Chapter Four
The earthy smell hit first. Then, as his eyes focused through the light, rows of neatly aligned planters, growing … daisies?
He furrowed his brow, stepped through the door and, this time, didn’t insist on holding it for her, as she closed and sealed it. He was out of his league in here. This was what she did now instead of play music? This was the opposite of a starlet chasing Nashville. This was a wallflower hiding.
He looked over at her, as she took an iPad off the wall, tapped in a passcode, and began swiping through screens. Then turned it and held it out to him to see; a dose of sheepishness on her face and an equal amount of pride.
A jumble of words and images flashed out at him.
Whoa … that was a lot. But she looked so nervous, sharing something special to her with him, he didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no way he could read all of that so fast. He leaned in and pretended to decipher instead, but his heart was racing.
He should leave her to her life and get his rocks off somewhere else tonight. She wasn’t a good-time girl but was a prize he wasn’t worthy of winning.
“They look like daisies.”
“That’s because they are. They’re an extinct ancestor to the aphanostephus ramosissimus.”
“Aphanstawhat?”
She laughed. “It’s the fancy name for doze daisies, a kind of wild daisy.”
“Why you gotta keep ’em locked up? Where no one can see ’em bloom?” As if she were one of them, hiding her talent from the world.
She opened an app, walked down the rubberized flooring, inspecting, a reverent softness on her face as she squatted and dipped her head to look beneath a leaf.
“These plants went extinct as development and ranching redefined the landscape. But a three-hundred-year-old expedition by Spanish explorers collecting specimens that just so happened to be in their reproductive phase saw them brought to Europe. Eventually they were donated to an herbarium in New York. And they were still viable, as it turns out.”
“So, you’re like a botanist or something?”
“Yeah. But I study fossilized flora and run an experimental paleobotany program.”
His pulse ratcheted up as she kept explaining, kept making it clear that she was much better than a farm foreman and shop mechanic and maybe wouldn’t even be interested in his proposition for her, if she was already building an accomplished career.
“I’m growing these specifically because their embryos and pollen are almost identical to a roughly sixty-five-million-year-old specimen I first learned about when I was seven.”
“Seven?”
She laughed, but then that wistful quietude that had exuded from her from the moment he’d spotted her, silenced her again.
“C’mon. I wanna know all about you,” he said softly. “What inspires you. What’s kept you hidden from me all this time I’ve lived out here.” Why I can’t seem to walk away.
She glanced at him as if wondering if she could trust him.
Naw, baby, you shouldn’t. He’d never hurt a girl, but he’d earned the notches on his bedpost and, if he were honest, that was all tonight had first been about, too, until she’d resisted his charm and picked up that banjo and then, she’d become much more than a notch.
She’d become a … possibility. Maybe even a reason.
She motioned to a rolling case like a librarian’s book return cart. Pulled out a textbook from it and opened it to a page that seemed to simply fall open due to having been looked at so much.
She held the book out to him. Shit, all one side of the page, nothing but tiny columns of text. He loosened the neck on the sterile suit to get a deeper breath, when she pointed to the photographs on the opposite page.
The top photograph, a landscape he’d hiked lots of times in the nearby state park. And the one beneath it, a close-up of a massive … limestone outcrop?
“I’m lookin’ at rocks, Flower Girl.” McClintock leveled a teasing smirk at her to offset the nerves chewing through him to bolt, or to grab her and sink into her body and mind and distract them both.
“A-plus, Trouble,” she teased back, and he loved it, because she didn’t tease easily. A guy had to earn it. “But no, really, see them?” She stepped beside him, arm brushing his chest, and he placed a hand on her shoulder.
She traced the picture with a slender, gloved finger.
He inspected more closely in the muted red light, falling silent.
His eyes widened. “Are those … fossils?”
She glanced up at him, so close. She bit that lip again, this girl so uncertain, and nodded, then traced her finger over another one. “Ancient ammonite imprint…” Kept tracing. “Part of a trilobite…” She continued tracing, telling, showing, until her finger stopped on one more. “Ancient daisies.”
“Daisy?” He inspected her profile now. Eyed that shoulder where her tattoo was hidden.
“Where it all began.” She shrugged, gesturing around at the growing flowers.
“Naw, girl. You ain’t done now. You gotta give me more to go on.”
She laughed easily again, and damn, he loved that relaxed sound, after working so hard to coax song out of her and spiriting her into the night like lovers and not perfect strangers.
“I’ve lived here my whole life. My folks didn’t have much money, and my momma didn’t let me out much. I spent a lot of time in the fields behind our house when my momma wasn’t dolling me up and…” She cleared her throat.
“Wasn’t what—”
“Lots of wild blackfoot daisies grew in these fields, and I used to pick bouquets or weave wreaths and wear ’em like crowns playin’ make-believe.
But then my second-grade class went on a field trip there, to the state park.
” She tapped the pictures. “I was so excited. It was the first time I’d gone anywhere besides out west with my daddy in the summers to the oil fields to stay at my uncle’s cabin.
I loved his cabin. This huge window, old fireplace.
Felt like home in ways this place never will. ”
He studied her, his lust subdued but his desire … fuck, it was ratcheting up, to understand why she’d felt so lost, because he knew what that was like. He knew.
“The uncle who taught you how to pick?”
She smiled warmly, nodding. “Uncle Johnny, like a big teddy bear with a big ol’ beard …
anyway, the park ranger showed us these—” She pointed at the fossils.
“And it just … blew my mind, that somethin’ so old, so pretty, could still be blooming today, all over our back pastures, and that even though I’d been lonely playing out there, I’d found them.
I didn’t think much of it until years later, when I learned hard and fast that music wasn’t gonna be my savior, and maybe I was better off—” She laughed, clearing her throat.
And he knew right then. She still loved music. She was just spooked.
“Ha, dramatic much … sorry. I’ve, uh, never said that before.
” She slid her book back onto the cart, a nervous tremor to her words.
“The greenhouse is controlled to maintain the project’s integrity and protect it from cross contamination with native species and potentially disrupt the ecosystem and—”
He touched her chin, turning her back to him. “What did save you, then?”
Because he sure as hell wanted to know if it would save him, too.
Music hadn’t been his savior, either, and yet, he would forever be entangled with this drive to chase the dream, thanks to his grandma feeding his insatiable desire for it.
Even if his band never made another penny, he’d never be able to quit music.
“When you felt so lost, you wanted to give up trying? What saved you, Flower Girl?”
Her eyes misted as she frantically blinked to clear them. He’d struck a chord.
“Daisy,” she finally whispered.
“You love these, don’t you?”
She nodded. “They’re my favorite flower. They’re pretty and sweet. And resilient. They don’t make a fool of me.”
His pulse spiked protectively. Because in this moment, he knew. Music had. And maybe that was why she’d refused his first attempts to lure her on stage. I’m done chasing boys in bands.
No. Music hadn’t made a fool of her. A guy had.
Don’t get in too deep. Don’t ask. Girls like her don’t want a guy like you.
“It’s silly, I know,” she continued, eyes fluttering downcast, and yet, every pulse in his body was urging him to do the wrong thing.
Take something as simple as, will you join my band? and make it messy and complicated.
“Come ’ere.” He pulled her to him, the two of them in hairnets and sterile jumpsuits and gloves like a futuristic dating show. “It ain’t silly. I think it’s beautiful. You poured yourself into this, and look at what you’ve accomplished.”
Her gaze snapped up as he looked reverently upon her heart-shaped cheeks, reaching out to drag a latex finger down them. Her eyes glistening. Aw, damn, he’d made her cry. He nestled her to his pectorals, draping his arms around her shoulders.
“Didn’t mean to make you emotional.”
“You didn’t.”
“Then why the tears, Flower Girl?”
“I just—Guys think it’s a waste of time,” she murmured against his chest.
He held her tighter. Pressed his lips to the top of her bonnet.
Guys? No, a guy had convinced her she was lame. He might suck at reading, but it only made him an expert at reading between lines. Who the fuck had twisted this girl’s heart up so bad that she didn’t believe this very room was something no one else had the grit or the brains to accomplish?
He brushed his thumb across her lips, pushing them out of shape and basking in their softness.
He pressed a soft kiss where he touched.
Careful, so as not to spook this guarded girl, when she kissed him back.
Softly at first, then more fervently. He exhaled and met her fervor, felt his blood rush to have a tendril of her trust. So much for leaving her be and he bore down, peppermint, lilac.
Felt her strained exhale as her fingers clenched into his jumpsuit, wanting to relax for him.