Seduced by Innocencey(27)

All the equipment I needed to make a basic healing salve was hidden in a secret compartment in one of the rocks. I pulled it out and began crushing the roses, mixing and blending.

"Would you like some help?"

I looked up to see my father standing over me. My instinct to fight him in everything fell flat as I looked at the mess I was making with the salve. "Yes. Thank you. I guess I've lost my touch since I've been gone."

My father sat next to me on the ground and looked at what I'd made. "Not so, you've got the basics. We just need to add a few more ingredients and get a cleaner sample of the oils in the rose. May I?"

I handed him the bowl and watched him work his own magic, turning my mush into a fragrant cure for serious cuts.

"Are you injured?"

"It's not for me."

"I see."

He didn't ask, and I wasn't planning on telling, but my stupid mouth didn't feel like listening to my brain. "I met a girl. She's special, Dad, real special. I took her out tonight but the whole date was a disaster." I told him everything that had happened. "This is for her arm, but I don't even know if she'll see me again."

"Do you think you could love her?"

I might have been falling for her already, but that was a tidbit I'd keep to myself. "I could, with time."

"Is she worth it? Is she worth whatever it would take to make her happy, to love her and be there for her?"

Yes. "I don't know."

His eyes settled on mine without judgment. "Son, I think you do, or you wouldn't be out here in the middle of the night mashing rose petals together."

Crap. "We've only had one date and one training session at the studio. No one can fall in love that fast."

"Really? I see. Well, let me ask you a question." Uh-oh. He had that voice that said I'd be learning a lesson. "Do you think your mother and I are in love?"

"Of course." They'd been deeply in love for as long as I could remember.

"Did you know that I told her I loved her after our first date?"

Double crap. "No, I didn't know that."

He mixed in another oil and stirred some more, using his Druid magic to accelerate the process. "It's true. I met her at a bookstore. She looked stunning standing in the classics section browsing through Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I wanted to impress her with my charm and brains, so I struck up a conversation and told her that I thought that the true tragedy in Romeo and Juliet wasn't in their love and death, but in their misguided notion that they had really been in love at all. Infatuation, I said, was at the heart of that play. Foolish, youthful lust."

I laughed, trying to imagine the look on my literature professor mother's face as my dad criticized her favorite play.

"You can imagine her response. She defended them and spoke eloquently of social injustice and sins of the father and how the true tragedy lay in their family's inability to look past ancient grievances and see into a brighter future. She postured that the deaths of the two young lovers spurred a renewed self-reflection in their families and forced them to consider the painful arrogance and futility of their struggle against one another.

"Before she had even stopped speaking, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with her. I asked her out on the spot and proposed to her, ring in hand, that night on our date."

The romance of his courtship stunned me. I'd always seen my dad as a business man, a good father—if a bit overzealous in turning his kids into his corporate puppets, and a devoted husband, but never an impulsive romantic. "Did she say yes?"

"Of course not." His deep laugh rumbled through the garden. "She hardly knew me. But it didn't take long to finally convince her we were soul mates."

"Do you really think Rose could be my soul mate?" The idea terrified me, but also gave me an uneasy joy.

"Only you can answer that, but based on what you've said, I'd say yes."

"Are you just trying to convince me I'm in love with her so I'll stick around and join the business?" I didn't mean it to sound as accusatory as it came out, but he didn't flinch or frown.

He smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. "Son, all I have ever wanted is for you to be happy. I don't care if that's with Rose Botanicals, or the studio, or driving your motorcycle around the country. I apologize for the things I said when you turned eighteen. I realized after you left that I'd driven a wedge between us, and it's pained me ever since. The only question I have for you now is: are you happy? Truly happy?"

In that moment I knew the answer. I'd been running my entire adult life, trying to find that one thing that would make me feel alive. I'd never found it, but when Rose walked into the studio that day, it found me.