“Don’t even start about my sister.” It was the first thing she said, and in the same ornery tone she’d spoken to him last time.

“I thought we covered this? I always liked your whole family. Violet included. I don’t think less of her because there are some raisins short in her bran. Because apparently she wouldn’t know a weed from a willow. Because she wouldn’t recognize common sense if it bit her in the butt-”

“I’ve leveled guys for less, so you just quit it. There is nothing wrong with my sister.”

“You don’t think some of that blond hair dye seeped into her brain?”

She lifted a booted foot to kick him-then seemed to realize she’d been suckered into his teasing and stiffened up again. She took a breath, then said quietly, “Go away, Pete.”

He didn’t. God knew why. Maybe it was the land. Looking at all those acres of tangled, woody, gnarled growth offended the farmer in him-even if he wasn’t much of a farmer anymore. “I don’t know much about lavender,” he admitted conversationally. “I mean, I’ve seen it in gardens and all, but I’ve no knowledge of it as a commercial crop. But a bird brain could figure out that this thicket has to be damned close to becoming completely unrecoverable-”

“It isn’t your problem,” Camille mentioned.

He ignored that. “The thing is, though, as bad a mess as this is…your sister started this massive planting only a few years ago. So there has to be a chance it’s salvageable. Not a good chance. But at least some chance. The question is how and how fast. I have to believe that if you don’t get control of it this spring, it’ll be gone for good. Which means that about by Monday, there needs to be a crew of guys in here-”

Without turning toward him, she lifted a finger in the air. Thankfully, Pete loved a woman who could communicate without words, so he just grinned. Until he realized that she was still staring at the long stretch of wasted, woebegone fields with a determined squint in her eyes.