Wild in the Field (6 page)

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.

N
othing had gone well for the entire week, and as far as Camille was concerned, it was all Pete's fault. He'd rattled her. It was one thing for her high school crush—the heroic icon of her whole darn childhood—to turn into a living, breathing man who seemed to be attracted to her. But entirely another thing for her to respond to him.

Obviously there was nothing serious between them—and couldn't be. It was just a matter of shaking off this constant rattled feeling. So she'd withdrawn. Specifically, she tried holing up in the cottage the way she had those first weeks, but that no longer seemed to work. The darn dog took all kinds of time and care. And the lavender simply had to be tended. And then, Pete's boys kept showing up to help her.

Camille was all for denial and cowardice and hiding
out, but dagnabbit, a woman couldn't even be a neurotic hermit in peace around here.

She hiked the driveway between the main house and her sister's Herb Haven business. Clouds had started building before noon, and now they were chasing across the sky, tumbling over each other, bringing a storm in their shadows. Since she'd been chased out of the lavender field because of the inclement weather, she figured she might as well use the time to suck it up and seek out her sister.

She hoped to find Violet alone, but when she poked her head in the Herb Haven, she spotted at least three bodies wandering around—that is, three human bodies, not counting the half-dozen cats.

She shied from the sound of strangers' voices. She'd have shied from the cats, too, except that two of the long-haired Persians tangled around her legs before she could escape back outside. Trying to walk to the greenhouses was an exercise in getting tripped and sabotaged. Finally, she hunched down to pet them, snarling behind her, “Dammit, Killer. You're a dog. Isn't it a mandate that you're supposed to chase cats? What good are you?”

She didn't have to look back to know the shepherd was as close behind her as bad breath. Killer was still snarling at every opportunity—including at her—but this last week, he'd taken up following her everywhere. She couldn't go to the bathroom, couldn't go to dinner, couldn't close the door on her bedroom without him. Just like now, he sat patiently, tongue lolling, less than two feet away from the disgusting sight of her petting the two long-haired nuisance cats.

The damn dog was just like having a second conscience. Couldn't escape him for love or money.

Finally the cats seemed sated. She stood up, slugged her hands in her jeans pockets, and wandered around the first greenhouse. Her parents had built this one. It wasn't as high-tech as Vi's new greenhouse, but it still had touches of their mother in here—Margaux's sacred pruning shears, her tidy potting sink and counter, the old French apron she used to wear.

Camille swallowed hard. Margaux was a wildly flamboyant flower lover, like Violet. And like Daisy. Cam was the only misfit of the daughters, the only one who'd wanted a high-stress city job, the one who'd never loved romantic lace and doodads. But when she was in here, sometimes she imagined the faint hint of her mother's perfume, lavender and jasmine, the warm scents hiding in all the musky, humid greenery.

Of course, that was foolishness. The greenhouse smelled like dirt and fertilizer, nothing more fanciful than that. She didn't miss her mother. She was long a grown woman, for God's sake. She was just…ticked off. Because she'd postponed talking to Violet as long as she possibly could—not because she cared about what her sister was going to do with the lavender, but because she'd promised Pete.

And darn it, she definitely didn't want to think about Pete.

So she poked and prodded, sniffed flowers, tested soil, read labels, snooped. By the time she heard Violet's exuberant, “Hey, you!” she'd explored one greenhouse stem to stern and was halfway through the new one.

“Cam! You're out and about. Still with the mutt, I see.” Violet sidestepped Killer, who growled and snarled for a second, but Vi had stopped being impressed by the dog's shenanigans. She barely spared
him a patient look before surging forward. Today she was wearing one of her floppy straw hats, a peasant blouse and a gypsy skirt printed with every color and some that probably didn't exist. “You could have found me in the store if you needed me.”

“You had customers. And I wasn't in any hurry.”

“You mean, you're still avoiding talking to anyone. Have you been to town yet? Even once?” Vi glanced at her face and said hastily, “Never mind, never mind. I'm so glad you're here. Did you see my peonies? My St. John's Wort? How about this one? You know what this is?”

She pointed to a silver-leaved plant, flowering now with deep, deep blue petals and bright yellow stamens. Camille figured she'd better cater to her. “No, what is it?”

“Nightshade. There are different kinds of wild nightshade. This silver-leafed one is poisonous, but it's also a wonderful, healing herb. People shouldn't be afraid of it. I mean potatoes and tomatoes are cousins of nightshade, and we all love those. And over here, Cam. Do you know what this one is?”

Camille had barely settled down to study the nightshade before Vi was dancing off, all excited now, fluttering from plant to plant like a butterfly. “Are you looking?” Violet demanded.

“Yes. Sheesh.” Truth to tell, most things in the greenhouses were gorgeous, but the plant Violet motioned to now was uglier than a weed. The leaves were coarse and stiff and fuzzy.

“It's called a button bush. Reminds me of lavender.”

“Are you kidding? Lavender's beautiful. This looks something you'd spray to kill.”

“Well, I know it's not much to look at. But you can't pamper lavender and you can't pamper this either. Lavender's going to grow where it's going to grow. It's like a Scot. You can't tell it anything. This button bush'll grow, but only if you create kind of the same marshy, hostile environment where it grows naturally.”

“And you'd do that why?” Camille asked wryly.

“Because it's so pretty in dried bouquets. And that's a lot of why people want herbs. Some for medicine or healing. Some like flowers. Some want them for spices. But some just like to dry them, and these buttons really add something cute in a bouquet.”

“Okay.” Camille interrupted before her sis could go on another endless tangent. “I looked around. Everything you're doing is cool, Vi. It's interesting. But you actually think there's a chance of selling all this stuff? The greenhouses are jammed full.”

“Yeah, they are, aren't they…” Vi connected nozzles. Started sprays. Pinched a brown leaf here and there. Kept on the move. “I don't know. I mean, I haven't really added up stuff in the ledgers for a while. There hasn't been time. But I had money from the divorce.”

“I knew the creep gave you a decent settlement, but I guess I thought you'd want to sock it away, for savings. Security.”

“Maybe I should have saved some. But after the divorce, I just needed to make something instead of destroy something, you know? Build something instead of splitting it apart. And when I got into breeding these plants, learning how to propagate them, watching all the new babies emerge like a surprise…it was so
wonderful
.”

“It is wonderful, Vi.” Camille hadn't had to be tact
ful—or tried to be tactful—in months now. If she could have ripped any hint of softness from her character, she would have. But somehow she sensed there was something going on with her sister that she didn't understand, so she tried to tread more carefully. “But, all the new breeds of lavender you started out there…did you realize how much you were planting?”

“Well. Sort of.”

“Vi, you're going to have enough lavender to stock the East Coast. You can't possibly sell even a portion of it just in your Herb Haven. You must have researched other markets? For the oil? And florists? And—?”

“I will, I will, Cam.” Her sister rushed closer to snuggle her in a fast, warm hug, then drew back with a beaming smile. “Don't worry about the silly old lavender. Who cares? I'll figure out all that marketing stuff. I just want you to get rested and get well. And you are feeling better, aren't you?”

“I'm fine. I was always fine,” Camille said impatiently.

Violet, when you never expected it, could suddenly turn heartless. “So, since you're so fine, that's that. We're going out to dinner tonight. In White Hills.”

Panic slicked up Camille's pulse, slippery as a snake and twice as icky. “No, I—”

“Come on, Cam. We'll have a girls' night out. Don't you remember how many times you and me and Daisy would do that, go into town, shop or have dinner on any excuse—and how much fun we always had? Come on! We can go pig out on something decadent. Eat chocolate. Drink wine. And how about a movie?”

“NO. I mean it! No!” She spun around and hustled for the greenhouse door, Killer hurtling right after her.

Violet sighed. “Cam. I love you, sis. But you either do this with me, or I'm going to have to get tough.”

“Don't you call mother!”

“Hey. I'm not that low. But I am warning you—”

Camille kept on going. Vi had threatened to tell on her before, but she hadn't. Violet wouldn't easily worry Mom or Dad any more than she would. Both of them would tattletale a problem with Daisy, but with Daisy still living in France for now, Camille felt safe from her interference, too. Besides, she'd get off the farm. When she got around to it. Some time. Eventually.

A blustery storm came and went, making Cam pace like a caged mouse. The instant the rain stopped, she took off with clippers for the lavender field, with Killer hugging her shadow.

Determinedly, she began pruning and clipping, pruning and clipping. The sky occasionally dripped, and the gloomy light seemed infused with a gray-damp chill. But, it was easier to work in cool than heat, even though some of the injuries from the attack came back to haunt her. Her ribs ached sharply if she clipped too fast; her ankle tried to give out if she pushed too hard—and God knows, she'd been pushing herself to the point of blisters.

Still, especially this afternoon, the work was exactly what she needed. Each lavender bush needed to be framed into a ball shape, but every single cut affected every single other cut. The work took just enough concentration that she didn't have spare time to think or brood.

When she suddenly heard the sound of a truck engine charging down the farm road behind her, she immediately stood up. It was a white pickup, the newer kind of truck style with a back seat and back doors,
and yes, of course she recognized it. But where she'd become used to seeing the two younger MacDougals, her heartbeat thumped like a fretful puppy's tail at the sight of Pete.

Although he pulled up and braked, he took his time before climbing out. For a moment he just sat there, his arm resting in the open window, looking terrific in an open-throated shirt, his face freshly shaved, his hair brushed. Something in his eyes made her think of un-banked fires and unfinished kisses, and worried her heartbeat all over again.

Still, it was his boys who exploded out of the truck. Par for the course, they looked like refugees from a rascal camp, hair all over the place, tripping as they galloped toward her in pants that sagged below their shoes.

They both yelled, “Hey, Camille!” as if they were delighted to see her, when the damn boys knew perfectly well she'd been churlish and rude to both of them. She frowned as they sprinted toward her, noting that Killer opened his eyes but didn't waste any energy barking or snarling for either of them.

“You gotta come with us!” Sean reached her first, panting since he'd run the lavender rows at a breakneck pace.

“Yeah, we're going to dinner and a movie. But we only get to go if you come.”

“Whoa,” Camille said firmly, thinking that she was going to strangle her sister and not look back. She'd
trusted
Vi. Sure, sisters threatened each other—that's what sisters did—but damnation, she'd never thought Violet would sink so low as to sic an outsider on her.
Telling Daisy or mom on her would have been loathsome. But sheesh. Tattletaling to Pete was low-down mean.

“It's a school night,” Simon explained. “Which means that we usually never get to do anything. Much less go to a movie. Much less go out to dinner and not have to do dishes. And Gramps is going to play euchre with his friends, so he doesn't need us at home.”

“Well, that's nice. But you don't need me to come with you.”

“Dad says we do. Dad says, if we can get you to go, then fine. Otherwise we have to go back home and do dishes and homework. Come
on
, Camille.”

“Yeah, come on. The future of our world rests with you. You want us to have to go home and wash
dishes?
I mean, is that fair?”

She wasn't just going to kill her sister. She was going to feed her sister to red ants. On a hot day. After Violet had been slathered with honey.

Camille pushed at her hair. “Look, guys. I feel your pain. I think dishes are a fate worse than death, too. But I'm not going anywhere. You don't need me. I've been working outside. My hands are dirty. I've been in these jeans all day. I—”

“Like, so?” Sean said in confusion.

To a woman she wouldn't have to explain. “So I can't go out in public like this.”

“That's dumb,” Simon informed her. “We like how you look. You look like one of us.

She wanted to pinch the bridge of her nose. She realized the boys meant a compliment. The boys often meant a compliment when they were insulting her, so there was no point in being offended. “Look, Sean. Simon. I know you're trying to do something nice—”

“We are not! Nobody's trying to do anything nice!
We're just trying to get out of chores and housework! Cripes, Camille. It's a free movie, what's the big deal?”