Lavender Morning (Edilean 1)

“Yes. A waterfall and a lake. Icy cold and beautiful.” Luke turned around and kept walking.

“You know this place well, don’t you.”

“I spent a lot of time walking here when I was growing up. I think it’s what first made me interested in plants. I used to wander along the trails with a guide to wildflowers in my hand and try to learn the names of all the plants.”

“What’s this one?” she asked, bending down to a weedy-looking plant with red flowers.

“Penstemon—and that’s the last I’m doing of that. I’m not a tour guide.”

“No, you’re a gardener who I’m told doesn’t have to worry about money. You didn’t really take earnings from your model wife, did you?”

“What do you think?”

“That you’d live on the street before you did that.”

“You do know something about me, don’t you?”

“I’m learning,” she said.

“And what have you learned so far?” he asked.

He said it lightly, as though it didn’t matter, but Joce could see the way his shoulders tightened. “That if anyone wants anything from you they have to draw it out. You don’t just sit down and spill your guts to people.”

“Is that good or bad?” he asked.

“Good for me,” she said, “because I’m learning how to get ’round you to find out your secrets.”

He stopped walking and turned to look at her. “You think so, do you?”

“Oh, yeah. I already know everything there is to know about you. Except for a few small things, that is, like why you’ve never let me see the inside of your house, why you and Ramsey are so competitive, why you didn’t tell me you were married, and what you and your grandfather are really cooking up. Other than those things, I know everything.”

“And I know that you can nag a man to death to find out what you want to know,” he said, but she could hear the smile in his voice. When he turned off the trail, she followed him. They came to a small waterfall that fed into a stream that went into a lake. It was beautiful and peaceful and it felt as though no one else in the world had ever been there before, but Luke knew just where to put their packs in a little alcove behind some rocks.

“Been here often, have you?”

“A million times,” Luke said. “When I was a kid I came here to get away from my father’s expectations and my mother’s constant watchfulness.”

“You and Ingrid came here?”

“Never,” he said.

“Couldn’t find designer boots?”

“She couldn’t find anyone who wanted to be alone with her on a wilderness trail,” he said softly, looking at Jocelyn.

It was natural to slip into his arms and to share a kiss. His mouth came down on hers slowly and tentatively at first, then deeper. As his arms tightened on her and his body came closer, she knew that he wanted her. If it had been up to Jocelyn she would have made love there in that beautiful spot, but he pushed her away.

“I can’t,” he said.

“That’s not what your body says,” she said, her voice husky.

“No, I mean, I don’t feel that I have a right. Thi

s thing about the…the marriage. I have to straighten that out first. And us. I want us to know about each other. I want—”

“Not to make a mistake again,” she said.

He didn’t say anything, but she knew that’s what he meant. Minutes later, they were stretched out on the ground, the water before them, and he pulled the next part of Miss Edi’s story out of his pack. His grandfather had given it to him last night.