Chapter Three
Hallie pushed her cart down the outdoor aisle of the nursery, tapping the skip button on the music app with her thumb. Next song. Next song. She’d gone through everything from Glass Animals to her nineties hip-hop mix and couldn’t seem to settle on anything today. After seeing Julian Vos again the afternoon before, she was caught between songs about unrequited crushes, letting go of the past, and hot tub orgies. In other words, she was a tad confused.
She stopped pushing the cart and stooped down to pick up a bag of potting soil, adding it to her cart with a grunt and continuing on. Oh, fifteen years later, Julian Vos was still gorgeous. Beyond gorgeous, really, with his ropey forearms and perfectly groomed black hair. Those same bourbon-brown eyes she remembered, in all their intensity and intelligence. She’d actually forgotten how much he towered over her five-foot-three-inch frame.
And that butt.
That butt had aged like a Cabernet. Full-bodied and—she assumed—delicious.
Neither Julian nor his backside had remembered her, however. It surprised Hallie how much him forgetting that night crushed her. Sure, she’d always carried a torch for him. But until yesterday, she wasn’t aware of exactly how bright it burned. Or how much it would suck to have it snuffed out by his foggy memory.
And his exact oppositeness.
Yes, he’d always been studious and structured. She should not have been surprised when he asked her to relocate the begonias. But apparently she’d created some idea of Julian Vos in her mind that wasn’t technically real. The man from her dreams who connected with her on a molecular level and could read her mind? He didn’t exist in reality. She’d built him up into a fantasy that would never play out. Had she been measuring men with the Julian Vos yardstick for fifteen years? Who could measure up to a figment of her imagination?
Although, some stubborn part of her brain refused to accept that he was flat-out stodgy with a side of arrogance. There was a reason she’d crushed so hard on him during freshman year of high school, right? Yes. As a senior, he’d been nothing short of brilliant. A shoo-in for valedictorian. A track-and-field star. A local celebrity, by virtue of his last name. But those weren’t the only qualities that had attracted Hallie.
No, on more than one occasion, she’d witnessed him being good.
At the one and only track meet she’d ever attended, he’d stopped running during a four-hundred-meter dash to help up an opponent who’d fallen and twisted his ankle, thus sacrificing his own opportunity to win. As she’d held her breath in the stands, he’d done it the same way she’d observed him doing everything else. With quiet intensity. Practical movements.
That was Julian’s way. He broke up fights with a simple line of logic. He’d have his head buried in a book while the senior girls swooned over him from a distance.
Hallie had traveled all over the West Coast by that point. On the road, traveling from gig to gig with her mother. She’d met thousands of strangers, and she’d never encountered anyone like Julian Vos. So at ease in his good looks and rich with character. Unless her fourteen-year-old mind had truly embellished the finer points of his personality? If she was asking herself that question, it was probably time to let the crush go.
Later tonight, she’d remove the bookmark of his YouTube lectures. She’d smooth out the dog-eared page containing his senior yearbook photo. In order to blot out the memory of their almost-kiss, she’d probably require hypnosis, but the recollection of his head dipping toward her, the fiery sky blazing all around them, had already begun receding at the edges. Her chest hurt over the loss of something that had been her companion for so long. The only constant besides her grandmother. But feeling stupid for nursing a crush on someone who didn’t even remember her?
Yeah, that stung a lot worse.
She knelt down and admired a flock of honeydew-green zinnias. No way she could pass them up. Later today—she couldn’t remember what time—she was landscaping the front yard of a summer home, preparing it for the arrival of the owners who lived in Los Angeles the rest of the year. They’d requested lots of unique colors—and that was an ask she didn’t mind in the slightest—
“Well, if it isn’t the talented Hallie Welch.”
The familiar voice brought Hallie to her feet, and she smiled warmly at the young man with ginger hair approaching her from the opposite direction. “Owen Stark. What on earth are you doing in the nursery buying flowers out from under me? It’s like you own a competing landscaping business or something.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard? So sorry you have to find out this way. I am your competition. We are mortal enemies.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Pistols at dawn, Stark!”
He slapped a hand across his chest. “I’ll alert my second.”
They broke into mutual laughter and traded places so they could see what the other had picked up. “Oooh, I’ll have to grab some of those succulents. Their popularity refuses to wane, doesn’t it? I like them for window boxes.”
“I’ve got a client requesting them along his walkway. White stone.”
“Low-maintenance special. Table for one.”
Owen chuckled and fell silent. Hallie gave him a smile on her way back to her own cart, trying not to notice the way he catalogued her features, the piercing blue of his eyes softening along with his expression. She liked Owen, a lot.
Surely a better match for Hallie didn’t exist anywhere in the world. On paper, at least. They were both gardeners. They could talk flora and fauna until they were blue in the face. He was kind, the same age, good-looking.
There was nothing not to like.
But she might as well admit that Owen Stark had fallen victim to the Julian Vos barometer. That and . . . Owen would fit into her life seamlessly. He’d make perfect sense in a way that was too perfect. A relationship with Owen would be natural. Expected. The person who coined the term “settling down” probably had this exact kind of partnership in mind. And settling down meant . . . this was it.
She’d be a gardener from St. Helena and would remain one for the rest of her life.
Did she want that? Her heart said yes. But could she trust that feeling?
When Hallie came to live with Rebecca, she had taken a deep breath for the first time ever, her grandmother’s routine grounding her. Giving her a firm place to settle her feet. To stop spinning like a top. Without Rebecca’s anchoring presence, though, she was picking up speed again. Whirling. Worrying she’d only belonged in St. Helena because of Rebecca and now . . .
Owen cleared his throat, alerting Hallie to the fact that she’d drifted.
“Sorry,” she muttered, attempting to focus on him. Consider him.
Maybe next time he asked her out, she would say yes. And she would wear a dress and perfume, hire a dog sitter, and take it seriously this time. She could see it was coming, too. Owen popped a tablet of gum into his mouth, chewed a moment, and exhaled at the ceiling. Oh, this was serious. He was going to go for a steak house.
Why had she left the dogs at home? They were always the perfect excuse to bolt.
“Hallie,” Owen started, red infusing his cheeks. “Since it’s Friday and all, I was wondering if you had plans for—”
Her phone rang.
She sucked in a thankful breath and snatched it up, frowning down at the screen. Unknown number. So what? She’d even take a telemarketer over agreeing to a steak house date and hours of personal conversation with Owen.
“Hello?” Hallie chirped into the phone.
“Hallie.”
Her stomach dropped to the ground like a sandbag. Julian Vos?
Julian was calling her?
“Yes. It’s me.” Did her voice sound unnatural? She couldn’t decipher her tone over the sudden babble of white noise in her ears. “How did you get my number?”
“I googled ‘Becca’s Blooms in Napa’ and there it was.”
“Oh right.” She wet her dry lips, searching desperately for something witty to say. “So important to have that internet presence.”
Nope. That wasn’t witty.
“Who is that?” Owen asked, not so quietly.
“Who is that?” Julian asked, too, after a beat.
Client, she mouthed to Owen, who gave her an understanding thumbs-up. To Julian, she said, “I’m at the nursery buying materials for a project later today. I ran into my friend Owen.”
“I see.”
Seconds ticked by.
She checked the phone to see if they’d gotten disconnected. “Are you still there?”
“Yes. Sorry.” He cleared his throat, but the sound was muffled, as if he’d briefly placed a hand over the receiver. “I’m distracted by the gopher holes in my yard.”
Her blood pressure spiked at the utterance of a gardener’s least favorite words. Except for maybe “weeds” or “crabgrass” or “do you take personal checks.” “Gopher holes?”
Owen winced with sympathy, turning away to peruse a plastic shelf of mini cactuses.
“Yes, at least three.” She could hear footsteps, as if he’d walked to the window to look out over the green expanse of lawn and the sun-drenched vineyard beyond. “One of them is right in the middle of the flowers you planted yesterday, which made me think you’d dealt with something of this nature before. Do you have a way of convincing gophers to move on? Or should I call pest control?”
“No need for that, I have a mixture I can use to . . .” The seal busted on her laughter. “Convince them.”
He made a considering sound. “You’re taking issue with my word choice?”
“Not at all. I’m picturing a formal negotiation. Once the contracts are signed, we’ll shake his little paw. He’ll pack his tiny suitcase and promise to write—”
“You’re very entertaining, Hallie.” Briefly, she heard a ticking, as if he’d lifted his watch closer to his face. “I’m sorry, I only have five minutes for this phone call. Are you able to make it over or should I just try and flush him out with the hose?”
“God, no. Don’t do that.” She cut a hand across her neck, even though he couldn’t see her. “You’re only softening the soil and making it easier for him to dig.”
Owen shot her a horrified glance over his shoulder. Amateur, he mouthed.
“I have a job this afternoon, but I can swing by afterward,” she said to Julian.
“At what time?”
“Whenever I finish.”
Julian’s breath released in her ear. “That’s extremely vague.”
How could it be so painfully obvious that someone was all wrong for her, yet his deep voice, and the very fact that he’d called her at all, was causing a mudslide in her stomach? It made little to no sense. Her lingering crush made her feel like a silly, naive teenager. While at the same time, the anticipation of seeing him again made Hallie almost light-headed.
So she would let herself go to the vineyard once more, even at the risk of extending this infatuation longer than it should have ever gone. But she wasn’t going to jump over hurdles for him. Oh no. At this point, her pride was on the line with this non-remembering fool.
“Vague is all I’ve got, I’m afraid.” She stared into the eye of an iris for moral support. “Take it or leave it.”
He was going to tell her to shove it. She convinced herself of that distinct possibility as the silence stretched. The Vos family had money coming out of their ears. They could find someone else to resolve their gopher issue at a moment’s notice. Julian didn’t necessarily need her.
“I’ll see you later, Hallie,” he sighed. “God knows when.”
“Why?” she blurted.
“Excuse me?”
Why couldn’t she just have said good-bye and hung up the phone like a regular person? Owen was looking at her strangely. As if maybe he realized this wasn’t a normal client call and was growing more curious by the moment. “Why do you want me there, specifically, for gopher negotiations? It obviously bothers you that I can’t give a formal time.”
“That’s a very straightforward question for someone so committed to being vague.”
“I’m not . . . committed to . . .” Was she committed to being vague? “Please just satisfy my curiosity.”
“Is your friend Owen still there?”
Was he? She glanced up, passing a tight smile to Owen, who was definitely attempting to eavesdrop. “Yes, he is. Why?”
“Just satisfying my curiosity.” She could almost hear the ticking of his jaw. Was he . . . annoyed at her being somewhere with another man? No. No way. That didn’t track—not even in the slightest. “Very well. Yes, I want you, specifically, to come back and intervene with the gopher. When you left yesterday, you said, ‘It was really nice to see you again,’ and the fact that I can’t remember how or where we met has shot my concentration to hell.”
“Oh.” Well. She hadn’t been expecting that. In fact, she’d been under the impression he was relieved to see her go and couldn’t care less about greetings and salutations. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was going to be such a big deal.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be. To most people.”
Hallie thought of the meticulous way he stacked his lecture notes. How precisely he rolled up his shirtsleeves. The way he couldn’t stop writing until the time ran out. “But you need things organized and tidy. Don’t you?”
He expelled a breath. “That’s right.”
That’s all this was. Julian didn’t want to see her again because of an attraction or because he enjoyed her company. He simply needed their acquaintance tied up in a neat little bow so he could go back to his manic typing sprees.
Maybe she needed their relationship, however casual, tied up, too.
The gopher wasn’t the only one who needed moving on.
“All right.” She swallowed the object in her throat. “Maybe I’ll tell you how we know each other later.”
“Vague.”
“Bye, Julian.”
When she hung up the phone, Owen gave her a questioning look. “That was a weird conversation,” he chuckled.
“Right?” She pushed her cart past him slowly. “Gophers put everyone on edge.”
Metal rattled behind Hallie, signaling that Owen had turned his cart around so they could walk in the same direction. Normally that wouldn’t bother her. Not at the nursery, anyway, where colorful flowers shot up out of the dirt everywhere she looked, acting as bright little buffers. But before the call from Julian, Owen had been on the verge of asking her out. And she’d been resigned to saying yes. Now, though? Now she hesitated. Once again, because of Julian Vos.
Man, she really needed to get Professor Forearms out of her head, once and for all. She wasn’t being fair to herself. Or to Owen, for that matter.
“Owen.” Hallie stopped the cart abruptly and turned, looking him right in the eye. Which seemed to stun him. “I know you want to ask me to dinner. On an actual date. And I want to say yes. But I need a little time.” Julian’s intense bourbon eyes blinked in her mind, but instead of stalling her speech, they gave her the impetus to push forward. “That’s asking a lot, considering how much space you’ve given me already. If you say no, I’ll understand.”
“I’m not going to say no.” He scrubbed at the back of his head. “Of course I’m not. You take your time.” A beat passed as he sobered. “I’m just asking you to take me seriously.”
His words hit her like stones. “I will,” she said, meaning it.