Love on Lavender Lane

by Karis Walsh

  The plants had looked uniform to her at first glance, aside from some color variations, especially since many of them hadn’t started flowering yet and the earlier bloomers still showed only the merest hints of color. From a distance, the plants appeared dusted with purple, but a closer view showed individual, tightly closed buds. After Kassidy’s explanation of the different varieties, however, Paige had begun to notice the unique characteristics of the cultivars. She might not know their names yet, but she could tell when they moved from a row of one type to a different one. She took notes about things like bracts and peduncles, trying not to laugh at the words because she wasn’t sure how Kassidy would react. She was funny and lighthearted in a lot of respects, but every once in a while she reverted to her prickly, defensive mode.

  It wasn’t just the lavender. Kassidy changed in Paige’s view, too, as the tour progressed. At first, Paige was focused only on her sensory perceptions of Kassidy. The distinctive scent of lavender blended with some unknown aromas that Paige had already come to associate with her. The faded green sweatshirt with its stretched-out collar that revealed Kassidy’s smooth skin and sharp collarbones. The jeans with permanent mud and grass stains on the knees, slouching low and sultry on her hips. She fit on her farm like the focal piece of a puzzle, matching the beauty and elegance of the herb she grew. The farm, Kassidy herself. They were an experience and not merely a place and a person, like an Impressionist painting come to life.

  As Paige took notes and listened to Kassidy talk, she started sorting her impressions under several specific headings. She was accustomed to the experience of seeing themes emerge from the tangle of new information, and she let the process happen without trying to force it. Kassidy had called her an artiste in a joking way, but Paige knew her consulting abilities had nothing to do with art. It was just common sense combined with a desire to organize information. There was nothing romantic or creative about it.

  Not like Kassidy’s vocation. Before today, Paige would have lumped farming into the general category of physical labor, but after hearing Kassidy talk about her plants and how she chose, grew, and used them, Paige saw the farm as more like a clay pot waiting to be molded than a field to be ploughed. Kassidy used as much intuition and experimentation as research and knowledge in her choices.

  Paige shook the cramps out of her writing hand as they finished the wide arc around the house—the center of the farm—and went inside a huge greenhouse. She had pages of notes and normally would have taken a break for a couple days to review and think about them before returning to finish her observation at a company. Sometimes she spent weeks during this phase, but she didn’t want to stop. She tried to convince herself it was because she only had weekends in McMinnville and needed to condense her work into a shorter period of time, but she wasn’t fooled by that reasoning at all. She could easily spend hours, no matter how much it hurt the tendons in her note taking hand, standing close enough to Kassidy to drink in the scent of her and listen to her talk.

  Kassidy might not be as forthcoming as Everett and some of the other business owners had been about their products, but she shared the same type of passion. Paige had originally thought Kassidy was only reticent with her because she was connected to her dad and here on a mission to make changes where none were wanted, but she started to change her mind as she learned more about the business. Kassidy held herself apart from more people than just Paige. Her community, her customers…she seemed to appreciate and like them, but she maintained a distance from them all.

  Paige looked around the cavernous greenhouse, noticing that only about a fifth of the tall workbenches running the length of the room showed any sign of use.

  “So this is where you plant the seeds?” she asked. She noticed the expression she had seen on Kassidy’s face after just about every question Paige asked, as if she was fighting the urge to roll her eyes dramatically and sigh, You don’t have a clue, do you?

  “It’s a reasonable question,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t look so pained by it. What do you do if you don’t plant seeds, then, clone them?”

  Kassidy smiled, turning a becoming shade of pink. “Sorry, it seems to be a reflex whenever you say something.” She paused, and then frowned. “I guess I’m still feeling defensive, like my dad sent you here to criticize the farm. It makes me want to contradict you, no matter what you say.”

  Paige was stunned into silence. Not because Kassidy was so quickly able to figure out the underlying reasons behind her determination to argue every point with Paige, but because she was willing to truthfully admit it. Honesty deserved honesty in return.

  “Your dad hired me to act as your consultant, but I think his real agenda was for me to fail and advise you to sell.” Paige held up a hand to stop Kassidy before she could interrupt her. “You have every right to be angry and indignant, and I can only guess what kind of a father he’s been for you, but I really believe he has your best interests at heart.”

  “That’s your great advice? To quit?” Kassidy’s expression clearly showed her disbelief and hurt feelings, and Paige stepped closer and took Kassidy’s free hand in hers.

  “God, no. I was just letting you know the subtext we’ve got going on here, because if we keep ignoring it and being defensive, it’ll only get in our way.” Paige took a deep breath, lacing her fingers through Kassidy’s in a very unprofessional way. She needed to keep them connected, stop Kassidy from running out of the greenhouse and shutting her out. She had been forming the intention to help Kassidy bridge the distance between herself and her customers and community, and instead Paige was closing the gap between the two of them. The move wasn’t professional, but like Kassidy had pointed out, this farm had little in common with an impersonal corporation. Maybe Paige could allow herself a little leeway.

  “Your dad wants you to be secure and safe. To a man like him, that means having a conventional job and a reliable paycheck. Those things symbolize happiness for him, and he doesn’t understand that you see the world differently. You can be angry about that if you want, but you shouldn’t turn down what I can offer because of hurt feelings.”

  Kassidy inched away but didn’t let go of Paige’s hand. “Tell me right now. After all this time showing you around the farm, are you just going to tell me to sell it and give up?”

  Paige started in surprise. She had been so focused on taking notes about ways to help Kassidy develop her business, and she had thought her enthusiasm was obvious. “No. I’m already coming up with ideas that will help you maximize the potential you have here. I don’t know if it will be enough to make you as profitable as you need to be, or if you’ll be willing to follow my advice. I’ll need to see some numbers to get a better feel for your profit margin and how we can improve it.”

  Kassidy scoffed. “Yeah, right. I’m supposed to trust you with my financial information. I really should make you go through my books while you’re naked, because then we’d be even in terms of exposure.”

  “More of your flirting.” Paige shook her head with a dramatic sigh. “First you act devastated about me leaving the farm, and now you expect me to be naked while I’m here. Very unprofessional, Ms. Drake.”

  Kassidy raised their linked hands and looked at them pointedly.

  “Message received.” Paige laughed. She gave Kassidy’s hand a slight squeeze and dropped their contact. It was a tough choice between letting go of her and pulling her closer, and Paige didn’t have the willpower to keep touching Kassidy and not wanting more. Especially if she was going to toss around words like naked. At least Kassidy looked embarrassed by what she had said, or maybe just surprised that she had said the words out loud.

  “So why don’t we keep to our original deal and finish the tour, and I’ll give you a sample of what a consulting guru can offer. If you like it, we go forward, clothing optional. If not, I go home.”

  Kassidy hesitated, and then nodded. “All right. But our clothes stay on.”

  “We can debate that point later,�
� Paige said with a smile before switching back to the business at hand. She enjoyed teasing Kassidy but didn’t want to overwhelm the conversation with innuendo. “So, this is where you clone your little lavender babies?”

  Kassidy laughed. She started talking again, seeming to regain control over her emotions as she discussed her beloved plants. “I propagate plants by taking cuttings from ones in the field. It only takes a few weeks for them to root, which is much faster than starting from seeds. Plus, I can rely on getting consistent qualities, like color or oil production, in the new plants. It takes about three years before the newly propagated plants are producing at full capacity.”

  Paige nodded, filling another page in her book and relieved to have something to do with her hands, keeping herself from thinking of excuses to touch Kassidy again. She shouldn’t have reached out to her, but she had needed to make Kassidy listen to what she was saying.

  Why? Paige wasn’t sure. She had been back and forth about this job from the start. She maybe should have let Kassidy storm out of the greenhouse, like she had obviously been ready to do. Let her deal with whatever childhood pain she carried inside on her own, without Paige butting in. Paige flipped to a fresh sheet of paper while Kassidy described how to take cuttings from plants. Paige really should walk away from this, but she already had so many notes it would be a shame to let them go to waste. And she couldn’t leave before she managed to sniff out the magical combination of scents in Kassidy’s perfume.

  Paige paused, her attention finally back on her job and off Kassidy. Or, at least sixty-forty in favor of the job.

  “If you’re using cuttings to save time over seeds, why not go one step further and buy plants from a nursery? I know I’ve seen lavender plants for sale, and I’m guessing there are wholesale markets for business owners.”

  Kassidy didn’t go through her eye-rolling, sighing display this time, and Paige counted it as a win. Either her question was reasonable, or Kassidy was slowly beginning to trust her. Paige assumed it was the latter.

  “A lot of the varieties I grow aren’t available in local markets, especially the more specialized and unique ones. I try new ones all the time, which I couldn’t do if I relied on what a nursery supplier has to offer. Performance isn’t always predictable since some types do well in the microclimate and soil here on the farm, while others don’t seem to take to it. If you went five miles down the road and planted the same varieties, the results might be quite different. So sometimes I just need to experiment and see what happens. Besides, you can’t always trust that the plant you get in a nursery is really what it’s supposed to be. Growers who don’t know what they’re doing might be careless with cuttings, or not recognize the differences among cultivars. If they’re propagating from seeds, there’s always the chance the new plant won’t match the parent one because bees or hummingbirds might have transferred pollen to them from a completely different type of lavender. It’s more reliable when I do it myself.”

  Paige wrote bees in her book and circled it before adding the other information. “Why are there so few plants in here? You have room for a lot more.” Paige gestured toward the far tables. Only the ones closest to them had neat rows of pots on them.

  Kassidy shrugged. “I’ve already planted at least half of the cuttings. I only make enough of them to fill the rows I have in mind for the new plants, or to replace old and unproductive ones.”

  Kassidy and Dante led the way back to the house while Paige trailed behind, finishing her scrawl of notes.

  “Why don’t we sit out here?” she asked when they got back to the patio. The clouds were thicker, but the day was still dry. “Dante’s still got some of that potting soil on his head, and I’d rather he didn’t bring it in your house.”

  Kassidy perched on the chair next to her, warily looking at the notebook. Paige laughed at her expression.

  “I promise I didn’t write Kassidy is a bad lavender farmer over and over in it,” she said, coaxing a grin out of Kassidy and a slight release in her tense posture. “I have lots of notes, but they’re still raw. I need to do more research and ask more dumb questions before I really have a sense of the direction I’d suggest for the farm. But I do have my audition piece ready, if you still want to hear it.”

  “Go ahead,” Kassidy said with an exaggerated tone of indifference.

  Paige took the lavender soap she had bought from Everett’s store and set it on the table in front of them.

  “This is your lavender, isn’t it?”

  Kassidy picked up the bar and looked at it before nodding, as if Paige might be asking a trick question. “Yes. I told you I sell lavender to local producers of soaps, hair products, that sort of thing.”

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong with this?” Paige tapped the bar with her finger. She was teasing in a way, happy to have the tables turned for a brief moment and to be the expert instead of the student.

  “Well, it smells good and makes your skin feel soft. I’m guessing those aren’t your main criticisms?”

  “Kassidy, where is your name on this? It should be on here at least two times.” She pointed at the name on the bar. “This should say Lavender Lane Farm Olive Oil Soap, not just generic lavender soap, and the farm’s website should be on the back.”

  “But Everett and Brian make the soap, and they paid for the lavender.”

  Paige shrugged. “Your name should be on every product made with your lavender. Charge a little less for the oils and ask for a cut of the profits, if you’d prefer. But don’t sell the right to future marketing or any future sales. You made a set amount for the lavender, but it ended there. If people use this product and like it, they’ll never be led back to the farm to try something else.”

  Kassidy frowned. “They’re my friends. I couldn’t ask them to…”

  “Right,” Paige said, figuring Kassidy had stopped midsentence because she didn’t know how to finish it. “You wouldn’t be hurting them at all, would you? You’d be working together to promote both businesses, because you can sell the soap from your website or at the farm, too. Being friends with them doesn’t mean you can’t show yourself and your product the respect you deserve.”

  Paige watched Kassidy as she seemed to internally struggle with Paige’s advice. She probably wanted to be able to dismiss it with a derisive laugh and tell Paige to go away, but she couldn’t help but see the logic in the advice. Paige had surprised herself with the concept last night, when she had been staring at the bar of soap and wondering why she felt compelled to do something about it. She knew her hesitation arose because she was accustomed to teaching businesses how to outsmart, outsell, and outperform their competitors. That would never work with Kassidy because of who she was and because of the collaborative nature of the local community. Paige had been right to look into the context of Kassidy’s business yesterday, even if she still was fairly ignorant about the specific product she contributed to it.

  Kassidy mumbled something under her breath.

  “What did you say?” Paige asked.

  “I said it makes sense,” Kassidy said, enunciating each word. “There. Are you happy?”

  Paige laughed and pressed a hand to her heart. “Ecstatic. I feel as if my life’s work is now justified.”

  Kassidy smacked her in the arm. “Now what? Do you have more brilliant ideas to share?”

  Paige shook her head. “If we’re going to work together, I need to get back to my regular process. I have to go back to Portland tomorrow, and while I’m there I’ll start organizing the notes I have and do some research. We can connect on the weekends when I’m here, and then I’ll make adjustments to my direction as necessary during the week. A few sessions of this, and I’ll have a proposal for you. Do you promise to follow the advice I give you, without question?”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough. I shouldn’t have bothered to ask.” Paige grinned. She felt the usual excitement about the upcoming period of exploring a new subject, but it was tempered by the st
range and sudden thought that she’d rather not go home to the city. On her drive here, she had been anxiously counting the hours before she could return to civilization. Kassidy seemed to have an amplifying effect on her, intensifying whatever emotions Paige was feeling at the time. She’d be better off getting away from McMinnville and restoring her equilibrium before they tackled the rest of this project. Even though she had playfully joked about putting distance between them, Paige decided it was exactly what she needed.

  “I want you to make a list of every product made with your lavender and send it to me.” Paige readied herself for the next battle. “And I really will need to see some numbers.”

  “Okay.” Kassidy got up and went into the house, and Paige nearly fell off her chair in shock.

  Kassidy shut the door behind her to keep Dante from following her into the house and leaned back against it. She felt exhausted from the day. Talking about her dad with Paige had made her weary because Paige forced her to see his side of this whole mess. It was much easier to just feel angry about his lack of parental skills than to look at things from his perspective and feel compelled to forgive him a teeny bit for wanting her to sell the farm because he cared about her in his warped, distant way.

  And Paige wore her out because she was so damned friendly and understanding. Even her flirting seemed to be timed so it put Kassidy at ease when she was getting wound too tight. She wasn’t sure if Paige meant the sexy things she implied, or if it was only a tactic to break the tension, but Kassidy sure as hell couldn’t imagine Paige acting this playful with Kenneth Drake or any other high-powered executive. Maybe it was meant for Kassidy alone…

  Still, she wanted to hate Paige and everything the situation involved, wanted to toss her off the farm and go back to the way she was accustomed to managing her life. She didn’t want to change anything, so why did Paige have to come up with such a smart idea? Kassidy had desperately tried to come up with an argument against Paige’s soap-based logic and hadn’t been able to think of a single one.