He’d never been drawn to a place, partly because he’d always been bulldog stubborn about not becoming dependent on physical possessions. But damn. Some of the buildings showed wear and tear, the original house showed generations of character and age, but all of it looked well loved. The property kept striking him as a spot where a man could come and find a place for himself, feel as if he belonged.
Cam had never belonged anywhere. Never known he even wanted to. Of course, maybe his immune system was down and he was catching some annoying bug that was messing with his mind. He kept working.
Unfortunately, he always had to travel heavy. His clothes could be stuffed easily enough into a duffel bag, but he had to cart enough equipment to set up a minilab, and although he’d deny it to the death, he was just a wee bit fussy about his equipment. His microscope had cost a fortune-and was worth every penny, because his testing chemicals had to be exactly right. And he couldn’t possibly carry around a full-scale distillation process, but he’d created a small, efficient steam distiller so that he could extract oil from small amounts of lavender.
Strangers assumed his old Birks and practical khakis meant that he was a totally laid-back personality. And he was. He’d been determined to convince himself for years that he was-except for his work, where Cam figured he had a reasonable excuse to be a perfectionist.
Setting up should have been a piece of cake after doing it around the world all these years, but this morning, it seemed, one humorous problem followed another. To begin with, Violet’s cats-for some God unknown reason- decided to hang with him. The old greenhouse had a lot of character, with a brick base and brick walkways and a nice, long concrete slab for a work space. But six of her mammoth, hairy cats sat on the greenhouse counter next to the sink, supervising every move he made. Worse yet, they wanted the water turned on. Regularly. Not a gush of water. A skinny little thread. And after one took her time getting a drink, it seemed the next one wanted her turn.
The herd of cats seemed to get thirsty about every twenty minutes.
By ten o’clock he hadn’t accomplished much of anything. He suddenly looked up and noticed a girl leaning in the doorway. She was a young teenager, somewhere around fourteen, he guessed. She looked younger than spring grass, with eyes big as beacons, frothy brown hair and shorts two sizes too tight.
“Hi. I’m supposed to get some twine from in here.” She motioned to the old cupboards above the sink.
“Go for it,” he invited her.
But she didn’t. She took a few steps in and then just kind of hung there, pulling her ear, changing feet, looking at the equipment he’d started to lay out. “I’m Boobla. Actually my name is Barbara and I’m sick to death of everyone calling me Boobla, but that’s what my little brother called me when he was too little to say my whole name and then it stuck. I’m so sick of it, I could cry.”
“Okay. Barbara it is,” he said obligingly.
“I work for Violet. Actually I’m her assistant manager.”
Cameron didn’t raise his eyebrows, but this one was barely in a bra. It seemed mighty doubtful that she carried such a mighty title.
“I run the place when she’s busy,” Barbara offered further. “And Violet is really busy most of the time. We have tons of customers. And she’s really nice, too. She said you were going to be here for a few weeks.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Well, we’re probably going to hire my friend Kari because we’re so busy and all. But I’d still have time to help you. If you need anything, you could just yell in the shop for me.”
“That’s really nice of you.” He added carefully, “Barbara.”
“I like perfume and all.
Okay. So this morning he was doomed not to get any work done. The kid eventually left, but cars and trucks zoomed in and out of the yard; he could hear the phone ringing both in Violet’s house and the shop. Every time he carried something in from the car, someone else seemed to stop to talk to him. The mailman. A neighbor. A customer who assumed he’d know if Violet sold “Yerba mate”, whatever that was.
He was annoyed, he told himself. He needed to get kicking, get serious, get into his job. But it seemed to be the kind of place where people took friendliness for granted. If you were in sight, you were fair game for conversation.
The sun poured down, heating up the day, making the cats want to snooze, bringing the irresistible scent of lavender wafting in from her east fields. Still, he tried to stay focused. Until he suddenly saw her striding out the back door of her Herb Haven, aiming for him.
Just like that, he felt a kick in the heart.
She was dressed just as goofy as the day before. Sandals today, paired with a sundress that wouldn’t pass for work clothes anywhere he could imagine. The fabric was all sunflowers, matching long dangling sunflower earrings and a sunflower ring. She’d swished her long hair into a haphazard coil, to get the heat of it off her neck, he supposed, and her cheeks were flushed with heat and sunshine.
So were her eyes when she spotted him.
Or maybe the problem was his vision suddenly blurring when he spotted her. Those midnight kisses suddenly zoomed into his mind, sneakier than temptation, wilier than forbidden. Her mouth was naked this morning. Those same supple, plump lips asked to be kissed. Those same striking hazel eyes dared him to figure her out.
She was a complicated, contradictory woman, he told himself. There were a ton of signs that she was too much trouble. To begin with, she was obviously a home-and-hearth kind of female, which meant he had nothing in hell to offer her. And then there was the mystifying issue of how she could be so damned beautiful and yet totally unattached. On top of that, the woman acted like a complete flake sometimes and other times clearly had a tantalizing brain. Whatever secrets she was holding back, it seemed obvious that she didn’t need a guy messing with her who wasn’t serious. There was too much vulnerability in those huge eyes.
Too much vulnerability in those kisses.
Better that he should stay clear, knowing he was only going to be there for a short time.
“You have a few minutes, Cam? I can steal a half hour now, if you want to go look at the lavender.”
“Ready,” he said. But the minute she came close, he felt his world shift. It was nuts. He’d had tons of women shake his timbers and move his hormones. Her pulling his chain wasn’t a new issue. He liked his chain pulled, for God’s sake. But those eyes, that hair, that smile…
Be careful, his heart warned him.
Which was the craziest thing of all, because Cam never, never did uncareful things.
Six
Violet understood that she couldn’t postpone dealing with the touchy lavender problem forever, but just then she was saved by the bell-or the ring, as it happened. Barbara yelled from the Herb Haven that there was an overseas telephone call for her. That meant Daisy had to be on the line-and there was no way she wanted to postpone a chance to talk with her sister.
She sent Cam up to the house for lunch. It was an easy way to get him out of listening range. Suggest food and men always moved. Once in her broom-closet-size office in the Herb Haven, she closed the door and listened to Daisy’s perky greeting.
“So. He got there. What’d you think of him?”
Violet briefly held the phone away from her ear to stare at it, then clapped it back tight. “Wait a minute. What is this?”
“What’s what?”
“You know what. What I think of
“It is,” Daisy said cheerfully. “But don’t worry about it. Just leave all that junk to Cam. He’s straight as an arrow. With any luck, you’re going to make a fortune, kiddo. And in the meantime, you’ll have a chance to forget that bubble-brain you finally got divorced from.”
