if you had a chance,” she said.
“You didn’t wake me up, but the phone did. A call that early usually means trouble. Everything okay?”
“Just hunky-dory,” she said lightly. And then had to sniff fast. Tears welled in her eyes before she could possibly stop them-not that she would. When she was a young girl, she hated being so impulsive and emotional, but these days, she knew the power of it. Men got shook up when they saw tears. They backed away from an emotional woman. It all worked out fine. Usually.
“Hey.” He saw the tears, and instead of looking frantic and freaked like any
“An idiotic mood, that’s all.”
“Nobody died?”
“Nope.”
“Some idiot dump you?”
“God, no.”
“You hurt yourself? Another bee sting?”
“No. Nothing happened.”
“Someone called,” he persisted.
“Yeah. My ex-husband. To tell me that he and his wife had a baby. Their second. A son. They were very happy. And I’m very happy for them.” Tears welled up again. Announcing her happiness and crying at the same time should
Instead, as if unconcerned whether she made any sense or not, he ambled past her, squeezing her shoulder momentarily when he passed by. And then started snooping. Poking at her pots and plants. Sniffing. Tasting. Literally tasting.
How could she help but be diverted? “You usually eat dirt?”
“Yeah. I’ve tried every fancy chemical test known to man, but sometimes the senses seem to tell the most important truth. A taste’ll tell me if the soil is highly acid or not.” He moved on, doing more poking, more smelling, more snooping. “These are more of your lavender experiments?”
“Not just lavender.” Because she was still feeling emotionally shaky, her tongue seemed to get loose. Not that her tongue needed an excuse to talk incessantly, but this time there was an actual reason. “Originally when I came home after the divorce, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Mom and Dad had retired south. This house was just left available for family. Dad wasn’t ready to do anything else with it, thinking one of us girls could still want to live here. So it was perfect for me to move into…and I didn’t have to rush getting a job, because I’d received a big settlement from the divorce. Partly there was a lot of money because he wanted the matrimonial house himself, and I didn’t, so I got that share. But whatever. I thought of that settlement as guilt money.”
“And was it?”
“Yeah. Big guilt on his part. But the point was, I came here and suddenly started remembering being a kid, trailing after my mom, all the pleasure we got out of growing things. Long term, I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do for a career, but for a couple years the Herb Haven just hit me as right. A divorce is like…destroying something, you know? So I wanted to create something. Grow things. Do something purposefully constructive instead of destructive.”
“You’ve got more than a green thumb,” Cameron remarked.
“Yeah. It’s kind of a joke in the family. Everything I touch seems to reproduce tenfold.” Again she felt a round of tears threatening. “Come on,” she said briskly. “I’ll show you the lavender.”
“First, I have to make you breakfast.”
“Pardon?”
“Breakfast. You haven’t had any. I haven’t had any. And since you put me up, I’m cooking.”
He made her crepes with blueberries. She sat at the table, lazy as a slug, letting him wait on her. It was another of the behaviors she’d taken up after Simpson-not kowtowing to men; acting like a spoiled princess. All normal men-certainly all Vermont men-steered way clear of an obviously high-maintenance woman, but Cameron… he just didn’t seem to be normal.
If he remembered those potent kisses from the night before-or if they meant anything to him-he never let on.
If he found anything odd in a woman wearing dangling marquisite earrings and a patchwork jacket and rubber boots and uncombed hair, he never let on about that, either.
“I’m going to need a place to set up a minilab. If I won’t be in your way, I could use the potting room in your greenhouse-the old greenhouse we were in this morning. It seems perfect. It’s got a sink and a longer counter for a work space, exactly what I need.”
“It’ll be too hot there,” she said.
“I’m not afraid of heat.”
“You’ll get interrupted-”
“I can work around noise and interruptions.”
“There’s no comfortable chair. I can’t make it into any kind of good working environment-”
“I don’t need everything perfect. In fact, I’m usually bored by perfection. Life’s a hell of a lot more interesting if we take the road less traveled, yes? Wasn’t it a Vermont man who said that?”
Well, yes, but Robert Frost was safely dead, which Cameron certainly wasn’t. In fact, although Cam was talking about his work…he kept looking at her. At her eyes. At her unkempt hair. At her bare mouth. As if he were communicating that he liked complicated women. Uncomfortable, difficult women. Hot women. As if he’d pegged her as less than perfect, the kind of woman who interested him.
“Well, do what you want,” she said crossly. She glanced at the clock and abruptly stood up. “Thanks for breakfast, but I really have to go. I should have already opened my Herb Haven. I’ll catch up with you later-”
She started to turn away when he suddenly said her name, very quietly, very gently.
“What?”
“I just want to make sure we’re clear. You’re okay with me working here. Living here. Setting up here for now.”
“Sure,” she said.
“We need to sign some agreements.”
She motioned, an exasperated gesture. “I don’t care about legal stuff like that.”
“Yeah, you do. Because it’s about potential money for you and protecting your rights.”
“Well, I don’t have time now.” She took off, leaving him with the dishes and her house. Leaving him, surely, with the impression that she was flaky and emotional and not the kind of woman he’d want to be involved with.
He’d readily established that he wasn’t looking for involvement. But those kisses last night-she didn’t trust them. It seemed wise to make absolutely sure there was a five-mile fence of emotional distance established between them…so there’d be no more kisses.
Not just for his sake. For hers. Because a man like Cameron reminded her of everything she couldn’t have.
Cam always had an unspoken impression that small towns in Vermont were quiet, bucolic, peaceful.
Violet’s place was as peaceful as JFK International Airport on a holiday.
He made a quick trek to view her twenty acres of lavender, but he swiftly returned to the yard. He couldn’t be that close to the lavender without making himself crazy. The field was breathtaking. She had plants close to harvest, florets already starting to open up, a few that were just days away from the perfect time to extract oil from and test. But he didn’t feel right about touching the lavender until they’d both signed some legal agreements. Violet could trust him not to take advantage of her, but of course, she had no way to know that.
Sometime that day he simply had to trap her alone and sit on her until he’d made all the contract issues clear for her.
Until then, he figured he could spend the morning setting up. His gaze kept wandering around the yard and house and property as he unpacked his car and started carting equipment into the old greenhouse. It was odd. Normally he didn’t much care where he was. Every place was new and interesting and involved different challenges. But there was something about her place-the land, the buildings, the whole feeling here-that provoked the strangest feeling.
