Okay. Then lets start back at the beginning. Apparently youve 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.
Okay. Then lets start back at the beginning. Apparently youve 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 shed passed it on to someone at Jeunnesse.
That was me. And initially I thought your sister was the grower. Thats why I talked directly with her instead of you.
Violet sighed in exasperation. Honestly, Daisy wouldnt have deliberately lied to you. Shes 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 isyouve 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. Its breathtaking in the spring and summer, nothing like it on the planet.
Violet nodded. I saw it twice as a girl. Our moms 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. Thats 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 its more than fun to Jeunnesse. The lavender ground around Provence has become problematic for the perfume growers. Its 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 dont 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 shed worked to give him the impression she was a dotty flake, but he continued without a blink. Then you also know that lavender isnt hard to grow. It doesnt 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 didnt dare interrupt.
Sonow you come to my role in this. Im one of Jeunnesses 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 its incomparable. Its sturdy. Its 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 dont know how else to explain it. Theres a certain chemical ingredient and reaction in lavender that makes it critical to the fine perfumes. Its not the lavender smell thats so important. Its how the lavender works chemically with the other ingredients. To say it simplistically, Id 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.
Shed never grown the strains of lavender for profit. Or for a crop. Or for its perfume potential. Shed started puttering in the green houses after her divorce, when shed 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 excitement and interest shed never expected. All right.
Initially, Jeunnesse just wants to buy your crop. However you planned to harvest it, Ill 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 well know for sure what we could have.
Shed stopped rocking. Stopped nursing her bee-stung foot. In fact, shed 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. Were 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 wasnt asking for promises-from him, from Jeunnesse. When it came down to it, she wasnt asking for any promises from anyone anymore. Shed stopped believing in luck-or that anyone would be there for her-the day shed caught Simpson in bed with his fertile little bimbo.
Now, though, she felt old, rusty emotions trying to emerge from her hearts cobwebs. For the lavender, she thought. Its 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 Camerons plan. Whether she got rich or not didnt 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, shed take a chance.
Not for the man.
But then, shed never thought for a minute that Cameron Lachlan was a threat to her heart, so that wasnt even worth a milliseconds worry.
Four
The 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 wasnt remotely moody by nature. Normally hed 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 Violets 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, hed have treasured the night. Hed 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 Violets long lawn were their personal ballroom.
He owned the world on nights like this-or thats how hed 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. Hed never been prey to loneliness. Something just seemed off with him lately. Especially tonight.
After Violet had gone inside, hed walked all over her family farm. She had a pretty piece of land-but hed 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 dads life. Peter Lachlan had died before the age of fifty-five, with a son who never knew him, a wife whod slept alone most of their marriage and fabulous possessions that didnt do much more than collect dust. Even as a young boy, Cameron had refused to follow in his fathers footsteps. Hed carved his own, and if his independence and vagabond ways werent everyones choice, hed 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, whod 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, didnt move. If the sky got serious, hed move onto the porch, but it was still warmish. If anything, the sudden spin of damp wind brought out her farms 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 farmhousebut 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 hed seen her unbraid that long, long pale hair and shake it free. The one where shed reached behind her to unbutton her blouse-and then, damnation, disappeared from sight to take the rest of her clothes off.