Galahad in Jeans (Louisiana Knights Book 2) (22 page)

“Using it should be good for it, as long as you wear your brace most of the time.”

She sent him a teasing look over her shoulder. “Yes, doctor.”

His smile mirrored hers, though it faded after a second. “You have a minute this morning? There’s something I’d like to show you.”

She had all the time in the world, since she only had to exchange the jeans and light blouse she wore now for the corset and hooped skirts of her costume for the house tour that would start in a couple of hours. “It wouldn’t be a replacement for my car, would it?”

“Not today. Tomorrow, maybe, when there’s no tour, so we have more time. Though I got you this.” He pulled a new cell phone from his back pocket and held it out to her.

“How did you do that?” It was a newer and better model than the one she had before, though the same brand. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Folks at the local office found you in their system. You have the same number, same plan.”

“That was nice of them.” Not that she was surprised. She’d grown used to the idea of people going out of their way for Beau, just as he went out of his way for them.

She thumbed the phone open, noting that she still had no missed calls, no text messages from Trevor. Odd, in light of the article she’d sent. She should probably call him, but was in too good a mood this morning to be brought down.

“So where are we going?” she asked as she clicked off the phone and slipped it into her back pocket.

“Eat up, and I’ll show you.”

Their destination was the greenhouse where his special cultivars were housed. It was cool and bright inside, though the exhaust fans hummed in the ceiling. Carla breathed in the smells of rich earth and green growing things while looking over the neat raised benches with their lush green foliage marked here and there by long, bullet-like buds and the occasional flower.

“Why are some blooming and some not?” she asked as Beau closed the door behind them and came to stand beside her.

“Different parentage, different bloom times, which means different pollination times. Then some were planted out on different days.”

“Planted out?”

“Moved from the germination trays when small, not much bigger than a blade of grass, and planted in pots.”

“You mean by hand, every one of these?”

Amusement shone in his eyes. “Every single one. Some are transferred to the field when they’re big enough, but those from special crosses wind up in this house. But what I wanted to show you is over here.”

The plant was in a bench halfway down the house, one with a bloom large enough to be seen well before they stopped beside it. It was the palest of pinks, with diamond-dusted semi-double petals that spread wide in a froth of ruffles edged with what appeared to be yellow-gold lace. Nestled deep inside was a pure green heart that held a delicate but unmistakable perfume.

“It’s perfectly lovely, Beau,” she said in hushed tones. “It almost reminds me of—”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Reaching into his pocket, Beau took out a small, folding knife and opened the blade. With a quick move, he sliced the flower from the plant and put the knife away again before handing the stem to Carla.

Dangling from it was a white plastic tag. Curious, she flipped the side with writing toward her.

Carla’s Ball Gown.

He thought, as she did, that the daylily looked like a miniature version of the hooped ball gown she’d worn the night before. For some reason, the idea brought the rise of tears. She could feel them pressing against the back of her nose, threatening to fill her eyes.

“Oh, Beau. I’m honored, truly.” She touched a fingertip to one petal edge, a move that revealed several small green cylinders hidden under the huge bloom. “But the stem had more buds. It was going to bloom again.”

“Doesn’t matter, the plant will put up other bloom stems.”

She met his gaze for a long, searching moment, accepting that sacrifice, before lifting the flower to inhale its ethereal scent. “Will it be expensive?”

He looked away toward the fields beyond the glass walls, as if a little embarrassed. “I don’t think I’ll sell it, not this one.”

“You’ll keep it for hybridizing then?” she suggested, remembering a little of what he’d told her before. It was a disappointment, though she could hardly blame him. She only had a sudden desperate longing to own this daylily that reminded him, in some small way, of her.

He dipped his head in courteous assent. “The crosses from it should be stunning.”

The mood between them had turned a little strained. In an effort to clear it, she asked, “How do you do that, cross two daylilies? Is it hard?”

“Nothing could be easier.” His voice turned lighter, as if he was glad to have something else to talk about. He looked around a second then reached for a nearby flower that was pale yellow with dark red, arrow-shaped markings in the middle zone of each petal so its eye appeared almost braided. With a quick twist of his wrist, he broke off a few long pieces in the middle and turned back to her. “Say we wanted to make a red eye for your daylily.”

“Mine?”

“Well, the one you have there that’s named for you,” he said, before glancing past her shoulder. “What I have here are stamens with pollen on them. See the yellow-gold powder? In the garden, bees and other insects crawl over the pollen. It’s a bit sticky, so clings to their bodies. When they fly to the next daylily, they rub over the pistil that stands up right here, in the heart of your flower. The pollen enters, descends, and pollinates the flower. In a day or two, it starts to form a seed pod. Eventually the seeds ripen and are then ready for planting. Make sense?”

“I think so,” she said. “But each flower only lives for a single day, right? That means they only have a short time for this to happen before they die.”

“One day, that’s all.” He brushed the back of his hand over his forehead as if it was growing warmer under the greenhouse glass. Maybe it was, at that.

“Anyway, in the greenhouse, or in the field if I notice a plant I like, pollination is more deliberate. I take stamens, like these, from another plant that’s a good match. I then hold the pistil of the first plant in a gentle grasp while I rub the stamen back and forth over the right spot until I think pollination has taken place. If all goes well, the result is—magic.”

Something in the timbre of his voice made her brain go a little haywire, so it almost seemed he was speaking of something other than propagation among daylilies. She had to swallow before she could speak. “And the result will be a pale pink flower with—what? A red eye?”

“On some plants, yes. But others may be pink with a green eye like the mother plant or red like the—the daddy. Then some might be red with a green eye and gold edge.”

“That sounds pretty.”

He looked at her, the warmth deep in his eyes far more affecting than the temperature in the greenhouse. “Yeah, they’ll all be gorgeous, no matter what.”

Carla was unable to look away from him as the mental image of gentle rubbing and careful pollination made heat and moisture pool below her waist. If she and Beau had children, would some have hazel-green eyes and some blue? Would they be blond or would their hair have more reddish highlights in the sun? Would they grow strong and tall, and be prolific?

How long they might have stood there, communicating on a silent, molecular level that had more to do with human biology than plant pollination, was hard to say. They were interrupted by the protesting squeak of the greenhouse door, as if someone jerked it too hard.

“Huh. So here you are. The woman up at the house told me you two were out here somewhere, but you’ve been hard to find.”

That grating, high-pitched voice was unmistakable. No wonder Trevor hadn’t called her; he’d been on his way.

He approached at a fast walk, arms swinging, black wing-tips grating sharply in the gravel of the walkway. With his custom gray and black suit, Windsor tie and supercilious curl to his upper lip, he was as out of place as a penguin at a luau.

Anger and chagrin at his showing up uninvited and unwanted, also disappointment at the interruption of something that seemed important, made her voice stiff when she spoke.

“Beau, this is Trevor Crandall, editor-in-chief of
South of Normal Magazine
. Trevor, allow me to present Robert Galahad Beauregard Benedict
.”

“My, how formal,” Trevor said. For an instant, it appeared he might ignore the hand Beau offered in greeting, but then he reached out and clamped down on it.

Carla saw Beau lift an eyebrow a fraction, but there was no other sign he felt her boss’s attempt to crush the bones of his hand. He simply held his grip firm while meeting Trevor’s hot gaze.

It was impossible not to compare the two men as they faced off against each other. Suddenly Carla felt sorry for Trevor. He was clearly getting older, his carbon-black hair thinning, inching back from his forehead, and his waistline expanding. Though almost as tall as Beau, he looked shorter because of stooped shoulders and lack of muscle tone. He was clearly outmanned in the strength department, too, for his face grew redder every second he held on to Beau’s hand. His colorless gray eyes turned murderous and a line of perspiration appeared above his narrow mustache.

If he’d thought to intimidate Beau, he learned his mistake. The quiet confidence of her perfect southern gentleman was unshakable. It came not from a show of power but from being comfortable in his own skin, in who and what he was and where he had been brought up.

Her perfect southern gentleman?

A corner of Trevor’s mouth twitched and he released his hold, almost throwing Beau’s hand away from him. “Nice to meet you.” His tone of voice said the sentiment was an outright lie.

Beau tipped his head in a truncated bow, his gaze stern. “The same to you.”

That greeting, so lacking in warmth and welcome, was the nearest thing to an insult. Trevor might not realize it, but Carla had to press her lips together to control her amused recognition. It still quivered in her voice when she turned to the editor-in-chief. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you get the profile I sent?”

“I got it,” Trevor said. “Now that you’re done here, it’s time you got back to the magazine where you belong. I’ve come to take you home.”

“I can’t go yet. I have to see about my car. Besides, I still have the vacations days added to this assignment.”

“They’re canceled. Get packed and let’s get out of here.”

Beau stirred and the glint of blue steel appeared in his eyes. “I believe you heard the lady’s answer.”

“Butt out. This is between me and Carla.” Trevor shot him a look of loathing. “If you were the gentleman everybody claims, you’d allow us the privacy to work it out.”

“If you were a gentleman of any kind,” Beau answered, “you’d listen to what she’s saying.”

“Now see here, you dumb—”

“Trevor!” Carla snapped. Turning to Beau, she put a hand on the rigid muscles of his arm. “Please. Just give us a minute. It will be all right.”

He met her eyes, his own dark blue and searching. He didn’t like it; that much was clear. Still her plea weighed with him. He gave a hard nod before turning away. “I’ll be outside.”

She watched him go, his long strides covering ground, footsteps crunching on the gravel path, while her chest ached as if a hand was squeezing her heart. The door creaked behind him. The greenhouse was quiet.

“So that’s the way it is,” Trevor said in sneering disdain.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The assignment is done and was sent in on time. I have every intention of returning to Baltimore when I’ve settled things about the flood damage to my car. Why you felt you had to come down here is more than I can see.”

“I was worried about you. You got yourself hurt, kept running into these weird accidents.”

His expression seemed more incensed than concerned, she thought. “Things happen. And there’s nothing weird about a flooded road after days of rain.”

“I guess getting involved with this hayseed was an accident, too.”

She’d once thought of Beau that way, too. Remembering it made her cringe. “We aren’t involved, not in the way you mean.”

“How then? What did he do to make you see him as some cross between a saint and a real life knight in armor—Sir Freaking Galahad? Did he sweet talk you in that ridiculous honeysuckle and molasses drawl? Or was it something else?”

“Don’t be more crude than you can help. Though it may be beyond your cynical mind to comprehend, there are good people in this world.”

“Oh, right, and how good would that be? Moaning good? Screaming good? Oh-baby-do-me-harder good? How many times did he have to make you come before you saw things his way?”

That he could smear her time spent at Windwood with his nasty accusations made her sick to her stomach. The words that boiled up from inside her had been a long time coming, but she could no longer hold them back.

“You are a sick, deluded man, Trevor,” she said, her eyes as she met his incredulous stare far steadier than her voice. “I have no idea why you think you can say whatever you like and get away with it, but you’re wrong. You’re also badly mistaken if you think I’d go anywhere at all with you. You can take yourself back to Baltimore because I’m staying here. I’m staying until I’m ready to leave, and there’s nothing you can do about it. More than that, you’ve had the last article I’ll ever write for
South of Normal Magazine,
because I quit.”

“Don’t say that,” he warned in a growl. “We had something going.”

“Wrong. Whatever you thought we had was all in your head.”

His eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t. You liked me until you came down here.”

Was that ego talking, or had he really convinced himself she was attracted to him?

It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t let it.

“I tolerated you, Trevor, because I needed the job like rest of the women in the office. I was never going to bed with you, no matter what kind of bait you dangled in front of me.”

He spread his feet, his upper lip lifting in a belligerent smirk. “You can’t quit. I won’t let you.”

“Watch me,” she said with the lift of her chin. “Or better yet, just go. Go away and leave me alone.”