Wild in the Moonlight
Wild in the Moonlight
Jennifer Greene
She was no man magnet.From her Gypsy clothing to her feline fan club to her transparent attempt at seeming helium-headed, Violet Campbell screamed, "Run for your life," her lucrative lavender fields be damned. But Cameron Lachlan had never wanted to be anywhere…with anyone…more. Somehow, someway, this bewildering lady had transformed his wanderlust to age-old desire.But instead of wanting the moon, which she deserved, Violet seemed to accept that he would leave her bed - and her. Which he might have done…once. But just when he'd found the woman worth staying for, she hinted at reasons that he should run - not walk - away.
She’d Been Hurt. She’d Been Lonely. She Needed.
And maybe those were secrets she never meant to reveal to a stranger, but she never told him anything. She just kissed him back, wildly, freely, intimately.
Cameron thought he was a man who took gutsy risks…but Violet was the brave one, the honest one. Something in her called him. Something in him answered her with a well of feeling he’d never known he had.
He raised his head suddenly. “I never meant—”
She gulped in a breath. “It’s all right. I didn’t think you did.”
“It was the moonlight.”
“I know.”
“I need you to know you can trust me.”
“I’m thirty-four, Cameron. Too old to trust someone I barely know. But also way too old to make more of a kiss than what it was. We’ll just call this a moment’s madness and forget all about it.”
Easier said…
Dear Reader,
Welcome to another passion-filled month at Silhouette Desire—where we guarantee powerful and provocative love stories you are sure to enjoy. We continue our fabulous DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS series with Kristi Gold’s Challenged by the Sheikh—her intensely ardent hero will put your senses on overload. More hot heroes are on the horizon when USA TODAY bestselling author Ann Major returns to Silhouette Desire with the dramatic story of The Bride Tamer.
Ever wonder what it would be like to be a man’s mistress—even just for pretend? Well, the heroine of Katherine Garbera’s Mistress Minded finds herself just in that predicament when she agrees to help out her sexy-as-sin boss in the next KING OF HEARTS title. Jennifer Greene brings us the second story in THE SCENT OF LAVENDER, her compelling series about the Campbell sisters, with Wild In the Moonlight—and this is one hero to go wild for! If it’s a heartbreaker you’re looking for, look no farther than Hold Me Tight by Cait London as she continues her HEARTBREAKERS miniseries with this tale of one sexy male specimen on the loose. And looking for a little Hot Contact himself is the hero of Susan Crosby’s latest book in her BEHIND CLOSED DOORS series; this sinfully seductive police investigator always gets his woman! Thank goodness.
And thank you for coming back to Silhouette Desire every month. Be sure to join us next month for New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson’s Best-Kept Lies, the highly anticipated conclusion to her wildly popular series THE MCCAFFERTYS.
Keep on reading!
Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Wild in the Moonlight
Jennifer Greene
JENNIFER GREENE
lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. She has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including three RITA
Awards from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine.
For Ryan and his bride—
Everyone thinks the romance happens
before you get married, but I promise you two—
the true excitement and wonder and magic come after.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
One
Just as Violet Campbell limped inside the back door into the kitchen, she heard the front doorbell ring.
She simply ignored it. It wasn’t as if she had a choice. Wincing from pain, tears falling from her eyes, she hopped over to the sink. After spending hours in the brilliant Vermont sun, her kitchen seemed gloomier than a tomb. It wasn’t, of course. Her pupils simply hadn’t adjusted to the inside light—either that, or the terrible severity of pain from the sting of a particularly ferocious bee was affecting her vision.
Someone rang her doorbell a second time.
Impatiently she yelled out, “Look! I can’t come to the door because I’m dying, so just chill out for a few minutes!”
Everyone in White Hills knew her, so if they wanted something from her, they were hardly going to wait for formal permission. Heaven knew why she bothered keeping the doorbell operational, anyway. People barged in at all hours without a qualm.
Gingerly she lifted herself onto the red tile counter, kicked off her sandal and carefully, carefully put her right foot in the sink. Her skirt got in the way. Ever since opening the Herb Haven, she’d had fun wearing vintage clothes—her oldest sister claimed she looked as if she shopped from a gypsy catalog. Today, though, she had to bunch up the swingy long skirt to even see her poor foot. An empty coffee cup was knocked over. A spoon fell to the floor. One of the cats—Nuisance? Devil?—assumed she was in the kitchen to provide a lap and some petting.
She petted the cat, but then got serious. Darn it, she needed to get her foot clean. Immediately.
Until that was done, she couldn’t tackle the bee sting. She was positive that the stinger had to still be in there. Nothing else explained the intense, sharp, unrelenting hurt. Well, there was one other explanation. Friends and family had no idea she was a complete coward, but Violet had discovered three years before that there was one terrific advantage to being divorced and living alone. She could be a crybaby and a wimp anytime she wanted to be.
And right now, for damn sure, she wanted to be. As far as Violet was concerned, a bee sting justified a sissy fit any day of the week. She dunked her foot under the faucet and switched on the tap. The rush of lukewarm water nearly made her pass out.
Possibly that was taking cowardice too far, but cripes. The whole situation was so unfair—and so ironic. Everything around her seemed to be heartlessly, exuberantly reproducing. Plants. Cats. Socks in her dryer. Even the dust bunnies under the bed seemed to lasciviously multiply the instant the lights turned off at night.
Everybody seemed to be having sex and babies but her—and that sure as sunlight included the bees. Lately she could hardly wander anywhere on the farm without running into a fresh hive. Possibly having twenty acres of lavender coming into bloom might—might—have encouraged a few extra bees to hang out. But it’s not as if she went close to the lavender. And her normal bees were nice bees. They liked her. She liked them.
Not this fella. Didn’t male bees die after stinging someone? She hoped he did. She hoped his death was violent and painful and lingering.
The front doorbell rang yet again.
“For Pete’s sake, could you lay off the doorbell? I can’t come to the door, so either come in or go away!”
Bravely gritting her teeth, she squirted antibacterial soap on the injured foot, then screeched when it touched the stinger spot, which was already turning bruisey red and throbbing like a migraine. She forced the foot under the tap water again.
The glass cabinet behind her head contained the box of first-aid supplies, but when she tried to stretch behind her, the movement sent more sharp shooting pains up her leg. The cat had been joined by another cat on the other side of the sink. Both knew perfectly well they weren’t allowed on the kitchen counters. Both still sat, as if they were the supervisory audience over an audition she was failing. Her skirt hem kept getting wetter. Her forehead and nape were sticky-damp from the heat—if not from shock. And she noticed the nail polish on her middle toenail had a chip. She hated it when her nail polish chipped.
“Allo?”
The sudden voice made her head jerk up like a rabbit smelling a jaguar in her territory. This just wasn’t a kitchen where jaguars prowled. After the divorce, she’d moved home primarily because it was available—her mom and dad had just retired to Florida, leaving the old Vermont homestead clean, ready for family gatherings at any time, but vacant.
She’d made it hers. Not that her mom hadn’t had wonderful decorating taste, but she’d fiercely needed to create a private, safe nest after Simpson took off with his extraordinarily fecund bimbo. Now, at a glance, she reassured herself that the world was still normal, still safe, still hers. The old cabinets held a prize collection of red Depression glass. A potbellied stove sat on the old brick hearth; she’d angled an antique-rose love seat on one side, a cane rocker on the other—both of which made seats for more cats. Red-and-white chintz curtains framed the wide windows overlooking the monster maple in the backyard. Potted plants argued for space from every light source. A crocheted heart draped the round oak table.
Everything was normal. Everything was fine…except that she heard the hurried, heavy clump of boots in her hall, coming toward the kitchen, at the same time she heard the jaguar’s voice doing that “Allo, allo” thing again.
She didn’t particularly mind if there was a stranger in her house. No one was a stranger in White Hills for long, and potential serial killers probably wouldn’t call out a greeting before barging in. Still, she didn’t know anyone who said “allo” instead of “hi” or “hello.” It wasn’t the odd accent that rustled her nerves but something else. There was something…spicy…about that voice. Something just a little too sexy and exotic for a somnolent June afternoon in a sleepy Vermont town. Something that made her knees feel buttery.
On the other hand, Violet knew perfectly well that she was a teensy bit prone to being overdramatic, so it wasn’t as if she felt inclined to trust her instincts. Reality was she was more likely stuck with a visitor—and right now she just had no patience with any more complications.
Without even looking up, she snapped out, “My God, you nearly scared me half to death. Whoever the hell you are, could you reach in the cupboard behind my head? Second shelf. I need tweezers. First-aid cream. And that skinny tube of ammonium stuff for stings. And the plastic bottle of purple stuff that you wash out wounds with, you know, what’s it called? Or maybe hydrogen peroxide. Oh, cripes, just give me the whole darn box—”
The stranger interrupted her list of instructions with that quiet, dangerous voice of his. “First—where exactly are you hurt?”
Like she had time for questions. “I’m not just hurt. I’m in agonizing pain. And I always tell myself that I should stockpile pain pills and narcotics, only damn, I never take any. I don’t suppose you carry any morphine on you?”
“Um, no.”
“I suppose you think it’s crazy, my talking this way to a stranger. But if you’re going to rob me, just do it. Feel free. I don’t even care. But get me the first-aid box first, okay?”
Silence. Not just on his part, but on hers. It was one thing to believe she was totally okay with a stranger in her kitchen, and another to have said stranger suddenly show up between her legs—before they’d even been introduced yet.
She gulped.
Close up, the guy could have sent any woman’s estrogen levels soaring. He seemed to cross the room so fast, and suddenly his blond head was bent over her foot in the sink. He was built long and sleek, with a daunting shoulder span and arm muscles that looked carved out of hickory. His feet alone looked bigger than boats. His hair was dark blond, disheveled, longish, as if he’d been outside in the hot breeze for hours. She couldn’t see much of his face except for his profile—which amounted to one hell of a nose and skin with a deep tan. The khaki shirt and boots and canvas pants were practical, not fancy, and though he was lean, he looked strong enough to knock down walls for a living.
When he finally glanced at her face, she caught the snap and fire of light-blue eyes, and a narrow mouth that seemed determined not to laugh. “All that yelling,” he said finally, patiently, “was about this sting?”
“Hey. It’s not just a sting. You didn’t see the bee. It was huge. Bigger than a horse. Practically bigger than an elephant. And it—”
“Are you allergic to bee stings?”
“No. Good grief, no. I’m not allergic to anything. I’m totally healthy. But I’m telling you, this was a big bee. And I think the stinger’s still in there.”
“Yeah, I can see it is.” Again he lifted his head. Again she felt those amused blue eyes pounce on her face, and caught a better look at him. That shag of blond hair framed a long-boned face that looked carved by a French sculptor.
If she wasn’t dying from misery, she might have let a shiver sneak up her spine. One look—and no matter how soggy her mind was from the pain—she was absolutely positive this guy wouldn’t normally be running around White Hills, Vermont…or any other back-country town.
“For the record,” she said, “you’re lost.”
“You think?” He shifted behind her, opened the cabinet and promptly hefted down her first-aid box. Well, actually, it was a shoe box. Filled to overflowing with herbal, natural, artificial and any other kind of first-aid supplies she’d accumulated over the past three years—and probably a few her mom had had around for the thirty years before that. He located the tweezers first.
The way the stranger held the tweezers made her nervous. Either that or something else did. Either way, she was really starting to get seriously nervous, not just pretend—and darn it, she hadn’t been doing all that well before the exotic stranger barged in.
“You’re lost,” she repeated. “I’m Violet Campbell. I own the Herb Haven—the building and greenhouses on the other side of the yard. This is my house. If you’ll tell me who you’re trying to find, I’ll be glad to—eeeikes!”
He lifted the tweezers to show her the stinger. “It looks like the stinger of a little sweat bee.”
Violet pinched the skin between her brows. Another delightful advantage to being divorced, apart from removing the scoundrel from her life, was not having to put up with men’s sick sense of humor. “Who are you looking for?” she repeated.
“You.”
He lifted the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and started unscrewing the top. She suspected he was going to pour it on the wound. She also suspected that she was going to shriek when he did—and maybe even cry. But the way he said “you” in that sexy, exotic accent put so much cotton in her throat that the shriek barely came out a baby’s gasp.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? The stinger’s out. The spot’s clean. Now you might want to take an antihistamine or put some ice on the spot for a few minutes—”
“You couldn’t possibly want me,” she interrupted. And then pinched the skin between her brows a second time. On any normal day she liked people. She liked interruptions. She even liked a hefty dose of chaos in her life. But there were men she felt comfortable with and men she didn’t.
This one was definitely a “didn’t.” He made her feel naked, which was pretty darn silly considering she was dressed in the ultramodest clothes of another era—except she suddenly realized her skirt was hiked up past her thighs. The point, though, was that she most certainly wasn’t wearing male-attracting clothes. Her women customers got a kick out of her sense of style, but men almost always backed away fast.
That was how she wanted it. She liked guys, had always liked guys, but she’d been burned enough for a while. Maybe for a whole lifetime. Normally men noticed her clothes and immediately seemed to conclude that she was a little kooky and keep their distance, so God knew what was wrong with this stranger. He’d surely noticed the oddball long skirt and vintage blouse, but he was still looking her over as if she were meringue and he had a sweet tooth.
Momentarily, though, he went back to playing doctor, scrounging in her first-aid box until he found the ammonium wand for bites and stings. She winced even before he’d touched the spot. As if they were in the middle of a civilized conversation, he said, “You were expecting me.”
“Trust me. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m staying here for a few weeks. With you.”
The wince was wasted. When he touched the wound with the ammonium wand, she sucked in every last dram of saliva her throat had left and released a screech. A totally unsatisfying screech. The ammonium hissed and stung like—damn it. Like another bee sting. Only worse. Still, she’d somehow easily managed to keep track of the conversation this time. “Obviously, you’re not staying here. I don’t even know you. Although I’m beginning to think you’re a complete maniac—”
Actually, she wasn’t particularly afraid of maniacs. She took credit for being one herself often enough. But she’d lost the last of her usually voluble sense of humor with that bite of ammonia. Good-looking or not—sexy or not—she was really in no mood for an emotional tussle with a stranger.
The man swooped everything back in the first-aid box, then turned around and aimed for the freezer, obviously to find some ice. “My name is Cameron Lachlan.”
“Great name. I’m happy for you.”
He grinned, but he also kept moving. When she motioned to a lower cupboard, he bounced down on his heels and came up with small baggie for the ice. “We definitely have some kind of strange screwup going on here. You do have a sister named Daisy Cameron, don’t you?”
It wasn’t often she got that thud-thud-thud thing in her stomach, but her palm pressed hard on her tummy now. “Yes, for sure. In fact, I have two sisters—”
“But it’s Daisy who lives in France.”
“Yes, for several years now—”
“The point being,” he said patiently, “that your sister has been playing go-between for us for months. Or that’s what I’ve understood. Because she was living right there, and because she knows my work and me personally, so you wouldn’t have to be dealing with a stranger. You were supposed to be expecting me. You were supposed to have a place for me to stay for several weeks. You were supposed to know that I was arriving either today or tomorrow—”
“Oh my God. You’re Cameron Lachlan?”
He scratched his chin. “I could have sworn I already mentioned that.”
It came on so fast. The light-headedness. The stomach thudding. The way her kitchen suddenly blurred into a pale-green haze.
Granted, she was a coward and a wuss—but normally she had a cast-iron stomach. Now, though, when she pushed off the counter and tried to stand on both feet, her bee sting stabbed like hot fire and her stomach suddenly pitched. “Try not to take this personally, okay?” she said. “It’s not that I’m not glad to see you. It’s just that you’ll have to excuse me a minute while I throw up.”
Two
Once Violet disappeared from sight—presumably to find the nearest bathroom—Cameron leaned against the kitchen counter and clawed a hand through his hair. Talk about a royal mess. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Nothing usually rattled him. Normally people got a higher education to earn a better living. Cameron had pursued a Ph.D so he could enjoy a footloose, vagabond lifestyle. He was used to jet lag. Used to time changes and strange beds. He had no trouble getting along with people of all different backgrounds and cultures.
But this blonde was doing something to his pulse.
“Be careful with my sister,” Daisy had warned him—which, at the time, had struck him as a curious thing to say. His only interest in Violet Cameron was business. Still, whether he’d wanted to hear it or not, Daisy had filled in enough blanks for him to understand why she was so protective of her younger sister. Violet had apparently been married to a real, selfish creep. “Something happened in that marriage that I still don’t know about. Something really bad in the last year. I still can’t get her to talk about it,” Daisy had told him. “But the point is, Violet was always extra smart, in school and life and everything else. It’s just since the divorce that she’s been…different. Fragile and nervous about men.”
Since that conversation had at the time been none of his business—and none of his interest—Cameron had pretty much forgotten it. Still, he’d definitely imagined a shy, quiet, understated kind of woman. A true violet in personality as well as name.
Now he wondered if Vermont might secretly be an alternative universe. Granted, he’d only been in the state for a couple of hours—and on the Campbell property even less than that—but Daisy’s description didn’t match anything he’d noticed in reality so far. Violet was as shy as neon lights, as nervous as a lioness, and as far as IQ…well, maybe she was smart, even ultrasmart, but who could tell beneath all those layers of ditsiness?
He heard a door open and instinctively braced. Seconds later Violet walked back in the kitchen. When she spotted him leaning against the counter, she seemed to instinctively brace, too.
Considering that Cameron had always gotten on well with women, it was a mighty blow to his ego to make one sick on sight. At the vast age of thirty-seven, though, he never expected to respond to a woman with a tumbly stomach of his own.
The old Vermont farmhouse seemed sturdy and serious. At first glance, he’d thought the base structure had to be at least two centuries old. The brick surface had tidy white trim and a shake roof; the plank floors were polished to a high shine. He’d been drawn to the place on sight; it looked practical and functional and solid, nothing frivolous.
Only, then there was her.
Standing with the light behind her, she could have been a fey creature from a fairy story. The first thing any breathing male was going to notice, of course, was her hair. It was blond, paler than sunlight, and even braided with a skinny silk scarf, it bounced halfway down her back…which meant it had to reach her fanny when it was undone. Her face was a valentine with warm, wide, hazel eyes, sun-kissed cheeks and a nose lightly peppered with freckles.
She wasn’t exactly pretty. She just had that something. Some kinds of women just seemed born pure female. They were never as easy to get along with—much less understand—but they seemed to radiate that female thing from the inside out. Nothing about her was flashy or sexy, but she was sensual from that pale, shiny hair to her soft mouth to the rounded swell of her breasts.
She seemed to be wearing old clothes—not old, as in practical, but old, as in the stuff you’d find in a great-grandmother’s attic trunk. The white blouse completely covered those delectable breasts, but the fabric seemed less substantial than a handkerchief. It was tucked into a long skirt swirling with bright colors. Crystal earrings dangled to her shoulders. A couple of skinny bangle bracelets glinted on her wrist. There was nothing immodest about the clothes; if anything, they seemed unnecessarily concealing for a sultry, ninety-degree afternoon. Cameron just wasn’t sure what the vintage gypsy image was supposed to mean.
He also couldn’t help but notice that she smelled.
Guys weren’t supposed to mention that sort of thing, but smells were Cameron’s business—and had helped him put away a sizable bank account—so scent tended to be a priority for him. In her case, she wasn’t using the kind of perfume that came out of a bottle, but around her neck and wrists there was the sweet, vague scent of fresh flowers—as if she’d ambled into a garden with roses and lilac petals and maybe some lily of the valley.
He noticed the delicate scents—which helped him forget that he’d also noticed her spanking-orange underpants. Usually he knew a woman just a wee bit better before he’d gotten a look at her underwear, but when Violet had been on the counter, trying to wash her foot in the sink, she’d pushed up her skirts—no reason for her to have been thinking about modesty since she obviously hadn’t been expecting company.
Hell. He hadn’t planned on barging in without being asked, either, but when a woman yelled out that she was dying, he could hardly stand on her front porch and wait politely for further news bulletins.
Now, though, she frowned at him. “We seem to be in quite an uh-oh situation,” she announced.
That wasn’t quite how he’d have put it, but he sure agreed. “You’d better get your foot up before that sting swells up on you.”
“I will.”
“You’re not still feeling sick to your stomach, are you?” He wanted to directly confront their obvious problem, but since she’d established—incontestably—that she was a hard-core sissy about the bee sting, it seemed wise to get her settled down. He sure as hell didn’t want her keeling over on him.
“I think my stomach’s fine now. It doesn’t matter, anyway. What matters is that we have to figure this out. Your being here. What we’re going to do with you.”
“Uh-huh. You want me to get us a drink?”
“Yes. That’d be great.” She sank into a chair at the oak table, as if just assuming he could find glasses and drinks. Which he could. He just didn’t usually walk in someone’s house and take over this way.
Being in the kitchen with her was like being assaulted with a rocket full of estrogen. It wasn’t just that she was a girly-girl type of woman, but everything about the place. Cats roosted on every surface—one blinked at him from the top of the refrigerator; another was sprawled on some newspapers on the counter; a black-and-white polka-dotted model seemed determined to wind around his legs. Every spare wall space had been decorated within an inch of its life, with copper pots and little slogans over the door and wreaths and just stuff. From the basket of yarn balls to heart-shaped rag rugs, the entire kitchen was an estrogen-whew. The kind of a place where a guy might be allowed to sip some wine, but God forbid he chug a beer.
On the other hand, he found lemonade in the fridge in a crystal pitcher. Fresh squeezed. The refrigerator was stuffed with so many dishes that he really wanted to stand and stare—if not outright drool. Never mind if she was overdosed with sex appeal. He might get fed out of this deal. That reduced the importance of any other considerations…assuming either of them could figure out how to fix such a major screwup.
“I think we need to start over,” he suggested. “You seemed to recognize my name? So I assume you also know that I’m the agricultural chemist from Jeunnesse?”
She immediately nodded at the mention of the French perfume company, so at least Cameron was reassured there was some cognition and sense of reality between her ears. But somehow she looked even more shaken up instead of less.
“I just can’t believe this. I did know you were coming, Mr. Lachlan—”
“Cameron. Or Cam.”
“Cameron, then. What you said was very true. My sister’s called and written me several times about this.” She lifted her bee-stung foot to a chair and accepted the long, tall glass of lemonade he handed her. “I’m just having a stroke, that’s all. The timing completely slipped my mind.”
“You have twenty acres of lavender almost ready to be harvested, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
Cameron took a long slow gulp of the lemonade. It seemed to him that it’d normally be a tad challenging to forget twenty acres of lavender in your backyard.
“You’re supposed to want me here,” he said tactfully.
“I do, I do. I just forgot.” She raised a ring-spangled hand. “Well, I didn’t just forget. It’s been unusually chaotic around here. Our youngest sister, Camille, got married a couple weeks ago. She’d been here most of the spring, working on the lavender. And she left on her honeymoon. Only, then she came back to get the kids.”
Boy, that made a lot of sense.
“Cripes, I don’t mean her kids. I mean her step-kids. Her new husband had twin sons from a previous marriage. And actually since Camille thinks of them as hers, I suppose it’s okay to call them her sons directly, don’t you think?”
Cameron took a breath. As thrilling as all this information was, it had absolutely nothing to do with him. “About the lavender…” he gently interrupted.
“I’m just trying to explain how I got so confused. I started the Herb Haven three years ago, when I moved back home, and it’s done fine—but it was this spring that it really took off. I’ve been running full speed, had to hire two staff and I’m still behind. And then Camille needed me to do something with all their dogs and animals while the family was on the honeymoon— I mean, they got a few days to themselves, but after that they even invited the kids and his dad, can you believe it? And then this old farmhouse I try to keep up myself. And then there are the two greenhouses. And Daisy…well, you already know my older sister, so you know Daisy’s genetically related to a steamroller.”
Finally she’d said something that Cameron could connect to. Daisy was no close personal friend, only a business connection, but he’d spent enough time to believe the oldest Campbell sister could manage a continent without breaking a sweat. Daisy was a take-charge kind of woman.
“Anyway, the point is, sometimes Daisy runs on—”
“Daisy runs on?” Cameron felt that point needed qualifying. As far as he was concerned, Daisy couldn’t touch her younger sister for her ability to talk—extensively and incessantly.
Violet nodded. “And I just don’t always listen to her that closely. Who could? Daisy always has a thousand ideas and she’s always bossing Camille and me around. We gave up arguing with her years ago. When you’ve got a headstrong horse, you just have to let them run. Not that I ride. Or that Daisy’s like a horse. I’m just trying to say that it’s always been easier to tune out and just let her think that she’s managing us—”
“About the lavender,” Cameron interrupted again, this time a wee bit more forcefully.
“I’m just trying to explain why I forgot the exact time when you were coming.” She hesitated. “I also seemed to have forgotten exactly what you’re going to do.”
Before he could answer, someone rapped on her front door. She immediately popped to her feet and hobbled quickly down the hall. Moments later she came back with her arms full of mail. “That was Frank, the mailman. Usually he just puts it in the box at the road, but at this time of year, there can be quite a load—”
More news he couldn’t use. And before he could direct her attention back to the lavender, her telephone rang. Actually, about a half dozen telephones rang. She must have a good number of receivers, because he could hear that cacophonic echo of rings through the entire downstairs.
She took the kitchen receiver—which enabled her to pet two cats at the same time. Possibly she was raising a herd, because he hadn’t seen these longhaired caramel models before. The caller seemed to be someone named Mabel, who seemed to feel Violet could give her some herbal suggestions for hot flashes.
This took some time. Cameron finished one glass of lemonade and poured another while he got an earful about menopause—more than he’d ever wanted to know, and more than he could imagine a woman as young as Violet could know. What was she, thirty? Thirty-one? What in God’s name was squaw root and flax seed oil?
She’d just hung up and turned back to face him when the sucker rang again. This time the caller appeared to be a man named Bartholomew. Although she seemed to be arguing with the guy, it was a stressless type of quarrel, because she sorted through her mail, petted more cats and put breakfast cups in the dishwasher during the conversation. A woman could hardly be ditsy to the bone if she could multitask, right? Then she hung up and started talking to him again.
“You see?” she asked, as if there was something obvious he should be seeing. “That’s exactly why it’s impossible for you to stay. Bartholomew Radcliffe is supposed to be putting a new roof on the cottage. The place where you were going to stay when you came in July.”
“It is July,” he felt compelled to tell her.
She made a fluttery motion with her hand, as if the date were of no import. Clearly there were several things in life that Violet Campbell considered inconsequential—dates, facts, contracts and possibly anything else in that generically rational realm. Because he was starting to feel exhausted, he rested his chin in his hand while she went on.
“That’s exactly the thing about July. The roof was supposed to be done by now. It’s just a little cottage. How long can it take to put a roof on one little cottage? And Bartholomew promised me it’d only take a maximum of two weeks, and he started it way back near the first of June. Only, I’ve never worked with roofers before.”
“And this is relevant, why?”
“Because I had no idea how it was with them. Today he didn’t come because there’s a threat of rain.” She motioned outside to the cloudless sky. “He doesn’t come on Fridays because Friday apparently isn’t a workday. And then there’s fishing. If the fishing’s good, he takes off early. You see what I mean?”
What he saw was that Violet Campbell was a sexy, sensual, unfathomable woman with gorgeous eyes and silky blond hair and boobs that he’d really, really like to get to know. The only problem seemed to be the content under her hair. There was a slim possibility she could fill out an application at a nut house, and no one would be certain whether she wanted employment or an inmate’s room.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d like to talk about the lavender crop.” But by then, he should have realized that Violet couldn’t be tricked, coaxed or bribed into staying on topic.
“We are. Basically. I mean, the issue is that when—if—you came, I assumed you could stay at the cottage. It’s nice. It’s private. It’s comfortable. But it’s quite a disaster right now because they had to take off the old roof to put on the new one. So there’s dust and nails everywhere. And tar. That tar is really hot and stinky. So the place simply isn’t livable. It will be— In fact, I can’t believe it’ll take him more than another week to finish it—”
“Depending on his fishing schedule, of course.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Well, I’m hearing you, chère. But it’d be a wee bit tricky for me to fly all the way back to France, just to wait out Bartholomew’s fishing schedule. And although I understand your strain of lavender runs late, I absolutely have to be here for the first of the harvest.”
“Well, yes, that’s all true, but I’m just confused what I can possibly do with you until I’ve got a place for you to stay.”
Maybe jet lag was getting to him. Maybe at the vast age of thirty-seven, he was no longer the easy-care, rootless vagabond he used to be. Maybe missed sleep and strange mattresses had finally caught up with him…but it seemed pretty damn obvious that Violet couldn’t really be this flutter-brained. Something must be bothering her about his being here. He just had no idea what. Considering her older sister had okayed him, she couldn’t be afraid of him, could she?
Nah. Cameron easily dismissed that theory almost before it surfaced. It wasn’t as if all women liked him. They didn’t. But he got along with most, and those women who related to him sexually generally were afraid that he’d have taken a fast powder by morning—no one was afraid of him in any other sense, that he could imagine.
So he slowly put down his lemonade glass and hunched forward, deliberately making closer eye contact. Not to elicit any sexual response, but to encourage an eye-to-eye honest connection. “Violet,” he said slowly and calmly.
“What?”
“Quit with the nonsense.”
“What nonsense?”
“Sleeping arrangements are not a problem. I wouldn’t mind sleeping outside on the ground. Actually, I like sleeping under the stars. Hell, I’ve roughed it on four continents. And if we get into some stormy weather, I’ll find a hotel in town and commute. My finding a place to throw a pillow is no big deal. So is there some reason that you don’t want me here that you haven’t said?”
“Good heavens. Of course not—”
Again, he said slowly and carefully, “You are aware that my work with your lavender is potentially worth thousands of dollars to you? Potentially hundreds of thousands?”
She squeezed her eyes closed briefly—and when she opened them again, he read panic in their deep, dark, beautiful, hazel depths. “Oh God,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m going to be sick again.”
Three
“No, you’re not going to be sick again,” Cameron said emphatically.
Violet met his eyes. “You’re right. I’m not,” she said slowly, and took a long deep breath.
She had to get a grip. A serious grip. She wasn’t really nauseous, she was just shook up. Her foot throbbed like the devil—that was for real. She’d been running all day in the heat even before the bee sting—that was for real, too. And normally men didn’t provoke her into behaving like a scatterbrained nutcase—but there were exceptions.
Virile, highly concentrated packages of testosterone with wicked eyes and long, lanky strides were a justifiable exception.
Violet tried another deep, calming breath. Most blondes hated blonde jokes, but she’d always liked them. She knew perfectly well how she came across to most men. A guy who thought he was dealing with a ditsy, witless blonde generally ran for the hills at the speed of light, or at the very least, considered her hands-off—and that suited Violet just fine.
It was just sometimes hard to maintain the ditsy, witless persona. For one thing, sometimes she actually felt ditless and witsy. Or witless and ditsy. Or…oh, hell.
That man had eyes bluer than a lake. She did much, much better with old, ugly men. And she did really great with children. Not that those attributes were particularly helping her now.
But that grip she’d needed was finally coming to her. Those long, meditative breaths always helped. “I have an idea,” she said to Cameron. “You’ve traveled a long way. You have to be hungry and tired—and I’m the middle of an Armageddon type of afternoon. Could you just…chill…for an hour or so? Feel free to walk around…or just put your feet up on my couch or on the front porch. I need to walk over to my Herb Haven, tell my employee what’s happening, finish up the problems I was in the middle of, get closed up for the day.”
“Is there anything I could help you with?”
“No. Honestly. I just need an hour to get my life back in order…and after that I’ve got more than enough in the fridge for dinner. I can’t guarantee it’s something you’ll want to eat, but we could definitely talk in peace then—”
“That sounds great. But if there’s running I could do for you, say. I know you can’t want to be on that foot.”
“I won’t be for long.”
It worked like a charm. She just couldn’t concentrate with all those life details hanging over her head—and with an impossibly unsettling man underfoot. An hour and a half later, though, she was humming under her breath, back in her kitchen, her one foot propped on a stool and a cleaver in her hand big enough to inspire jealousy in a serial killer.
Not that any foolish serial killer would dare lay a hand on one of her prized possessions.
She angled her head—just far enough to peer around the doorway to check on her visitor again. There was no telling exactly when Cameron had decided to sit down, but clearly it was his undoing. He’d completely crashed. He wasn’t snoring, but his tousled blond head was buried in the rose pillow on the couch, and one of his stockinged feet was hanging over the side. That man was sure long. One cat—either Dickens or Shakespeare—was purring on the couch arm, supervising his nap with a possessive eye.
Amazing how easy it was for her to relax when he was sleeping.
She went back to her chopping and sautéing and mixing. Cooking was a favorite pastime—and a secret, since she certainly didn’t want anyone getting the appalling idea that she was either domestic or practical. Tonight she couldn’t exercise much creativity, because she already had leftovers that needed using up, starting with some asparagus soup—and somehow finding an excuse to eat the last of the grape sorbet.
Early evening, the temperature was still too sweltering to eat anything heavy, but it was no trouble to put together bruschetta and some spicy grilled shrimp for the serious part of the meal. The shrimp took some fussing. First seeding and slicing the hot chilies. Then slicing the two tall stalks of lemongrass. Then she had to grate the fresh ginger, crush the garlic, chop the cilantro and mix it with warmed honey and olive oil.
He’d probably hate it, she thought. Men tended to hate anything gourmet or fancy, but as far as Violet was concerned, that was yet another of the thrilling benefits to being divorced. She could cook fancy and wild all she liked—and garlic-up any dish to the nth degree—and who’d ever care?
She’d have belted out a rock-and-roll song, off-key and at the top of her lungs, if it wouldn’t risk waking her visitor. She’d deal with him. But right now she was just seeping in some relaxation, and satisfaction. She’d kicked some real butt in the last hour, finished up the week’s bookkeeping, made up four arrangements for birthday orders and fetched a van full of pots and containers from town. Even without the bee sting, it was a lot to do for a woman who was supposed to be a flutter-brained blonde, but then, when no one was watching she had no reason to be on her guard.
Her sisters thought she was afraid of getting hurt again because of Simpson. The truth was that her ex-husband had turned out to be a twerp, but she never held that against the other half of the species. She wasn’t trying to avoid men. She was trying to help men avoid her—and for three years she’d been doing a great job at it, if she said so herself.
She was still humming when the telephone rang—naturally!—just when she was trying to coat the shrimp with the gooey mixture. She cocked the receiver between her ear and shoulder. “Darlene! Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to call you back…and yes, you told me he was a Leo. Okay. Try a fritatta with flowers. Flowers, like the marigolds I sold you the other day, remember? I’m telling you, those marigolds are the best aphrodisiac…and you wear that peach gauze blouse tonight…uh-huh…uh-huh…”
Once Darlene Webster had been taken care of, she washed her hands and started stabbing the coated shrimp on skewers. Immediately the phone rang again. It was Georgia from the neighborhood euchre group. “Of course I can have it here, what’s the difference? We’ll just have it at your house next time. Hope the new carpet looks terrific.”
After that Jim White called, who wanted to know if he could borrow her black plastic layer. And then Boobla called, who wanted to know if there was any chance Violet could hire her friend Kari for the summer, because Kari couldn’t find a job and they worked really well together. Boobla could talk the leaves off a tree. Violet finally had to interrupt. “Okay, okay, hon. I’ve got enough work to take on one more part-timer, but I can’t promise anything until I’ve met her. Bring her over Monday morning, all right?”
She’d just hung up, thinking it was a wonder she wasn’t hoarse from the amount of time she got trapped talking on the phone, when she suddenly turned and spotted Cameron in the door.
Her self-confidence skidded downhill like a sled with no brake.
It was so unfair. Cameron had been in a coma-quality nap; she knew he had, so you’d think he’d have woken up still sleepy. And he yawned from the doorway, but she still felt his eyes on her face like sharp, bright lasers. Interested. Scoping out the territory from her disheveled braid to her bare feet.
“You’re a hell of a busy woman,” he said. His tone was almost accusing, as if she’d misled him into thinking she was too scatterbrained to maintain any kind of serious, busy life.
“I’m sorry if the phone woke you. It’s been hell coming back to the town where I grew up, because everyone knows me.” She added quickly, “Are you hungry? All I have to do is pop the shrimp on the grill and I’m ready—”
“I’ll do it, so you can stay off that hurt foot.”
Whenever she woke up from a nap, she had cheek creases and bed hair and a crab’s mood until she got going again. He seemed to wake up just as full of hell and awareness as when he’d dropped off. There was no way she could like a man with that kind of personality flaw. Worse yet, he proved himself to be one of those easygoing guys, the kind who rolled with the punches and tended to fit in whatever kind of gathering they walked into. He started her grill before she could—and the barbecue was one that could make her mother swear; it never lit unless you begged it desperately. Then he found her silverware drawer and set the table without asking. Granted, it wasn’t challenging to find anyone’s silverware drawer, but for a man to make himself useful without praising him every thirty seconds? It was spooky.
There had to be a catch.
“What do you usually drink for dinner? Wine, water, what?”
“You can have wine if you want. I know I’ve got a couple open bottles on the second shelf—not fancy quality, but okay. For myself, though, this day has been too much of a blinger to do wine.”
He grinned. The smile transformed his face, whipped off five years and made her think what a hellion he must have been as a little boy. “So you’d like to drink…?”
“Long Island iced tea,” she said primly.
He burst out laughing. “I got it now. Cut straight to the hard stuff.”
“It’s been an exhausting day,” she defended.
“You’re not kidding.”
The phone rang yet again—it was just another call, nothing that affected life or death—so after that she turned down the volume and let the answering machine pick up. She wasn’t ready to fix the sun and the moon, but she was prepared to concentrate on the lavender deal.
Still, the instant they sat down to dinner, it was obvious they wouldn’t be talking business for a bit longer. “You haven’t eaten in days?” she inquired tactfully.
“Not real food. Not food someone’s actually taken the time to make from scratch.” It was impossible to eat her spicy shrimp without licking one’s fingers. But when he licked his, he also met her eyes. “Would you marry me?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Actually, I never say it. I figured out, from a very short, very bad marriage years ago, that I’m too footloose to be the marrying kind. But I’m more than willing to make an exception for you.”
“Well, thanks so much,” she said kindly, “but I’d only say yes to my worst enemy, and I don’t know you well enough to be sure you could ever get on that list.”
He’d clearly been teasing, but now he hesitated, his eyes narrowing speculatively. He even stopped eating—for fifteen seconds at least. “That’s an interesting thing to say. You think you’d be so hard to be married to?”
“I don’t think. I know.” She hadn’t meant to sidetrack down a serious road. It was his fault. Once he’d implied that he wasn’t in the marriage market, she instinctively seemed to relax more. Now, though, she steered quickly back to lighter teasing. “Never mind that. The point is that you might want to be careful making rash offers like that, at least until you know the woman a little better.”
“Normally, yeah. But in your case I know everything I need to know. I haven’t had food like this since…hell. Maybe since never. Where the hell did you learn to cook?”
“My mom. Most of her family was French, and she loved to putter in the kitchen, let all three of us girls putter with her. My one older sister is downright fabulous. Give Daisy a grain of salt, and I swear she can make something of it. Me, though…I just like to mess around with food.”
“Well, I can cook okay. I even like to—when I’ve got a kitchen to play around in. But at my best, I never came up with dishes like this.”
That was enough compliments. The cats were circling, which he didn’t seem to mind. She’d never fed them from the table, but that didn’t mean anything. Telling a cat not to do something was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and they’d all smelled the shrimp cooking.
Outside, evening was coming on. The crickets hadn’t started up yet, but the birds had already quieted, the last of the day’s sultry wind died down. It was that pre-dusk time when a soft, intimate yellow haze settled a gentle blanket on everything.
He’d leveled one plate, filled another. She had no choice about piling on more food. God knew how the man stayed so lean, but it was obvious he’d been starved. He even ate her asparagus soup with gusto, and that took guts for a guy.
“I didn’t see that much, driving up—but it looks like you’ve got a beautiful piece of land here,” he remarked.
“It is. Been in my family since the 1700s. My dad’s side was from Scotland. Lots of people with that background here. Maybe they felt at home with the rocky land and the slopes and the stern winters.” She asked, “Sometimes I catch a little French accent when you talk…which I guess is obvious if you work at Jeunnesse. But it’s not there all the time. Do you actually live in France?”
“Yes and no. I’ve worked for Jeunnesse for better than fifteen years now. I like them, like the work. But basically what I’ve always loved is traveling around the globe. So I’ve got a small apartment in Provence, but I’ve kept my American citizenship, have a cottage in upstate New York. Both are only places I hang my hat. I live for months at a time wherever Jeunnesse sends me.”
“So there’s no place you really call home?”
“Nope. I think I was just born rootless.” He said it as if wanting to make sure she really heard him. “You’re the opposite, aren’t you? Everything in your family’s land is about people who value roots.”
“Yes.” She suspected women had chased him, hoping they’d be the one who could turn him around. It was so ironic. She was as root bound as a woman could be. All she’d ever wanted in life was a man to love and a house full of kids. Still, discovering they were such opposites reassured her totally that nothing personal was likely to happen between them. “You’ve never had a hunger for kids?” she asked him.
“I’ve got kids. Two daughters, Miranda and Kate.” He leaned over and filled her glass. She wasn’t sure whether she’d finished two or he just kept topping off her first one. Either way she knew she wouldn’t normally be prying into a stranger’s life without the help of some Long Island iced tea. “My ex-wife still lives in upstate New York—which is why I’ve kept a cottage up there—so that I can easily come back a few times a year to see the girls. Although, often enough as they’ve gotten older, they’ve come to see me. They didn’t mind having a dad spring for tickets to Paris or Buenos Aires.”
“But didn’t you mind missing a lot of their growing-up years?”
He got up and served the grape sorbet—once he’d determined that was the one course he hadn’t tried yet. “Yeah. I missed it. But I tried the suit-and-tie kind of life when I was married. Almost went out of my mind. She kicked me out, told me I was the most irresponsible son of a gun she’d ever laid eyes on. But I wasn’t.”
“No?”
“No. I never missed a day’s work, never failed to bring home a paycheck. It was sitting still I couldn’t handle. Everyone can’t like the same music, you know?”
She knew, but she also suspected there had to be some kind of story in those lake-blue eyes. Maybe he was a vagabond, one of those guys who couldn’t stand to be tied down. But maybe something had made him that way.
She stood up and hefted their plates. His life wasn’t her business, of course, or ever likely to be. “I’ll pop the dishes in the dishwasher, and then we can talk outside.”
“Nope.” He stood up, too. “I’ll pop the dishes in the dishwasher, and you can put your foot up outside.”
She let him.
Once he called out, “Is it okay if I put the cats in the dishwasher, too?”
And she yelled back, “Why, sure. If you don’t want to live until morning.”
He banged around in there, whistling something that sounded like “Hard-Hearted Woman,” occasionally scolding the cats, but eventually he finished up and pushed through the back screen door, carrying another pitcher, sweating cold and jammed with ice cubes.
She’d already settled on the old slatted swing, with her sore foot perched on the swing arm and her good foot braced against the porch rail to keep the swing moving at a lullaby speed. He took the white wicker rocker and poured two glasses. “Two iced teas. No alcohol involved.”
“Good.” It was time they talked seriously. She knew it as well as he did, but the screen door suddenly opened as if by a ghost hand, startling them both…only to see a flat-faced golden Persian nuzzle her way outside. As soon as Cameron settled back in the rocker, the thug-size cat leaped on his lap.
“Could you tell your damn cat it’s hotter than blazes, and I need a fur coat on my lap like I need poison ivy?”
“It’s hard to hear over her purring, but honestly, if she’s in your way, just put her down.”
“Get down,” he told the cat, in a lover’s croon. But that wasn’t the voice he used with her. Maybe he was stroking the cat, but the eyes that met hers had turned cool and careful. “You think we’ve spent enough time getting comfortable with each other?”
“Enough to talk,” she agreed, and settled one thing right off the bat. “You’ve spent hours traveling and it’s too late now to find a place in White Hills. You can stay here tonight, no matter how we work out everything else.”
“I’ll camp outside,” he said.
“Fine.” She wasn’t making a big deal out of where he hung his hat. He’d won some trust from her. Not a ton. But if she didn’t feel precisely safe around him, it wasn’t because she feared he was a serial killer or criminal. The man had more character in his jaw bone than most men did in their whole bodies. “But it’s your plan for my lavender that I want to hear about.”
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Jennifer Greene
She was no man magnet.From her Gypsy clothing to her feline fan club to her transparent attempt at seeming helium-headed, Violet Campbell screamed, "Run for your life," her lucrative lavender fields be damned. But Cameron Lachlan had never wanted to be anywhere…with anyone…more. Somehow, someway, this bewildering lady had transformed his wanderlust to age-old desire.But instead of wanting the moon, which she deserved, Violet seemed to accept that he would leave her bed - and her. Which he might have done…once. But just when he'd found the woman worth staying for, she hinted at reasons that he should run - not walk - away.
She’d Been Hurt. She’d Been Lonely. She Needed.
And maybe those were secrets she never meant to reveal to a stranger, but she never told him anything. She just kissed him back, wildly, freely, intimately.
Cameron thought he was a man who took gutsy risks…but Violet was the brave one, the honest one. Something in her called him. Something in him answered her with a well of feeling he’d never known he had.
He raised his head suddenly. “I never meant—”
She gulped in a breath. “It’s all right. I didn’t think you did.”
“It was the moonlight.”
“I know.”
“I need you to know you can trust me.”
“I’m thirty-four, Cameron. Too old to trust someone I barely know. But also way too old to make more of a kiss than what it was. We’ll just call this a moment’s madness and forget all about it.”
Easier said…
Dear Reader,
Welcome to another passion-filled month at Silhouette Desire—where we guarantee powerful and provocative love stories you are sure to enjoy. We continue our fabulous DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS series with Kristi Gold’s Challenged by the Sheikh—her intensely ardent hero will put your senses on overload. More hot heroes are on the horizon when USA TODAY bestselling author Ann Major returns to Silhouette Desire with the dramatic story of The Bride Tamer.
Ever wonder what it would be like to be a man’s mistress—even just for pretend? Well, the heroine of Katherine Garbera’s Mistress Minded finds herself just in that predicament when she agrees to help out her sexy-as-sin boss in the next KING OF HEARTS title. Jennifer Greene brings us the second story in THE SCENT OF LAVENDER, her compelling series about the Campbell sisters, with Wild In the Moonlight—and this is one hero to go wild for! If it’s a heartbreaker you’re looking for, look no farther than Hold Me Tight by Cait London as she continues her HEARTBREAKERS miniseries with this tale of one sexy male specimen on the loose. And looking for a little Hot Contact himself is the hero of Susan Crosby’s latest book in her BEHIND CLOSED DOORS series; this sinfully seductive police investigator always gets his woman! Thank goodness.
And thank you for coming back to Silhouette Desire every month. Be sure to join us next month for New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson’s Best-Kept Lies, the highly anticipated conclusion to her wildly popular series THE MCCAFFERTYS.
Keep on reading!
Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Wild in the Moonlight
Jennifer Greene
JENNIFER GREENE
lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. She has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including three RITA
Awards from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times magazine.
For Ryan and his bride—
Everyone thinks the romance happens
before you get married, but I promise you two—
the true excitement and wonder and magic come after.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
One
Just as Violet Campbell limped inside the back door into the kitchen, she heard the front doorbell ring.
She simply ignored it. It wasn’t as if she had a choice. Wincing from pain, tears falling from her eyes, she hopped over to the sink. After spending hours in the brilliant Vermont sun, her kitchen seemed gloomier than a tomb. It wasn’t, of course. Her pupils simply hadn’t adjusted to the inside light—either that, or the terrible severity of pain from the sting of a particularly ferocious bee was affecting her vision.
Someone rang her doorbell a second time.
Impatiently she yelled out, “Look! I can’t come to the door because I’m dying, so just chill out for a few minutes!”
Everyone in White Hills knew her, so if they wanted something from her, they were hardly going to wait for formal permission. Heaven knew why she bothered keeping the doorbell operational, anyway. People barged in at all hours without a qualm.
Gingerly she lifted herself onto the red tile counter, kicked off her sandal and carefully, carefully put her right foot in the sink. Her skirt got in the way. Ever since opening the Herb Haven, she’d had fun wearing vintage clothes—her oldest sister claimed she looked as if she shopped from a gypsy catalog. Today, though, she had to bunch up the swingy long skirt to even see her poor foot. An empty coffee cup was knocked over. A spoon fell to the floor. One of the cats—Nuisance? Devil?—assumed she was in the kitchen to provide a lap and some petting.
She petted the cat, but then got serious. Darn it, she needed to get her foot clean. Immediately.
Until that was done, she couldn’t tackle the bee sting. She was positive that the stinger had to still be in there. Nothing else explained the intense, sharp, unrelenting hurt. Well, there was one other explanation. Friends and family had no idea she was a complete coward, but Violet had discovered three years before that there was one terrific advantage to being divorced and living alone. She could be a crybaby and a wimp anytime she wanted to be.
And right now, for damn sure, she wanted to be. As far as Violet was concerned, a bee sting justified a sissy fit any day of the week. She dunked her foot under the faucet and switched on the tap. The rush of lukewarm water nearly made her pass out.
Possibly that was taking cowardice too far, but cripes. The whole situation was so unfair—and so ironic. Everything around her seemed to be heartlessly, exuberantly reproducing. Plants. Cats. Socks in her dryer. Even the dust bunnies under the bed seemed to lasciviously multiply the instant the lights turned off at night.
Everybody seemed to be having sex and babies but her—and that sure as sunlight included the bees. Lately she could hardly wander anywhere on the farm without running into a fresh hive. Possibly having twenty acres of lavender coming into bloom might—might—have encouraged a few extra bees to hang out. But it’s not as if she went close to the lavender. And her normal bees were nice bees. They liked her. She liked them.
Not this fella. Didn’t male bees die after stinging someone? She hoped he did. She hoped his death was violent and painful and lingering.
The front doorbell rang yet again.
“For Pete’s sake, could you lay off the doorbell? I can’t come to the door, so either come in or go away!”
Bravely gritting her teeth, she squirted antibacterial soap on the injured foot, then screeched when it touched the stinger spot, which was already turning bruisey red and throbbing like a migraine. She forced the foot under the tap water again.
The glass cabinet behind her head contained the box of first-aid supplies, but when she tried to stretch behind her, the movement sent more sharp shooting pains up her leg. The cat had been joined by another cat on the other side of the sink. Both knew perfectly well they weren’t allowed on the kitchen counters. Both still sat, as if they were the supervisory audience over an audition she was failing. Her skirt hem kept getting wetter. Her forehead and nape were sticky-damp from the heat—if not from shock. And she noticed the nail polish on her middle toenail had a chip. She hated it when her nail polish chipped.
“Allo?”
The sudden voice made her head jerk up like a rabbit smelling a jaguar in her territory. This just wasn’t a kitchen where jaguars prowled. After the divorce, she’d moved home primarily because it was available—her mom and dad had just retired to Florida, leaving the old Vermont homestead clean, ready for family gatherings at any time, but vacant.
She’d made it hers. Not that her mom hadn’t had wonderful decorating taste, but she’d fiercely needed to create a private, safe nest after Simpson took off with his extraordinarily fecund bimbo. Now, at a glance, she reassured herself that the world was still normal, still safe, still hers. The old cabinets held a prize collection of red Depression glass. A potbellied stove sat on the old brick hearth; she’d angled an antique-rose love seat on one side, a cane rocker on the other—both of which made seats for more cats. Red-and-white chintz curtains framed the wide windows overlooking the monster maple in the backyard. Potted plants argued for space from every light source. A crocheted heart draped the round oak table.
Everything was normal. Everything was fine…except that she heard the hurried, heavy clump of boots in her hall, coming toward the kitchen, at the same time she heard the jaguar’s voice doing that “Allo, allo” thing again.
She didn’t particularly mind if there was a stranger in her house. No one was a stranger in White Hills for long, and potential serial killers probably wouldn’t call out a greeting before barging in. Still, she didn’t know anyone who said “allo” instead of “hi” or “hello.” It wasn’t the odd accent that rustled her nerves but something else. There was something…spicy…about that voice. Something just a little too sexy and exotic for a somnolent June afternoon in a sleepy Vermont town. Something that made her knees feel buttery.
On the other hand, Violet knew perfectly well that she was a teensy bit prone to being overdramatic, so it wasn’t as if she felt inclined to trust her instincts. Reality was she was more likely stuck with a visitor—and right now she just had no patience with any more complications.
Without even looking up, she snapped out, “My God, you nearly scared me half to death. Whoever the hell you are, could you reach in the cupboard behind my head? Second shelf. I need tweezers. First-aid cream. And that skinny tube of ammonium stuff for stings. And the plastic bottle of purple stuff that you wash out wounds with, you know, what’s it called? Or maybe hydrogen peroxide. Oh, cripes, just give me the whole darn box—”
The stranger interrupted her list of instructions with that quiet, dangerous voice of his. “First—where exactly are you hurt?”
Like she had time for questions. “I’m not just hurt. I’m in agonizing pain. And I always tell myself that I should stockpile pain pills and narcotics, only damn, I never take any. I don’t suppose you carry any morphine on you?”
“Um, no.”
“I suppose you think it’s crazy, my talking this way to a stranger. But if you’re going to rob me, just do it. Feel free. I don’t even care. But get me the first-aid box first, okay?”
Silence. Not just on his part, but on hers. It was one thing to believe she was totally okay with a stranger in her kitchen, and another to have said stranger suddenly show up between her legs—before they’d even been introduced yet.
She gulped.
Close up, the guy could have sent any woman’s estrogen levels soaring. He seemed to cross the room so fast, and suddenly his blond head was bent over her foot in the sink. He was built long and sleek, with a daunting shoulder span and arm muscles that looked carved out of hickory. His feet alone looked bigger than boats. His hair was dark blond, disheveled, longish, as if he’d been outside in the hot breeze for hours. She couldn’t see much of his face except for his profile—which amounted to one hell of a nose and skin with a deep tan. The khaki shirt and boots and canvas pants were practical, not fancy, and though he was lean, he looked strong enough to knock down walls for a living.
When he finally glanced at her face, she caught the snap and fire of light-blue eyes, and a narrow mouth that seemed determined not to laugh. “All that yelling,” he said finally, patiently, “was about this sting?”
“Hey. It’s not just a sting. You didn’t see the bee. It was huge. Bigger than a horse. Practically bigger than an elephant. And it—”
“Are you allergic to bee stings?”
“No. Good grief, no. I’m not allergic to anything. I’m totally healthy. But I’m telling you, this was a big bee. And I think the stinger’s still in there.”
“Yeah, I can see it is.” Again he lifted his head. Again she felt those amused blue eyes pounce on her face, and caught a better look at him. That shag of blond hair framed a long-boned face that looked carved by a French sculptor.
If she wasn’t dying from misery, she might have let a shiver sneak up her spine. One look—and no matter how soggy her mind was from the pain—she was absolutely positive this guy wouldn’t normally be running around White Hills, Vermont…or any other back-country town.
“For the record,” she said, “you’re lost.”
“You think?” He shifted behind her, opened the cabinet and promptly hefted down her first-aid box. Well, actually, it was a shoe box. Filled to overflowing with herbal, natural, artificial and any other kind of first-aid supplies she’d accumulated over the past three years—and probably a few her mom had had around for the thirty years before that. He located the tweezers first.
The way the stranger held the tweezers made her nervous. Either that or something else did. Either way, she was really starting to get seriously nervous, not just pretend—and darn it, she hadn’t been doing all that well before the exotic stranger barged in.
“You’re lost,” she repeated. “I’m Violet Campbell. I own the Herb Haven—the building and greenhouses on the other side of the yard. This is my house. If you’ll tell me who you’re trying to find, I’ll be glad to—eeeikes!”
He lifted the tweezers to show her the stinger. “It looks like the stinger of a little sweat bee.”
Violet pinched the skin between her brows. Another delightful advantage to being divorced, apart from removing the scoundrel from her life, was not having to put up with men’s sick sense of humor. “Who are you looking for?” she repeated.
“You.”
He lifted the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and started unscrewing the top. She suspected he was going to pour it on the wound. She also suspected that she was going to shriek when he did—and maybe even cry. But the way he said “you” in that sexy, exotic accent put so much cotton in her throat that the shriek barely came out a baby’s gasp.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? The stinger’s out. The spot’s clean. Now you might want to take an antihistamine or put some ice on the spot for a few minutes—”
“You couldn’t possibly want me,” she interrupted. And then pinched the skin between her brows a second time. On any normal day she liked people. She liked interruptions. She even liked a hefty dose of chaos in her life. But there were men she felt comfortable with and men she didn’t.
This one was definitely a “didn’t.” He made her feel naked, which was pretty darn silly considering she was dressed in the ultramodest clothes of another era—except she suddenly realized her skirt was hiked up past her thighs. The point, though, was that she most certainly wasn’t wearing male-attracting clothes. Her women customers got a kick out of her sense of style, but men almost always backed away fast.
That was how she wanted it. She liked guys, had always liked guys, but she’d been burned enough for a while. Maybe for a whole lifetime. Normally men noticed her clothes and immediately seemed to conclude that she was a little kooky and keep their distance, so God knew what was wrong with this stranger. He’d surely noticed the oddball long skirt and vintage blouse, but he was still looking her over as if she were meringue and he had a sweet tooth.
Momentarily, though, he went back to playing doctor, scrounging in her first-aid box until he found the ammonium wand for bites and stings. She winced even before he’d touched the spot. As if they were in the middle of a civilized conversation, he said, “You were expecting me.”
“Trust me. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m staying here for a few weeks. With you.”
The wince was wasted. When he touched the wound with the ammonium wand, she sucked in every last dram of saliva her throat had left and released a screech. A totally unsatisfying screech. The ammonium hissed and stung like—damn it. Like another bee sting. Only worse. Still, she’d somehow easily managed to keep track of the conversation this time. “Obviously, you’re not staying here. I don’t even know you. Although I’m beginning to think you’re a complete maniac—”
Actually, she wasn’t particularly afraid of maniacs. She took credit for being one herself often enough. But she’d lost the last of her usually voluble sense of humor with that bite of ammonia. Good-looking or not—sexy or not—she was really in no mood for an emotional tussle with a stranger.
The man swooped everything back in the first-aid box, then turned around and aimed for the freezer, obviously to find some ice. “My name is Cameron Lachlan.”
“Great name. I’m happy for you.”
He grinned, but he also kept moving. When she motioned to a lower cupboard, he bounced down on his heels and came up with small baggie for the ice. “We definitely have some kind of strange screwup going on here. You do have a sister named Daisy Cameron, don’t you?”
It wasn’t often she got that thud-thud-thud thing in her stomach, but her palm pressed hard on her tummy now. “Yes, for sure. In fact, I have two sisters—”
“But it’s Daisy who lives in France.”
“Yes, for several years now—”
“The point being,” he said patiently, “that your sister has been playing go-between for us for months. Or that’s what I’ve understood. Because she was living right there, and because she knows my work and me personally, so you wouldn’t have to be dealing with a stranger. You were supposed to be expecting me. You were supposed to have a place for me to stay for several weeks. You were supposed to know that I was arriving either today or tomorrow—”
“Oh my God. You’re Cameron Lachlan?”
He scratched his chin. “I could have sworn I already mentioned that.”
It came on so fast. The light-headedness. The stomach thudding. The way her kitchen suddenly blurred into a pale-green haze.
Granted, she was a coward and a wuss—but normally she had a cast-iron stomach. Now, though, when she pushed off the counter and tried to stand on both feet, her bee sting stabbed like hot fire and her stomach suddenly pitched. “Try not to take this personally, okay?” she said. “It’s not that I’m not glad to see you. It’s just that you’ll have to excuse me a minute while I throw up.”
Two
Once Violet disappeared from sight—presumably to find the nearest bathroom—Cameron leaned against the kitchen counter and clawed a hand through his hair. Talk about a royal mess. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Nothing usually rattled him. Normally people got a higher education to earn a better living. Cameron had pursued a Ph.D so he could enjoy a footloose, vagabond lifestyle. He was used to jet lag. Used to time changes and strange beds. He had no trouble getting along with people of all different backgrounds and cultures.
But this blonde was doing something to his pulse.
“Be careful with my sister,” Daisy had warned him—which, at the time, had struck him as a curious thing to say. His only interest in Violet Cameron was business. Still, whether he’d wanted to hear it or not, Daisy had filled in enough blanks for him to understand why she was so protective of her younger sister. Violet had apparently been married to a real, selfish creep. “Something happened in that marriage that I still don’t know about. Something really bad in the last year. I still can’t get her to talk about it,” Daisy had told him. “But the point is, Violet was always extra smart, in school and life and everything else. It’s just since the divorce that she’s been…different. Fragile and nervous about men.”
Since that conversation had at the time been none of his business—and none of his interest—Cameron had pretty much forgotten it. Still, he’d definitely imagined a shy, quiet, understated kind of woman. A true violet in personality as well as name.
Now he wondered if Vermont might secretly be an alternative universe. Granted, he’d only been in the state for a couple of hours—and on the Campbell property even less than that—but Daisy’s description didn’t match anything he’d noticed in reality so far. Violet was as shy as neon lights, as nervous as a lioness, and as far as IQ…well, maybe she was smart, even ultrasmart, but who could tell beneath all those layers of ditsiness?
He heard a door open and instinctively braced. Seconds later Violet walked back in the kitchen. When she spotted him leaning against the counter, she seemed to instinctively brace, too.
Considering that Cameron had always gotten on well with women, it was a mighty blow to his ego to make one sick on sight. At the vast age of thirty-seven, though, he never expected to respond to a woman with a tumbly stomach of his own.
The old Vermont farmhouse seemed sturdy and serious. At first glance, he’d thought the base structure had to be at least two centuries old. The brick surface had tidy white trim and a shake roof; the plank floors were polished to a high shine. He’d been drawn to the place on sight; it looked practical and functional and solid, nothing frivolous.
Only, then there was her.
Standing with the light behind her, she could have been a fey creature from a fairy story. The first thing any breathing male was going to notice, of course, was her hair. It was blond, paler than sunlight, and even braided with a skinny silk scarf, it bounced halfway down her back…which meant it had to reach her fanny when it was undone. Her face was a valentine with warm, wide, hazel eyes, sun-kissed cheeks and a nose lightly peppered with freckles.
She wasn’t exactly pretty. She just had that something. Some kinds of women just seemed born pure female. They were never as easy to get along with—much less understand—but they seemed to radiate that female thing from the inside out. Nothing about her was flashy or sexy, but she was sensual from that pale, shiny hair to her soft mouth to the rounded swell of her breasts.
She seemed to be wearing old clothes—not old, as in practical, but old, as in the stuff you’d find in a great-grandmother’s attic trunk. The white blouse completely covered those delectable breasts, but the fabric seemed less substantial than a handkerchief. It was tucked into a long skirt swirling with bright colors. Crystal earrings dangled to her shoulders. A couple of skinny bangle bracelets glinted on her wrist. There was nothing immodest about the clothes; if anything, they seemed unnecessarily concealing for a sultry, ninety-degree afternoon. Cameron just wasn’t sure what the vintage gypsy image was supposed to mean.
He also couldn’t help but notice that she smelled.
Guys weren’t supposed to mention that sort of thing, but smells were Cameron’s business—and had helped him put away a sizable bank account—so scent tended to be a priority for him. In her case, she wasn’t using the kind of perfume that came out of a bottle, but around her neck and wrists there was the sweet, vague scent of fresh flowers—as if she’d ambled into a garden with roses and lilac petals and maybe some lily of the valley.
He noticed the delicate scents—which helped him forget that he’d also noticed her spanking-orange underpants. Usually he knew a woman just a wee bit better before he’d gotten a look at her underwear, but when Violet had been on the counter, trying to wash her foot in the sink, she’d pushed up her skirts—no reason for her to have been thinking about modesty since she obviously hadn’t been expecting company.
Hell. He hadn’t planned on barging in without being asked, either, but when a woman yelled out that she was dying, he could hardly stand on her front porch and wait politely for further news bulletins.
Now, though, she frowned at him. “We seem to be in quite an uh-oh situation,” she announced.
That wasn’t quite how he’d have put it, but he sure agreed. “You’d better get your foot up before that sting swells up on you.”
“I will.”
“You’re not still feeling sick to your stomach, are you?” He wanted to directly confront their obvious problem, but since she’d established—incontestably—that she was a hard-core sissy about the bee sting, it seemed wise to get her settled down. He sure as hell didn’t want her keeling over on him.
“I think my stomach’s fine now. It doesn’t matter, anyway. What matters is that we have to figure this out. Your being here. What we’re going to do with you.”
“Uh-huh. You want me to get us a drink?”
“Yes. That’d be great.” She sank into a chair at the oak table, as if just assuming he could find glasses and drinks. Which he could. He just didn’t usually walk in someone’s house and take over this way.
Being in the kitchen with her was like being assaulted with a rocket full of estrogen. It wasn’t just that she was a girly-girl type of woman, but everything about the place. Cats roosted on every surface—one blinked at him from the top of the refrigerator; another was sprawled on some newspapers on the counter; a black-and-white polka-dotted model seemed determined to wind around his legs. Every spare wall space had been decorated within an inch of its life, with copper pots and little slogans over the door and wreaths and just stuff. From the basket of yarn balls to heart-shaped rag rugs, the entire kitchen was an estrogen-whew. The kind of a place where a guy might be allowed to sip some wine, but God forbid he chug a beer.
On the other hand, he found lemonade in the fridge in a crystal pitcher. Fresh squeezed. The refrigerator was stuffed with so many dishes that he really wanted to stand and stare—if not outright drool. Never mind if she was overdosed with sex appeal. He might get fed out of this deal. That reduced the importance of any other considerations…assuming either of them could figure out how to fix such a major screwup.
“I think we need to start over,” he suggested. “You seemed to recognize my name? So I assume you also know that I’m the agricultural chemist from Jeunnesse?”
She immediately nodded at the mention of the French perfume company, so at least Cameron was reassured there was some cognition and sense of reality between her ears. But somehow she looked even more shaken up instead of less.
“I just can’t believe this. I did know you were coming, Mr. Lachlan—”
“Cameron. Or Cam.”
“Cameron, then. What you said was very true. My sister’s called and written me several times about this.” She lifted her bee-stung foot to a chair and accepted the long, tall glass of lemonade he handed her. “I’m just having a stroke, that’s all. The timing completely slipped my mind.”
“You have twenty acres of lavender almost ready to be harvested, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
Cameron took a long slow gulp of the lemonade. It seemed to him that it’d normally be a tad challenging to forget twenty acres of lavender in your backyard.
“You’re supposed to want me here,” he said tactfully.
“I do, I do. I just forgot.” She raised a ring-spangled hand. “Well, I didn’t just forget. It’s been unusually chaotic around here. Our youngest sister, Camille, got married a couple weeks ago. She’d been here most of the spring, working on the lavender. And she left on her honeymoon. Only, then she came back to get the kids.”
Boy, that made a lot of sense.
“Cripes, I don’t mean her kids. I mean her step-kids. Her new husband had twin sons from a previous marriage. And actually since Camille thinks of them as hers, I suppose it’s okay to call them her sons directly, don’t you think?”
Cameron took a breath. As thrilling as all this information was, it had absolutely nothing to do with him. “About the lavender…” he gently interrupted.
“I’m just trying to explain how I got so confused. I started the Herb Haven three years ago, when I moved back home, and it’s done fine—but it was this spring that it really took off. I’ve been running full speed, had to hire two staff and I’m still behind. And then Camille needed me to do something with all their dogs and animals while the family was on the honeymoon— I mean, they got a few days to themselves, but after that they even invited the kids and his dad, can you believe it? And then this old farmhouse I try to keep up myself. And then there are the two greenhouses. And Daisy…well, you already know my older sister, so you know Daisy’s genetically related to a steamroller.”
Finally she’d said something that Cameron could connect to. Daisy was no close personal friend, only a business connection, but he’d spent enough time to believe the oldest Campbell sister could manage a continent without breaking a sweat. Daisy was a take-charge kind of woman.
“Anyway, the point is, sometimes Daisy runs on—”
“Daisy runs on?” Cameron felt that point needed qualifying. As far as he was concerned, Daisy couldn’t touch her younger sister for her ability to talk—extensively and incessantly.
Violet nodded. “And I just don’t always listen to her that closely. Who could? Daisy always has a thousand ideas and she’s always bossing Camille and me around. We gave up arguing with her years ago. When you’ve got a headstrong horse, you just have to let them run. Not that I ride. Or that Daisy’s like a horse. I’m just trying to say that it’s always been easier to tune out and just let her think that she’s managing us—”
“About the lavender,” Cameron interrupted again, this time a wee bit more forcefully.
“I’m just trying to explain why I forgot the exact time when you were coming.” She hesitated. “I also seemed to have forgotten exactly what you’re going to do.”
Before he could answer, someone rapped on her front door. She immediately popped to her feet and hobbled quickly down the hall. Moments later she came back with her arms full of mail. “That was Frank, the mailman. Usually he just puts it in the box at the road, but at this time of year, there can be quite a load—”
More news he couldn’t use. And before he could direct her attention back to the lavender, her telephone rang. Actually, about a half dozen telephones rang. She must have a good number of receivers, because he could hear that cacophonic echo of rings through the entire downstairs.
She took the kitchen receiver—which enabled her to pet two cats at the same time. Possibly she was raising a herd, because he hadn’t seen these longhaired caramel models before. The caller seemed to be someone named Mabel, who seemed to feel Violet could give her some herbal suggestions for hot flashes.
This took some time. Cameron finished one glass of lemonade and poured another while he got an earful about menopause—more than he’d ever wanted to know, and more than he could imagine a woman as young as Violet could know. What was she, thirty? Thirty-one? What in God’s name was squaw root and flax seed oil?
She’d just hung up and turned back to face him when the sucker rang again. This time the caller appeared to be a man named Bartholomew. Although she seemed to be arguing with the guy, it was a stressless type of quarrel, because she sorted through her mail, petted more cats and put breakfast cups in the dishwasher during the conversation. A woman could hardly be ditsy to the bone if she could multitask, right? Then she hung up and started talking to him again.
“You see?” she asked, as if there was something obvious he should be seeing. “That’s exactly why it’s impossible for you to stay. Bartholomew Radcliffe is supposed to be putting a new roof on the cottage. The place where you were going to stay when you came in July.”
“It is July,” he felt compelled to tell her.
She made a fluttery motion with her hand, as if the date were of no import. Clearly there were several things in life that Violet Campbell considered inconsequential—dates, facts, contracts and possibly anything else in that generically rational realm. Because he was starting to feel exhausted, he rested his chin in his hand while she went on.
“That’s exactly the thing about July. The roof was supposed to be done by now. It’s just a little cottage. How long can it take to put a roof on one little cottage? And Bartholomew promised me it’d only take a maximum of two weeks, and he started it way back near the first of June. Only, I’ve never worked with roofers before.”
“And this is relevant, why?”
“Because I had no idea how it was with them. Today he didn’t come because there’s a threat of rain.” She motioned outside to the cloudless sky. “He doesn’t come on Fridays because Friday apparently isn’t a workday. And then there’s fishing. If the fishing’s good, he takes off early. You see what I mean?”
What he saw was that Violet Campbell was a sexy, sensual, unfathomable woman with gorgeous eyes and silky blond hair and boobs that he’d really, really like to get to know. The only problem seemed to be the content under her hair. There was a slim possibility she could fill out an application at a nut house, and no one would be certain whether she wanted employment or an inmate’s room.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d like to talk about the lavender crop.” But by then, he should have realized that Violet couldn’t be tricked, coaxed or bribed into staying on topic.
“We are. Basically. I mean, the issue is that when—if—you came, I assumed you could stay at the cottage. It’s nice. It’s private. It’s comfortable. But it’s quite a disaster right now because they had to take off the old roof to put on the new one. So there’s dust and nails everywhere. And tar. That tar is really hot and stinky. So the place simply isn’t livable. It will be— In fact, I can’t believe it’ll take him more than another week to finish it—”
“Depending on his fishing schedule, of course.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Well, I’m hearing you, chère. But it’d be a wee bit tricky for me to fly all the way back to France, just to wait out Bartholomew’s fishing schedule. And although I understand your strain of lavender runs late, I absolutely have to be here for the first of the harvest.”
“Well, yes, that’s all true, but I’m just confused what I can possibly do with you until I’ve got a place for you to stay.”
Maybe jet lag was getting to him. Maybe at the vast age of thirty-seven, he was no longer the easy-care, rootless vagabond he used to be. Maybe missed sleep and strange mattresses had finally caught up with him…but it seemed pretty damn obvious that Violet couldn’t really be this flutter-brained. Something must be bothering her about his being here. He just had no idea what. Considering her older sister had okayed him, she couldn’t be afraid of him, could she?
Nah. Cameron easily dismissed that theory almost before it surfaced. It wasn’t as if all women liked him. They didn’t. But he got along with most, and those women who related to him sexually generally were afraid that he’d have taken a fast powder by morning—no one was afraid of him in any other sense, that he could imagine.
So he slowly put down his lemonade glass and hunched forward, deliberately making closer eye contact. Not to elicit any sexual response, but to encourage an eye-to-eye honest connection. “Violet,” he said slowly and calmly.
“What?”
“Quit with the nonsense.”
“What nonsense?”
“Sleeping arrangements are not a problem. I wouldn’t mind sleeping outside on the ground. Actually, I like sleeping under the stars. Hell, I’ve roughed it on four continents. And if we get into some stormy weather, I’ll find a hotel in town and commute. My finding a place to throw a pillow is no big deal. So is there some reason that you don’t want me here that you haven’t said?”
“Good heavens. Of course not—”
Again, he said slowly and carefully, “You are aware that my work with your lavender is potentially worth thousands of dollars to you? Potentially hundreds of thousands?”
She squeezed her eyes closed briefly—and when she opened them again, he read panic in their deep, dark, beautiful, hazel depths. “Oh God,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m going to be sick again.”
Three
“No, you’re not going to be sick again,” Cameron said emphatically.
Violet met his eyes. “You’re right. I’m not,” she said slowly, and took a long deep breath.
She had to get a grip. A serious grip. She wasn’t really nauseous, she was just shook up. Her foot throbbed like the devil—that was for real. She’d been running all day in the heat even before the bee sting—that was for real, too. And normally men didn’t provoke her into behaving like a scatterbrained nutcase—but there were exceptions.
Virile, highly concentrated packages of testosterone with wicked eyes and long, lanky strides were a justifiable exception.
Violet tried another deep, calming breath. Most blondes hated blonde jokes, but she’d always liked them. She knew perfectly well how she came across to most men. A guy who thought he was dealing with a ditsy, witless blonde generally ran for the hills at the speed of light, or at the very least, considered her hands-off—and that suited Violet just fine.
It was just sometimes hard to maintain the ditsy, witless persona. For one thing, sometimes she actually felt ditless and witsy. Or witless and ditsy. Or…oh, hell.
That man had eyes bluer than a lake. She did much, much better with old, ugly men. And she did really great with children. Not that those attributes were particularly helping her now.
But that grip she’d needed was finally coming to her. Those long, meditative breaths always helped. “I have an idea,” she said to Cameron. “You’ve traveled a long way. You have to be hungry and tired—and I’m the middle of an Armageddon type of afternoon. Could you just…chill…for an hour or so? Feel free to walk around…or just put your feet up on my couch or on the front porch. I need to walk over to my Herb Haven, tell my employee what’s happening, finish up the problems I was in the middle of, get closed up for the day.”
“Is there anything I could help you with?”
“No. Honestly. I just need an hour to get my life back in order…and after that I’ve got more than enough in the fridge for dinner. I can’t guarantee it’s something you’ll want to eat, but we could definitely talk in peace then—”
“That sounds great. But if there’s running I could do for you, say. I know you can’t want to be on that foot.”
“I won’t be for long.”
It worked like a charm. She just couldn’t concentrate with all those life details hanging over her head—and with an impossibly unsettling man underfoot. An hour and a half later, though, she was humming under her breath, back in her kitchen, her one foot propped on a stool and a cleaver in her hand big enough to inspire jealousy in a serial killer.
Not that any foolish serial killer would dare lay a hand on one of her prized possessions.
She angled her head—just far enough to peer around the doorway to check on her visitor again. There was no telling exactly when Cameron had decided to sit down, but clearly it was his undoing. He’d completely crashed. He wasn’t snoring, but his tousled blond head was buried in the rose pillow on the couch, and one of his stockinged feet was hanging over the side. That man was sure long. One cat—either Dickens or Shakespeare—was purring on the couch arm, supervising his nap with a possessive eye.
Amazing how easy it was for her to relax when he was sleeping.
She went back to her chopping and sautéing and mixing. Cooking was a favorite pastime—and a secret, since she certainly didn’t want anyone getting the appalling idea that she was either domestic or practical. Tonight she couldn’t exercise much creativity, because she already had leftovers that needed using up, starting with some asparagus soup—and somehow finding an excuse to eat the last of the grape sorbet.
Early evening, the temperature was still too sweltering to eat anything heavy, but it was no trouble to put together bruschetta and some spicy grilled shrimp for the serious part of the meal. The shrimp took some fussing. First seeding and slicing the hot chilies. Then slicing the two tall stalks of lemongrass. Then she had to grate the fresh ginger, crush the garlic, chop the cilantro and mix it with warmed honey and olive oil.
He’d probably hate it, she thought. Men tended to hate anything gourmet or fancy, but as far as Violet was concerned, that was yet another of the thrilling benefits to being divorced. She could cook fancy and wild all she liked—and garlic-up any dish to the nth degree—and who’d ever care?
She’d have belted out a rock-and-roll song, off-key and at the top of her lungs, if it wouldn’t risk waking her visitor. She’d deal with him. But right now she was just seeping in some relaxation, and satisfaction. She’d kicked some real butt in the last hour, finished up the week’s bookkeeping, made up four arrangements for birthday orders and fetched a van full of pots and containers from town. Even without the bee sting, it was a lot to do for a woman who was supposed to be a flutter-brained blonde, but then, when no one was watching she had no reason to be on her guard.
Her sisters thought she was afraid of getting hurt again because of Simpson. The truth was that her ex-husband had turned out to be a twerp, but she never held that against the other half of the species. She wasn’t trying to avoid men. She was trying to help men avoid her—and for three years she’d been doing a great job at it, if she said so herself.
She was still humming when the telephone rang—naturally!—just when she was trying to coat the shrimp with the gooey mixture. She cocked the receiver between her ear and shoulder. “Darlene! Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to call you back…and yes, you told me he was a Leo. Okay. Try a fritatta with flowers. Flowers, like the marigolds I sold you the other day, remember? I’m telling you, those marigolds are the best aphrodisiac…and you wear that peach gauze blouse tonight…uh-huh…uh-huh…”
Once Darlene Webster had been taken care of, she washed her hands and started stabbing the coated shrimp on skewers. Immediately the phone rang again. It was Georgia from the neighborhood euchre group. “Of course I can have it here, what’s the difference? We’ll just have it at your house next time. Hope the new carpet looks terrific.”
After that Jim White called, who wanted to know if he could borrow her black plastic layer. And then Boobla called, who wanted to know if there was any chance Violet could hire her friend Kari for the summer, because Kari couldn’t find a job and they worked really well together. Boobla could talk the leaves off a tree. Violet finally had to interrupt. “Okay, okay, hon. I’ve got enough work to take on one more part-timer, but I can’t promise anything until I’ve met her. Bring her over Monday morning, all right?”
She’d just hung up, thinking it was a wonder she wasn’t hoarse from the amount of time she got trapped talking on the phone, when she suddenly turned and spotted Cameron in the door.
Her self-confidence skidded downhill like a sled with no brake.
It was so unfair. Cameron had been in a coma-quality nap; she knew he had, so you’d think he’d have woken up still sleepy. And he yawned from the doorway, but she still felt his eyes on her face like sharp, bright lasers. Interested. Scoping out the territory from her disheveled braid to her bare feet.
“You’re a hell of a busy woman,” he said. His tone was almost accusing, as if she’d misled him into thinking she was too scatterbrained to maintain any kind of serious, busy life.
“I’m sorry if the phone woke you. It’s been hell coming back to the town where I grew up, because everyone knows me.” She added quickly, “Are you hungry? All I have to do is pop the shrimp on the grill and I’m ready—”
“I’ll do it, so you can stay off that hurt foot.”
Whenever she woke up from a nap, she had cheek creases and bed hair and a crab’s mood until she got going again. He seemed to wake up just as full of hell and awareness as when he’d dropped off. There was no way she could like a man with that kind of personality flaw. Worse yet, he proved himself to be one of those easygoing guys, the kind who rolled with the punches and tended to fit in whatever kind of gathering they walked into. He started her grill before she could—and the barbecue was one that could make her mother swear; it never lit unless you begged it desperately. Then he found her silverware drawer and set the table without asking. Granted, it wasn’t challenging to find anyone’s silverware drawer, but for a man to make himself useful without praising him every thirty seconds? It was spooky.
There had to be a catch.
“What do you usually drink for dinner? Wine, water, what?”
“You can have wine if you want. I know I’ve got a couple open bottles on the second shelf—not fancy quality, but okay. For myself, though, this day has been too much of a blinger to do wine.”
He grinned. The smile transformed his face, whipped off five years and made her think what a hellion he must have been as a little boy. “So you’d like to drink…?”
“Long Island iced tea,” she said primly.
He burst out laughing. “I got it now. Cut straight to the hard stuff.”
“It’s been an exhausting day,” she defended.
“You’re not kidding.”
The phone rang yet again—it was just another call, nothing that affected life or death—so after that she turned down the volume and let the answering machine pick up. She wasn’t ready to fix the sun and the moon, but she was prepared to concentrate on the lavender deal.
Still, the instant they sat down to dinner, it was obvious they wouldn’t be talking business for a bit longer. “You haven’t eaten in days?” she inquired tactfully.
“Not real food. Not food someone’s actually taken the time to make from scratch.” It was impossible to eat her spicy shrimp without licking one’s fingers. But when he licked his, he also met her eyes. “Would you marry me?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Actually, I never say it. I figured out, from a very short, very bad marriage years ago, that I’m too footloose to be the marrying kind. But I’m more than willing to make an exception for you.”
“Well, thanks so much,” she said kindly, “but I’d only say yes to my worst enemy, and I don’t know you well enough to be sure you could ever get on that list.”
He’d clearly been teasing, but now he hesitated, his eyes narrowing speculatively. He even stopped eating—for fifteen seconds at least. “That’s an interesting thing to say. You think you’d be so hard to be married to?”
“I don’t think. I know.” She hadn’t meant to sidetrack down a serious road. It was his fault. Once he’d implied that he wasn’t in the marriage market, she instinctively seemed to relax more. Now, though, she steered quickly back to lighter teasing. “Never mind that. The point is that you might want to be careful making rash offers like that, at least until you know the woman a little better.”
“Normally, yeah. But in your case I know everything I need to know. I haven’t had food like this since…hell. Maybe since never. Where the hell did you learn to cook?”
“My mom. Most of her family was French, and she loved to putter in the kitchen, let all three of us girls putter with her. My one older sister is downright fabulous. Give Daisy a grain of salt, and I swear she can make something of it. Me, though…I just like to mess around with food.”
“Well, I can cook okay. I even like to—when I’ve got a kitchen to play around in. But at my best, I never came up with dishes like this.”
That was enough compliments. The cats were circling, which he didn’t seem to mind. She’d never fed them from the table, but that didn’t mean anything. Telling a cat not to do something was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and they’d all smelled the shrimp cooking.
Outside, evening was coming on. The crickets hadn’t started up yet, but the birds had already quieted, the last of the day’s sultry wind died down. It was that pre-dusk time when a soft, intimate yellow haze settled a gentle blanket on everything.
He’d leveled one plate, filled another. She had no choice about piling on more food. God knew how the man stayed so lean, but it was obvious he’d been starved. He even ate her asparagus soup with gusto, and that took guts for a guy.
“I didn’t see that much, driving up—but it looks like you’ve got a beautiful piece of land here,” he remarked.
“It is. Been in my family since the 1700s. My dad’s side was from Scotland. Lots of people with that background here. Maybe they felt at home with the rocky land and the slopes and the stern winters.” She asked, “Sometimes I catch a little French accent when you talk…which I guess is obvious if you work at Jeunnesse. But it’s not there all the time. Do you actually live in France?”
“Yes and no. I’ve worked for Jeunnesse for better than fifteen years now. I like them, like the work. But basically what I’ve always loved is traveling around the globe. So I’ve got a small apartment in Provence, but I’ve kept my American citizenship, have a cottage in upstate New York. Both are only places I hang my hat. I live for months at a time wherever Jeunnesse sends me.”
“So there’s no place you really call home?”
“Nope. I think I was just born rootless.” He said it as if wanting to make sure she really heard him. “You’re the opposite, aren’t you? Everything in your family’s land is about people who value roots.”
“Yes.” She suspected women had chased him, hoping they’d be the one who could turn him around. It was so ironic. She was as root bound as a woman could be. All she’d ever wanted in life was a man to love and a house full of kids. Still, discovering they were such opposites reassured her totally that nothing personal was likely to happen between them. “You’ve never had a hunger for kids?” she asked him.
“I’ve got kids. Two daughters, Miranda and Kate.” He leaned over and filled her glass. She wasn’t sure whether she’d finished two or he just kept topping off her first one. Either way she knew she wouldn’t normally be prying into a stranger’s life without the help of some Long Island iced tea. “My ex-wife still lives in upstate New York—which is why I’ve kept a cottage up there—so that I can easily come back a few times a year to see the girls. Although, often enough as they’ve gotten older, they’ve come to see me. They didn’t mind having a dad spring for tickets to Paris or Buenos Aires.”
“But didn’t you mind missing a lot of their growing-up years?”
He got up and served the grape sorbet—once he’d determined that was the one course he hadn’t tried yet. “Yeah. I missed it. But I tried the suit-and-tie kind of life when I was married. Almost went out of my mind. She kicked me out, told me I was the most irresponsible son of a gun she’d ever laid eyes on. But I wasn’t.”
“No?”
“No. I never missed a day’s work, never failed to bring home a paycheck. It was sitting still I couldn’t handle. Everyone can’t like the same music, you know?”
She knew, but she also suspected there had to be some kind of story in those lake-blue eyes. Maybe he was a vagabond, one of those guys who couldn’t stand to be tied down. But maybe something had made him that way.
She stood up and hefted their plates. His life wasn’t her business, of course, or ever likely to be. “I’ll pop the dishes in the dishwasher, and then we can talk outside.”
“Nope.” He stood up, too. “I’ll pop the dishes in the dishwasher, and you can put your foot up outside.”
She let him.
Once he called out, “Is it okay if I put the cats in the dishwasher, too?”
And she yelled back, “Why, sure. If you don’t want to live until morning.”
He banged around in there, whistling something that sounded like “Hard-Hearted Woman,” occasionally scolding the cats, but eventually he finished up and pushed through the back screen door, carrying another pitcher, sweating cold and jammed with ice cubes.
She’d already settled on the old slatted swing, with her sore foot perched on the swing arm and her good foot braced against the porch rail to keep the swing moving at a lullaby speed. He took the white wicker rocker and poured two glasses. “Two iced teas. No alcohol involved.”
“Good.” It was time they talked seriously. She knew it as well as he did, but the screen door suddenly opened as if by a ghost hand, startling them both…only to see a flat-faced golden Persian nuzzle her way outside. As soon as Cameron settled back in the rocker, the thug-size cat leaped on his lap.
“Could you tell your damn cat it’s hotter than blazes, and I need a fur coat on my lap like I need poison ivy?”
“It’s hard to hear over her purring, but honestly, if she’s in your way, just put her down.”
“Get down,” he told the cat, in a lover’s croon. But that wasn’t the voice he used with her. Maybe he was stroking the cat, but the eyes that met hers had turned cool and careful. “You think we’ve spent enough time getting comfortable with each other?”
“Enough to talk,” she agreed, and settled one thing right off the bat. “You’ve spent hours traveling and it’s too late now to find a place in White Hills. You can stay here tonight, no matter how we work out everything else.”
“I’ll camp outside,” he said.
“Fine.” She wasn’t making a big deal out of where he hung his hat. He’d won some trust from her. Not a ton. But if she didn’t feel precisely safe around him, it wasn’t because she feared he was a serial killer or criminal. The man had more character in his jaw bone than most men did in their whole bodies. “But it’s your plan for my lavender that I want to hear about.”
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Jennifer Greene
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: She was no man magnet.From her Gypsy clothing to her feline fan club to her transparent attempt at seeming helium-headed, Violet Campbell screamed, «Run for your life,» her lucrative lavender fields be damned. But Cameron Lachlan had never wanted to be anywhere…with anyone…more. Somehow, someway, this bewildering lady had transformed his wanderlust to age-old desire.But instead of wanting the moon, which she deserved, Violet seemed to accept that he would leave her bed – and her. Which he might have done…once. But just when he′d found the woman worth staying for, she hinted at reasons that he should run – not walk – away.