Read Online Wild in the Moonlight by Jennifer Greene - Free Book Online

ensured that Cameron thought she was a fruitcake.
    Instead, as if unconcerned whether she made any sense or not, he ambled past her, squeezing her shoulder momentarily when he passed by. And then started snooping. Poking at her pots and plants. Sniffing. Tasting. Literally tasting.
    How could she help but be diverted? “You usually eat dirt?”
    â€œYeah. I’ve tried every fancy chemical test known to man, but sometimes the senses seem to tell the most important truth. A taste’ll tell me if the soil is highly acid or not.” He moved on, doing more poking, more smelling, more snooping. “These are more of your lavender experiments?”
    â€œNot just lavender.” Because she was still feeling emotionally shaky, her tongue seemed to get loose. Not that her tongue needed an excuse to talk incessantly, but this time there was an actual reason. “Originally when I came home after the divorce, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Mom and Dad had retired south. This house was just left available for family. Dad wasn’t ready to do anything else with it, thinking one of us girls could still want to live here. So it was perfect for me to move into…and I didn’t have to rush getting a job, because I’d received a big settlement from the divorce. Partly there was a lot of money because he wanted the matrimonial house himself, and I didn’t, so I got that share. But whatever. I thought of that settlement as guilt money.”
    â€œAnd was it?”
    â€œYeah. Big guilt on his part. But the point was, I came here and suddenly started remembering being a kid, trailing after my mom, all the pleasure we got out of growing things. Long term, I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do for a career, but for a couple years the Herb Haven just hit me as right. A divorce is like…destroying something, you know?So I wanted to create something. Grow things. Do something purposefully constructive instead of destructive.”
    â€œYou’ve got more than a green thumb,” Cameron remarked.
    â€œYeah. It’s kind of a joke in the family. Everything I touch seems to reproduce tenfold.” Again she felt a round of tears threatening. “Come on,” she said briskly. “I’ll show you the lavender.”
    â€œFirst, I have to make you breakfast.”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œBreakfast. You haven’t had any. I haven’t had any. And since you put me up, I’m cooking.”
    He made her crepes with blueberries. She sat at the table, lazy as a slug, letting him wait on her. It was another of the behaviors she’d taken up after Simpson—not kowtowing to men; acting like a spoiled princess. All normal men—certainly all Vermont men—steered way clear of an obviously high-maintenance woman, but Cameron…he just didn’t seem to be normal.
    If he remembered those potent kisses from the night before—or if they meant anything to him—he never let on.
    If he found anything odd in a woman wearing dangling marquisite earrings and a patchwork jacket and rubber boots and uncombed hair, he never let on about that, either.
    â€œI’m going to need a place to set up a minilab. IfI won’t be in your way, I could use the potting room in your greenhouse—the old greenhouse we were in this morning. It seems perfect. It’s got a sink and a longer counter for a work space, exactly what I need.”
    â€œIt’ll be too hot there,” she said.
    â€œI’m not afraid of heat.”
    â€œYou’ll get interrupted—”
    â€œI can work around noise and interruptions.”
    â€œThere’s no comfortable chair. I can’t make it into any kind of good working environment—”
    â€œI don’t need everything perfect. In fact, I’m usually bored by perfection. Life’s a hell of a lot more interesting if we take the road less traveled, yes? Wasn’t it a Vermont man