silvery eyes, that sexy jaw stubble and heady masculine scent. He sure packed a powerful punch of pheromones.
Too bad she’d never see the man again.
“Are you okay?” Emma was asking.
“Oh yeah. Fine. I just need some coffee. I’ll do some work on the new plantings, then later I’m going to drive down to Fairview Court and check things out, maybe move a couple of boxes down. Mind if I borrow a truck?”
“It’s pointless to argue with you, I suppose.”
“It is. My mind’s made up.”
“Then I’ll just argue with these chickens instead. They’re more reasonable.”
Emma turned back to her flock. Kate headed for the farmhouse, which had been built in the early days of Lost Harbor’s existence. Everywhere she looked, there was a piece of antique equipment—an old-fashioned clothes wringer or an ironwork boot scraper. It was part of the charm of the place, and about as far from Kate’s LA condo as could be.
Her little guest room had an enamel bowl and water pitcher, along with an aluminum lidded chamber pot.
Cute, but she drew the line at chamber pots.
After a lengthy shower, she filled an insulated thermos with coffee and wandered down to the peony fields. Emma had organized the plots according to their harvest time and the color of the cultivars, from the gorgeous deep pink of the Edulis Superba to the much-in-demand coral of the Coral Sunset.
The Alaska peony industry existed only because it was one of the few places in the world where peonies bloomed from July to as late as September. Since Alaska thawed so much later than anywhere else with appropriate growing conditions, Alaska peonies bloomed after everyone else’s had already gone by.
So if you were a summer bride who wanted fresh peonies for your wedding, your only option in the entire world was one of the peony farms in Alaska.
Kate knew that most people thought of salmon or king crab or goldmining when they thought about Alaskan industries. But peony farms did pretty well too. Emma spent most of the year protecting, weeding, and irrigating the bushes, then went through an insanely busy few weeks of harvest in the summer. Petal to the Metal had several huge walk-in coolers where they stored the stems before they were shipped out.
Right now, in late April, the big task was scouting for botrytis, a gray mold that caused cankers to form on the peony stems. Every canker had to be cut out with a knife—which made it the perfect job for Emma’s afterschool worker, a teenage girl named S.G., who’d arrived in Lost Harbor with a hunting knife and clothes made from animal hides.
Even in a town full of eccentrics, the girl stood out because of her mysterious origins. S.G. stood for Spruce Grouse, a name she’d chosen herself because she didn’t know her real name. She’d been raised in Lost Souls Wilderness by a trapper who refused to say where he’d found her.
Kate spotted her working a row of Edulis Superba. She wore a “botrytis bag” around her neck to stash the scraps of mold in. With her lower lip between her teeth, she was carefully carving a canker from a stem.
“Morning, Kiddo,” Kate greeted the girl. “Getting in a couple hours before school?”
S.G. shrugged. “School’s boring today. I don’t want to go.”
“Oh no. You’re not skipping school for this job. That’s one of the terms and conditions of your employment, remember?”
She winced at her own legalese. Sometimes she forgot to phrase things like a regular person.
“But Kate, it’s really seriously very boring today. There’s a job fair. And I already have a job.” She popped the piece of diseased stem in her bag, then used a bottle of alcohol to disinfect her blade. It was very important not to spread the botrytis through the crop.
Kate squatted next to her. In her overalls and mud boots, her pale hair in two braids, S.G. looked like any other Lost Harbor kid, but she’d been through so much. After running away from the trapper, she’d hidden out in the local firehouse for weeks. She’d used their shower, filched food from their refrigerator, and spied on the firefighters.
Firefighters…that reminded her of Darius. That man had a pesky way of popping into her thoughts at random moments. She wondered where he was now. Probably on his way back to Oregon with the band.
“Kate?” She started. S.G. was frowning at her, and she realized she’d completely zoned out thinking about Darius.
“Sorry. Job fair. It’s a good thing. You might want to