Wild Man Creek (Virgin River #14)(72)

She dreamed about what the sex would be like. They would surely come together like mating cyclones. She wanted him with all her heart. They seemed completely compatible.

But there was one glitch. He was married.

Now was a good time for Kelly to be away. It was to be a busy week in the Brazzi household. Luca’s children, who were either married or had been away at school, would all be at home and Luca would be completely unavailable. They wouldn’t even have a phone chat, much less a cooking session.

Kelly had heard all about Colin, but she’d kept Luca to herself. Kelly had never once mentioned his full name or the details of their professional friendship. Chances were good Jillian would have heard of him or even seen his name on the side of a deli container.

It wasn’t quite four in the afternoon when Kelly pulled up to the front of the Victorian. She parked and followed the drive around to the back where she thought she might find her sister—and she was right. She could see her prowling around a huge garden inside a five-foot cyclone fence with a large gate at each end. Kelly watched. Jillian would walk a few feet, crouch and examine a plant, pinch a bud or flower, stand to walk a few more feet, crouch again, and so on.

As she neared, Kelly saw that the garden flourished; some of the plants were growing tall, full and dark green. There were vines winding up parts of the fence and small trellises. Some plants were staked to hold them up, some had strong stalks, some were covered with porous cheesecloth, some were bushy. The rows were immaculate and the color rich.

“It actually looks like you know what you’re doing,” Kelly said.

Jillian jumped and whirled. “Kell!” Jillian ran down the row in her red rubber boots and cargo pants, out through the gate and threw herself on her sister, hugging her hard.

Kelly laughed and returned the hug. Then she held her sister away from her eyeing her gardening clothes. “Not exactly what I expected,” Kelly said, “but close. When was the last time you wore a bra or panty hose?”

“Panty hose—once. And a bra now and then. I have this sports thing on. It does the trick.”

Kelly just laughed. Then she turned full circle to take in the yard—things had certainly changed since she’d first seen it almost a year ago while out here on vacation with Jillian and their girlfriends. The house was beautifully groomed, for one thing—freshly painted and sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. There were two new aluminum storage sheds nestled between big trees and a road cut through the trees out back. Just then, she saw a young man on the road driving a golf cart toward them.

When he pulled up to Jillian and jumped out she said, “Denny, meet my sister, Kelly. Kelly, my assistant, Denny Cutler.”

Kelly put out her hand, but he just stared down at his. “Um,” he said, wiping it on his pant leg. “Sorry, I’m kinda dusty. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Kelly said with a laugh.

“Grab those flats off the bed, Denny,” Jillian said. “Jump in, Kell, and I’ll give you a tour. This is my garden-mobile.”

“This is quite the operation,” Kelly said as she climbed in beside her sister.

Jillian drove them through the trees to the back meadow. There were two freestanding greenhouses and just past them, someone had begun clearing another garden plot. “We put up these greenhouses a couple of months ago and are using lights and irrigation to start plants. We’ve been moving half of them into the outdoor garden and leaving half inside so we can monitor the difference in growth, gestation and quality. I have another shelter ready to put up when that plot is cleared, tilled and fertilized—but the new one is made of screen with retractable panels, and it’s very large. We might be trying it with smudge pots as the weather cools. Everything is experimental right now—but so far it’s working exactly as I’d hoped. We have some heartier early vegetables coming through and I’m cutting lettuce, pulling a few carrots and scallions, but the special heirloom starts are another month from appearing.”

Kelly gazed at her little sister in wonder. “Okay, I already know this, but tell me again how this all started.”

“I remembered being here last autumn with you and when I arrived here I just wanted to come over and see the back porch and garden, which was looking a little neglected. I was literally crying into the mud, crying over my losses in San Jose….”

“Kurt…?”

Jillian shook her head. “When you get down to it, it wasn’t about Kurt. I was upset over the demise of my career, my loss of innocence, missing my mentor—all the things I had put sixty to eighty hours a week into. I was so hurt and angry, and instinctively I started digging. Next thing I knew I was sitting at Jack’s bar having a glass of wine, talking about the stuff Nana used to grow and a guy at the bar asked me why I didn’t grow that stuff here. He said they grow pot year-round up here—using grow lights run on a generator. He said the special plant seeds I was talking about had to be available somewhere. I found them online, I ordered many varieties and I got moving.” She smiled. “I hired Denny so I could catch up with the planting season and I’m keeping him as long as I can.”

“And Colin?” she asked.

“Oh, I found him painting out back here. I was sitting up on the widow’s walk trying to figure out how to access this area through the thick trees when I noticed a guy had driven up here and was painting. He liked this meadow because it was large and there were no shadows from the trees. I clawed my way through to find out what he was doing here. And, little by little… Well, he’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”