“No, you’re not going to be sick again,” Cameron said emphatically.

Violet met his eyes. “You’re right. I’m not,” she said slowly, and took a long deep breath.

She had to get a grip. A serious grip. She wasn’t really nauseous, she was just shook up. Her foot throbbed like the devil-that was for real. She’d been running all day in the heat even before the bee sting-that was for real, too. And normally men didn’t provoke her into behaving like a scatterbrained nutcase-but there were exceptions.

Virile, highly concentrated packages of testosterone with wicked eyes and long, lanky strides were a justifiable exception.

Violet tried another deep, calming breath. Most blondes hated blonde jokes, but she’d always liked them. She knew perfectly well how she came across to most men. A guy who thought he was dealing with a ditsy, witless blonde generally ran for the hills at the speed of light, or at the very least, considered her hands-off-and that suited Violet just fine.

It was just sometimes hard to maintain the ditsy, witless persona. For one thing, sometimes she actually felt ditless and witsy. Or witless and ditsy. Or…oh, hell.

That man had eyes bluer than a lake. She did much, much better with old, ugly men. And she did really great with children. Not that those attributes were particularly helping her now.

But that grip she’d needed was finally coming to her. Those long, meditative breaths always helped. “I have an idea,” she said to Cameron. “You’ve traveled a long way. You have to be hungry and tired-and I’m the middle of an Armageddon type of afternoon. Could you just…chill…for an hour or so? Feel free to walk around…or just put your feet up on my couch or on the front porch. I need to walk over to my Herb Haven, tell my employee what’s happening, finish up the problems I was in the middle of, get closed up for the day.”