Love in the Vineyard (Tavonesi #7)(19)

He waved his hand through the cool morning air. “Imagine how many conversations might be taking place all around us.”

Evidently he wasn’t the only fascinating member of his large family.

“I do think we can hear them. If we listen. Really listen.” She knelt in front of a shrub she didn’t recognize and fingered the soft hairs on the leaves. “Sometimes I think I speak their language better than my own.”

She’d never admitted her feelings to anyone. And now she was the one sounding like a member of the lunatic fringe.

He crouched beside her. The buff-colored pants he wore hugged his thighs. He had legs like an athlete. Maybe he was one.

The corners of his mouth lifted in a playful grin. “Maybe they’re eavesdropping on us.”

Even through the rich aroma of the plants around them, she could detect the scent that was distinctly his. The mélange of spices and citrus and maleness wound into her senses with the same force it had the night of the party.

He ran his fingers along a lower branch on the shrub. “Amber once told me that plants have genes that use signals similar to the ones we use to relay sensory information through the body.”

Natasha pulled her hand back from the plant. The sensory signals flooding her were clear enough without adding a plant’s messages to them. Just being around Adrian shot energy through her.

Desire.

She hoped the perfume makers were wrong, hoped that desire didn’t really have a perceptible scent. If it did, she was in trouble.

He pressed one knee to the ground and retrieved the brochure from his back pocket. He opened it to a small map and pointed to the paths marked in blue.

“There’s a Woodland Garden and a Chinese Heritage Rose Garden in this section. Do you have a preference?”

How long had it been since someone had cared about her preferences?

“Let’s just wander,” she said as she stood.

To her relief he tucked the brochure back into his pocket as they started up the path.

The garden had been minimally pruned, allowing plants to grow into one another. It was the closest thing to wilderness she’d experienced except on TV. Bliss flooded her as they walked deeper into a wooded area canopied with tall trees. Birdsong mingled with the sound of their footsteps on the gently sloping path. Magnolias stretched high above them, and with every gentle breeze, flowering quince blossoms showered down on them like confetti. People spoke of spring fever, and she’d never really known what they’d meant. But she felt it now, felt the rising energy of new life coursing in her.

And was she dropping into fantasy or did she really feel a strange connection to the mysterious man who walked beside her?

They reached a bench in front of a pond filled with water lilies. A huge climbing rose with deep pink blooms arched over a rock wall off to one side.

Her heart clenched as he pulled the brochure from his pocket.

“That’s Rosa chinensis Spontanea. It says here that it’s a key parent of modern roses. Once thought to have been extinct,” he read smoothly, “it was reintroduced in the 1980s.”

“I think all roses originally came from China,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t hand her the dreaded booklet. “I do love roses. Their colors, their transporting scents.”

He sat on the bench and draped his arm across the back of the curved wood. “I was surprised to discover such a place around here.”

Evidently he was new to the area too. Or maybe he was simply visiting. Suddenly she had a nearly uncontrollable urge to find out more about him. But then there’d be the inevitable questions about her life in return. She’d just have to stick to her rules.

She sat at the far end of the bench, barely out of reach of his fingertips. He drew his arm away and leafed through the brochure again.

“This place was a pile of rubble in 1968. The woman who bought this land first planted the vineyards we passed. And then she traveled to China and collected all the starts and seeds for this garden for twenty years. Imagine.”

Her chest tightened when he handed her the brochure.

She turned several pages and looked at the pictures. And miracle of miracles, she could read a couple of the captions. “Twenty expeditions,” she read. “That’s quite a dream.”

“I wonder why she loved China so?” Adrian pointed to the brochure. “Does it say anything about that?”

She turned her gaze back to the pages, and the words began to wiggle. It’d be only moments before the whole thing was one big blur. She stood and handed the booklet back to him.

“I’d have to squint to read the small print. You have a look.”

He flipped through the pages, hunting for information. She envied the ease with which he could so quickly scan the tightly packed paragraphs.

“I find these sorts of guidebooks truly frustrating,” he said as he folded it and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket.

Not as frustrating as she did, she wanted to say.

“They never tell you the backstory, what motivated a person to pursue such a near-impossible feat.”

“Perhaps it was her dream,” Natasha said.

He crossed his arms and stretched out his long legs and surveyed the blooming plants covering the hillside. “I trust the power of dreams. I always have.”

She didn’t. Not anymore.

“Do you?”