Jennifer Greene: Wild in the Moonlight

“Oh, God. Let me waste some electricity along with you.” Cameron suddenly appeared from the dining room, shirtless and shoeless, just wearing low-slung khaki shorts and carrying packing tape. Now, though, he tossed the tape and hiked over to the open refrigerator. Faster than lightning, he dropped a soft, lingering kiss on her mouth. “Mmm. Fresh toothpaste. What an aphrodisiac.”

“I hate to say this, Lachlan, but you could find an aphrodisiac in a dust bunny.” Oh, God. Even that light kiss and she was not only fine again, but her pulse was soaring like a hummingbird’s. He’d changed her so much. Healed her. Made her feel like a whole woman again. And all because of those long, wicked nights and wild, sneaky kisses. Because of the way he loved her.

And the way she loved him back.

“Have you been out to our lavender? You know how it needs to be cut back, hard, as soon as the crop’s taken. Well, old Filbert and the crew finished an hour ago. She’s all tied up and pretty again.”

Bad news. She closed the refrigerator door-after filling a cup full of ice-and headed for the couch in the living room. It was too hot to stand up. Too hot to hear bad news anywhere near that bright, happy sunlight. “You talked to Jeunnesse?”

“Yup.” He didn’t sit on the couch, instead, pulled up the old round ottoman and plunked down, facing her. “You know what has to happen now. I’ve tested all I can here. The rest has to happen in a bigger lab.”

“I know.”

“The next part of the testing takes time. Perfumes have a top note, a middle note and a base note. Lavender is used for all three. But the top note is usually the most volatile-the scent you pick up when you first put on perfume. And the base note-that’s the scent that lingers even hours after you’ve been wearing the perfume.”

He was talking as if she didn’t know these things. As if he believed he needed to carefully cover them again. He was looking at her as if she were some kind of fragile treasure. Searching her face the way he’d searched her face for days-even though she’d never told him, and never would, how strangely sick she’d been.

“The middle note in the perfume isn’t so much about smell. It’s about staying power. About chemistry. It’s what makes one perfume last and another completely dissipate. It’s what makes the best perfumes endure. And the right lavender is the key to that enduring power. It’s what we’re hoping your lavender has.”

She had no idea why he was telling her this. She knew it all. He knew it all. Somehow, though, every darn time Cam brought all this up again, all she could think of was how something was terribly wrong with her. Because unlike a good lavender, she seemed to have no enduring power for men. It wasn’t just Simpson who’d left her.

Cam was leaving her now, too.

Simpson, she’d just loved. But Cameron was about to take her heart and soul with him. It was definitely some kind of flaw in her-she just seemed to attract men who didn’t want to stay. For three years now, she’d blamed her infertility, but Cam had certainly proven that theory wrong, because he didn’t care if she could have kids or not. He’d made it more than clear that he needed no more children.

“Vi, I have to go back to France. To the Jeunnesse labs.”

“Of course you do.” Because her voice sounded so hollow, she said more strongly, “I’ve known that from the start.”

“There’s a good staff of chemists there, and they can run most of the tests. But I know the lavender. I need to take charge of it.”

“Cam, why are you telling me this? I’ve known from the beginning that you were only going to be here for a few weeks. We both knew.”

“I just want to be sure you realize…that this isn’t about wanting to leave you. It’s just about the work.” He waited, as if hoping she’d ask him something, say something.

And Violet knew exactly what he wanted to hear, so she put on her best ultraviolet smile and touched his cheek with love. “Didn’t I tell you I never wanted ties?” she asked fiercely. “I love you, Cameron Lachlan. Just the way you are. Just the way we’ve been together. I wouldn’t have given up a second of our summer for the world.”

She saw his jaw clamp tight, and a light seemed to deaden in his eyes, but she couldn’t fathom what else he might conceivably have wanted her to say. “There’s no reason we can’t see each other again,” he said.

“I hope we do. But I don’t want you worried about it.” She couldn’t tie him down. Wouldn’t. Cam was who he was, a heart-free vagabond, a lover and a giver and a healer of women-but he’d tried marriage before, already had two daughters. He’d been terribly unhappy, and if there was one thing she wanted for this man who’d become her whole world, it was to love him. There was no way she’d ask him for anything he hadn’t clearly offered.

“Have you picked a time to leave?” she asked lightly.

He nodded, then had to swallow as if something thick were stuck in his throat. “Tomorrow morning at daybreak. I can’t wait longer than that.”

So, Violet thought. Now I know the exact minute my heart’s going to be broken for all time.

Cameron watched his daughter’s Jeep bounce out of his driveway. It had rained the last five days in September. His gravel driveway could have been renamed Mud Puddle Avenue. He waved another goodbye to Miranda and Kate.

The two girls were ecstatic he’d quit Jeunnesse and come home from France for good. They’d both asked about living with him-which could happen, if their mother agreed. He wasn’t that sure what the girls really wanted or needed yet, but in the meantime he was less than two hours from their home. They could visit him anytime they wanted, especially now that Miranda had a driver’s license.

When the car rounded the curve out of sight, he stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and aimed for the old shake-shingled cottage. The surrounding woods were starting to change color, picking up tips of gold and vermilion and bronze. The brook, at the back of the property, glistened in the sunlight. He took in a long clean breath, wanting to feel like he belonged here.

He didn’t.

He wanted to. He’d loved the place when he bought it, even though at the time it was only to have a house close to his daughters for their visits here. And he’d quit Jeunnesse once he’d finished Violet’s business and knew she was going to be set up any way she wanted to be in the future. At that point, though, he knew he no longer wanted to continue with that job. The work had been good to him and for him, but was nothing remotely what he wanted in his life anymore.

He’d thought-perhaps crazily-that he could recapture the feeling he had with Violet. He wanted that feeling of belonging. Of roots. He wanted a red barn and a stone fence. Rocks. Insane neighbors. A place private enough to make wild love in the moonlight with his one and only lover.

He stomped up the porch steps and pushed open the door, thinking darkly that he wanted a woman who cried at the drop of a hat, who made strange and wonderful food, who took in no end of cats and neighbors, who wore Victorian lace and neon-orange underpants.

Nothing but lonely silence greeted him in the house.

It was funny, but coming home, he’d made all kinds of foolish assumptions. For sure, he hadn’t blindly assumed that Violet was ready to talk about wild, crazy things like marriage. But it was going to be so much easier to see her now, easier to talk, easier to be together. He’d planned to try a relentless romantic assault by courting her in all the old-fashioned ways.

It had never once occurred to him that she wouldn’t answer his notes or phone calls.