leaves from the budstick—the shoots we just cut. But we’ll leave just a little stub, just about an eighth of an inch of the petiole—the leaf stalk.”
“I know what a petiole is,” she muttered, and watched Harper demonstrate before she took her turn.
Good hands, she thought. Quick, skilled, sure. Despite—or maybe because of the nicks and calluses—they were elegantly male.
She thought they reflected who he was perfectly, that combination of privileged background and working- class.
“Cut the soft tip from the top, see? Now watch.” He angled around so she could see, and their heads bent close together. “We want the first bud at the base, that’s where we’re going to cut into the stem, just a little below there. See how you have to angle the cut, going down, then another above, behind the bud toward that first cut. And . . .” Gently, holding the chip by the leaf stalk, he held it out.
“I can do that.”
“Go ahead.” He slipped the bud chip into a plastic bag, and watched her work.
She was careful, which was a relief to him, and he heard her whispering his instructions to herself with every move.
“I did it!”
“Nice job. Let’s get the rest.”
He did seven in the time it took her to do three, but she didn’t mind. He showed her how to stand astride the rootstock to remove the sideshoots and leaves from the bottom twelve inches.
She knew it was a maneuver, and really, she’d probably feel guilty about it later, but she deliberately fumbled her first attempt.
“No, you need to position it between your legs, more like this.”
As she’d hoped, he came over to stand behind her, in a nice vertical spoon, his arms coming around, making her belly dance as his hands closed over her wrists.
“Bend down a little, loosen at the knees. That’s it. Now . . .” He guided her hand for the cut. “Just a sliver of the bark,” he murmured, and his breath breezed along her ear. “See, there’s the cambium. You want to leave a lip at the base where the chip will layer.”
He smelled like the trees, sort of hot and earthy. His body felt so firm pressed against hers. She wished she could turn around, just turn so they were pressed front to front. She’d only have to rise up on her toes for their mouths to line up.
It was a maneuver, and
“Yeah. Better. A lot.”
As she’d hoped, his gaze skimmed down, lingered on her mouth. Classic move, she thought. Classic results.
“I’ll . . . show you how to do the rest.”
He looked blank for a moment, like a man who’d forgotten what he was doing in the middle of a task. She couldn’t have been more delighted.
Then he stepped back, reached in his tool bag for the grafting tape.
That had been so nice, she mused. Line to line, heat to heat, for just a few seconds. Of course now she was all churned up, but it felt good, felt fine to have everything swimming around inside her.
But as penance for her calculation, she behaved herself, played the eager student as she positioned the bud chip on the stock so the cambium layers met as snugly as her body had met Harper’s.
She bound the chip to stock using the tape around and over the bud as instructed.
“Good. Perfect.” He still felt a little breathless, and the palms of his hands were damp enough that he wiped them on the knees of his jeans. “In six weeks, maybe two months, the chip will have united, and we’ll take off the tape. Late next winter, we’ll cut the top of the stock, just above this bud, and during the spring the grafted bud will send out a shoot, and we’re off and running.”
“It’s fun, isn’t it? How you can take a little something from one, a little something from another, put them together and make more.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Will you show me some of the other techniques sometime? Like what you do in the grafting house?” Her body was angled, her head bent over the next rootstock. “Roz and Stella showed me some of the propagation techniques. I’ve done some flats by myself. I’d like to try something in the grafting house.”
Alone with her there, in all that moist heat. He’d probably drown in a pool of his own lust.
“Sure, sure. No problem.”
“Harper?” She knelt to join chip bud with rootstock. “Did you ever think, when your mama started this place, it’d be what it is?”
He had to focus, on her words, on the work, and ignore—or at least suffer through—his body’s reaction to her.
Lily’s mama, he reminded himself. A guest in his home. An employee. Could it be any more complicated?
Jesus, God. Help.
“Harper?”
“Sorry.” He wrapped grafting tape. “I did.” When he looked up, looked around, beyond the fields and nursery beds, to the greenhouses, and sheds, he calmed. “I guess I could see it because it was what I wanted, too. And I know when Mama puts her mind to something, puts her back into it, she’s going to make it work.”
“What if she hadn’t wanted it, or put her mind to it? What would you be doing?”
“Just what I’m doing. If she hadn’t decided on this I’d’ve started it myself. And because I wanted it, she’d’ve got on board, so I guess we’d have pretty much what we have here.”
“She’s the best, isn’t she? It’s good that you know that, that you understand how lucky you are. I see that between you. You don’t take each other for granted. I hope Lily and I have that one day.”
“Seems like you already do.”
She smiled at that, and rose to go to the next rootstock. “Do you think you and Roz are the way you are with each other, to each other—and your brothers, too—because you didn’t have a daddy most of your life? I mean, I think I was closer to my own daddy because it was just the two of us than I might’ve been otherwise. I’ve wondered about that.”
“Maybe.” His hair, a thick tangle of black, fell forward as he worked. He shook it back, momentarily annoyed he’d forgotten a hat. “I remember her and my father, how they were together. It was special. She’s got something like that with Mitch—not the same. I guess it’s never the same, not supposed to be. But they’ve got something good and special. That’s what she deserves.”
“Do you ever think about finding somebody? Somebody good and special?”
“Me?” His head whipped up, and he narrowly missed slicing his own finger with the knife. “No. No. Well, eventually. Why? Do you?”
He heard her sigh as she moved down the nursery bed. “Eventually.”
WHEN THEY WERE finished, and she had gone, Harper walked back to the pond. He emptied out his pockets, tossed his sunglasses on the grass. Then dived in.
It had been something he’d done—with or without clothes—since childhood. There was nothing like a quick dip into the pond to cool you down on a sticky summer day.
He’d been on the point of kissing her. More than, he admitted, and sank under the surface, along the lily pads and yellow flags. It had been more than a kiss—even a hot and greedy one—that had run through his mind when he’d had his hands on her.
He had to put that aside—well off to the side—as he had been for more than a year now. She looked to him for friendship. God help him, she probably thought of him as a kind of brother.
So he’d just have to keep tamping down his less than brotherly feelings until he beat out the last of the sparks. Or burned up.
Best thing for him to do was get himself back into circulation. He was spending too much time at home, and too much of that time alone. Maybe he’d go into the city tonight, make some calls, meet some friends. Better yet, make a date. Have dinner, listen to music. Charm himself into some willing female’s bed.
The trouble was, he couldn’t think of any particular female he wanted to be with, over dinner, with music, or in
