Chapter 1: Léonie - Crushing His Mountain Flower

“When are you due?” my cousin Margot asked, shaking out her bright red hair and scanning the chattering crowds gathered for my baby shower.

“37 weeks, not too long to go now—” I said, but she wasn’t even listening.

“Your house is so beautiful, of course, but it doesn’t bother you to live under the same roof as your mother-in-law and the woman your husband used to run around with?”

Her tone was sharp, but her eyes were on my husband Étienne, circulating around the yard, that long-sleeved white shirt open to the throat, head and shoulders taller than everyone else in attendance.

“No, of course not,” I laughed, keeping an eye on my mother-in-law and her assistant walking toward me. Hopefully she hadn’t heard what Margot had said.

Margot was just trying to get a rise out of me, I guessed we had never fully outgrown that competitive cousin dynamic.

“That was a long time ago, and Placidie isn’t as awful as she seems,” I whispered. “She’s just protective of her son.”

It did seem a little bit strange to see Bastide and Pinoteaux families mixing together. As a rule, we didn’t mix.

But my baby was a special event.

“Ready to open the presents, Léonie?” Placidie asked.

My mother-in-law was a very beautiful woman, running a manicured hand through her flowing black hair with its dramatic snow-white streaks, while her assistant Faustine was dressed in a tight-fitting short cream dress.

Bold choice with the full wineglass she was holding, but I wasn’t going to say anything.

In fact I wondered if she was a little bit drunk the way she was slinging it about.

“Yes, of course, I’m very excited,” I said. “Let me just get Étienne.”

“I’ll get him,” Faustine said eagerly, whipping around so fast that the bright scarlet liquid slopped out of her glass and landed all down the front of my pretty pale green maternity dress.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Léonie,” she said.

“What a mess. You’re going to have to go get changed,” Placidie said, her voice brittle with barely-suppressed disdain. “You can’t be seen around everybody looking sloppy and filthy.”

So much for my hope that my elegant mother-in-law would like me a little more by the time our baby came.

“All right,” I said, glancing back at my husband, but he wasn’t looking at me.

I can’t wait to have his baby, I thought as I hurried inside.

Actually I’d been dreaming of having his baby from the first moment I’d ever seen Étienne Bastide. He didn’t know about the years of my secret longing, but from that first day, he was like a god to me.

But for a long time he didn’t notice me at all, even though at 18 and 19 we were both together at all the major festivals and feast-days.

I had the kind of quiet personality it was easy to overlook.

At the time, I was such an innocent, living in the Pinoteaux compound and having very little contact with the outside world.

There were a lot of other women who held his attention.

Not me. Painfully shy and awkward, with translucent freckled skin and pale lashes, a thick mass of bright red hair I didn’t know what to do with. I was the last girl Étienne would ever look at.

He favored the bold, confident women. Ones like Faustine, who was his age, but who got to do everything my strict daddy wouldn’t let me—dye her hair platinum blonde, wear makeup, go out on dates.

I wanted to be her so badly. But the Pinoteaux family was strict—no dating for me. My brother or my cousin or some other male relative was always watching. And by then Gran wasn’t around to advocate for me. . . fight with Da that I deserved a little more freedom.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized why.

The Bastille Day picnic the year I turned 19 was the first time Étienne noticed me. . .

It was late in the afternoon, the air baked and dry, the men lounging around by the tables drinking wine, while the young people our age had been chased out into the meadows beyond.

Étienne and the others were playing mumblety-peg, their knives flashing bright in the sunshine.

I was hanging back, trying not to make it so obvious that I was sneaking peeks at Étienne, that I wished he would notice me, instead of flirting with Faustine, his tanned hand looking breath-takingly delicious on her waist as he pulled her closer for a kiss.

But I never could have predicted how he did notice me, because the only warning we got was a rustling deep in the woods, and then suddenly, the animal burst through to the meadow.

It was some kind of rabid boar that must have been crashing through the trees for hours, its flanks slick with sweat and froth.

And everyone else was fast enough to flee.

Except me.

I had been wandering little further out, in a meadow knee-high with fragrant mayapple, checking for the first tart blackberries.

“Léonie!” my brother Réjean called. “Come away from there!”

But by then it was too late--the boar was between me and the path, pawing the ground, its eyes red-rimmed.

I whimpered, began to back up as the wild blackberries all spilled from my fingers.

“Don’t run,” a deep voice called, and I looked up to see Étienne, advancing on the path toward me, his movements tight and controlled.

And our eyes met for the first time.

He was beckoning me closer, telling me to walk toward the rabid boar.

It should have gone against every logical instinct in my body. Move toward the dangerous predator? Closer to trouble?

But I didn’t even stop to think, the boar tossing its hairy head back and forth, looking like it wanted to spear me with those tusks.

I instantly obeyed him.

One step. Then another, my eyes locked on Étienne’s. I couldn’t look away, my lips parted and my heart pounding.

Later I realized there was a knife in his hand, but at the time I didn’t even notice. I just did as he said.

The boar was snorting louder the closer I came, but I didn’t even notice that either.

It was like I was hypnotized. All this man had to do was crook that one tanned finger, and I would have followed him off a cliff.

The boar lowered his tusks and charged, but Étienne was faster, moving in a blur, and I was still walking forward, trusting in him, when the first splash of blood landed on my dress.

“Don’t look, Léonie,” he said, and I obediently squeezed my eyes tightly shut, lips tingling to taste my name in his mouth.

He knew my name.

His words went down like the sweetest, most fragrant juice. He had said them to me. He had looked at me.

Everything was different after that.

I waited breathlessly until he stood beside me, his fingers skimming my lower back.

“All you all right?”

“Yes,” I breathed, heat pulsing on my skin. Would he see the goosebumps raised by the faintest trace of his breath across my collarbone?

I didn’t open my eyes until he told me it was safe to look.

From that moment on, my status changed. Étienne didn’t touch me or flirt with me, and sometimes he barely talked to me, but at every single gathering, he was beside me.

Sometimes he showed me how to play mumblety-peg or carve simple figures into wood.

But mostly he made sure no other men talked to me.

And visit by visit, I realized he had stopped paying the other women any attention.

When I turned 21, my Da wasn’t surprised when his Da sent a message that I was the one Étienne wanted to marry.

By then, the powerful Étienne Bastide could have had anyone or anything he wanted.

And he wanted me.

Now at 24, I was lucky enough to sit in our baby boy’s massive nursery folding tiny onesies, wondering when I was going to go into labor and who he was going to look like.

Would he be dark-haired and tanned like Étienne? Or pale and auburn-haired like me?

How beautiful and perfect it all was, here in the sprawling massive Bastide house, here in the mountains where ivy and roses grew up the side.

Lucky and blessed beyond belief. My only sorrow was that my beloved Gran wasn’t here to see this.

Even though she was always skeptical about Étienne back in the day, I knew she would have been so happy to come over and quilt or knit with me, while away the long, lonely hours during the day when my husband had to work.

I straightened a little stuffed coyote on a shelf as I passed by the nursery. All of these were local animals. So our son would know right from the beginning that his daddy was from the mountains and the mountains were a part of his daddy.

I could feel him kicking too, baby boy wanting to come out and see the world. I knew it was better that he cooked just a little bit longer, but I was so excited to meet him.

Étienne and I hadn’t agreed on a name yet, but my husband’s idea would probably win. He had the much stronger will, it was the way of things that I could never stand my own up against his.

I hurried—well, waddled, really—into the bedroom.

Excited to get back out there and take my husband’s hand, so proud to be seen with him.

I peeled the wet dress off and adjusted the bra over my aching breasts, then checked my hair in the mirror, making sure my auburn curls didn’t look too wild.

That was when I saw somebody in the shadows.

Whirling around so fast I hit my elbow on the doorknob, I saw my brother-in-law emerge from the rumpled bed.

“Mano, what are you doing here? Get out!”

He strode toward me. Casual, relaxed. Like he had any right to be in my bedroom half-naked, no shirt on, his pants hanging low on his hips.

Clutching the wet dress to my chest, I stumbled backwards.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

But Mano only put an arm around my thick waist and pulled so I was flush against his body. He was like a shorter version of my husband, his chin covered in stubble that he dragged along my throat.

“Kiss me,” he rasped.

“Ew, what is wrong with you?”

Just then the door to the bedroom was thrown violently open, crashing against the opposite wall.

“What the hell is happening in here?”