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. Good perfume,” she qualified. “Not just the stuff you buy at discount stores. I’ve smelled the real stuff. We go shopping at Macy’s every fall. Violet said you were a chemist. You had to go to college for a long time to do that, huh?”
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 him should have nothing to do with a lavender deal. His being here is supposed to be about oil. Lavender oil. And for the record, all the legal stuff sounds like a nightmare.”
“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 t
o make a fortune, kiddo. And in the meantime, you’ll have a chance to forget that bubble-brain you finally got divorced from.”
Violet closed her eyes and prayed for patience. She loved both her sisters, even if both of them could be total pains. Camille was the youngest, though, so she was more easily suckered. If Violet wanted Camille to do something, she just nurtured and fed and mothered until Camille either gave in or begged for mercy. Getting Daisy to behave was a far tougher challenge.
Daisy was the beauty of the family. God knew how Mom had named her for the common flower, when she was the exotic tropical blossom of the clan, with a model’s figure and that kind of style and élan. Daisy also had guts-enough guts to take off for France and live a wild, free lifestyle like everybody dreamed of but nobody ever really did. Unfortunately nobody could bully Daisy. Daisy could exhaust the whole family with her sneaky, take-charge, bossy ways.
“Something smells really, really rotten here,” Violet said darkly. “How long have you been planning this? You didn’t send Cameron Lachlan over here just for the lavender. You were thinking about setting me up. Damn it, you twerp. You didn’t think I’d fall for Cameron, did you?”
“Come on. He’s adorable.”
“He’s a lot of things, but adorable isn’t one of them. Good-looking, yeah. Rough and tough, yeah. Independent, yeah. Great eyes, yeah. But adorable is a word for boys.”
“Exactly. You don’t need any more boys in your life. About time you had a man scale your walls.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I don’t know for sure what that bozo did to you, and neither does Camille. But we both know something was bad at the end. So, fine. Broken bones take six weeks in a cast. Broken hearts taken longer. But you were made to be married, Vi. It’s time to take another chance.”
“You’re out of your mind. And I’m going to tell Mom you did this to me.”
“Are you kidding? Mom’s in on it.”
“You’re low. Lower than a skunk. Lower than an earthworm. I thought you were my favorite sister, but not anymore.”
“Uh-huh.” Daisy yawned through this threat. All three sisters regularly pulled the “favorite sister” jealousy thing on each other. But something happened then. As clear as the connection to France was, something seemed different-as if Daisy put her hand over the mouthpiece-and when she suddenly came back on, her voice changed. The real humor in her tone now sounded forced. “Listen, you, it’s your turn for some happiness. You don’t have to tell me what happened before the divorce-”
“What’s wrong?” Violet said.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Violet wasn’t the maternal sister for nothing. Her job in the family was to be the caretaker, the one who made chicken soup when the other two were dumped, the one who cleaned up their scrapes and listened to stuff they couldn’t tell their mother. “The last four times you’ve called, something hasn’t been right in your voice. Is the romance fading with Monsieur Picasso? You tired of living in France?”
“What could be wrong? The romantic French countryside, a hot summer sun, bougainvillea outside my window, breezes off the Mediterranean, freedom, a country where men really know how to appreciate a woman-”
Now Violet started to get really worried. “Quit with the horse spit. He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”
“No. And quit turning the subject around. We’re talking about you. You and love. You and sex. You and Cameron. Just think about it, would you? He’s not the marrying kind. But he’s a good man. The kind who’ll be honest. And good to you. A good guy to get your feet wet in the love pool again, without having to make any major risky dives. Besides which, he really is an answer for your lavender problem.”
When Violet hung up, she thought, what’s wrong with me has nothing to do with lavender. And it can’t be fixed.
She hustled to the house to grab some lunch-but there was no further serious talking with Cameron, because he was the one to get a phone call that time. One of his daughters kept his ear pinned for almost a half hour.
She was dying to ask him some questions about that conversation, but about the time he hung up, she saw the roofer’s truck bounce into the yard. Par for the course, the roofers were late, so she ran over to the cottage to raise hell.
Just when she tried to track down Cameron again, the lady from the White Hills Gazette showed up with her sunny face and her legal pad-Violet remembered the interview, didn’t she? No, she hadn’t remembered, and she hadn’t had time to put on lipstick in hours now, but publicity for the Herb Haven was too important to pass up.
An hour later, she glanced up to see Cameron in the doorway, listening to her rant on about the events and products and courses she’d scheduled for the summer. He lifted his hand in the air, showing her what looked to be an oatmeal raisin cookie. Thank God. If she didn’t get some sugar and junk food soon, she was probably going to fade out altogether.
After the interview, she leveled the plate of cookies he’d brought-but he’d disappeared by then. She searched until she found him on her back porch, talking with Filbert Green.
Filbert was the farmer her father had hired to caretake the farm after her parents retired to Florida. The idea was for Filbert to put in corn and soybeans or whatever, to keep the land in shape, until one of the Campbell daughters realized how much they belonged on the Vermont homestead and settled down to have some kids.
Camille had just gotten married, but she had no need for the land, and heaven knew when or if Daisy was coming back from France. So when Violet had limped home after the divorce, the house had been empty and everyone happy she was going to stay there. She’d let Filbert go. She wanted to wallow on the land in peace and quiet. Now, though, she saw Filbert hunkered down on her porch with Cam hunkered down next to him, both of them drawing plans with sticks like two smudge-nosed boys in a sandbox. They were talking about her lavender. Talking about the harvest. What needed doing, who’d do it, how. She needed to listen, needed to actively participate, only, damnation if there wasn’t another interruption.
Kari was the interruption, and actually it occurred to Violet by then that the girl had been shadowing her around for some time. A job interview, she recalled. Kari wanted a job, and God knew Violet was so behind she could barely catch her own tail. The girl was hardly out of diapers, but damn, she could talk spreadsheets like a true computer geek.
“Okay. These are the rules. Take ’em or leave ’em. I don’t give a damn what you wear, as long as you don’t show up naked. I don’t care if you’re late or early as long as the work gets done. But you have to like cats. And I need accurate records. I can’t work with someone who’s careless with numbers. So. Are we square or not?”
Kari of the shy smile and hopelessly baby blue eyes suddenly turned shrewd. “How much you gonna pay me?”
“How much you want?”
“Ten bucks an hour. I’m worth it.”
“This is your first job. Don’t you think that’s a little high?”
“Beats me. That’s what my dad told me to ask for, first try.”
“Okay, then you got it, first try. I love guts in a girl.”
Once she put the girl on the payroll, by a miracle, she caught a thirty-second break. In those thirty seconds, she remembered those kisses of Cameron’s from last night, how she’d felt-how he’d felt-and whether she dared entertain the extraordinary fantasy of making love with him.
Cripes, it was one of those days when she could barely find time to pee, so considering a love affair seemed the height of lunacy. But her sister’s phone call had helped promote the lunacy. Daisy had pointed out that Cameron had a uniquely perfect qualification for a lover-he didn’t want to settle down.
For another woman, that would obviously be a disadvantage. But for her… For three years now, she’d been afraid of attracting a man who’d want a normal, married type of life with her. Cameron was the first guy where she was dead sure he wouldn’t want something from her that she couldn’t give.
&nbs
p; On top of which, she couldn’t even remember feeling this level of lust and longing for a man she’d barely met. There was something dangerous about that man. Something wicked. Something that made her dream about dumb things she knew she couldn’t have.
Thankfully, the insane day just kept getting worse. There were no more thirty-second breaks. Around four, she gulped down two glasses of water before she keeled over from heat exhaustion, remembered she had a killer bee sting, babied it with some honey, then abruptly heard raised voices from inside the shop.
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.
Wild in the Moonlight Page 6
