Wild in the Field

Four

When most women got kissed, Camille thought grimly, their mood perked up. At least if it had been a good kiss. And Pete’s kiss had certainly qualified as a humdinger.

As she trudged toward the lavender fields, carrying a long-armed set of clippers, she could feel every creaky, cranky muscle in her body complaining. For three days, she’d been working nonstop in the lavender. Specifically, that was the same three days since Pete had brought her that dadblamed mangy dog and kissed her.

Working herself into a state of exhaustion hadn’t made her forget Pete-but it was doing a fabulous job of completely wearing her out. It was also giving her something to do to earn her keep. The lavender appeared to be a thankless, ridiculous, hopeless job-but that just suited her mood, anyway. She wasn’t looking for meaningful. She was looking for something so mind-numbing and exhausting she’d be too tired to have nightmares.

When she reached the crest of the hill, the late-afternoon sun was temporarily so blinding bright that it took several seconds before she realized she wasn’t alone. There were bodies in the lavender field. Two of them. Squinting, she realized they were boys. Both were hunkered down in the first row of the overgrown lavender, working with clippers-in fact, working with far better clippers than her own.

In a single blink, she knew who they had to be. Pete’s sons. They were identifiably young teenagers-at an age when boys tripped over their own feet and their arms seemed longer than their whole bodies. But she could see Pete in their height, the strong bones and ruddy skin. Both had his brown hair, too, with that hint of mahogany in the sunlight.

She clomped closer, building up a good head of steam. Obviously Pete had sent them over with the clippers. Her father would have labeled Pete a clishmaclaver-which was one of his Scottish terms for busybody. Doggone it, she hadn’t asked for his help. And she may have turned into a rude, ornery bitch-and was proud of it!-but even a curmudgeon had to have a line. She sure as heck wasn’t going to let two young boys kill themselves working in those hopelessly overgrown twenty acres.

“Boys! Hey!” She yelled, the instant she was within hearing distance. It wouldn’t take her two seconds to send them both packing; she was sure of it.

They both immediately jerked upright. “Hey, Ms. Campbell!” Damn, but they were startlingly alike. Except one had a cowlick-the same one who pushed a step forward, with an agonizing-red blooming on his cheeks as if he normally died from having to speak to strangers. “Hi, Ms. Campbell, I saw the dog in your yard.”

She still intended to throw them both off the property, but obviously that comment forced her to recognize a greater priority-their safety. “Good grief-you guys didn’t try to go close to Killer, did you?”

“No,” the shy one spoke up again. “I meant-I saw what you did with the snow fence. Making a yard for him and all. That was cool. Giving him a way to get some exercise so he didn’t always have to be tied up.”

Camille perched a fist on her hip. She didn’t need praise from some baby-aged kid for hauling five tons of snow fence, all to create a stupid yard for a mangy, worthless, violently aggressive mutt who hated her and everyone else. She needed someone to give her a whack upside the head for being so crazy. But before she could correct the boy’s misconception of her, his brother pushed ahead of him. This one was just as good-looking and gawky, but he didn’t have a cowlick-and no shy blush on his cheeks. “We shoulda said who we were. I’m Simon. That’s Sean. Sean’s the one who found Darby. Dad says he’s always finding trouble.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too.” Simon poked him, then kept talking as if the two of them regularly conducted conversations while socking each other. “See, we heard about Mr. Chapman being taken to a rest home. But it’s like nobody remembered that he had a dog, until Sean did. Mr. Gaff let us in the house. Sean found Darby in the back room, locked in, all dirty, no food, no water. He’d turned wild like. In fact, I thought he was gonna kill Sean. Not that that wouldn’t be a good riddance and all-”

Sean slugged him. Simon slugged back. Camille rubbed two fingers on her temples, wondering when and how she was going to throw them off the property, when so far she couldn’t even get a word in.

And Simon kept right on talking, even as he was being slugged. “Anyway, the pound loaned us this leash they use on wild or sick animals. It’s like any other leash, except that it has this stick thing attached so the dog can lunge, but not so close he can bite you. Anyway, then Sean brought it home-”

Sean finally ventured another comment. “-And Simon’s gonna tell you that Dad was mad at me. Which he was. But it’s like no biggie. Dad always has a cow when I bring home another animal. The point is that Dad figured out right away that you’d be the perfect person to adopt Darby.”

Camille’s jaw dropped. “Your dad said what?”

“He said you’d be the one person who could save Darby. I mean, I could save him, too. But we’ve already got dogs and cats and raccoons and homing pigeons and all, and like, obviously, Darby is too ornery right now to be around other animals. So we couldn’t take him. There was just no way. And that’s when Dad said you were the perfect one. Because you were the only one in White Hills who was even meaner than Darby.”

Again her jaw dropped. “He said what?”

“Yeah, cool, huh? I wasn’t convinced, because you’re a woman and all. But then Dad explained that you’re not really like a woman.”

This time her voice seemed to raise a complete octave. “He said what?”

The brothers exchanged glances, as if suddenly aware she didn’t sound thrilled with the conversation. The one without the cowlick-Simon-seemed to be inherently elected to handle difficult verbal situations with adults. “Dad said you’re okay. Like, look at you. You dress like a guy. You’ve got dirty boots. Your hair’s all messed up. You’re ornery. I mean, you’re practically like us.”

Sean nodded, as if anxious to clear up this problem of potentially offending her. “See, once Mom took off, we all just said screw it. We don’t need or want women in our lives, you know? Because Dad was, like, way depressed. And now he’s fine. The whole trick was getting rid of women.”

Simon finished up the explanation. “Now do you get us? If you were like a woman, we’d never have trusted you to take Darby.”

“I see.” Actually, what Camille saw was that a chill wind was scooching over the hill; it was nearing the dinner hour; she hadn’t gotten a lick of work done; and now she had to translate fourteen-year-old-teenage-boy lingo into something an adult might understand. That godforsaken dog was clearly a prize. To them. And that she was apparently too unkempt and ornery to be “like a woman” was a giant compliment. To them.

“Okay. Anyways…” Both boys suddenly turned around and picked up their clippers again.

“Whoa. Wait a minute there-”

“It’s okay, Ms. Campbell. We know what to do. Dad called the county extension office, and this guy talked to all of us about lavender, how it’s grown, what to do and everything.”

“We know it’s a flower. Neither of us wanted to work around anything sissy like flowers, but it’s not your fault, after all, that your sister’s so bonkers-”

“Simon, shut up. You’re insulting her family, you nimwit.”

“Oh.” Simon glanced back, stricken. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything. I meant to say how sorry I was for you. Your sister scares all of us, and you have to deal with her all the time. It can’t be easy.”

“Anyways…” Sean started clip, clip, clipping as he talked. “We learned a bunch of junk. It was pretty interesting, about how there’s English lavender and French lavender and Spanish lavender. What you got here is apparently all kinds of crossbreeds.”

“And what we have to do is lop off about a third from the top and sides.” Simon glanced at her clippers, shook his head. “Yours aren’t sharp enough. They have to be good ones. But back to the job. We have to cut the stems back to a few inches from where the woody part starts. See?”

He motioned, and stayed hunkered down like that until she came over, scowling, and bent down to have a look. Then he went on. “This is like a big mess. It’ll take three years to get it back, the county guy said, but you can do it if it’s worked right. Lop the sides and top. Then the stems back. Then next year, you do another third. Then by the third year, it’ll be vible again.”

“Vible?”

“Vi-a-ble,” Sean said disgustedly. “He gets Cs in English. He’s so stupid.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too. Anyways, Ms. Campbell, you really got a lot of this lavender.”

She tried wildly waving a hand to get a turn in. “I know I do, but I don’t need you boys!”

They stopped working abruptly, but both of them looked crushed. “Dad’s paying us, Ms. Campbell, so you don’t have to. And it’s either this or we have to clean the bathrooms and do the wash. I mean, come on. We really work good. I promise. And we can get here most afternoons by like three-fifteen or so. You wouldn’t fire us before you even gave us a chance, would you?”

For Pete’s sake. She’d like to throw up on the whole damn world, but how was she supposed to be mean to two motherless brats? “You two can’t possibly do this whole twenty acres and that’s that. You can work for an hour in the afternoon sometimes. IF you want to. When you want to. And only if it doesn’t interfere with your damned schoolwork, you hear me?”

Yup, they both heard her. They were both nodding like bobbing corks.

“And I never said ‘damned’ either!”

More exuberant nodding. Hell. It was all she could do not to slick down Sean’s cowlick and jog up to the house to bring cookies to the brats.

She stormed back to the cottage, thinking that this just wasn’t going to work. She knew it. But this was Pete’s doing, so the only way she could stop it was to go directly to Pete.

And that meant risking being near him-not that he’d want to kiss her again. Considering that he apparently thought of her as an unkempt, ugly, genderless nonwoman, it was astounding that he’d wanted to kiss her the first time. Nevertheless, once you’d been stung by a mosquito, you knew what the itch was like and obviously avoided it a second time if you could.

She could put up with the boys. For a while. Anything was better than risking getting too close to Pete again-at least until she figured out what the Sam Hill that kiss had been about.

Camille waited the dog out for three more days, but by Saturday afternoon, she’d had it. When the temperature climbed to a reasonably warm seventy-six degrees, she pulled on ragged shorts and a black tee, then carted outside a bucket, flea shampoo, rags and a hose.

Killer-alias Darby-had been allowing her to bring food and water, particularly if the food included ground round, and he’d quit snarling in her presence. But coming close enough to touch him was a different proposition. He bared his teeth when she stepped off the cottage porch, and bristled into a hair-ruffed growl when she got within five feet.

She stopped there. Temporarily. “Look,” she said irritably. “You stink. You stink so bad I can smell it through the windows. I’ve had it with this whole attitude thing. If you think you can out-mean me, buster, you’ve got another think coming. Now you’re getting a bath today, and I mean to tell you, that’s that.”

Growl, snap, snarl. Growl, snap, snarl.

Camille pushed back her hair, put her hands on her hips, and growled right back. Her voice was deceptively as soothing as a whisper. “You want to tear me apart?” she demanded. “Well, where you’re making a mistake, Killer, is thinking that I care. If you were a person, my dad would be calling you a sumph. You know what that is? In Scottish, it’s the word for a half-wit. Because that’s how you’re behaving. Half-witted.”

She’d been talking to him for days, knowing he was completely ignoring her, but she didn’t turn her back on the dog. She wasn’t that stupid. Quietly she bent down, added the flea shampoo to the warmish water in the bucket, and dunked in the rag. Killer stopped snarling-until she took another step closer-and then he resumed the fierce warning growls.

“I am so sick of this. You snap at me, I’ll snap right back, you no-count worthless mutt. You think life’s treated you so terribly? Well, big frigging deal. I lost everything…” When he stopped growling, she took a quiet step toward him.

“So the owner you loved turned mean and now you don’t trust anyone. That’s tough. Real tough.” She took another step. Then another. “But the guy I loved was killed by strangers. The court system barely slapped their hands. I’ll never feel safe again as long as I live. I literally lost everything-my job, my husband, my life. Myself.” Calmly, slowly, she sponged the soapy water on his neck and back. The dog went still, rigid as stone, eyes tracking her with the fierceness and anger of a predator. “So don’t waste that stupid attitude on me. I’m tired of it. You think life’s unfair? I agree. You think life’s not worth living? I agree. You just want to be left alone to be miserable-man, I agree with that, too. And I’ll leave you completely alone. But you have to have a bath first, because I’m the one trying to sleep under that window there. I’ve been living with that smell ever since you got here. I’ve had enough…”

It wasn’t as if she were sweet-talking the darn dog. She was being plenty mean and tough. She just happened to be using a crooning tone of voice, because as long as she kept talking, he stopped growling and was letting her wash him. Maybe he was just sick of being filthy, who knew? But her heart was beating hard enough to implode-it wasn’t easy getting this close to the dog, when she had every reason to fear it might attack her. Still. She had to try something. The wild, despairing rage in its eyes-she couldn’t stand it anymore. She understood it. All too well.

“I’m not going near your face or eyes, so don’t get your liver in an uproar. Just a little more now. Then I’ll rinse you off and leave you alone. I’ll be darned, I thought you were almost all brown. But you’re more than half blond, aren’t you, you low-down, ornery-”

From behind her, she heard the sound of a gate unlatching.

“…boneheaded, pea-brained, worthless…”

And then she heard the quiet clomp of a boot on her porch.

“…lazy, stubborn… DAMN IT, KILLER!” She had a pretty good grip on the dog, but her hands and the dog’s coat were both slippery, and suddenly Killer bolted, knocking over the bucket of soapy water. On her. Followed by his shaking all over. On her. And then the dog just stood there, staring at her, sopping wet with his tongue hanging out. As if they were friends. As if he’d forgotten all about wanting to rip her throat out and how much he hated her and all humans and everything else.

And then she heard another sound coming from behind her…the rumble of a man’s throaty, wicked, evil laughter.

Whew. Pete tried to choke back the laugh, because she turned on him faster than a man could spit.

“What’s so funny, Pete MacDougal?”

He cocked a foot forward. “You. Saw a cat fall in a well once. It didn’t look half as drowned as you do.” Well, that was a complete lie. She was wet, yes, but she looked damned adorable, with her spiky hair and the animation and color in her cheeks. More to the point, she’d broken his heart with how much she’d revealed about herself when she was talking to the dog. And broke his heart more, seeing her still trying, so hard, to be tough, to not feel or care, when it was as obvious as sunshine she cared so much she was crying from the weight of it.

“Dadblamit, MacDougal! I’m not going to take any more insults from you!”

He blinked. “Actually, I just got here, so really, I’ve only had a chance to insult you once. And then, what can I say? You are wetter than the dog. Got more suds and mud on you than the dog twice over. But I don’t recall say anything else-”

“Well, you didn’t. Today. But you sure filled your boys’ ears last week!”

She shot past him so fast he didn’t have a chance to register more than a “Huh?” More interesting, since she’d neglected to forbid him inside the door, he trailed in after her.

Years ago, he’d seen the inside of the cottage. A great-grandmother had lived there for years, had still been around to hand out cookies and candy at Halloween when he’d been a kid. He remembered the place as being small, but full of color and light.

Now the whole fireplace wall was stacked to the ceiling with moving boxes-Pete assumed that Camille still hadn’t unpacked from Boston. The windows looked washed, but otherwise the level of dust rivaled his sons’ housekeeping. He saw boxes for fancy kitchen equipment, like the latest in coffeemakers and pasta makers and toast makers and all those other “makers”-yet none of that was unpacked. In fact, through the doorway of the old-fashioned kitchen, he could see a battered stainless coffeepot on the old stove that was too pitiful to be called an antique.

So she was still camping out. Still not actually living anywhere. At least emotionally.

Pete pushed a hand through his hair, waiting. Camille had disappeared into the bedroom-he could hear her muttering through the half-closed door. Eventually he saw a soggy lump of cloth hurled on the floor, followed by another.

When Cam finally reemerged, she was barefoot but at least dry, wearing worn jeans and a dry shirt. It was another one of those shirts that must have been her dad’s, because the old blue chambray looked soft as a baby’s butt, frayed and shapeless.

He hadn’t figured out yet whether she was trying to be as ugly as possible, or if she was unconsciously trying to cover herself with comforting things-like the clothes that had belonged to her father.

Pete could have told her that the ugly goal was completely unattainable and doomed to failure. Those dark eyes and pale skin and that soft, vulnerable mouth took his breath every time he saw her. But that she might be trying to cover herself with comforting things made him think about her father. Colin Campbell was a good guy. Pete had always thought of him as an honorary uncle, although he hadn’t seen him since the Campbells retired and moved south. Colin, though, had always been a strong, protective father with his daughters-so much so that Pete wondered if her dad even realized how much pain his baby daughter was in.

Of course, try to be nice to her and you could get your head bitten off. He knew better than that-so when she showed back up in the doorway, he said immediately, “What were you talking about, implying that I’d filled my boys’ ears about you? What did they tell you? That I’d put you down in some way?”

“Not exactly. Just forget it.” She didn’t flip him a finger, which Pete thought was progress. And she was carrying a brush, which also seemed to be progress, a sign that she cared what her wild thatch of thick, short hair looked like-except that she shook the brush at him en route to her kitchen. “I don’t want your sons helping me with the lavender.”

“You don’t like my boys?” Immediately he stiffened.

“I don’t like anyone, so don’t take it personally. Your boys are terrific. Although if I were you, I’d get the damn horse for Sean before he nags you into an early grave. And don’t be telling Simon any secrets, because he’ll tell anyone anything-”

“Yeah, in fact, I already heard from Simon that you’ve been feeding them delicacies they never get at home.”

“That’s a complete lie. I only brought them some sandwiches and stuff because they were working so hard,” she said defensively. “And because they’re boys. And being boys, they seem to be hungry all the time.”

Obviously she thought he’d accused her of being kind, because the teakettle got slammed in the sink. And once the kettle was filled, it got slammed on the stove. And then a mug got slammed on the counter. One mug. He couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t offer him any.

“I haven’t starved either kid. I swear. No matter what they told you,” he said deadpan.

She rolled her eyes. “The point is, that I don’t want them working on the farm. I mean it, Pete. It’s not right, unless I could pay them. And I positively can’t afford to pay them.”

“I’ve been paying them-”

“I know that. And it’s even more wrong. I don’t want your charity, and the whole lavender thing isn’t your problem.”

“Okay, I know how to settle this,” Pete said peaceably. “I’ll go ask your sister-”

As expected, she promptly paled in horror, and dropped a spoon. “Come on. Don’t sic Violet on me. That’s not fair.”

He scratched his chin. “Well, see, there we have a problem. Because I either have to talk to your sister or to you. There are some decisions that have to be made on all that lavender. I have to ask one of you before going ahead-”

“What in God’s name are you trying to interfere with now?” she asked, obviously exasperated. In fact, so exasperated that she seemed to blindly set down a second mug in front of him. And once the hot water bubbled, she even stirred in some instant coffee for him.

He took a sip of the sludge. Her coffee was almost-almost-as bad as his. “Well, there are three things we have to decide. The first is, your sis is going to have to invest in mulch, because you’ve got good drainage there, but not good enough for lavender. Then, assuming you actually want to make something of that mess, you need soil with a pH around six point five, which I haven’t tested for. But I suspect-knowing the nature of my land next to that acreage-that you’re going to need to side dress the plants with some lime.”

He watched her sink into the scarred chair across the table. Violet’s eyes would have crossed at the first mention of soil pH and lime. Not Camille’s. She not only knew land; she had a sense for it that neither of her sisters had. It was pretty obvious, though, that she hadn’t thought through the long-term dimensions of the lavender problem. Still, she responded swiftly. “I can do all that without help.”

“Yeah?” He figured she had the strength to mulch twenty acres like a cow could fly.

“I can, Pete.”

“Uh-huh.” At one time, the little kitchen had been a cheerful oasis. Now, the sink had rust stains; the paint was peeling and the floor needed to be redone.

“You think my dad raised a couch potato? Maybe it’s been a few years, but I know how to fertilize and mulch and all. I just didn’t…”

“You didn’t know the lavender was going to need it. And neither, apparently, did your sister. She’s not a couch potato either, but as far as I know she never steps into a field if she can help it. Which brings us to our main problem-”

“There is no our, MacDougal.” When he sipped his coffee and said nothing, she prodded him, “So? So? What is this big problem supposed to be?”

Pete raised a hand. This was a serious question, no teasing. “I have to know what she’s trying to do. Your sister. I mean, I read up on lavender, so I’d get an idea why anyone’d grow the darn stuff. But it’s not as if Violet planted a little flower garden here. Apparently she bred and crossbred all kinds of varieties. In France, now, lavender’s a major crop in the perfume industry-but it’s about the oil, not about the flower. Unless your sister planned to grow enough flowers for all the florists in the entire northern hemisphere, I have to assume she was hoping to harvest the oil. Only I don’t see any harvesting equipment to extract the oil. I don’t even know if she’s looked into potential markets. There’s only so much money you can pour into this if-”

“I hear you. I’ll sit on my sister and find this stuff out.” Camille had seemed to be listening, but suddenly she blurted out, “When’d she leave you, Pete?”

“Huh?”

“Your ex-wife. When did she leave you and the boys? I figured it couldn’t have been long ago, because the hurt seems pretty fresh. The boys really talk up how much they don’t miss her. How much they don’t love her. How much they don’t care.”

Pete chugged down the coffee, but only so he could set the mug down. He hadn’t come here to talk about this. “Yeah, well, it’s been a couple years. Almost three. It’s my dad who feeds them that kind of anti-women talk, making out like it’s fun to live like bachelors, not need women, all that. You know my dad.”

“I used to.”

“So you know he adored my mom. Nothing anti-women about him. I don’t understand why he keeps pushing the attitude on the boys. It seems as if he thinks we’ll all be hurt less if we just pretend we don’t need women in our lives.”

“They really do seem like good kids, Pete.”

“They are. But it’s always there, you know? Hiding in the closet. That their mom left them. That she loved them so little that she could just take off and not look back. Reality is, she took off on me, not them. But that’s not how kids see it.” Pete frowned. He wasn’t sure why he was spilling all this stuff. He couldn’t remember talking this much about Debbie or the divorce. To anyone.

And Camille was suddenly frowning right back at him. “It’s none of my business.”

“Actually-it isn’t.”

She was on her feet faster than a flash. “It’s not as if I care. I only started this whole conversation to tell you that I didn’t want your help, or your boys’ help, or anyone else’s help.”

He stood up, too, thinking the damn woman was more mercurial than a summer wind. For a minute there, she’d not only listened about the scope of the lavender problems-which she sure as hell had no way to know about, coming in cold to the farm after all this time. But she’d also asked about his sons and the divorce situation as if she actually cared. Without thinking, he murmured, “I keep getting glimpses of the Camille I remembered. The Camille you used to be.”

Wrong thing to say. Scarlet streaked her cheeks faster than fire. “Well, I’m not that person. That girl’s gone forever and never coming back, so if you were thinking-”

“I wasn’t thinking anything, so don’t be tearing any more bloody strips off me.” His voice dropped low. Lower than a bass tenor and quieter than midnight. “Cam, I understand anger. If I’d been through what you have, I’d be tearing the bark off trees. I’m sorry you’ve been through such hell. But I’m not part of anything that hurt you. I’m just an old friend who happens to have the means and time to help you with the lavender. And I’ve got two sons who are teenagers, which means they’re selfish as hell, and that means it’ll do them good-for their sakes-to put in some hours doing something for someone besides themselves. Now, that’s all that’s going out there, so quit giving me a murdle-grups.”

Her father used to use that Scottish term-murdle-grups. It meant bellyache. And Pete thought using it might make her smile. But apparently she’d scared herself, having a conversation with him as if she cared. She didn’t want to care. Not about him. Which she seemed obligated to make crystal clear.

Her chin went up a notch. “I’m not keeping the dog.”

“No?”

Her chin shot up another defiant inch. “I’ve been tending him. I admit that. But I’ve only been taking care of him because I didn’t want him put away. The very instant he’s better, I’m finding him a home and getting rid of him.”

“You do that. That’ll show me how mean you are,” he goaded her.

“I am mean.”

Aw, hell. It was such a stupid conversation that he couldn’t think of a single reason to continue it. So he grabbed her and kissed her instead.

What else could he possibly have done? She was just standing there, fists on her hips, looking like a waif against Goliath. She wasn’t going to quit challenging him unless he did something.

This time, though, she knew his kiss.

She knew the taste of him.

She knew the risk of him.

And for damn sure, Pete knew how much trouble she was. Or he thought he did.

Before he’d severed the first kiss, he was already coming back for another, his fingers disappearing into her thick, damp hair, his body picking up her body heat-even through the huge shirt she was wearing. Her impossibly soft skin was another aphrodisiac pull-and he didn’t need any more pulls. She was already yanking every emotional chain he had.

He’d managed without since Deb left. No question that he was more primed than a lit stick of dynamite, but in all this time, it was easier doing without than volunteering for any more wear-and-tear on his heart.

He knew, instinctively, that Camille would risk more wear-and-tear than maybe his heart could handle.

But she kissed like the loneliest soul he knew. She kissed as if he were her first. As if she was shaky-scared and still couldn’t turn away. As if she was starved to touch and be touched, to hold and be held. As if she’d die if he let her go.

One kiss seeped into another, whispered into another, danced into another. A counter jammed into his back as he pulled her closer in, dipping down for another slower, deeper kiss. His fingers trailed down, kneading her shoulders, then molding down her back. Her breasts tightened, snugged against him so he could feel her bare nipples, smell the perfume of her skin, feel the frantic beat of her heart.

He found her soft, silken lips again. Heard the murmur of a groan deep inside her throat when he took her tongue. Her responsiveness caused his pulse to jack-hammer. He lifted her tighter, higher, closer to him, nestling her between his thighs.

She kissed back like a summer storm, all heat and lightning and surprise. Hell. How could such a small package have been hiding so much explosive passion?

He thought: it wasn’t that she wanted him. It was that she’d been alone so long. He thought: it couldn’t be that he mattered to her, because half the time she was furious with him. In his head he understood-really understood-that this wasn’t likely about him. She’d just been so lost since her husband died that being kissed and desired opened a door that had been rusted shut with grief and pain.

But just then, just for that minute, he sucked in those hot, wet kisses of hers. Inhaled the lush feeling her busy hands invoked. Smelled her skin, inhaled the earthy sweet sounds of longing she made. At least until she nipped his neck.

And then his eyes bolted open and he lifted his head with a little shock-and humor. “You bit me,” he murmured.

“What can I say? I missed lunch.”

“But you. You. Actually bit me.”

“You’re telling me a woman’s never taken a nip of you before, MacDougal? What, have you been with all sissies?”

“Campbell, are you flirting with me? From the minute you came home, you’ve given me grief nonstop.”

“It wasn’t personal. I’ve given everyone grief. Temporarily, though, all I can think about is having you for lunch.”

Nobody have given him a sudden ticket to Never Never Land. Reality was all around him. The silky sunlight. The dust. The sound of birdsong. The smells of bad coffee and verdant earth and flowering almond outside the window screen. Yet all he could see was her wildly tumbled hair, the ache in her eyes, her mouth swollen from his kisses. Her face was still, her gaze searching his just as urgently as his searched hers.

“What’s going on here?” he asked gently.

“Maybe I’m trying to scare you away.”

“And you think I’ll scare?”

Silence. Then she touched his cheek with her fingertip. “Yeah, I do, Pete. I don’t know why you keep kissing me. I don’t know why you keep trying to help me. But you have to know that I’m a walking catastrophe. I can’t fit in your life, in your sons’ life. I’m not ready for any kind of relationship. I’m not ready for much of anything.”

“Yeah. So?”

A whisper of a grin, the first natural one he’d seen on her lips. “Don’t get sassy with me, you dolt. I’m serious. If you come on to me, you could get what you’re asking for. Trouble. So you think it through real good before you kiss me again, you hear?”

Slowly, she pulled completely free from his arms, then turned around and simply walked out. The screen door clapped behind her.

The damn woman had left him in her kitchen. And he stood there for a good five minutes, feeling as dazed as if someone had smacked him upside the head-or upside the heart. God knew what he was going to do about her. Right then, for sure, he didn’t have a clue.