Lavender Blue

by Donna Kauffman

  He gazed down at her pretty face, into her pretty eyes. “You’re being very kind.”

  “I’m being very honest.”

  He nodded, as if accepting the compliment, even if he wasn’t quite sure it was all that true. But if it was to her, then what else mattered? “Well, for the record, you can ask me anything. Anytime. You’ve certainly earned that right. I guess I’d like to think if the unique way in which we started to get to know each other is worth anything, it’s that we can bypass a lot of those more formal dating etiquette rules.”

  “Is that what we’re doing?” she asked, seeming quite cheerful about the prospect. “Dating?”

  “I’m not sure what the kids are calling it these days, but given I asked you out and you said yes . . . I think that’s the right term.”

  “I guess that’s right,” she said, sounding quite pleased.

  “At least one date, anyway,” he added, with a wry grin of his own. “I suppose we should figure out exactly when and where it will be, but—”

  “Hannah, honey?” Vivienne called to them from a distance, then waved a long, silk scarf over her head in case they’d missed her. “If you’re done flirting with our very handsome and capable stonemason, could you maybe come give Chey a hand in the lavender fields again?”

  Hannah flushed a bright pink, but Will just smiled and wiggled his eyebrows, which made her laugh in surprise, and her embarrassment fled.

  Maybe you have one or two suave moments in you after all, he thought, and decided making Hannah laugh, and maybe even making her blush, wouldn’t be a bad goal to add to the list of others he’d set for himself.

  “Care to join me and pick some lavender?”

  “I thought I’d go find Jake, see how he’s doing,” Will said. “Maybe try one of those lavender cupcakes. Then I’ll come out and find you.”

  Those gray eyes of hers flared again, and he had to curl his fingers in to keep from reaching for her. He’d bet all the money he had that she’d taste a damn sight better than pretty much anything Vivienne could cook up. And having tasted Ms. Baudin’s amazing cooking, that was saying something.

  “Sounds like a good plan,” she told him.

  “Hannah, honey,” Vivi said, sounding a bit more impatient this time.

  Will winked at Hannah as her cheeks filled once more with the most delightful shade of pink, and then she turned and headed toward Vivienne and the rows of fat, brilliantly blooming lavender bushes.

  Will’s smile remained as he watched her go, his nerves maybe a bit jittery, but not in a bad way. He’d often recalled what Hannah had said about still talking to her son, sharing what she was doing with him, as if he were her guardian angel, watching over her. So he didn’t feel as silly as he thought he would have when he murmured, “So, what do you think, Zoey? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Is it okay to move on . . . honor your memory by living a full life?”

  He stood there another long moment, as if he half expected her to appear next to him, like some wavery, heavenly figure, and chat with him about how he was supposed to court another woman. The two of them had talked about everything under the sun in their time together, so it seemed the most natural thing in the world, on the one hand. He ducked his chin then, shook his head, smile still in place, but a decidedly self-deprecating one now. “But on the other hand, how does this work, exactly?” he murmured. “And just how badly am I kidding myself that I have any business dating anybody.”

  Well, it’s taken you damn well long enough, my fiddle-playing man, so get on with it already. You like her. Jake likes her. Hell, I like her. But then, you always did have good taste.

  Will went stock-still. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he was just having a really bad case of wishful thinking. Because damn if he hadn’t just heard Zoey. Like heard Zoey.

  Of course, if you don’t mind, when it comes time for the two of you to hit the sheets, I’m gonna bow out. I mean, I love you, and forever will, but . . . you understand. Three’s a crowd.

  Will grinned then, almost laughed out loud. That was most definitely Zoey. “Understood,” he said, as if it was the most natural, normal thing in the world. Having a conversation with his late wife. About a woman he might possibly be falling for. Okay, quite probably falling for.

  And maybe it was natural. Or maybe he’d finally lost his damn mind. In the end, as Hannah had said, if it worked for him, then who the hell cared? It doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. “Indeed, it doesn’t.”

  He started walking toward the farmhouse, wondering why in the world he hadn’t just talked it over with his best friend sooner. Of course Zoey knew the right thing to say. When hadn’t she? He might have avoided wasting one hell of a lot of time trying to duck life.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said under his breath, and entered the fray of life. All of it.

  Chapter Twelve

  “This is a much bigger turnout than my projections determined. Even accounting for the weather report being off by a greater margin than statistics would have indicated, and an overperformance of word-of-mouth engagement, my numbers are still way off.” Frowning, Avery looked from her clipboard to the fields beyond the veranda, which were still teeming with people picking lavender, despite the event’s having formally ended two hours ago.

  Hannah smiled, knowing how much it annoyed Avery to be reminded she was human and therefore not perfect. Hannah poured them both more tea from the pretty floral-patterned china service that had been positioned neatly between them on the café table. “Well, as long as we’re outperforming, not underperforming, I think we can live with the projection error.”

  Avery looked at Hannah, her eyes appearing bigger than usual behind her round, horn-rimmed glasses. “It wasn’t an error. I couldn’t possibly have predicted—”

  Hannah laid her hand on Avery’s arm, then handed her a scone. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re doing well. Really, really well. Have a scone. Celebrate.”

  “I should have started with a greater baseline figure given there is no charge for the lavender picking and tea service today.”

  “Scone,” Hannah repeated, and put it into Avery’s hand.

  Avery munched absently as she skimmed her numbers again. “So, you and the mason, huh?” she said, still mulling, calculating, recalculating.

  Hannah, who had just taken a bite of her own scone, might have choked slightly. She quickly sipped some tea, swallowed hard, then tried to pretend that Avery’s surprising comment hadn’t caught her off guard. Too late for that.

  Avery looked up from her clipboard, her lips curving dryly. “What? You don’t think anyone notices the two of you all but jumping each other every time you’re within eyeball distance? The whole town is talking about you two now.” She batted her eyelashes. “Apparently you shared a ‘moment’ together at the amphitheater?” She made air quotes while still holding her partially eaten scone, then fanned herself with her free hand. “Steamed up more than a few pairs of glasses from what I heard.”

  Hannah just sat there, slack-jawed. If she’d taken the time to think about it, she supposed it wasn’t all that surprising. Only she hadn’t been thinking about it, not that way. She hadn’t been thinking about the town or what everyone might or might not be talking about. She’d been too busy trying to sort out her feelings for Will and what she wanted to do with them. Not that all her pondering and decision making had done her a whit of good.

  After their talk at the music venue, she’d admitted that she was drawn to Will in ways that had to do with a lot more than how he filled out his white work tees, or the fact that he was struggling to figure out how to manage his own tragic past. If anything, the latter was what had convinced her to steer clear of him, at least in any personal way. He had a lot he was trying to figure out; she’d done a lot of that work already. So the last thing she needed was to be dragged through it again and again as he dealt with his own issues. She had told him the truth, that she’d always be there to help, to talk to, but t
he occasional conversation was not the same as becoming involved with him, where she’d be a part of the process full time. That would be supremely foolish. If she was really interested in getting involved with someone new, exploring that part of her life again, pretty much any other man would be a better candidate than Will McCall.

  Which totally explains why the moment he asked to see you socially, you all but fell on top of him in your rush to say yes.

  Yeah, she was going to just have to get over trying to get over him. That plainly wasn’t working. All day long she’d found herself searching for him in the fields, or watching him talk to Jake, or wandering over to the stables to look at Chey’s stone house and check out the horses. Yeah, had anyone asked, she could have pretty much pinpointed where Will McCall was at any given moment. A flying drone couldn’t have kept better tabs on his movement than she had.

  “I’m going to take that besotted look on your face as a yes, then,” Avery said, her eyes dancing when Hannah flushed at being caught mooning.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Hannah said, being honest. “He’s a really good man dealing with some tough issues that I know a little bit about. We’ve talked about them a few times. It’s nothing more than that.” Except there was that kiss. And how much you would really like to finish it.

  “Right,” Avery said dryly, once again pulling Hannah from where her gaze had naturally turned to search for him. Again. “And hey, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. He’s not hard on the eyes. For a guy his age.”

  “Hey now,” Hannah said jokingly.

  Avery raised both hands. “I’m just saying, if you were to do an emotional to physical ratio chart, the two of you would likely get an eighty-five-percent compatibility rating. Possibly higher. I’m not entirely sure as I’m missing data.”

  “Missing data?” Hannah repeated. “You’ve worked some kind of chart for us?”

  Avery shrugged, unrepentant. “It’s just a hobby. I’m trying to apply some of my mathematical theories to human behavior.” She grinned. “I needed some guinea pigs and you two were just ever-so-conveniently making goo-goo eyes at each other.”

  Hannah’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “We do not make any kind of eyes at each other.”

  Avery merely raised her eyebrows over the rims of her glasses and sent Hannah a pointed look, then popped another morsel of scone in her mouth.

  “In fact,” Hannah went on, “I could hardly get the man to crack a smile, much less—” She broke off as Avery immediately flipped a few pages on her clipboard and scribbled down something.

  “What—” Hannah asked. “What are you doing?”

  Avery looked at Hannah and beamed sweetly. “Gathering data.”

  Hannah sighed in defeat and munched on the rest of her scone.

  “So,” Avery asked at length, after sipping some tea and sighing in disgust once again as she continued to review her welcome party statistics. “Is it the wife thing holding you back?”

  Hannah had just taken another sip of tea and almost sprayed the table with it. Dabbing at her chin, she very deliberately set her cup and the remains of her scone down and gave Avery one of her own pointed looks. “The wife thing?”

  “Will’s wife,” Avery said. She put her clipboard down and looked at Hannah, her expression serious now. “His late wife. I asked a few questions, and it’s not like it’s a secret. His wife was killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve when Jake was a toddler. Will hasn’t made the kind of progress we have in dealing with it, despite its being over a decade ago.” She folded her hands on top of her clipboard. “I was just wondering if that was why you’re ambivalent about pursuing him.” She raised her hands, palms out. “Not data collecting.”

  At Hannah’s narrowed gaze, a hint of a sheepish look crossed her face. “Okay, well, I’ll at least wait until later to write it down. But I’m serious. Are you worried that his loss will, you know . . . pull you back?”

  That was the thing with Avery. For all her geekiness and need to dissect and put everything into some kind of equation or projection chart, she was a true friend, and was sincerely concerned for Hannah’s well-being.

  Hannah relaxed, knowing Avery would always be Avery, but she’d also always have Hannah’s back, and her heart was forever in the right place.

  “Yes,” Hannah said, opting to be honest about it. Maybe talking would help her sort things out once and for all. “I didn’t know all the specific details you just mentioned, but I knew he was dealing with loss and was pretty sure it was his wife. On the surface, Will seems a pretty foolish choice, you know? And with the details you just filled in, even more so. I mean, none of us have been involved with anyone for some time. We’ve just moved out here, launched this joint venture, which isn’t fully launched yet, and . . . so many other things. I just feel like it’s not the right time, in addition to his being quite probably not the right guy.”

  “Yes, well, try as I might to organize and chart human emotion, pretty much the only thing I’ve determined so far is that emotional investment outweighs intellectual rationale pretty much every single time when the heart is involved.”

  “I’m not saying my heart is involved,” Hannah said, trying not to feel alarm when just saying that felt like a lie. “I’m attracted to him, because, well, you’ve seen him. He’s not hard on the eyes.” She grinned. “For an old guy.”

  Avery rolled her eyes, but grinned. “I would concur.”

  Hannah laughed at that. “See? And he’s got that whole quiet, alpha male thing going. But then there’s the emotional stuff he’s dealing with, which shows his vulnerable side, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t at least a little sexy, even if I don’t wish suffering on him, or anyone. He clearly loves his son and has done a great job with him. He’s hardworking, makes art out of rocks, and . . .” Hannah trailed off. She wasn’t exactly talking herself out of anything here. “And yeah, okay. I’ve got it bad,” she admitted sheepishly. “So bad that even his pining for his long-deceased wife just makes him that much more . . . I don’t know. Human, and flawed, and yet loyal. Kind of proof that when he loves, he loves fully.” She looked at Avery and lifted her shoulders. “How am I supposed to fight against that?”

  Avery held her gaze, and Hannah could see her mind whirring behind those rapid-process eyes of hers. “Maybe you don’t,” she said, at length. “I mean, yes, there is definitely that emotional quicksand of his past versus yours. You’re out on the green now and he’s still in the sandpit. You don’t want to be dragged back into the sandpit.”

  Hannah nodded and smiled despite the seriousness of the conversation. “Since when do you make golf metaphors?”

  “Golf is a game of mathematics,” she replied, as if that explained everything, and it essentially did. “I’ve always wanted to learn to play, but I’m not the most coordinated person. Doesn’t keep me from studying it, though.” She shrugged. “What can I say—the golf channel is my white noise when I work.”

  “I never knew that,” Hannah said, amused.

  Avery’s cheeky smile resurfaced. “New data. Maybe you should jot that down.”

  Hannah laughed, then responded to Avery’s earlier assertion. “You’re right, though. I don’t want to go back to the sandpit. I also can’t seem to shrug off this attraction, much less make it go away.” She hesitated to say the rest of it, then decided it didn’t matter at this point. “He asked me out. Earlier today. I keep trying to put distance between us until this . . . whatever it is, simply dies out. Then he shows up and . . .”

  Avery looked at her. “You couldn’t say yes fast enough.”

  Hannah hung her head, then raised her hand. “Guilty as charged.”

  “Good,” Avery said.

  Hannah lifted her gaze back to Avery. “Good? Why? It’s like I’m asking to get hurt. Or, at the very least, emotionally bruised.”

  “I think you need to take the edge off so you can feel things as clearly as you’re seeing them.”

&nbs
p; “Take the edge—” Hannah’s eyes widened. “You mean go to bed with him? I’m not even sure I want to date him, much less—”

  “Pheromones and hormones can really cloud one’s judgment. I’ve got a chart for that I’m developing, too. Well, I’m starting by mapping out what would constitute the perfect kiss. I haven’t worked my way beyond that because . . . you know.”

  Hannah did know. Avery had dated or tried to. She’d had her first kiss, and quite a few more after that, with different guys she’d gone out with. But nothing beyond that. At twenty-four, Avery might be a certified genius, but she was also still a certified virgin. She was adorable and funny, sharp and forthright, and beautiful in her own right. But she also possessed a brain that ran at the speed of light and never shut down, and most men simply couldn’t compete with it, much less keep up with it. Those first kisses—which Avery had deemed complete failures—had never led to anything more, because either the gentleman in question took off not too long afterward, or Avery sent them packing.

  “So, I’m not telling you from personal experience, but everything I’ve read on the subject does back up my assertion.”

  “He has a teenage son and is a central figure in this town,” Hannah told her. “The very last thing I’m going to do is simply jump in bed with him. Not that I would anyway.”

  “Because of the late wife thing.”

  Hannah gaped. “No, because of the I-just-don’t-jump-straight-into-bed-with-men thing.”

  “That, too,” Avery agreed.

  Maybe Hannah should have thought it through a little more before having this talk with Avery.

  “It was just a suggestion,” Avery added, looking not remotely sorry for making it. “Who knows, maybe he’s lousy in the sack, and you’d get over him anyway.”

  “I’m not having this conversation with you anymore,” Hannah said on a half laugh, putting her linen napkin on the table next to her plate.

  “Suit yourself,” Avery said easily, ever unflappable. As Hannah pushed back her chair Avery picked up her clipboard again. “But, if you do, I’d really appreciate some direct anecdotal data for my research.”