He located the tweezers first.
The way the stranger held the tweezers made her nervous. Either that or something else did. Either way, she was really starting to get seriously nervous, not just pretend—and darn it, she hadn’t been doing all that well before the exotic stranger barged in.
“You’re lost,” she repeated. “I’m Violet Campbell. I own the Herb Haven—the building and greenhouses on the other side of the yard. This is my house. If you’ll tell me who you’re trying to find, I’ll be glad to—eeeikes!”
He lifted the tweezers to show her the stinger. “It looks like the stinger of a little sweat bee.”
Violet pinched the skin between her brows. Another delightful advantage to being divorced, apart from removing the scoundrel from her life, was not having to put up with men’s sick sense of humor. “Who are you looking for?” she repeated.
“You.”
He lifted the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and started unscrewing the top. She suspected he was going to pour it on the wound. She also suspected that she was going to shriek when he did—and maybe even cry. But the way he said “you” in that sexy, exotic accent put so much cotton in her throat that the shriek barely came out a baby’s gasp.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? The stinger’s out. The spot’s clean. Now you might want to take an antihistamine or put some ice on the spot for a few minutes—”
“You couldn’t possibly want me,” she interrupted. And then pinched the skin between her brows a second time. On any normal day she liked people. She liked interruptions. She even liked a hefty dose of chaos in her life. But there were men she felt comfortable with and men she didn’t.
This one was definitely a “didn’t.” He made her feel naked, which was pretty darn silly considering she was dressed in the ultramodest clothes of another era—except she suddenly realized her skirt was hiked up past her thighs. The point, though, was that she most certainly wasn’t wearing male-attracting clothes. Her women customers got a kick out of her sense of style, but men almost always backed away fast.
That was how she wanted it. She liked guys, had always liked guys, but she’d been burned enough for a while. Maybe for a whole lifetime. Normally men noticed her clothes and immediately seemed to conclude that she was a little kooky and keep their distance, so God knew what was wrong with this stranger. He’d surely noticed the oddball long skirt and vintage blouse, but he was still looking her over as if she were meringue and he had a sweet tooth.
Momentarily, though, he went back to playing doctor, scrounging in her first-aid box until he found the ammonium wand for bites and stings. She winced even before he’d touched the spot. As if they were in the middle of a civilized conversation, he said, “You were expecting me.”
“Trust me. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m staying here for a few weeks. With you.”
The wince was wasted. When he touched the wound with the ammonium wand, she sucked in every last dram of saliva her throat had left and released a screech. A totally unsatisfying screech. The ammonium hissed and stung like—damn it. Like another bee sting. Only worse. Still, she’d somehow easily managed to keep track of the conversation this time. “Obviously, you’re not staying here. I don’t even know you. Although I’m beginning to think you’re a complete maniac—”
Actually, she wasn’t particularly afraid of maniacs. She took credit for being one herself often enough. But she’d lost the last of her usually voluble sense of humor with that bite of ammonia. Good-looking or not—sexy or not—she was really in no mood for an emotional tussle with a stranger.
The man swooped everything back in the first-aid box, then turned around and aimed for the freezer, obviously to find some ice. “My name is Cameron Lachlan.”
“Great name. I’m happy for you.”
He grinned, but he also kept moving. When she motioned to a lower cupboard, he bounced down on his heels and came up with small baggie for the ice. “We definitely have some kind of strange screwup going on here. You do have a sister named Daisy Cameron, don’t you?”
It wasn’t often she got that thud-thud-thud thing in her stomach, but her palm pressed hard on her tummy now. “Yes, for sure. In fact, I have two sisters—”
“But it’s Daisy who lives in France.”
“Yes, for several years now—”
“The point being,” he said patiently, “that your sister has been playing go-between for us for months. Or that’s what I’ve understood. Because she was living right there, and because she knows my work and me personally, so you wouldn’t have to be dealing with a stranger. You were supposed to be expecting me. You were supposed to have a place for me to stay for several weeks. You were supposed to know that I was arriving either today or tomorrow—”
“Oh my God. You’re Cameron Lachlan?”
He scratched his chin. “I could have sworn I already mentioned that.”
It came on so fast. The light-headedness. The stomach thudding. The way her kitchen suddenly blurred into a pale-green haze.
Granted, she was a coward and a wuss—but normally she had a cast-iron stomach. Now, though, when she pushed off the counter and tried to stand on both feet, her bee sting stabbed like hot fire and her stomach suddenly pitched. “Try not to take this personally, okay?” she said. “It’s not that I’m not glad to see you. It’s just that you’ll have to excuse me a minute while I throw up.”
Two
Once Violet disappeared from sight—presumably to find the nearest bathroom—Cameron leaned against the kitchen counter and clawed a hand through his hair. Talk about a royal mess. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Nothing usually rattled him. Normally people got a higher education to earn a better living. Cameron had pursued a Ph.D so he could enjoy a footloose, vagabond lifestyle. He was used to jet lag. Used to time changes and strange beds. He had no trouble getting along with people of all different backgrounds and cultures.
But this blonde was doing something to his pulse.
“Be careful with my sister,” Daisy had warned him—which, at the time, had struck him as a curious thing to say. His only interest in Violet Cameron was business. Still, whether he’d wanted to hear it or not, Daisy had filled in enough blanks for him to understand why she was so protective of her younger sister. Violet had apparently been married to a real, selfish creep. “Something happened in that marriage that I still don’t know about. Something really bad in the last year. I still can’t get her to talk about it,” Daisy had told him. “But the point is, Violet was always extra smart, in school and life and everything else. It’s just since the divorce that she’s been…different. Fragile and nervous about men.”
Since that conversation had at the time been none of his business—and none of his interest—Cameron had pretty much forgotten it. Still, he’d definitely imagined a shy, quiet, understated kind of woman. A true violet in personality as well as name.
Now he wondered if Vermont might secretly be an alternative universe. Granted, he’d only been in the state for a couple of hours—and on the Campbell property even less than
