He frowned at her. He wasn’t the kind of man to accept setbacks or contradictory opinions.
“Because we don’t know what’s beneath all this,” she explained, knowing she wouldn’t have much opportunity to convince him. “It would be a crime to come in with heavy machinery. There could be a treasure trove destroyed in the process. Old household items that would belong in a museum, and heirloom plant strains that might be very hard to find now. Do you see these powdery silver-white patches on the prickly pear?”
“They look like damp erupting behind whitewash in a mildewed basement,” he said.
“They do, but take a bit of it and crush it in your fingers.”
He reached out and did so, then looked up at her in astonishment at the brilliant crimson red that had stained his skin. “That’s amazing. What is it?”
“Cochineal. Those white patches are colonies of living creatures—a kind of scale insect. They store the red pigment in their bodies. Before the Spanish arrived in Mexico, the Mixtec Indians farmed these insects on the cactus and used them to make dye. There were periods when it was almost as precious as gold. It was used as a food coloring, too, for a long time, in jams, medicines, candy.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“You’ve probably eaten it.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“This might sound strange,” Rowena went on slowly, “but I have a feeling that the whole garden could provide the same experience as you’ve just had with the cochineal. Nothing to get excited about at first glance, but if you take a closer look, if you approach with delicacy, you discover its magic. I’d hate to bring in a bulldozer, Mr. Radford—”
“Call me Ben,” he ordered. “I won’t need to tell you that again, I hope.”
“Ben,” she repeated, and that warning thunk hit her stomach again, more powerfully than ever. Why did she like the idea of calling him Ben? “Um, I hope you won’t. And, uh, Rowena, for me. Or Rowie.” Why had she added that? It was the nickname her sister called her by, and sometimes Mom and Dad. A client had no need to know it.
He was still looking at the crimson stain on his fingertips, and he had incredible hands—strong and lean and smooth. Sure hands, the way almost everything about him seemed sure.
Oh, except for that one very telling moment when he’d mentioned his divorce.
She could smell the aura of soap and coffee and clean male skin that hovered around him and it did something to her, quickened the blood in her veins and muddied her thoughts in a way that was unsettling but—like her outburst a few minutes ago—exhilaratingly new.
“We could lose some really valuable things,” she finished vaguely.
He nodded, instantly decisive. “No bulldozer. It’s a deal. So you’d use a team to clear the cactus by hand? Machetes and whatnot?”
“I’d be here myself the whole time, to oversee the work so that nothing important was damaged. If this place was mine, I’d let the design of the restored garden evolve over a period of some days as we began to discover what lay beneath. I wouldn’t plan it on paper in advance. It would be a unique, fascinating exercise.”
She ran her gaze over the mazelike expanse and felt a ridiculous itch to get started at once, like a kid in a candy store. Was that the curve of a stone well housing she could glimpse between the forests of cacti? Even if the well didn’t produce water, the old stone would make a dramatic accent with the right surroundings. She could see brilliant yellow flowers, too, but couldn’t make out what they were. It would be wonderful to work on this garden.
“Tell me more, Rowena,” Ben Radford invited her softly. “Make me see it. Paint it for me.”
“Oh, um…” she began awkwardly, and even when she relaxed and grew more fluent, she kept waiting for him to lose interest and signal that she’d said enough.
But he never did. Instead he stayed silent. He followed the gestures she made, nodded when she emphasized a point, smiled and even laughed with her once or twice when she invited him to picture an incident from a previous project. Like the time she’d briefly mistaken a late-twentieth-century lost toy for a Civil War belt buckle because she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She’d made an appointment to get contact lenses the next day.
She didn’t mind telling an anecdote against herself if it made a man laugh. Ben Radford’s laugh was deep and a little rusty, as if he didn’t use it often enough.
“I really think that’s about all I can tell you for the moment,” she finished, after several minutes.
Ben nodded slowly, and made up for his disdainful failure to glance in her direction earlier by studying her with a disconcerting intensity now. What was he looking at? The too-dreamy expression in her eyes? The way her smile wobbled when she felt doubtful about something she’d said? Or was he seeing something else? Had she gone way over the top just now? What did he see? How much was he judging her?
“That’s not what I envisaged when I decided to bring you in,” he said.
“You expected to start with a blank canvas, so to speak, and lay the whole thing out according to a plan on paper, right off the bat.”
“I guess I did.”
“I could do it that way,” she conceded slowly.
“But you’d rather not.”
“No, because it’s such a fabulous opportunity!” She clasped her hands together, then quickly separated them again. Her body language would say she was begging. “With what you’ve done to the house so far—that’s wonderful, by the way, such a great blend of modern comfort and warmth, and authentic historical references. I’d love to do the same with this yard. To stay true to the Hispanic and pre-Hispanic heritage, while developing a space that’s beautiful and usable and welcoming at the same time. You’d love it, too. I know you would.”
His smile was crooked and cynical this time. “You know I would? What if I said it doesn’t fit my idea of the place at all?”
She’d let her personal feelings show too clearly, and she’d assumed way too much about her prospective client. Putting on a blank, polite face, she told him, “Then we’ll do whatever you decide. You’re the client, Mr.—Ben. Or you would be,” she corrected herself quickly, “if you decided to contract me for the project.”
She didn’t think that he would. Their initial dealings with each other this morning had been too awkward, and he was the kind of man who made quick, incisive decisions that he didn’t rethink.
Even now, after they’d found some common ground, there was something in the air that she couldn’t put her finger on, a kind of tension that made her uncomfortable and which she wanted to escape from as soon as she could. Her therapist, Jeanette, would probably want her to identify the tension’s exact origin in their next session, but Rowena wasn’t convinced she should risk taking a closer look at it.
“Tell me why I’d love this idea of yours,” Ben said. “How can I know? Convince me. How do you know? You seemed pretty sure just now.”
“Because I saw what you’d done with the house,” she explained simply. “That couldn’t just have been the work of decorators. I could see one person’s unique vision there. I assume that person was you.”
“You’re right. It was me. I said no to half of what the interior designer wanted, not to mention—” But he stopped.
He narrowed his eyes, looked down at the tips of his fingers and rubbed them together almost without seeing them. Was he still thinking of the picture Rowena had painted? Or was this an absentminded interest in the brilliant color of the dye that stained his skin.
“My wife thinks this whole idea is insane,” he said abruptly. Then he swore under his breath and muttered, “I have to start remembering