“Campbell, are you flirting with me? From the minute you came home, you’ve given me grief nonstop.”
“It wasn’t personal. I’ve given everyone grief. Temporarily, though, all I can think about is having you for lunch.”
Nobody have given him a sudden ticket to Never Never Land. Reality was all around him. The silky sunlight. The dust. The sound of birdsong. The smells of bad coffee and verdant earth and flowering almond outside the window screen. Yet all he could see was her wildly tumbled hair, the ache in her eyes, her mouth swollen from his kisses. Her face was still, her gaze searching his just as urgently as his searched hers.
“What’s going on here?” he asked gently.
“Maybe I’m trying to scare you away.”
“And you think I’ll scare?”
Silence. Then she touched his cheek with her fingertip. “Yeah, I do, Pete. I don’t know why you keep kissing me. I don’t know why you keep trying to help me. But you have to know that I’m a walking catastrophe. I can’t fit in your life, in your sons’ life. I’m not ready for any kind of relationship. I’m not ready for much of anything.”
“Yeah. So?”
A whisper of a grin, the first natural one he’d seen on her lips. “Don’t get sassy with me, you dolt. I’m serious. If you come on to me, you could get what you’re asking for. Trouble. So you think it through real good before you kiss me again, you hear?”
Slowly, she pulled completely free from his arms, then turned around and simply walked out. The screen door clapped behind her.
The damn woman had left him in her kitchen. And he stood there for a good five minutes, feeling as dazed as if someone had smacked him upside the head-or upside the heart. God knew what he was going to do about her. Right then, for sure, he didn’t have a clue.
Five
Nothing had gone well for the entire week, and as far as Camille was concerned, it was all Pete’s fault. He’d rattled her. It was one thing for her high school crush-the heroic icon of her whole darn childhood-to turn into a living, breathing man who seemed to be attracted to her. But entirely another thing for her to respond to him.
Obviously there was nothing serious between them-and couldn’t be. It was just a matter of shaking off this constant rattled feeling. So she’d withdrawn. Specifically, she tried holing up in the cottage the way she had those first weeks, but that no longer seemed to work. The darn dog took all kinds of time and care. And the lavender simply had to be tended. And then, Pete’s boys kept showing up to help her.
Camille was all for denial and cowardice and hiding out, but dagnabbit, a woman couldn’t even be a neurotic hermit in peace around here.
She hiked the driveway between the main house and her sister’s Herb Haven business. Clouds had started building before noon, and now they were chasing across the sky, tumbling over each other, bringing a storm in their shadows. Since she’d been chased out of the lavender field because of the inclement weather, she figured she might as well use the time to suck it up and seek out her sister.
She hoped to find Violet alone, but when she poked her head in the Herb Haven, she spotted at least three bodies wandering around-that is, three human bodies, not counting the half-dozen cats.
She shied from the sound of strangers’ voices. She’d have shied from the cats, too, except that two of the long-haired Persians tangled around her legs before she could escape back outside. Trying to walk to the greenhouses was an exercise in getting tripped and sabotaged. Finally, she hunched down to pet them, snarling behind her, “Dammit, Killer. You’re a dog. Isn’t it a mandate that you’re supposed to chase cats? What good are you?”
She didn’t have to look back to know the shepherd was as close behind her as bad breath. Killer was still snarling at every opportunity-including at her-but this last week, he’d taken up following her everywhere. She couldn’t go to the bathroom, couldn’t go to dinner, couldn’t close the door on her bedroom without him. Just like now, he sat patiently, tongue lolling, less than two feet away from the disgusting sight of her petting the two long- haired nuisance cats.
The damn dog was just like having a second conscience. Couldn’t escape him for love or money.
Finally the cats seemed sated. She stood up, slugged her hands in her jeans pockets, and wandered around the first greenhouse. Her parents had built this one. It wasn’t as high-tech as Vi’s new greenhouse, but it still had touches of their mother in here-Margaux’s sacred pruning shears, her tidy potting sink and counter, the old French apron she used to wear.
Camille swallowed hard. Margaux was a wildly flamboyant flower lover, like Violet. And like Daisy. Cam was the only misfit of the daughters, the only one who’d wanted a high-stress city job, the one who’d never loved romantic lace and doodads. But when she was in here, sometimes she imagined the faint hint of her mother’s perfume, lavender and jasmine, the warm scents hiding in all the musky, humid greenery.
Of course, that was foolishness. The greenhouse smelled like dirt and fertilizer, nothing more fanciful than that. She didn’t miss her mother. She was long a grown woman, for God’s sake. She was just…ticked off. Because she’d postponed talking to Violet as long as she possibly could-not because she cared about what her sister was going to do with the lavender, but because she’d promised Pete.
And darn it, she definitely didn’t want to think about Pete.
So she poked and prodded, sniffed flowers, tested soil, read labels, snooped. By the time she heard Violet’s exuberant, “Hey, you!” she’d explored one greenhouse stem to stern and was halfway through the new one.
“Cam! You’re out and about. Still with the mutt, I see.” Violet sidestepped Killer, who growled and snarled for a second, but Vi had stopped being impressed by the dog’s shenanigans. She barely spared him a patient look before surging forward. Today she was wearing one of her floppy straw hats, a peasant blouse and a gypsy skirt printed with every color and some that probably didn’t exist. “You could have found me in the store if you needed me.”
“You had customers. And I wasn’t in any hurry.”
“You mean, you’re still avoiding talking to anyone. Have you been to town yet? Even once?” Vi glanced at her face and said hastily, “Never mind, never mind. I’m so glad you’re here. Did you see my peonies? My St. John’s Wort? How about this one? You know what this is?”
She pointed to a silver-leaved plant, flowering now with deep, deep blue petals and bright yellow stamens. Camille figured she’d better cater to her. “No, what is it?”
“Nightshade. There are different kinds of wild nightshade. This silver-leafed one is poisonous, but it’s also a wonderful, healing herb. People shouldn’t be afraid of it. I mean potatoes and tomatoes are cousins of nightshade, and we all love those. And over here, Cam. Do you know what this one is?”
Camille had barely settled down to study the nightshade before Vi was dancing off, all excited now, fluttering from plant to plant like a butterfly. “Are you looking?” Violet demanded.
“Yes. Sheesh.” Truth to tell, most things in the greenhouses were gorgeous, but the plant Violet motioned to now was uglier than a weed. The leaves were coarse and stiff and fuzzy.
“It’s called a button bush. Reminds me of lavender.”
“Are you kidding? Lavender’s beautiful. This looks something you’d spray to kill.”
“Well, I know it’s not much to look at. But you can’t pamper lavender and you can’t pamper this either. Lavender’s going to grow where it’s going to grow. It’s like a Scot. You can’t tell it anything. This button bush’ll grow, but only if you create kind of the same marshy, hostile environment where it grows naturally.”
“And you’d do that why?” Camille asked wryly.
“Because it’s so pretty in dried bouquets. And that’s a lot of why people want herbs. Some for medicine or healing. Some like flowers. Some want them for spices. But some just like to dry them, and these buttons really add something cute in a bouquet.”
“Okay.” Camille interrupted before her sis could go on another endless tangent. “I looked around. Everything you’re doing is cool, Vi. It’s interesting. But you actually think there’s a chance of selling all this stuff? The greenhouses are jammed full.”
“Yeah, they are, aren’t they…” Vi connected nozzles. Started sprays. Pinched a brown leaf here and there. Kept
