Page 7 of Tributary

CHAPTER SIX

Asa

DIANA CRAWFORD FRESH from sleep is a shockingly alluring sight. I don’t often see women in the morning. The ones who stick around for coffee seem to roll out of bed in full makeup and pristine clothes. But Diana just looks at home in her skin, like yesterday. Her long hair is pulled up in a messy bun, and she makes her way to her parents’ kitchen in wool socks and leggings that display her toned legs and leave me adjusting my morning wood inside my khakis. She pads around in an oversized flannel shirt that must have belonged to one of her brothers, and she doesn’t even appear to notice me as she privately sips her coffee, eyes closed, enjoying the sensation of the warm liquid.

I’m not sure what I find so arousing about watching a woman ignore me to drink coffee, but I feel drawn to her and her short temper, quick tongue. I can’t recall ever feeling drawn to a particular woman before. Generally, I’m game for whoever will agree to roll around with no strings attached. My father impressed upon me from a young age that relationships would get in the way of my business ambitions. Above all else, he taught me to nurture the family company. Of course, that was before he retired and stepped down as president and CEO of Wexler Holdings. Now he and my mother won’t shut the hell up about me giving them grandchildren.

Diana Crawford doesn’t make me think about grandchildren, though. She makes me think of a jungle cat, cautious and sharp, watchful and lithe.

“You’re staring.”

Her voice snaps me back to attention, where I’m leaning on the counter, indeed staring at her as she finishes her coffee. “Sorry,” I mutter and shrug. “Wasn’t sure if I should…” I gesture toward the coffee pot and she rolls her eyes. She slides me a mug and the pot and I smile, glad she didn’t pour it for me.

I just watched Diana chug her coffee down black, but I’m much more particular. I add the milk slowly, seeking just the right shade of walnut, and now it’s her turn to stare. I don’t want her to pull her eyes off me, so I slow my pour to a drip until we’re both laughing. That’s a sound I need to hear again. It seems to fill the whole room, and I like that her laughter is hard won.

“All right, Dad,” Diana says, and pecks her father on the cheek. “I’m out. I just saw Levon pass by with the plow again. I gotta check on my babies.”

Before I can say another word, she’s bundled up and out the door, leaving me alone in the kitchen with Daniel and Rose. Archer evidently skied off home before the sun came up, claiming he’s got to get his clients ready for quarterly taxes.

Rose smiles and asks if I’m planning to meet with Andrew Moorely about the AI work they’re doing over at the college, but I shake my head. “I have to get back. I had an update email from Moorely this morning—he seems to think things are going well.”

“And when might we expect to see you back here in town,” she asks. I can already see the gears turning in her head—maybe if she offers me a cocktail reception I’ll come back with a few more million bucks for the hard sciences at OCC.

“Depends on what Hunter gets accomplished up there,” I tell her, gesturing upward. I finish my eggs and rise from the table. “Rose, Daniel, thank you again for your hospitality. I’m going to wander around town and stretch my legs before I catch a train home.”

“Do you want company?” Rose hustles to stand up and join me, but I know she has work to attend to up the hill. Lord knows what trouble the undergrads got themselves into given the snow day. I eventually convince her and Daniel that I’m fine to explore their town alone.

I feel much more myself walking through the quaint streets of Oak Creek in my own clothes, although I do make note that I’ll have to have my Berlutis treated after crunching through the salty sidewalks. I start to wonder if Daniel and Rose really bought my story of looking for a newspaper at the co-op. I could give two shits about getting a pastry to go at the bakery.

I’m drawn back toward Diana’s shop, and I try not to hurry as I walk there along the sidewalk she shoveled herself. The only place I want to be is inside the tiny little Houseplant Haven, where a beautiful woman is oh-so-carefully splicing plants in the sunshine that pours through the front window of her shop. She bites her lip, concentrating as she wraps the delicate stems in twine. I watch her work until I can’t take it anymore, and then I push into the door.

The bell tinkles above my head and she looks up. “Wexler,” she says, turning her face back to her plants. “You get lost looking for the train station?”

“I came to see your research,” I tell her. And I came to see you.

She snorts. “I told you. I don’t show people my lab. My clients don’t even go back there.” She brushes off her hands and holds two separate pots up, smiling. “These, you can look at,” she says. “It’s witch hazel.”

“witch hazel is a real thing?”

She laughs again, a sound I could bottle and pipe through my house. “Nature’s own astringent. I sell a lot of it at the co-op for teenage acne. And the Acorns buy it to treat their hemorrhoids.”

“Do I even want to know what that means?”

She shakes her head and I reach for the little pot, examining the yellow flowering shrub in the light. It smells clean and sharp. “What other plants do you Frankenstein together?” I step a notch closer, gauging her reaction, and she doesn’t back away from me entering her space.

She grins and wags her finger. “I told you, you’re not getting into my lab. And I don’t mess around too much propagating herbs. But I grow a lot of useful plants.” She walks around the front of the shop, showing me small pots of herbs I’ve never heard of: nettles, gooseberry, comfrey.

“You might just be a witch after all,” I tease, sniffing something fragrant and purple. I squint to read the tiny, handwritten name tag. Hyssop.

“Maybe I am,” she counters. She snaps a leaf from a potted plant and the smell of peppermint wafts toward my face. She offers the leaf toward me, asking “Do you need something to cool you down?”

I step even closer to her and decide I don’t want to wait any longer to quench my thirst for this woman. Instead of taking the leaf with my hand, I dip my head and lick it from her finger, sucking a bit as she gasps at the contact. She meets my eye and I see she’s as turned on as me. Her pupils are fully dilated and she’s breathing heavily as my tongue moves over her fingertip. I box her in against the counter, one arm on either side of her warm body. “I think I’m under your spell,” I tell her, and I lean in for the kiss.

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