Love on Lavender Lane

by Karis Walsh

  They weren’t much—and they were never enough—but they were worth the frustration and yearning they evoked. Paige felt more alive and happier here with Kassidy than she had felt in a long time, and as long as she was in McMinnville, she wasn’t going to reject the moments of shared laughter and intimacy that life doled out to her, piece by piece.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Paige took a deep breath as they got close to their first destination and let out some more leash for Dante, pedaling faster to keep up with his surge of speed. At least he was going straight now, barreling along toward the twins who were yards ahead. Paige heard Kassidy’s laughter behind her as she raced to catch up. Paige saw the winery sign marking the turn off the bike path at the end of a row of tall rhododendron bushes, and she watched the twins veer to the right and off the bike path. She relaxed, assuming Dante would continue along the path and follow them through the entrance, but instead he made a hard right turn at exactly the same moment they did, plowing through the shrubs.

  “Are you broken?” Kassidy asked from the path behind her, sounding far more amused than concerned.

  “No, but this rhododendron will never be the same.” Paige stood up and pried the bike out of the branches. Dante wiggled under the shrub to the other side, where the twins were apparently waiting because Paige heard dual cries of Got him!

  Kassidy walked her bike over and brushed at the loose soil on Paige’s thigh, still laughing. “I wish I had been able to see your face, but it looked pretty funny from behind. Good thing you’re wearing dark colors.”

  “I’ve learned I need to dress in mud-colored clothes when I take Dante anywhere,” Paige said, leaning into Kassidy’s touch. She pointed at her rear. “There’s more dirt back here. Can you get that, too?”

  Kassidy gave her a swat instead and wiped tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge. Paige used her thumb to clean it off, wanting to linger but moving away instead when she saw more tourists coming down the path. She bumped Kassidy with her shoulder as they walked their bikes onto the winery’s property.

  They parked their bikes and wandered over to the outdoor bar where Kyle and Kayla were waiting for them with Dante. Paige felt a slight twinge in her hip from where she had landed, and Dante had an orange rhododendron flower caught in his collar, but otherwise they were in better shape than she had anticipated.

  “Welcome to Misty Hills Winery.” The winery owner greeted them and splashed biker-sized samples into their glasses. Paige raised her eyebrows at Kassidy, who was swirling the wine around her glass.

  “Notice how the owner welcomed us to her winery instead of yelling at us to get off her property? That’s a good way to greet visitors.”

  “Don’t start, or I’ll sic the twins on you,” Kassidy said, taking a sip of her wine. “And I said the word welcome to the Wilsons. I told them they were welcome to leave by the same way they came onto the farm. That’s sort of the same thing.”

  “Well…” Paige drew the word out for several seconds. “Not really. And look, she’s smiling at everyone.”

  “I smiled when they left. I can’t promise more than that.”

  Paige laughed as they took their glasses over to where the twins were sitting at a picnic table where some board games and puzzles had been set out. She changed the subject away from Kassidy’s farm, gesturing instead toward the twins who seemed to be embroiled in a heated game of Boggle while Dante looked on, ready to snatch a letter cube if given the chance.

  “Is everything a competition with them?”

  Kassidy sighed with the indulgence of a doting parent. Or a long-suffering one. Paige wasn’t sure.

  “They’ve always been that way. They’ll compete and fight and scream at each other, but the second there’s an outside threat they’ll stick so close together they seem like one person.”

  “A threat, like the arrival of your dad’s minion?”

  “Exactly.” Kassidy paused, and then added, “The fact that they’re racing each other and playing games today means they like you. They’re being themselves around you.”

  Paige felt a surprising rush of pleasure at Kassidy’s words. She was the outsider here, not part of Kassidy’s family and only temporarily part of her farm. That was the way she spent most of her life, dipping into businesses and relationships for short periods and stepping out of them again without hesitation. She was shocked to find out how great it felt to get close enough to someone to feel like an insider in their lives. She enjoyed spending time with Kassidy and was already dreading the time when they would inevitably part ways, but this was different. Right now—just for today—she was part of Kassidy’s whole world, not just one corner of it.

  “So I can let my guard down now that they aren’t mirroring each other’s posture and speaking in unison?” Paige asked, reverting to jokes because she wasn’t ready to face the mix of emotions Kassidy’s confession had raised in her.

  “Those are the danger signs,” Kassidy said, nodding with mock solemnity. “If you see them, get on your bike and ride for the hills.”

  As soon as they sat down, Kyle and Kayla set their pencils down and turned to Paige.

  “Uh-oh.” Kassidy leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “Run!”

  As if Paige had a chance of moving with Kassidy’s breath warm against her neck and her hand resting on the bench next to Paige’s thigh. She didn’t feel capable of standing up, let alone running away.

  “So, Paige. Tell us more about your business,” Kayla said.

  “Um, what do you want to know?” Paige asked, unable to think much beyond her physical reaction to Kassidy. They had been near each other before and had held hands. Paige should be getting used to her presence and becoming less affected by her, not more.

  “Do you have some sort of nickname in Portland’s corporate world?” Kyle asked. “Something like the Terminator or the Battle-ax?”

  “Because all the employees know that when you show up, they’re about to be fired to save the company some money?” Kayla added, as if Kyle’s nicknames needed an explanation.

  “Stop it, you two,” Kassidy said in a stern voice. “Don’t be rude.”

  Paige burst out laughing, relieved to have been released—at least temporarily—from the spell cast by having Kassidy’s lips so close to her neck.

  “You asked me something quite similar the first day I came to your farm, Kass. Remember?”

  “All I remember from that weekend is someone calling someone else’s chicken perfume-y,” Kassidy said, waving her hand vaguely through the air. “The rest is hazy.”

  Paige grinned and pushed at Kassidy’s shoulder. She turned back to the twins who were laughing along with them.

  “Kidding aside, it’s a legitimate question,” she said, hearing the laughter fade from her own voice, replaced with a more serious tone. The topic was one that mattered to her personally, and she found herself wanting to reassure the twins that she wasn’t a monster and Kassidy was safe with her. “I hate knowing I’m the cause of anyone losing a job, and I do my best to focus on retraining and a reallocation of duties rather than firing anyone. It’s a different matter with upper management in top-heavy companies, though. They’re less likely to accept a change in title or responsibilities, and often choose to leave a company instead.”

  She smiled at Kassidy. “It’d be like suggesting we demote you from lavender keeper to lavender bystander. That conversation wouldn’t go well.”

  “I’m sure I would handle it with dignity if I believed it was best for my farm,” Kassidy said, kicking Kayla’s leg under the table when she laughed so hard she choked on her wine.

  “My turn to ask a question,” Paige said. She was enjoying the chance to see this different side of Kassidy as she interacted with her siblings, fluidly changing from sister to parent to friend with the twins. The controlled, private lavender farmer gave way to a softer, more complex woman when she was with them. “What was Kassidy like whe
n she was young?”

  “K was never young,” Kyle said.

  “I mean, has she always been such a good cook?” Paige quickly changed the tone of her original question when she felt Kassidy grow tense beside her and saw Kayla frown at her brother.

  “As long as we can remember, she was,” Kyle said, easily accepting the revised question. “She talks about how bad she was at first, but we were too young to care that we were guinea pigs while she was learning. She always was good at the basic things like macaroni and cheese, but after a while she was creating her own recipes and making fancier meals.”

  “Baking was another story, though. Remember the first time she made brownies?” Kayla asked. She and Kyle made identical grimaces.

  Kassidy groaned. “Please don’t tell this story.”

  She was sitting close enough to Paige for their arms and shoulders to be in contact, and Paige was relieved to feel when Kassidy relaxed again. “Please do tell the story,” Paige said.

  “It was our first bake sale at school, when we were in kindergarten,” Kayla said. “She sent a package of store-bought cookies with us, and I came home crying because all the other parents had sent homemade treats.”

  Kyle laughed and continued the story. “So for the next sale she made brownies. They were too hard to cut, so she had to break them into pieces with a hammer. Kayla came home from school crying again, begging her to go back to store-bought the next time.”

  Kassidy poked Paige in the side with her elbow to get her attention. “To be fair, Kayla was prone to overdramatizing everything that happened at school, so her criticism of my baking was probably exaggerated.” She paused, and then grinned at Paige. “The part about the hammer was true, though.”

  Kyle smiled at his sister with obvious fondness. “By the time we were in first grade, she had taught herself to bake really well. Her shortbread cookies were famous and always sold out before anything else.”

  “They were amazing,” Kayla agreed. “And I was never overdramatic.”

  “I wanted to use the red crayon, but Robbie wouldn’t let me,” Kyle said in a high-pitched whine.

  “Enough of this. Come on,” Kassidy said, laughing as she got up and tugged on Paige’s sleeve. “Let’s get to our next stop. I’ll take Dante for this leg, if only to spare the poor bushes along the way.”

  The twins jostled each other as they raced toward their bikes, while Kassidy and Paige walked more slowly, sticking close together.

  Paige reached for Kassidy’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “The brownie story was funny, but I can’t imagine what it was like for you to face those kinds of responsibilities when you were eleven. I was concerned about doing homework and playing sports, while you were doing so much more. I really admire you for the way you took care of the twins.”

  Kassidy tugged on their joined hands, pulling Paige against her. “You were doing more than homework and sports, Paige. You were living out your parents’ unmet dreams. We both had expectations to fulfill, but I wouldn’t change mine even if I could because my relationship with the twins is so much more than it would have been if circumstances had been different.”

  Paige leaned into the contact between them while she considered Kassidy’s statement. Would Paige change the way she had been raised if she had the chance? Who would she be right now if the pressure to perform had been removed, allowing her to follow her own path? Maybe she would have discovered some cherished passion in life, or maybe she just wasn’t the type of person who had one. Still, her past had brought her here, to McMinnville and Kassidy. She was grateful for that and didn’t want to imagine a life in which they hadn’t met.

  “I guess you’re right,” she said. “An easier road might not have been as rewarding.”

  Kassidy let go of Paige’s hand when they got to the trail. “I’ll keep chanting that to myself when I listen to your business proposal.”

  Paige laughed as she got on her bike and watched Kassidy and Dante maneuver around a group of tourists. “Are you sure you can handle him? We’re going to see plenty more rhododendrons along the way, and he might run under any one of them.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Kassidy said, waving off her protests. She started pedaling down the trail, and Dante—just like he had during Paige’s tour of the first farm—trotted obediently at her side.

  “He’s only behaving because I already tired him out,” Paige called to Kassidy, hurrying to catch up to the pair. Her wrist still had red bands around it where Dante’s leash had embedded itself into her skin, but now he was jogging along with a slack line. The ride to the first winery certainly hadn’t been long enough to wear him out, but she had to save face somehow. Hard to do when she still had dirt stains from hip to ankle.

  Paige was glad to be riding again. She enjoyed being included in some of Kassidy’s family camaraderie and she loved being close to Kassidy, but neither of those had any impact on the work she was here to do. They were distractions. Wonderful ones, but irrelevant to her job. For one quarter of a mile, though, she was going to do nothing more than lag behind and admire the view of Kassidy on her bike. Completely and unabashedly unprofessional.

  Before they reached the winery, Kassidy stopped by a small trail leading off the bike path. Dante stood beside her, tongue lolling in a happy grin as they waited for Paige.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Kassidy asked, gesturing toward the valley next to them. “Should we take this path for a little while and see where it goes?”

  “I’m game,” said Paige, following her onto the narrow track. They wound along the edge of a small hill, and the downward-sloping meadow on the opposite side of the path was blanketed with green grass, bright pink foxglove, and deep purple lupine. When Paige had first come to McMinnville, spring had been visible in small spots of color against a rainy gray backdrop. On this sunny weekend, the season was bursting out and the area looked more like the fertile farming region shown in Oregon travel brochures.

  “Gorgeous,” Paige said, although she was still contemplating the view she had of Kassidy as much as the scenery.

  They came around a corner and halted when the slope grew steeper and the path disappeared into the thick grass. This side of the hill was dotted with dozens of tiny but vivid wildflowers, like multicolored fairy lights.

  “Wow,” Paige said, putting down the kickstand on her bike and coming to stand next to Kassidy and Dante. “Look at all those colors. Could you plant something like this in a corner of one of your empty fields? It would be a great spot for picnics.”

  Kassidy put her hand on Paige’s arm. “That’s a good idea, Paige,” she said. “And I’m sure you have a million of them. But can you be off duty for the rest of the day?”

  “I’ll try,” Paige said. She wasn’t about to ignore her personal interest in Kassidy or stop grasping for those moments when she felt compelled to let her feelings show, especially since Kassidy seemed to invite them as often as she did. But she was working very hard to convince herself that as long as she balanced those connections with times of focus on Kassidy’s business, she could keep them from developing into something deeper. She was afraid that if she shut off the work side of her brain and let Kassidy have free rein over all her thoughts, she’d lose herself in wanting what she couldn’t have. “Unless I notice something that would be perfect for your farm, then—”

  Kassidy leaned forward and kissed her far too briefly before pulling away again. “Then…what?”

  Paige exhaled slowly. “Then I’ll write it down and bring it up later?”

  Kassidy nodded. “Much later,” she said, covering Paige’s mouth with hers again. Lingering this time. Hovering in the space between new romance and full-blown passion.

  Paige loved the feel of Kassidy’s lips moving slowly against hers as she pressed her body closer. It was the perfect kiss for a long, sensual evening in front of a lavender-scented fire, with chocolate melting on fingers and tongues. But she and Kassidy didn’t have that luxury, and probably never would. Th
ey just had this moment, like all the others before it, until the twins came around the corner and interrupted them, or Dante got restless and pulled Paige out of reach. Paige wasn’t about to waste a single nanosecond with Kassidy when she only had a handful of them to savor.

  She wrapped her free arm around Kassidy’s waist and pulled them flush against each other. A determined nip from her teeth, and Kassidy’s mouth opened to her, deepening the kiss as their tongues met. Paige felt desire coil inside her belly as tightly as Kassidy’s hand twisting in her hair. Subtlety was shoved to the side, and suddenly the kiss that had merely promised passion delivered it in abundance.

  As if they had reached an agreed upon moment, both Kassidy and Paige broke away from the kiss at the same time. Kassidy felt rather than heard Paige’s sigh as she leaned briefly against her before standing upright again.

  “That was…” Kassidy started, but she had no idea how to finish the sentence. Amazing. Arousing. Far too short. A mistake? No, she couldn’t say that.

  “Not exactly professional,” Paige finished for her. “I’m sorry.” She raked her fingers roughly through her hair, and Kassidy clenched her hands into fists to keep from reaching out to straighten her tangled curls.

  Kassidy struggled to figure out the direction to take with this awkward conversation. We shouldn’t have done this vied with Please kiss me again, but neither option would bring them back to the innocent moment before she had given in to the desire she had felt for too long and kissed Paige. Kassidy didn’t regret the kiss—absolutely not—but she was afraid of the emotions that had led to it. She had spent her life excluding people from her home life. Friends and girlfriends were allowed to be close to her, but not to her family. Even the little she had shared with Audrey had been used against her, reinforcing her need to keep her past private. Today, Paige had been included in her relationship with the twins, delving beyond the polite facade Kassidy and her siblings showed in public, to the fights, embarrassing stories, and love underneath.