but who could tell beneath all those layers of ditsiness?
He heard a door open and instinctively braced. Seconds later Violet walked back in the kitchen. When she spotted him leaning against the counter, she seemed to instinctively brace, too.
Considering that Cameron had always gotten on well with women, it was a mighty blow to his ego to make one sick on sight. At the vast age of thirty-seven, though, he never expected to respond to a woman with a tumbly stomach of his own.
The old Vermont farmhouse seemed sturdy and serious. At first glance, he’d thought the base structure had to be at least two centuries old. The brick surface had tidy white trim and a shake roof; the plank floors were polished to a high shine. He’d been drawn to the place on sight; it looked practical and functional and solid, nothing frivolous.
Only, then there was her.
Standing with the light behind her, she could have been a fey creature from a fairy story. The first thing any breathing male was going to notice, of course, was her hair. It was blond, paler than sunlight, and even braided with a skinny silk scarf, it bounced halfway down her back…which meant it had to reach her fanny when it was undone. Her face was a valentine with warm, wide, hazel eyes, sun-kissed cheeks and a nose lightly peppered with freckles.
She wasn’t exactly pretty. She just had that something. Some kinds of women just seemed born pure female. They were never as easy to get along with—much less understand—but they seemed to radiate that female thing from the inside out. Nothing about her was flashy or sexy, but she was sensual from that pale, shiny hair to her soft mouth to the rounded swell of her breasts.
She seemed to be wearing old clothes—not old, as in practical, but old, as in the stuff you’d find in a great-grandmother’s attic trunk. The white blouse completely covered those delectable breasts, but the fabric seemed less substantial than a handkerchief. It was tucked into a long skirt swirling with bright colors. Crystal earrings dangled to her shoulders. A couple of skinny bangle bracelets glinted on her wrist. There was nothing immodest about the clothes; if anything, they seemed unnecessarily concealing for a sultry, ninety-degree afternoon. Cameron just wasn’t sure what the vintage gypsy image was supposed to mean.
He also couldn’t help but notice that she smelled.
Guys weren’t supposed to mention that sort of thing, but smells were Cameron’s business—and had helped him put away a sizable bank account—so scent tended to be a priority for him. In her case, she wasn’t using the kind of perfume that came out of a bottle, but around her neck and wrists there was the sweet, vague scent of fresh flowers—as if she’d ambled into a garden with roses and lilac petals and maybe some lily of the valley.
He noticed the delicate scents—which helped him forget that he’d also noticed her spanking-orange underpants. Usually he knew a woman just a wee bit better before he’d gotten a look at her underwear, but when Violet had been on the counter, trying to wash her foot in the sink, she’d pushed up her skirts—no reason for her to have been thinking about modesty since she obviously hadn’t been expecting company.
Hell. He hadn’t planned on barging in without being asked, either, but when a woman yelled out that she was dying, he could hardly stand on her front porch and wait politely for further news bulletins.
Now, though, she frowned at him. “We seem to be in quite an uh-oh situation,” she announced.
That wasn’t quite how he’d have put it, but he sure agreed. “You’d better get your foot up before that sting swells up on you.”
“I will.”
“You’re not still feeling sick to your stomach, are you?” He wanted to directly confront their obvious problem, but since she’d established—incontestably—that she was a hard-core sissy about the bee sting, it seemed wise to get her settled down. He sure as hell didn’t want her keeling over on him.
“I think my stomach’s fine now. It doesn’t matter, anyway. What matters is that we have to figure this out. Your being here. What we’re going to do with you.”
“Uh-huh. You want me to get us a drink?”
“Yes. That’d be great.” She sank into a chair at the oak table, as if just assuming he could find glasses and drinks. Which he could. He just didn’t usually walk in someone’s house and take over this way.
Being in the kitchen with her was like being assaulted with a rocket full of estrogen. It wasn’t just that she was a girly-girl type of woman, but everything about the place. Cats roosted on every surface—one blinked at him from the top of the refrigerator; another was sprawled on some newspapers on the counter; a black-and-white polka-dotted model seemed determined to wind around his legs. Every spare wall space had been decorated within an inch of its life, with copper pots and little slogans over the door and wreaths and just stuff. From the basket of yarn balls to heart-shaped rag rugs, the entire kitchen was an estrogen-whew. The kind of a place where a guy might be allowed to sip some wine, but God forbid he chug a beer.
On the other hand, he found lemonade in the fridge in a crystal pitcher. Fresh squeezed. The refrigerator was stuffed with so many dishes that he really wanted to stand and stare—if not outright drool. Never mind if she was overdosed with sex appeal. He might get fed out of this deal. That reduced the importance of any other considerations…assuming either of them could figure out how to fix such a major screwup.
“I think we need to start over,” he suggested. “You seemed to recognize my name? So I assume you also know that I’m the agricultural chemist from Jeunnesse?”
She immediately nodded at the mention of the French perfume company, so at least Cameron was reassured there was some cognition and sense of reality between her ears. But somehow she looked even more shaken up instead of less.
“I just can’t believe this. I did know you were coming, Mr. Lachlan—”
“Cameron. Or Cam.”
“Cameron, then. What you said was very true. My sister’s called and written me several times about this.” She lifted her bee-stung foot to a chair and accepted the long, tall glass of lemonade he handed her. “I’m just having a stroke, that’s all. The timing completely slipped my mind.”
“You have twenty acres of lavender almost ready to be harvested, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
Cameron took a long slow gulp of the lemonade. It seemed to him that it’d normally be a tad challenging to forget twenty acres of lavender in your backyard.
“You’re supposed to want me here,” he said tactfully.
“I do, I do. I just forgot.” She raised a ring-spangled hand. “Well, I didn’t just forget. It’s been unusually chaotic around here. Our youngest sister, Camille, got married a couple weeks ago. She’d been here most of the spring, working on the lavender. And she left on her honeymoon. Only, then she came back to get the kids.”
Boy, that made a lot of sense.
“Cripes, I don’t mean her kids. I mean her step-kids. Her new husband had twin sons from a previous marriage. And actually since Camille thinks of them as hers, I suppose it’s okay to call them her sons directly, don’t you think?”
Cameron took a breath. As thrilling as all this information was, it had absolutely nothing to
