Wild in the Moonlight (4 page)

“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.”

“Okay. Then let's start back at the beginning. Apparently you've been developing some strains of lavender in your greenhouse. And over a year ago, you sent your sister Daisy a sample of a lavender you particularly liked.”

“I remember all that. I also remember her telling me that she'd passed it on to someone at Jeunnesse.”

“That was me. And initially I thought your sister was the grower. That's why I talked directly with her instead of you.”

Violet sighed in exasperation. “Honestly, Daisy wouldn't have deliberately lied to you. She's just had this thing about protecting me ever since I got divorced. So she probably just tried to keep me out of it until she was sure something good could come from a meeting.”

“Well, the point is…you've been crossbreeding a variety of lavender strains and come up with several of your own.”

“Yes,” she concurred.

“Well, Jeunnesse has been making perfume for over a hundred years. They have thousands of acres of lavender under contract. You know the history? Provence was always known for its acres of lavender. It's breathtaking in the spring and summer, nothing like it on the planet.”

Violet nodded. “I saw it twice as a girl. Our mom's family was from that area. We still have cousins there, and Mom always, always grew some lavender in the backyard to remind her of home. That's how I got my ideas to develop different strains.”

Fluffball—her biggest cat, and the one with the brazen-honky-tonk-woman character—draped over
his lap and exposed her entire belly for his long, slow stroking fingers. “Maybe you did it for fun, but it's more than fun to Jeunnesse. The lavender ground around Provence has become problematic for the perfume growers. It's not a matter of depleted soil or anything like that, because you can always add or subtract nutrients from a soil. But nematodes and diseases build up when the same crop is grown year after year, decade after decade. So now the company seeks to acquire long-term contracts with people across the world who have the right growing situation for lavender.”

Before he could continue the educational lecture, she lifted a finger to interrupt. “Cameron. You don't have to talk to me as if I were quite that dumb. I know most of this,” she said impatiently.

For a second she forgot how hard she'd worked to give him the impression she was a dotty flake, but he continued without a blink. “Then you also know that lavender isn't hard to grow. It doesn't need the pampering that lots of plants require. There are also already hundreds of strains of lavender across Europe and America and South America.”

She knew that, too, but this time she didn't dare interrupt.

“So…now you come to my role in this. I'm one of Jeunnesse's agricultural chemists. What that amounts to is that I have a fancy degree that gives me a chance to travel and get my hands dirty at the
same time. My job is to study new lavender strains. To evaluate how they work in a perfume equation. In fact, it literally took months for our lab to complete an analysis of the lavender you sent.”

“And—”

“And it's incomparable. It's sturdy. It's strong. The scent is strong and true, hardy. But more than all the growing characteristics I could test, your strain of lavender has the magic.”

“The magic?”

Cameron lifted his hands—annoying the cat when he stopped petting her. “I don't know how else to explain it. There's a certain chemical ingredient and reaction in lavender that makes it critical to the fine perfumes. It's not the lavender smell that's so important. It's how the lavender works chemically with the other ingredients. To say it simplistically, I'd call it ‘staying power.' And I can explain that to you in more depth another time. The point is that your lavender has it. We think. I think.”

She'd never grown the strains of lavender for profit. Or for a crop. Or for its perfume potential. She'd started puttering in the green houses after her divorce, when she'd first come home and had nowhere to go with all the anger, all the loss. Growing things had been renewing. But hearing Cameron talk, seeing the sunset glow on his face, feeling his steady, dark eyes as night came on, invoked a shiver of ex
citement and interest she'd never expected. “All right.”

“Initially, Jeunnesse just wants to buy your crop. However you planned to harvest it, I'll either take charge or work alongside you, whichever you want. Obviously, your twenty acres are no big deal in themselves, it takes five hundred pounds of flowers to make an ounce of lavender oil. But I can easily get enough to analyze the quality and nature and characteristics of your lavender. Enough for me to extract some oil, my own way, under my own control, so we'll know for sure what we could have.”

She'd stopped rocking. Stopped nursing her bee-stung foot. In fact, she'd completely forgotten about her bee-stung foot. “And then what happens?”

“Then, at the end of the harvest, we make some decisions. If your strain is as unique as I think it is, you have several choices. No matter what, you want to get started on patenting your strain. Then, if you want to grow it yourself—and can buy or rent the acreage to do it—then Jeunnesse would offer you a long-term contract. Another choice would be for you to sell the rights to Jeunnesse for a period of years. We're talking a long-term commitment, worth a great deal of money on both sides—that is, assuming your strain of lavender lives up to its potential. But we have to see what this mysterious strain of yours can do before making any promises.”

Violet wasn't asking for promises—from him,
from Jeunnesse. When it came down to it, she wasn't asking for any promises from anyone anymore. She'd stopped believing in luck—or that anyone would be there for her—the day she'd caught Simpson in bed with his fertile little bimbo.

Now, though, she felt old, rusty emotions trying to emerge from her heart's cobwebs. For the lavender, she thought. It's not that she really believed she was suddenly going to get ridiculously lucky over something so chancy as her playing around in the greenhouse. It was just that there was no reason not to go along with Cameron's plan. Whether she got rich or not didn't matter. She had nothing to lose—and a lot of fun and interest to be had—just to see if this crazy thing came true.

For the lavender, she'd take a chance.

Not for the man.

But then, she'd never thought for a minute that Cameron Lachlan was a threat to her heart, so that wasn't even worth a millisecond's worry.

T
he moonless night was silent as a promise. Cameron lay on his back on the open sleeping bag, trying to fathom why he felt so strangely moody and restless. He wasn't remotely moody by nature. Normally he'd have inhaled a special night like this. Clouds were building, stealing in from the west, concealing the moon but also bringing tufts of cooler air. God knew he was tired, and when he closed his eyes he could smell the sweet summer grass, the lavender in the distance, the blooms whispering out of Violet's garden.

The lights had gone off in the upstairs bedroom an hour ago. Vi had told him he could sleep inside—in
the spare room, on the living room couch, on the porch, wherever he wanted. But Cam had sensed she was uncertain around him. If sleeping outside might make her feel safer, it was sure no hardship for him.

Any other time, he'd have treasured the night. He'd found some wild mint growing near her mailbox, rubbed it on his neck and arms, enough to chase off the mosquitoes and bugs. No dew tonight, so the grass was warm and dry. He heard the hoot of a barn owl, the cry of crickets. Fireflies danced as if Violet's long lawn were their personal ballroom.

He owned the world on nights like this—or that's how he'd always felt before. Instead the frown on his forehead seemed glued there. It made no sense. He loved his freedom, loved the smells and scents of a night this breathless, this private. He'd never been prey to loneliness. Something just seemed off with him lately. Especially tonight.

After Violet had gone inside, he'd walked all over her family farm. She had a pretty piece of land—but he'd seen pretty pieces of land before and never felt inclined to plunk down roots.

Cameron had long realized he had an allergy to roots, or any other possessions that could tie him down. His father had built up millions, running a company that—as far as Cam was concerned—had taken over his dad's life. Peter Lachlan had died before the age of fifty-five, with a son who never knew him, a wife who'd slept alone most of their marriage
and fabulous possessions that didn't do much more than collect dust. Even as a young boy, Cameron had refused to follow in his father's footsteps. He'd carved his own, and if his independence and vagabond ways weren't everyone's choice, he'd loved his life.

It was just tonight that a weird, unsettled restlessness seemed to hem his mood, nipping at his consciousness, stealing his peace.

A sudden brisk wind brushed his hair. The cats, who'd been purring relentlessly at his side, stood up and shot toward the house. The black sky suddenly started moving, clouds being whipped like cake batter. The fireflies disappeared.

He felt the first drop of rain, didn't move. If the sky got serious, he'd move onto the porch, but it was still warmish. If anything, the sudden spin of damp wind brought out her farm's sweet scents. He told himself he was looking at the old red barn with the Dutch shingled roof, the rock fence, the rolling slope in front of him. But somehow his gaze kept straying to her house. Not the architecture of the sturdy old white farmhouse…but the shiny windows on the second story.

Specifically the window on the east. The one where the light had been switched off an hour before. The one with the filmy drift of white curtain at sill level. The one where he'd seen her unbraid that long, long pale hair and shake it free. The one where she'd
reached behind her to unbutton her blouse—and then, damnation, disappeared from sight to take the rest of her clothes off.

He couldn't figure her out.

She was awfully bright for a batty woman.

She cooked better than a professional chef. Had more business pots going—the land, the house, the greenhouses, her herb and flower business—than any one person could normally take care of. She seemed to be emotionally and financially thriving on all that chaos, even if she did choose to dress like an old-fashioned spinster. She also seemed to make a point of acting as if she were witless, goofy, one of those fragile women who'd swoon if life put any stress on them.

As far as he could tell, she loved stress.

Most confusing of all, though, those soft eyes were studying him—then shying away—as if she were a young girl unfamiliar with the chemical pull between the sexes. She'd been married, for heaven's sakes. She'd surely had a hundred men react to her before. Besides which, he knew perfectly well when he sent off interested signals to a woman.

He
was
interested. Hell, she was sensual to her fingertips, complicated in personality and character, and he'd always liked complicated woman. But he needed to seriously work with her, and the instant they met, he picked up her wariness of him. So he'd sent out no signals, no vibes. He
knew
he hadn't. And
he sure as hell wouldn't go near a woman when she made it clear she wasn't in the market for attention—at least not from him.

But damn. She was a handful of fascination.

Another raindrop plopped on his forehead. Then another.

From one breath to the next, a meandering drizzle suddenly turned into a noisy deluge. Skinny needles pelted down, warm and wet. He climbed to his feet quickly enough, but before he could scoop up the sleeping bag, he heard a warning growl of thunder…followed by a breathtaking crack of lightning that seemed to split open the sky.

Abruptly her back screen door slammed open. “Damn it! Get in here!”

For a second he had to grin, lightning or no lightning. Unquestionably the screech came from his delicate flower of a hostess. The one with the vintage clothes and the fluttery hands who made out as if stringing a whole thought in a single sentence was a difficult challenge for her.

A yard light slapped on. Ms. Violet—harridan— Campbell showed up on the porch steps, barefoot, her tank and boxer shorts looking distinctly unvintage-like. In fact, her boobs looked poured into that tank, making him pause for another moment in sheer respectful appreciation.

“Have you lost your mind? That's lightning, for God's sake! Didn't you hear the storm coming? I
kept waiting and waiting for you to come inside, but obviously you've been living in France too long. In America, we know enough to get out of the rain.”

“I'm coming—”

“By the time you get around to coming in, we'll both be electrocuted. Look. I may not have welcomed the idea of your sleeping in the house—for God's sake, I don't
know
you. But a storm is a storm, for Pete's sake.

“Pete's sake, God's sake… I'm getting confused whose sake is involved here—”

“Lachlan! Move your butt!”

Well, he'd been planning on it, but while she was screaming at him, she was also getting rained on. Which meant that tank and boxers were getting wet. And so was that long silvery curtain of blond hair.

Maybe he was thirty-seven, but he hoped to hell he never got so mature he failed to appreciate a beautiful woman. Particularly a beautiful woman whose attributes were outlined delectably between the yard light and the rain and the lightning.

On the other hand, being electrocuted posed a threat to his long-term ability to appreciate much of anything, so he hustled to the door just behind her. The instant she opened the screen, four cats seemed to leap from nowhere, determined to cut inline. And then, in the blink of a second, her yard light went out.

“There goes the power,” she muttered.

It was his instinct to take charge, especially when a woman was in trouble. He couldn't help it. It was how he'd been raised—not by his absentee father, but by his mom, who'd expected even small kids to step up when there was a problem. He'd never minded. He liked stepping up. But in this case, the image Violet projected of being scatterbrained and helpless was—he was coming to understand—totally misleading.

She moved around in the dark, apparently gathering up candles—not the pretty decorative candles she had strewn all over the place but the practical, no-drippers she apparently stashed for no-power circumstances like this.

The back door opened off her kitchen, where she lit two and put them on the oak table, then kept going. She put one lit candle into a hurricane lamp, placing it in the bathroom off the kitchen, then carried more into the living room.

The living room, he'd noticed before, seemed to be part of the original farmhouse. In the dark, a guy could kill himself on all the stuff, but basically it was one of those long narrow rooms, with long narrow windows, requiring a long narrow couch. She'd done it all in roses and pinks—in case anyone could conceivably doubt she was female to the bone. Wade past the estrogen, though, and there was a massive old-fashioned brick hearth—big enough to roast a boar or two—where she lit four more candles.

“Better?” she asked.

“Can practically see well enough to read,” he said mildly, although that wasn't exactly true. No matter how many fat white candles she lit, they didn't lighten the shadows. Mostly they lit up her. Eyes darker than secrets flashed up to his face, but he didn't think she really noticed him. She was too frazzled to think. Too frazzled to notice how that damp, stretchy red tank top was cupping her breasts.

“I can't guarantee we'll have light or water before morning,” she said unhappily.

“Well, hell. I expected you to shut off that storm and restore the power immediately. What's wrong with you?”

He'd thought to lighten her up. It didn't seem to work. “I mean…I'm not sure the toilets will work.”

“Inconvenient for sure, but more for you than me. If I have to step behind a tree before morning, I can probably cope.”

“I'm afraid there's no phone.”

“Damn. There goes another opportunity to make friends by calling people after midnight.”

“
Lachlan.
Would you quit being so damn nice!”

He didn't get it. She seemed to be chasing around, lighting more candles for no particular reason that he could fathom. It was the middle of the night. So there was a storm. It was a sturdy house, nothing threatened by a little thunder and lightning.

And accusing him of being nice was a low blow.
No self-respecting male liked to think of himself as “nice.” Yeah, he'd offered to sleep outside and made a point of communicating that he was a here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of guy, but that was just so she wouldn't be afraid of his coming on to her. It wasn't because he wanted her to think he was
nice.
Sheesh, how insulting could she get?

“You want me to drive into town? Is that why you're upset, because you feel stuck with me under your roof?” he asked. “There's just no reason to get your liver in an uproar. If I'm a problem for you, I'll just take off, go find a hotel or motel—”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous,” she said crossly. “You're not taking off cross-country in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm. I never heard of anything so stupid.”

Well, hell. Somehow he had to find some way to communicate with her a hell of a lot better than they were doing so far. They hadn't even started to do serious business, yet he seemed to invoke some kind of strange response from her. She was running on froth and emotional fumes. He needed her straight and coherent.

So he snagged her arm when she tried to go flying by—God knew where she was sprinting off to this time, but apparently her goal was to find more candles, even though the living room already looked like a witch's lair. She went stark still the instant his hand closed on her wrist.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She didn't shout it. Or whisper. Only…asked.

He felt her pulse gallop. Felt the warmth of her skin. Felt her gaze shoot to his face as if compelled by their sudden closeness. “I'm confused what's going on here. Are you afraid of storms?”

“No. Heavens. I grew up here. We get blizzards in winter, thunderstorms in summer. Vermonters are sturdy people. Actually, I love the rain.”

Typical for her, she offered a lot of talk but very little information. “So it's just me, then? I'm doing something to make you nervous?”

“I'm not nervous. I'm always goofy,” she assured him. “Ask anyone.”

He struggled not to laugh. If he'd laughed, of course, she would have diverted him from the problem. Which made him wonder if that was why she came across so scatterbrained—because it was such an effective defense for her. “I don't want to ask ‘anyone.' You're right here, I'm asking you. If you want me out of here, I'll leave. Just say the word.”

She still hadn't seemed to breathe, although his hand had immediately dropped from her wrist. “You're staying. As long as you don't mind staying with a batty woman.”

“You're not batty.”

“You don't know me. I know me. And if I say I'm batty, I should know.”

God. It was like trying to reason with a cotton
puff. Only she wasn't a cotton puff. In all that flickering candlelight her hair was drying, looking like silky silver. The pulse in her throat was beating hard. Her skin, her mouth, defined softness. And her eyes…she was still meeting his eyes. There was nothing goofy there, just the awareness between a man and a woman that carried enough heat to melt the Arctic.

He had no intention of kissing her. Maybe she was just figuring out the chemistry, but he'd known it since he first laid eyes on her. There was no explaining what drew a man and woman together—particularly when the two people were as contrarily opposite as they seemed to be—but Cameron didn't sweat problems he couldn't solve. When there was heat, there was heat. You didn't lie about it. You didn't pretend. You just faced the truth, whatever it was.

And the truth was, he didn't care if there was a combustible furnace of chemistry between them, he wasn't going to kiss her.

Yet suddenly he was.

He wanted to blame it on the moonlight…only there was none. In the dark candlelit room, with the growl of thunder and hiss of rain just outside, there seemed nothing alive but her and him. Nothing he could smell but her soft skin, the flower scents drifting from her hair, her throat. Nothing he could hear but the pounding of his own heart, in anticipation.