have put sandals on, but they were by the back door. She’d put on lipstick, but hadn’t gotten around to the dishes. She’d bandaged her foot, but the coffee table was still heaped with folded clothes that—yet again—refused to put themselves away.
When it came down to it, just showing up was the best she could manage.
Petie was doing a far better job of taking care of their guest. He was sprawled on top of the couch as if he was an afghan, lazily slinging a dirty bare foot in the air. He’d served their guest a sweating glass of grape Kool-Aid and opened a package of Oreos.
“My theory,” Pete was explaining to Tucker, “is that when school’s out, you should get to forget about it. You should get to do stuff you like. Summer should be about not worrying … Hey, Mom. Mr. MacKinnon’s here.”
“I see him. And I heard when you called me the first time. Welcome, Tucker.”
He stood up, not the polite way a boarding-school kid learned to stand when a lady entered the room. It was more of a long, lanky stretching up. He went from a nice, reasonable-sized man sitting in a chair, to a six-three hunk of space that instantly stole all the oxygen in the room.
There was nothing manicured about Tucker. His eyebrows were the same scruffy brown as his hair … and the stubble on his chin. The shirt was clean, no more wrinkled than his cotton pants, and his slow smile looked as lazy as the rest of him. The blue eyes were sexy blue. Laser-riveting blue. Dizzy blue. Or maybe that was just how she reacted to him.
It certainly wasn’t Tucker’s fault he made her knees want to buckle. She should have matured years ago. She kept meaning to. As soon as she had time. For now, unfortunately, he was the only man in a blue moon who had inspired a completely ditzy, unreasonable, irrational crush.
“You’ve got quite a place here,” he said easily.
“It’s a work in progress. Would you like me to show you around?”
“Sure. That sounds good. Pete, you want to come with us?”
“Do I have to?” Pete asked her.
“Nope. Up to you.”
She wished he’d come. She wanted a chaperone. Not to protect her from Tucker. To protect him from her. She was likely to make a damn fool of herself around him.
But showing him around the place gave her something to do, something to say. She started with the shop, because the bombardment of scents and textures usually pleased everybody—men as well as women.
“Wow. How’d you come up with all this?” he asked, almost the minute they walked in the door.
Naturally her pride swelled like a balloon. All this time, she’d never been able to talk to him, and now she couldn’t stop. First, she explained how she’d arranged the shop, and why. Her herbs were all in pots, set in antique porcelain sinks, located so they’d get east light. The old porcelain added to the country-comfortable atmosphere, but also enabled her to set up a water-spraying system so the herbs could easily be misted.
Across the room, the west side held cubbyholes with books on medicinal and culinary uses for herbs and spices, with handwritten recipes that Garnet had started but her customers had added to. Color photographs identified what the herbs looked like in different seasons. The north wall had the least exposure to sunlight, so it was a natural spot to put counters and shelves for bottled or burlap-packed spices and herbs, with fresh samples displayed on small trenchers so a customer could smell and taste.
“Obviously the fresh samples aren’t there now—we clean up at night. But lots of customers don’t know the difference between cilantro and basil. That’s why we have the samples and the books and the recipes … to give them ideas about how to use them.”
“So what’s back here?” Tucker motioned to a wooden half door leading to a space in the back.
She unhooked the gate to the half door and motioned him through so he could see. “We have classes back here … Sometimes we’ll cater a lunch for a small group, or we’ll use recipes to show folks how to use their herbs. This is also where we pot and arrange the plants. And there’s one more room in the far back ….”
She led the way ahead of him. The back room was her favorite, possibly because of its spectacularly wonderful messes. A board-plank table functioned as a work area, but every inch of space was used. Herbs dried from the ceiling and cubbyholes held rolls of ribbon and linen bags and string, while potting soil and tools and pots took up another heap of space. “And this is one of my serious treasures.” She motioned to the climate-controlled aquarium that took up one complete wall. “I created this for a teaching tool. It’s just a miniature woods to show some of the endangered species in our area. Like this plant, Gray’s Lily … and the Glade Splurge here … and this is Mountain Bittercress….”
Her voice trailed off. She completely lost her train of thought. She glanced up and found him watching her. Until that instant she hadn’t realized how close he was, how tall he was, and damn, if he didn’t have the most wicked eyes. Alarm thrummed in her pulse. It was one thing to admit she had a crush, another to fool herself into believing he was looking at her with interest. That kind of interest.
She covered the awkward moment with a sudden quick laugh. “Well, I’ve been talking your ear off, haven’t I? You didn’t come here to hear about all this.”
“Only because I didn’t know what all you were doing here. I knew about the shop. Everybody does. But I didn’t know you did all this interactive stuff with your customers. I mean, all the hands-on learning, side education, the whole shebang.”
Garnet could feel a flush climb her neck, embarrassing the devil out of her. She just rarely heard praise.
“Well, isn’t that similar to what you do?” she asked swiftly. “I know, you don’t have a shop. But you have some kind of private school …?”
“Not a school. A camp and retreat center. I sort of fell into it. Had to do something with my mountain … I mean, there’s some real beauty up top, a small lake, waterfalls, creeks, rocks, woods. It’s too damned special not to share. So I take in groups. Boys in trouble. Companies having trouble with employees getting along. People wanting to start a new venture, make sure the whole new staff can cleave together.”
“And then …?” She ambled back outside with him, exiting from the shop’s back door. A slatted roof covered the breezeway to her bungalow, which provided shade but no mercy from the heat. Tonight, though, the oppressive temperatures had finally eased. A pale haze was stealing across the sky, softening the bright edges of the day.
“Well, what I do after that depends on the group,” Tucker said. “I tend to start them out with some exercise—not work exercise, something fun. That gives me a baseline to work with. I get a picture of what the group can do—what the group might want to achieve together. I don’t teach. I wouldn’t know how to teach. But it’s a little like what you created here. I try to expose people to things they haven’t seen and done before. Hope to challenge them, to engage their natural interests. When something works, I build on that. Garnet …?”
She’d been listening, but when he said her name in a question, she lifted her head.
“I’d like to see everything you’ve got going outside, but maybe another time? I can see you’re favoring that right foot. How about if we find a place
