Free To Catch a Camden by Victoria Pade

that would melt in the greenhouse heat, so she hadn’t.
    It was not how she wanted to be seen by him, and a wave of self-consciousness struck her.
    “I came to see if I could take you to lunch.”
    “I can’t go anywhere with you dressed like that and me like this!” she blurted out.
    He looked her up and down and grinned. “I don’t know about me, but you’re kind of adorable. You just look summery—what’s wrong with that? We’ll go someplace casual, with a patio where we can eat al fresco.”
    From behind the Echinacea, Jeanine said, “Go, Gia.”
    She had brought a shirt to put on over the tank top to go home....
    But that wasn’t going to upgrade her look much.
    “Come on,” Derek urged. “Get me out of this heat—I wanted to talk to you about the Bronsons.”
    So he hadn’t come for her.
    Gia knew it was stupid, but that disappointed her, too.
    “If you can’t make it tomorrow just say it—”
    “That’s not what I want to talk about—I’ll be there tomorrow. But that’s part of what I need to go over with you.”
    “It’s time for lunch anyway, you might as well,” Jeanine contributed.
    Gia knew that Derek had to be more and more uncomfortable in the greenhouse heat, and since he just wanted to talk about the Bronsons, why should she care what she was wearing? So she gave in. “Okay, but nothing fancy—there’s a sandwich place down the street with a few tables outside. Maybe we could just do that.”
    “Nothing fancy, sandwiches are fine,” he agreed.
    “I have a shirt I can put on. Let’s go out back here,” she said, leading him to a rear door and ushering him to the outdoor gardens.
    “There’s more out here?”
    “And more greenhouses, too,” Gia told him, pointing to the other two built around the perimeters of the outdoor garden.
    “Greenhouses to grow in year-round, this garden to grow in the summer months, huh?”
    “Right. We’re watching for predictions of the first frost—we’ll harvest just before that happens and then close these gardens down for winter. But right now—” She bent down and said to the pale purple flowers, “You’re beautiful, aren’t you?”
    “You talk to your plants....”
    “They’re living things,” she said.
    “That smell like—”
    “It’s thyme. We use it in antiseptic and antifungal creams, and in cough medicine. It’s good for bronchial infections. The leaves can be made into a tea, too.”
    “Also good in food,” he supplied.
    “Also good in food,” she confirmed.
    “So you grow all this?” he asked as Gia led him along the path through the plants and into the main building.
    “We do. They’re our babies, we plant them and nurse them along, then harvest and turn them over to production where some of them are ground and put into capsules or tablets, or pressed for their oils, or whatever can be done with them.”
    “And this stuff works like medicine?” he asked skeptically.
    “This stuff has been around longer than contemporary medicine. It’s what people used before there were chemicals. Sometimes the effects are more subtle or they take a little while to build up before they work, but rather than take chemicals to get rid of heartburn, give me gum or a peppermint leaf to chew, or an orange to eat, or a pill that doesn’t have anything in it but orange oil.”
    “And those things work?”
    “You’ll never know until you try them,” she challenged as they went into her small office. “Sometimes a spoonful of vinegar works, too.”
    “So you’re anti–contemporary medicine?” he asked.
    “No. But I’ll always try something natural before I’ll go the other route,” she said as she took the tailored white blouse draped on her desk chair and put it on, buttoning it over her tank top. “And there are a lot of things that work as preventatives, too. Like the gingko in the greenhouse—that’s good for the brain and the memory,” she said, pointing to her head. “I take it every day.”
    He