He made her think of male alpha wolves-of the kind of guy a woman was instinctively very, very careful around. Not for fear he’d hurt her, but for fear of being taken under by a force bigger than her, an emotional force, a sexual force.
Camille shivered suddenly, and then abruptly, scowled. Elemental force? Where on earth was this horse hockey coming from? The damned man had left her with a filthy, vicious dog that no one could love or want, and somehow managed to divert her attention for a couple seconds by kissing her senseless.
Well-the next time she saw him, there’d be no kisses and no nonsense either. She whirled around, only to find Killer-alias Darby-snoozing on his side in the maple’s shade.
If that wasn’t typical! Both males had wreaked total havoc on her day, and now one was sacked out and the other had walked away.
She was simply going to ignore them both, and that was that.
Four
When most women got kissed, Camille thought grimly, their mood perked up. At least if it had been a good kiss. And Pete’s kiss had certainly qualified as a humdinger.
As she trudged toward the lavender fields, carrying a long-armed set of clippers, she could feel every creaky, cranky muscle in her body complaining. For three days, she’d been working nonstop in the lavender. Specifically, that was the same three days since Pete had brought her that dadblamed mangy dog and kissed her.
Working herself into a state of exhaustion hadn’t made her forget Pete-but it was doing a fabulous job of completely wearing her out. It was also giving her something to do to earn her keep. The lavender appeared to be a thankless, ridiculous, hopeless job-but that just suited her mood, anyway. She wasn’t looking for meaningful. She was looking for something so mind-numbing and exhausting she’d be too tired to have nightmares.
When she reached the crest of the hill, the late-afternoon sun was temporarily so blinding bright that it took several seconds before she realized she wasn’t alone. There were bodies in the lavender field. Two of them. Squinting, she realized they were boys. Both were hunkered down in the first row of the overgrown lavender, working with clippers-in fact, working with far better clippers than her own.