Wild in the Moonlight

Five

Violet’s bedside telephone rang just after five in the morning. She jolted awake like a kicked colt. Mental images of her mom and dad or her sisters in an accident flashed through her mind in a panic as she fumbled for the phone. No one called this early unless there was a dire emergency-or unless someone had the sensitivity of an ox.

She clapped the receiver to her ear and recognized Simpson’s voice.

Her pulse climbed back down from the worry stratosphere. Her ex-husband-like PMS and rain-could always be counted on to show up at the most inconvenient time. “Insensitive” should have been his middle name.

“Were you asleep?” he asked, his tone warmly ebullient.

“Me? Heavens, no.” Why tell the truth? He wasn’t worth it.

“Good. Because I didn’t want to wake you. I just couldn’t seem to resist calling. Vi, Livie had the baby.”

As if someone slapped her, Violet instinctively braced against the headboard. “Congratulations.”

“A son this time. We’re going to name him John Edward, but Livie wants to call him Ed, after me.”

“You got your son,” she said.

“Yeah.” Pride colored his booming baritone-pride that he’d never felt for her. Or with her. “Almost nine pounds. Twenty-two inches.”

“He’ll be playing football before you know it.”

“Yeah, in fact-”

“I hope Livie’s okay, and I’m happy you’ve got a son, Ed.” She hung up, plunking down the receiver before he had a chance to continue the conversation.

For a second she had the oddest trouble catching her breath. The east window was open, letting in cool, rain-freshed air. Outside, nothing stirred in the pre-dawn light. Even the bugs were still snoozing. The sky was paler than smoke, the sunrise nothing more than a promise this early, but last night’s violent storm had completely washed away.

Remembering the storm made her also remember how soundly she’d been dreaming until the telephone call. The dream pictures were still vivid in her mind…images of tumultuous kisses from a Scotsman named Lachlan, backdropped by Scottish lakes and moors and mist, her running naked and uninhibited through a moss-carpeted forest and Lachlan catching her.

The call from her ex-husband had certainly wilted that dream.

She pushed away the sheet and stood up, not awake yet-or wanting to be-but knowing she didn’t have a prayer of going back to sleep. Not after that call. She tiptoed around the room, gathering clothes, not turning on a light, not wanting to wake Cameron down the hall.

It wasn’t hard to navigate, even in the darkness. Unlike the rest of the house, which she’d jam-packed with girl stuff, she’d redone two of the upstairs bedrooms completely differently. One she’d turned into an office. For the other, her childhood bedroom, she’d bought a Shaker bed and dresser, painted the walls a virgin white, bought a plush white carpet, and called it quits.

Family and friends would find the decorating strange, she knew. All her life she’d gone for lots of color and oddball style and “stuff,” yet, especially right after the divorce, the barren room suited her in ways she’d never tried to explain-not to friends, not even to family.

Now, though, the point was that she could easily find her way around the room even in the dark…at least, if it wasn’t for the cats tripping her. On the rare occasions she woke up this early, the cats usually ignored her and continued sleeping, but maybe they sensed how suddenly rattled she felt-possibly because of remembering Cameron’s totally unexpected and very real kisses the night before. Possibly because of her ex-husband’s call.

Ed hadn’t called out of meanness. Violet had figured out a long time ago that Ed was far too unimaginative to be deliberately mean. He undoubtedly believed she’d want to know that his second child had been born, the son he’d wanted so much. No one knew more than Violet how much he’d wanted a son.

Downstairs, lights were on all over the place-she’d forgotten about losing power the night before. Forgotten almost everything when that sassy upstart Scotsman had pulled her into his arms.

She pulled on mud boots, a patchwork light jacket over her long denim skirt. Her hair was hanging in a wild heap down her back, but she didn’t care. She needed…something. Air. A slap of morning. Some way, somehow, to catch her breath. She hadn’t been all that upset about those kisses from Cameron until her ex had called.

Now, she felt all churned up. A young rabbit hopped across the grass, trying to evade her bodyguard contingent of cats-none of whom could catch road kill, they were all so fat and lazy, but the baby bunny didn’t know that.

Violet aimed for the front door of the Herb Haven, then changed her mind and headed for the greenhouses. There were two. The newest one she’d built herself, a couple years ago, but by this time in the summer, it was almost empty. Plants were all outside, either transported to the nursery or for sale in the business.

The original greenhouse, though, had been her mother’s. It wasn’t as high-tech as the new one, the heating and cooling and watering systems not even half as efficient. But her mom’s sacred pruning shears were still hung on the wall, as was the old French apron she used to wear. Violet could remember the three sisters chasing up and down the aisles while Margaux potted and fussed with plants-her mom had always been the kind of mother who encouraged kids to get their hands dirty, to get into life, not just watch from the bleachers. Her sisters had often gone off with their dad into the fields. Not her.

She’d loved hanging out with her mom, loved watching Margaux nurturing and babying each flower, each herb, as if it alone were precious to her. She loved to dry the herbs, to watch her mom create artistic arrangements, to hear her mother insist that she needed to listen to each plant to understand what it needed. Her mom was a life lover, emotional about everything, an unrepentant romantic, a woman to the core. Margaux, in fact, was the only one who knew the real reason she’d divorced Simpson.

Of course, if Violet started remembering that ghastly memory, how Margaux had wrapped her up in a long, rocking hug and tried to soothe her like a child, she’d burst out crying. She didn’t mind crying. She did it regularly, but it was just too darn early for that kind of heavy emotion, so she pushed up her sleeves and started puttering. In the heat of summer, there wasn’t much left here in the greenhouse, either, but she still had some experiments going.

She plucked dry leaves, smelled the soil for health, and was just uncoiling a long skinny hose to mist-water her babies when she heard the door swing open. Cameron stood there, looking as devilish and sexy as he had the night before. In spite of the cool morning, his shirt was unbuttoned and he was wearing jeans so old and worn they cupped his bitsy butt and long, lean legs.

“Damn, did I wake you up? I tried to be quiet. After all your traveling, I figured you’d sleep most of the morning if you had a chance,” she said.

“You didn’t wake me up, but the phone did. A call that early usually means trouble. Everything okay?”

“Just hunky-dory,” she said lightly. And then had to sniff fast. Tears welled in her eyes before she could possibly stop them-not that she would. When she was a young girl, she hated being so impulsive and emotional, but these days, she knew the power of it. Men got shook up when they saw tears. They backed away from an emotional woman. It all worked out fine. Usually.

“Hey.” He saw the tears, and instead of looking frantic and freaked like any normal man, he walked slowly toward her. “What are we talking here? Bad news, bad morning, what?”

“An idiotic mood, that’s all.”

“Nobody died?”

“Nope.”

“Some idiot dump you?”

“God, no.”

“You hurt yourself? Another bee sting?”

“No. Nothing happened.”

“Someone called,” he persisted.

“Yeah. My ex-husband. To tell me that he and his wife had a baby. Their second. A son. They were very happy. And I’m very happy for them.” Tears welled up again. Announcing her happiness and crying at the same time should certainly have ensured that Cameron thought she was a fruitcake.

Instead, as if unconcerned whether she made any sense or not, he ambled past her, squeezing her shoulder momentarily when he passed by. And then started snooping. Poking at her pots and plants. Sniffing. Tasting. Literally tasting.

How could she help but be diverted? “You usually eat dirt?”

“Yeah. I’ve tried every fancy chemical test known to man, but sometimes the senses seem to tell the most important truth. A taste’ll tell me if the soil is highly acid or not.” He moved on, doing more poking, more smelling, more snooping. “These are more of your lavender experiments?”

“Not just lavender.” Because she was still feeling emotionally shaky, her tongue seemed to get loose. Not that her tongue needed an excuse to talk incessantly, but this time there was an actual reason. “Originally when I came home after the divorce, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Mom and Dad had retired south. This house was just left available for family. Dad wasn’t ready to do anything else with it, thinking one of us girls could still want to live here. So it was perfect for me to move into…and I didn’t have to rush getting a job, because I’d received a big settlement from the divorce. Partly there was a lot of money because he wanted the matrimonial house himself, and I didn’t, so I got that share. But whatever. I thought of that settlement as guilt money.”

“And was it?”

“Yeah. Big guilt on his part. But the point was, I came here and suddenly started remembering being a kid, trailing after my mom, all the pleasure we got out of growing things. Long term, I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do for a career, but for a couple years the Herb Haven just hit me as right. A divorce is like…destroying something, you know? So I wanted to create something. Grow things. Do something purposefully constructive instead of destructive.”

“You’ve got more than a green thumb,” Cameron remarked.

“Yeah. It’s kind of a joke in the family. Everything I touch seems to reproduce tenfold.” Again she felt a round of tears threatening. “Come on,” she said briskly. “I’ll show you the lavender.”

“First, I have to make you breakfast.”

“Pardon?”

“Breakfast. You haven’t had any. I haven’t had any. And since you put me up, I’m cooking.”

He made her crepes with blueberries. She sat at the table, lazy as a slug, letting him wait on her. It was another of the behaviors she’d taken up after Simpson-not kowtowing to men; acting like a spoiled princess. All normal men-certainly all Vermont men-steered way clear of an obviously high-maintenance woman, but Cameron…he just didn’t seem to be normal.

If he remembered those potent kisses from the night before-or if they meant anything to him-he never let on.

If he found anything odd in a woman wearing dangling marquisite earrings and a patchwork jacket and rubber boots and uncombed hair, he never let on about that, either.

“I’m going to need a place to set up a minilab. If I won’t be in your way, I could use the potting room in your greenhouse-the old greenhouse we were in this morning. It seems perfect. It’s got a sink and a longer counter for a work space, exactly what I need.”

“It’ll be too hot there,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of heat.”

“You’ll get interrupted-”

“I can work around noise and interruptions.”

“There’s no comfortable chair. I can’t make it into any kind of good working environment-”

“I don’t need everything perfect. In fact, I’m usually bored by perfection. Life’s a hell of a lot more interesting if we take the road less traveled, yes? Wasn’t it a Vermont man who said that?”

Well, yes, but Robert Frost was safely dead, which Cameron certainly wasn’t. In fact, although Cam was talking about his work…he kept looking at her. At her eyes. At her unkempt hair. At her bare mouth. As if he were communicating that he liked complicated women. Uncomfortable, difficult women. Hot women. As if he’d pegged her as less than perfect, the kind of woman who interested him.

“Well, do what you want,” she said crossly. She glanced at the clock and abruptly stood up. “Thanks for breakfast, but I really have to go. I should have already opened my Herb Haven. I’ll catch up with you later-”

She started to turn away when he suddenly said her name, very quietly, very gently.

“What?”

“I just want to make sure we’re clear. You’re okay with me working here. Living here. Setting up here for now.”

“Sure,” she said.

“We need to sign some agreements.”

She motioned, an exasperated gesture. “I don’t care about legal stuff like that.”

“Yeah, you do. Because it’s about potential money for you and protecting your rights.”

“Well, I don’t have time now.” She took off, leaving him with the dishes and her house. Leaving him, surely, with the impression that she was flaky and emotional and not the kind of woman he’d want to be involved with.

He’d readily established that he wasn’t looking for involvement. But those kisses last night-she didn’t trust them. It seemed wise to make absolutely sure there was a five-mile fence of emotional distance established between them…so there’d be no more kisses.

Not just for his sake. For hers. Because a man like Cameron reminded her of everything she couldn’t have.

Cam always had an unspoken impression that small towns in Vermont were quiet, bucolic, peaceful.

Violet’s place was as peaceful as JFK International Airport on a holiday.

He made a quick trek to view her twenty acres of lavender, but he swiftly returned to the yard. He couldn’t be that close to the lavender without making himself crazy. The field was breathtaking. She had plants close to harvest, florets already starting to open up, a few that were just days away from the perfect time to extract oil from and test. But he didn’t feel right about touching the lavender until they’d both signed some legal agreements. Violet could trust him not to take advantage of her, but of course, she had no way to know that.

Sometime that day he simply had to trap her alone and sit on her until he’d made all the contract issues clear for her.

Until then, he figured he could spend the morning setting up. His gaze kept wandering around the yard and house and property as he unpacked his car and started carting equipment into the old greenhouse. It was odd. Normally he didn’t much care where he was. Every place was new and interesting and involved different challenges. But there was something about her place-the land, the buildings, the whole feeling here-that provoked the strangest feeling.

He’d never been drawn to a place, partly because he’d always been bulldog stubborn about not becoming dependent on physical possessions. But damn. Some of the buildings showed wear and tear, the original house showed generations of character and age, but all of it looked well loved. The property kept striking him as a spot where a man could come and find a place for himself, feel as if he belonged.

Cam had never belonged anywhere. Never known he even wanted to. Of course, maybe his immune system was down and he was catching some annoying bug that was messing with his mind. He kept working.

Unfortunately, he always had to travel heavy. His clothes could be stuffed easily enough into a duffel bag, but he had to cart enough equipment to set up a minilab, and although he’d deny it to the death, he was just a wee bit fussy about his equipment. His microscope had cost a fortune-and was worth every penny, because his testing chemicals had to be exactly right. And he couldn’t possibly carry around a full-scale distillation process, but he’d created a small, efficient steam distiller so that he could extract oil from small amounts of lavender.

Strangers assumed his old Birks and practical khakis meant that he was a totally laid-back personality. And he was. He’d been determined to convince himself for years that he was-except for his work, where Cam figured he had a reasonable excuse to be a perfectionist.

Setting up should have been a piece of cake after doing it around the world all these years, but this morning, it seemed, one humorous problem followed another. To begin with, Violet’s cats-for some God unknown reason-decided to hang with him. The old greenhouse had a lot of character, with a brick base and brick walkways and a nice, long concrete slab for a work space. But six of her mammoth, hairy cats sat on the greenhouse counter next to the sink, supervising every move he made. Worse yet, they wanted the water turned on. Regularly. Not a gush of water. A skinny little thread. And after one took her time getting a drink, it seemed the next one wanted her turn.

The herd of cats seemed to get thirsty about every twenty minutes.

By ten o’clock he hadn’t accomplished much of anything. He suddenly looked up and noticed a girl leaning in the doorway. She was a young teenager, somewhere around fourteen, he guessed. She looked younger than spring grass, with eyes big as beacons, frothy brown hair and shorts two sizes too tight.

“Hi. I’m supposed to get some twine from in here.” She motioned to the old cupboards above the sink.

“Go for it,” he invited her.

But she didn’t. She took a few steps in and then just kind of hung there, pulling her ear, changing feet, looking at the equipment he’d started to lay out. “I’m Boobla. Actually my name is Barbara and I’m sick to death of everyone calling me Boobla, but that’s what my little brother called me when he was too little to say my whole name and then it stuck. I’m so sick of it, I could cry.”

“Okay. Barbara it is,” he said obligingly.

“I work for Violet. Actually I’m her assistant manager.”

Cameron didn’t raise his eyebrows, but this one was barely in a bra. It seemed mighty doubtful that she carried such a mighty title.

“I run the place when she’s busy,” Barbara offered further. “And Violet is really busy most of the time. We have tons of customers. And she’s really nice, too. She said you were going to be here for a few weeks.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Well, we’re probably going to hire my friend Kari because we’re so busy and all. But I’d still have time to help you. If you need anything, you could just yell in the shop for me.”

“That’s really nice of you.” He added carefully, “Barbara.”

“I like perfume and all. Good perfume,” she qualified. “Not just the stuff you buy at discount stores. I’ve smelled the real stuff. We go shopping at Macy’s every fall. Violet said you were a chemist. You had to go to college for a long time to do that, huh?”

Okay. So this morning he was doomed not to get any work done. The kid eventually left, but cars and trucks zoomed in and out of the yard; he could hear the phone ringing both in Violet’s house and the shop. Every time he carried something in from the car, someone else seemed to stop to talk to him. The mailman. A neighbor. A customer who assumed he’d know if Violet sold “Yerba mate”, whatever that was.

He was annoyed, he told himself. He needed to get kicking, get serious, get into his job. But it seemed to be the kind of place where people took friendliness for granted. If you were in sight, you were fair game for conversation.

The sun poured down, heating up the day, making the cats want to snooze, bringing the irresistible scent of lavender wafting in from her east fields. Still, he tried to stay focused. Until he suddenly saw her striding out the back door of her Herb Haven, aiming for him.

Just like that, he felt a kick in the heart.

She was dressed just as goofy as the day before. Sandals today, paired with a sundress that wouldn’t pass for work clothes anywhere he could imagine. The fabric was all sunflowers, matching long dangling sunflower earrings and a sunflower ring. She’d swished her long hair into a haphazard coil, to get the heat of it off her neck, he supposed, and her cheeks were flushed with heat and sunshine.

So were her eyes when she spotted him.

Or maybe the problem was his vision suddenly blurring when he spotted her. Those midnight kisses suddenly zoomed into his mind, sneakier than temptation, wilier than forbidden. Her mouth was naked this morning. Those same supple, plump lips asked to be kissed. Those same striking hazel eyes dared him to figure her out.

She was a complicated, contradictory woman, he told himself. There were a ton of signs that she was too much trouble. To begin with, she was obviously a home-and-hearth kind of female, which meant he had nothing in hell to offer her. And then there was the mystifying issue of how she could be so damned beautiful and yet totally unattached. On top of that, the woman acted like a complete flake sometimes and other times clearly had a tantalizing brain. Whatever secrets she was holding back, it seemed obvious that she didn’t need a guy messing with her who wasn’t serious. There was too much vulnerability in those huge eyes.

Too much vulnerability in those kisses.

Better that he should stay clear, knowing he was only going to be there for a short time.

“You have a few minutes, Cam? I can steal a half hour now, if you want to go look at the lavender.”

“Ready,” he said. But the minute she came close, he felt his world shift. It was nuts. He’d had tons of women shake his timbers and move his hormones. Her pulling his chain wasn’t a new issue. He liked his chain pulled, for God’s sake. But those eyes, that hair, that smile…

Be careful, his heart warned him.

Which was the craziest thing of all, because Cam never, never did uncareful things.