Love in Lavender_Sweet Contemporary Beach Romance

by Elana Johnson

  “We didn’t have music today.”

  “Oh. Well, what did you have instead?”

  “PE.”

  “Do you like PE?” He opened the door and held it for the kids while she said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  “One thing, okay guys?” he called after them. “Whatever you want.”

  Once he had his pancake wrapped sausage link, and the kids had their candy, they got back in the truck. He said, “So, have you guys been out to a lavender farm before?”

  “Yeah,” Jess said in a bored tone, and Dixie said, “My great-grandparents owned a farm. My mom says I came to visit when I was little, but I don’t remember.”

  “We have horses and goats and chickens.” He glanced at the kids, glad Dixie was talking again. “What do you want to do first?”

  “Horses,” Jess said.

  Dixie said, “Goats.”

  He chuckled. “We’ll have time to do it all.” They arrived at the farm in fifteen minutes and Drew called, “Ma?” when he got out of the truck. His mother appeared on the front porch of the farmhouse, wearing an apron and a wide smile.

  “That’s my mom,” he told the kids. “She’s made cookies, and she can’t wait to feed you guys dinner.”

  She received the children with a hug for each of them and a quick, “Hello,” before taking them into the kitchen to get a cookie. Drew supposed he probably shouldn’t have bought them candy on the way out, but as they petted goats and fed chickens and finally saddled horses, neither of them seemed pale or ill.

  “Up you go, Jess.” Drew held out his hand to help the boy up, but Jess didn’t need it. He landed in the saddle like he’d ridden a horse every day.

  He grinned, and Drew pulled out his phone. “Let’s take a picture for your mom.” He still hadn’t answered Yvonne’s text. He wasn’t sure if he should, or if he should simply delete it. He’d been devastated when she’d left him, and it had taken a year before he’d stopped blaming himself for the break-up.

  He pushed Yvonne from his mind and tapped to take the picture.

  “Don’t send it to her,” Jess said, his smile slipping.

  “Why not?” Drew admired the photo and turned to help Dixie onto her pony.

  “She gets nervous about me doing stuff like this.” Jess wore a disgruntled expression when Drew faced him again.

  “You don’t think she’ll find out? You aren’t going to tell her?” He tapped the stirrup. “Right there, Dix. Left foot.” The girl stumbled a bit, but Drew righted her.

  “Probably not,” Jess said. “I’ll just tell her about the goats and chickens.”

  Dixie pushed off the ground and Drew helped her land in the saddle. “Oof,” she said, surprise racing across her face before it split into a smile.

  He gathered the reins of both horses and led them out, thinking about what Jess had said. He’d never known Janey to be afraid of anything. In high school, she formed the rock climbing club and led the group into Olympic National Park on weekends.

  Of course, that was before her husband had been killed when the ferry he piloted from the northern point of town over the United States border and into Victoria, Canada had caught fire and sunk with him on board.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t ride the horses if she’s going to be mad about it.” Drew glanced over his shoulder, and the identical looks of wonder and joy on Jess’s and Dixie’s faces squashed that idea real quick. So Drew put his worries to rest—he could deal with Janey Germaine’s wrath if he had to.

  He walked them through the neat lavender rows, pointing out the different varieties of the plant while Blue and Chief kept the overeager chickens away.

  “What’s that?” Jess asked, pointing to something on his right. Drew followed his finger and spotted the old wishing well his father had installed a few years before his death.

  He chuckled and changed course. “I don’t suppose either of you have any coins with you?” He certainly didn’t carry cash and when both children said they didn’t either, Drew said, “Well, just another reason to come out here again.”

  They arrived at the old stone well, and Drew helped Jess and then Dixie down. “My dad built this,” he said, peering over the edge. “My brother—you guys know Chief Herrin, right? He’s my older brother.”

  The kids nodded and joined him with their hands splayed against the rough rock of the well.

  “Anyway, Chief Herrin really wanted to make the high school football team. So my dad would come out into the fields every night and practice with me and Adam.” Memories flooded Drew’s mind, all of them happy, with footballs being thrown while the sun set and laughter filled the sky as they headed back to the house for their favorite treat: ice cream sandwiches.

  His mom made them from scratch, using a thin, crispy gingerbread cookie and lavender honey ice cream. Drew had gotten his love of eating ice cream from his father and his obsession with crafting ice cream from his mother.

  “Anyway,” he said, realizing he’d fallen silent and that Jess was now staring at him. “The summer before Adam’s tryouts, Dad came out here and started building this wishing well. He said he needed the water this far out anyway, and if Adam tossed in a quarter every day for a month and made the same wish, he’d get what he wanted.”

  Dixie stepped closer to his side. “Did he do it?”

  “He sure did.” Drew reached up and ran his finger along the top of the roof, which went to a sharp point. The well had seemed so magical when his father had first built it. “Adam came out every day for a month with a quarter he’d earned by raking grass, or hauling lavender, or working around the house for my mom. He’d toss it in, close his eyes tight, and make his wish. Silently.” Drew made eye contact with both kids, smiling at them. “That’s the trick. You can’t say your wish out loud.”

  Dixie closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I don’t have a quarter.”

  “Like I said, we’ll have to come back.” The sun was starting to edge toward the ocean on the west, so Drew turned his back to the well and leaned his weight into the wall. “I’m sure I can rustle up some quarters for us.”

  “I already know what I want to wish for,” Jess said, copying Drew and leaning into the well too.

  “I don’t know that we’ll be able to come every day,” Drew said.

  “Maybe you could come and make our wishes for us,” Dixie suggested.

  “But then you’d have to tell me your wish out loud.” He tapped her on the forehead. “I think once is probably enough. Come on, we better get back before dinner starts.” He helped the kids back onto the horses and led them back to the barn.

  He showed them how to brush down the animals and put them in their stalls. When they approached the house, a forest green SUV sat in the driveway, which meant Janey had arrived. Adam’s truck sat beside it.

  “Looks like we’re last.” Drew increased his speed. “When we get inside, let’s get washed up quick, all right?”

  “Drew?” Dixie’s sweet voice lifted into the sky.

  “Yeah, sweetheart?” He paused and let Jess go into the farmhouse first.

  “Mom said you were there when I was born.”

  He crouched in front of her. “I sure was.” A sense of pride filled him, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  “So you knew my dad.”

  Drew straightened as he exhaled. “I knew your dad a little bit,” he said. “He and your mom lived out here. Right over there.” He pointed southwest, where the frame of another house could barely be seen through the trees. “I wasn’t living here, so I wasn’t real close with them. But I knew your mom a little bit from when she came to visit in the summertime. And yeah, I knew your dad, sure.”

  Dixie’s hand fitted into Drew’s. “I miss my dad. Do you miss your dad?”

  The question took Drew by surprise, and that grief that normally allowed him to go about his day undisturbed hit him hard behind his heart.

  He managed to nod, and his voice was only a little rough around the edges when h
e said, “Yeah, I miss my dad.”

  “But you have Joel now.”

  Drew didn’t want to go into how he’d been a lot older than Dixie when his dad died, that he hadn’t lived at home when his mother got remarried. But all he did was nod. “Yeah, I have Joel now.” He pushed the door open and tugged on Dixie’s hand to get her to enter first. She went inside, and he looked up into the sky, hoping for one last breath of peace before the craziness of dinner began.

  Then he faced the bright, loud atmosphere of the farmhouse and joined his family and friends. As he greeted his brother and put the forks out where his mother dictated, he realized there was one person missing.

  Gretchen.

  Somehow they all fit around the dining room table, and Joel said a blessing on the food. Conversations broke out, about school, about the farm, about the National Park, about the happenings of the police department. Drew enjoyed the vibrant, boisterous meal more than he’d thought he would, and as Anita stood to join his mother in making coffee, Drew leaned back in his chair.

  “Can I go play with Chief and Blue?” Jess asked his mom.

  “If it’s okay with Drew.”

  “Sure, go on. There are balls in the box in the utility room next to the washing machine.”

  Jess started to get up, and Dixie did too. They rummaged around in the box to find a toy for the dogs, who waited with their tongues hanging out of their mouths. Blue whined, as if he thought he could find the ball faster.

  “So did you ask Gretchen about coming out and staying here at the farm?” His mom placed a steaming mug of coffee in front of him.

  Drew’s whole body seized, but he managed to lock his gaze onto Dixie’s. “Mom,” he said quietly.

  “I just don’t think it would be good for her to try to manage on her own. It’s not necessary.”

  Drew looked to Janey for help. He wanted her to jump in with, “Oh, I’ll be there to help her,” but she sat silently, watching him.

  “We have all those bedrooms upstairs,” his mom continued as if an awkward hush hadn’t fallen over the table. “She’s going to need help.”

  “She has a broken foot,” Drew said. And we’re not together, he added silently. “She can’t go up and down stairs.”

  “I can help her,” Dixie blurted out as she rushed toward the table. “And Drew, you could come help too, right?” She looked from person to person at the table. “My mom would love to stay out here. She talks about her granddad’s lavender farm all the time.”

  Janey finally leaned forward and touched Dixie’s arm. “We should talk to her about it first, honey.”

  “Can we go now?” she asked. “Mom said we could come visit her tonight. We can ask her right now.”

  Dread filled Drew, and he pressed his eyes closed in a long blink. “I can take you to see your mom.” He pushed back from the table and headed into the utility room to get his jacket.

  He found Janey with Dixie in the front living room, zipping Dixie’s sweatshirt before the little girl practically skipped out the front door.

  “This is a bad idea, right?” he asked Gretchen’s best friend.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She tucked her hands in her back pockets. “Depends on how it’s presented. Gretchen doesn’t like to accept help or be viewed as a charity case.” She put her hand on Drew’s shoulder as she passed. “Good luck.”

  Drew chewed on her words all the way to the hospital, but he still couldn’t figure out a way to ask Gretchen to come live at the farm with his parents—who she probably barely knew—and make it seem like it wasn’t for her benefit. How could he make it into something they needed from her?

  In the end, he didn’t even get a chance to say anything. Dixie beat him to the room and had barely burst through the door when she said, “Drew’s mom said we can come stay at the farmhouse while your foot gets better, and I really want to.”

  Gretchen looked up from the magazine she was reading. “What?”

  “Please?” Dixie ran to her mother’s bedside. “Please, please, please? They have horses and chickens and this wishing well I need to throw a quarter in every day and make a wish or it won’t come true.”

  Gretchen scoffed in helplessness and looked over Dixie’s head to Drew, who still had no idea what to say.

  Chapter Nine

  Gretchen listened while Dixie and Drew managed to piece together a story about a wishing well—which apparently Drew’s father had built before he’d died—and “the best horses on the planet, Mom,” and the fact that Drew’s step-father needed help with harvesting the lavender.

  “I have a job,” Gretchen said. She’d checked her schedule that afternoon after the x-rays, and she had an anniversary party on Saturday night she was providing centerpieces for. And she didn’t have a wedding on the day of the Safety Fair, but the evening before.

  She’d closed her calendar app at that point, because her foot ached and her brain couldn’t handle more than the minimal things she’d done that day. She wasn’t sure how in the world she was going to put in a ten-hour day in only a week.

  “You could still run The Painted Daisy,” Drew said. “But you’d be closer to your flowers out at the farm, and my mother would love to help with that. She’s always saying how much she admires those gardens you maintain.” He didn’t seem to be lying, though Gretchen couldn’t tell just by looking. She was a mom though, and her fibbing radar wasn’t going off.

  “You don’t have to decide right now,” he said.

  But Dixie pouted and said, “I don’t want to be home alone, Mom. If we stay out there for a week or two, Joel and Donna will be around, so if you need to rest, you can. And I can feed the chickens, and play with Drew’s dogs—”

  “My dogs live with me,” he said quickly, his gaze even on Dixie.

  “But you come out to the farm a lot, don’t you?” She looked up at him, almost a pout on her face.

  “Not a lot,” he hedged and that dishonesty alarm sounded in Gretchen’s head. She both liked and disliked the idea of having help with Dixie. Needed but didn’t need the compassion of Drew and his family. Wanted and didn’t want to spend more time with him.

  Her feelings felt like she’d stuffed them into a small roller coaster car and set them down a twisty track with multiple loops. She couldn’t make decisions with so much wind in her face, without knowing which way the coaster was about to throw her. So she said nothing.

  “You won’t be able to drive,” Drew said, almost securing her decision right then.

  “My foot is only broken in one spot,” she said. “It doesn’t need surgery.”

  “It’s in a full cast,” he said, his eyes sliding down to where her foot lay. She wanted to move it but she couldn’t hide it. “You can’t drive with your right foot in a cast. How are you going to get to the shop and back?”

  “Or out to the flowerbeds?” Dixie challenged.

  Gretchen had never felt so ganged up on before, even when Aaron and Dixie wanted to go to skip school and work and hop on a ferry to Whidbey Island. In the end, she’d relented, called and excused Dixie, and they’d spent a great day on the beach together. She’d wished Aaron was more spontaneous more often, but he operated like clockwork. In the shower at six-thirty, out the door by seven-thirty. He’d worked long hours, and Gretchen hadn’t minded until that last year before his death.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, her standard mom-answer that bought her time to think about what she should do. Time to get off this roller coaster of confusing emotions she hadn’t felt in fifteen long years.

  “Can I tell you in the morning?” She stroked Dixie’s hair, her insides softening at the pleading look on her daughter’s face. She didn’t dare look at Drew, because her attraction to him flowed through her the same way her blood did. Surely he’d see it, and she didn’t want him to see it yet.

  “C’mon, Dix,” he said, extending his arm toward her. “I’ll take you back to Janey’s.”

  “I don’t want to go to Janey’s,” s
he complained, but she moved to Drew’s side. He put his arm around her and it looked so natural. Gretchen’s heart banged against her ribs as she watched the two of them interact. He seemed to have already forged a relationship with her after just one day, and Gretchen experienced a rush of jealousy that tightened her throat. Since Aaron’s death—and even before it—the two of them had been inseparable. But Gretchen had sensed some distance between them the past few months. She’d eased up on the asthma nagging, letting Dixie manage her inhaler on days she had PE and not asking her about how things had gone during gym class.

  “Say good-bye to your mother.”

  Dixie turned back and ran over to the bed. “Love you, Mom.”

  Gretchen ignored the way the bandage on her wrist pulled, and the zing of pain radiating through her bruised ribs as she hugged her daughter. “Love you, too, Dix.” She held her tight, never wanting to let go. “Be good for Drew and Janey, okay?”

  “I will.” Dixie gave her a fast smile before rejoining Drew in the doorway. He waved and ducked out into the hall, leaving Gretchen to dream about tracing her fingertips along his bearded jaw moments before she kissed him.

  The next morning, Dr. Harris arrived at the same time the sun burst through the window. “You can go home today,” she said, scribbling something on Gretchen’s chart. “Who’s coming to pick you up?”

  “Drew Herrin.”

  Dr. Harris nodded without missing a beat, finished her notes, and hung the clipboard on the end of the bed. “So they’ll bring in breakfast, and I’ll get the nurses going on your discharge papers.” She smiled at Gretchen. “I’m glad you’ve got Drew helping you.”

  Gretchen wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but Dr. Harris exited before she could. She wondered what the doctor would think if she knew Drew was just going to drop her off at home to fend for herself and Dixie.

  The fear she’d entertained last night—that she couldn’t take care of herself and Dixie on her own—slammed into her with the force of a tsunami. She scooted to the edge of the bed and swung her legs toward the floor. She couldn’t put weight on her foot for six weeks, and she couldn’t reach her crutches either.