“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.