She hiked out to find Boobla near tears, being railed on by an unsatisfied customer. Wilhelmena wanted a cure for age. There wasn’t one. It seemed she’d bought some chamomile and clover and mint and parsley and primrose a few weeks ago, believing the combination of products would clear up her wrinkles and fix her dry skin, and now she wanted a refund because they didn’t work.
Violet gently stepped in front of her clerk. “Those are all good ideas for dry skin, but I don’t know why you had the impression they’d fix wrinkles.”
“Because your girl told me it would.”
Violet didn’t have to ask Boobla to know the teenager never said any such thing. “If you don’t want the products, you can bring them back. I’ll give you a partial refund.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
Violet’s gaze narrowed. She knew Wilhelmena. Hell’s bells, every shopkeeper in three counties knew Wilhelmena. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sue me then, hon, because that’s as far as I’m going.”
The woman railed a little while longer. For anyone else, she’d have gone the long mile, but not for a complainer-and then there was the principle of backing up her staff. Boobla was still a baby, which was precisely the point. This was her first job. Violet wasn’t about to let anyone browbeat her just because she was a kid.
More customers came and went. In the meantime, orders for baskets still had to be filled, plants needed watering, the grass mowed. Even after hours, the phone kept ringing and a delivery truck came in.
The next time Violet looked up, somehow it was well past seven. The kids had both gone home, the closed sign was parked in the window, and Cameron was standing in the Herb Haven doorway with the fading sun behind him.
“What the hell kind of place are you running here, chere?” he murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re doing the work of four men and then some. You barely had time to grab half a sandwich at lunch, and I know you had a couple of cookies. But have you had anything serious to eat since breakfast?”
Who knew? Who cared? She had no idea how long he’d been standing there, but the silence suddenly coiled around her nerves like velvet ribbons. He looked like such a shout of male next to all the flower sights and smells and fuss, especially with his leg cocked forward and his broad shoulders filling the doorway. When she met his gaze, there was no instant thunderclap, just more of those itchy-soft velvet nerves. She was just so aware that no one else was in sight or sound but her and Cam and all that golden dusk.
But then she recalled his question. He sounded as if he were accusing her of being an effective manager, so Violet instinctively defended herself. “I really don’t work very hard. All my running around is just an act-to fool people into thinking I have a head for business. I’d be in real trouble if the customers ever realized I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”
“Sure,” Cam said, but there was a wicked glint in his eyes. She had a bad feeling he was on to her flutter- brained routine-which was a foolish fear, since every guy in the neighborhood and surrounding county had been convinced for years she was a hard-core ditz. He distracted her, though, when he lifted a white paper bag and shook it.
She smelled. “Food?”
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s nothing like what you cook. But I made a trek into White Hills and picked up some fresh deli sandwiches, drinks, dessert. By midafternoon I figured that I’d never get you out to the lavender to talk unless I somehow wooed you away from the phone and the business. I thought you must be hungry by now.”
She wasn’t. Until she looked at him. And then realized there seemed to be something hollow inside her that had been aching for a long time.
“I don’t have long,” she said.
He nodded, as if expecting that answer, too-but shook the bag again, so she could catch the scent of a kosher dill and corned beef on rye.
“I don’t usually eat red meat,” she said twenty minutes later, as she was wolfing down her second sandwich.
“I can see you’re not into it.”
“And I never eat chips. They’re terrible for you.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, as he opened the second bag of chips and spilled them onto a napkin.
She wasn’t exactly sure how he’d conned her into this picnic, but he seemed to have pulled a Pied Piper routine-his carrying an old sheet to use as a tablecloth, and the food and his car keys and strapping her into the front seat and his driving-while she did nothing but follow the scent of food. By the time he’d unfurled the sheet to sit on, on the crest of the east hill overlooking the lavender, she’d already been diving in.
He had a kind side, she had to give him that, because he didn’t say a word when she gobbled down the second helping of chips. All that salt. All that fat. She tasted guilt with every bite, but, man, were they good. “You really ate ahead of time?” she insisted again.
“Sure did,” he said.
But she wasn’t convinced. He’d brought enough for two. She’d assumed he was diving in when she was, until she suddenly glanced up and noticed that he was mounding his food on her plate. “I never eat this much. You must think I’m a greedy pig.”
“Yeah. I’ve always admired greed in a woman. Always admired meanness, too, and you’ve got an unusually mean streak. I was watching how you treated those two kids who work for you. They both think you’re a goddess.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Are you kidding? I’m in awe, chere.” When she finally finished enough to please him, he reopened the bag and emerged with more goodies. “Almond cookies. And there’s a little more raspberry iced tea. Although I only bought a few cookies. I had no idea you were going to need three or four dozen just to fill you up on a first round.”
The darn man was so comfortable and fun to be with that she had to laugh…but then, of course, reality caught up with her. She couldn’t be feeling comfortable. Not here.
It wasn’t that she never came out to this stretch of the farm. She’d planted the twenty acres of lavender over the past few years, after all. Still, she avoided this view if she could help it. She wasn’t the one who’d tended it-her younger sister Camille had, when she’d come home early in the spring, yelling the whole time about how crazy Violet had become to neglect anything like this.
And the craziness was true. Obviously, she knew she was coming out here with Cameron; they had to get the harvest business settled. But for whole long stretches of time, she forgot how traumatically symbolic the lavender was for her.
A knot filled her throat as she gazed at the stretching, rolling sweep of lavender. Until Camille had come home, the long rows of lavender bushes had been an unkempt, overgrown thatchy mess. They still weren’t perfect, yet Violet-who had always nurtured and mothered everything and everyone-had thrown these plants in the ground and just left them.
Cameron suddenly said quietly, “Tell me what you originally planned to do with this?”
His voice was gentle, serious, nonjudgmental, but she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat-not for that moment.
The smell of lavender saturated the warm summer air. The buds were just barely coming on, because all the strains she’d put in were late types. Buds would keep coming from now through August, and by late summer the smell would be unbearable, invading everything, impossible to escape from-not that anyone would want to.
The plants were pale purple, soft in the evening light, and that first blush of bud smell was like nothing else-not at all heavy, but immeasurably light, a scent that was forever fresh and frisky and clean. There was nothing quite like it. No other flower, no other herb, had a scent even remotely related to lavender.
“Violet?”
When he prompted her, she motioned to the field without looking at him. “Our mom-her name was Margaux- always had lavender growing in the backyard. She’s the one who taught me what I know. There are all kinds of lavender, but basically most strains fall in one of two camps. ‘Hardy lavender’ is what a lot of people call English lavender, even though it’s not from England. And the ‘tender lavenders’ tend to grow around France and Spain.”
Cameron leaned back. “Go on.”
