Page 7 of A Field of Beauty

Tessa was trying to adopt his strategy, but it was a completemind shift from how she was raised. Her family wasn’t fabulously wealthy, but they were well-to-do. She’d never had to pay back any school debts like Dawson did. She had never worried about making ends meet. Until now. “I’m not a trust-fund baby.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Dawson had figured that out after she started driving a used Vespa. She’d sold the Audi plus the rest of her inherited stock certificates to provide for the year—property tax, his salary, and everything in between. “So if we can’t afford a greenhouse, how can we create one?”

He looked past her into the house. “Do you have a spare room?”

Not hardly. This old carriage house was a tiny box. One bedroom, one airplane-sized bathroom, a small kitchen, and a sitting area. She lifted a finger in the air. “I could empty out my closet. Give me thirty minutes and it’s yours.”

First, she moved the clothes that were hanging in the closet onto her bed. As she folded up her dresses to fit into a chest of drawers, it surprised her to realize that just a few months ago, she had worn a dress every single day. Appearing feminine was part of being Southern. She caught sight of herself in a small mirror on the wall. Most days, she wore overalls and a T-shirt. Imagine if her mother could see her! Hair was gathered into a messy bun, usually hidden under a big straw hat. Nails were clipped short, polish-free, and always had dirt under them. She couldn’t even remember when she’d last had a manicure. Her mother would faint at the sight of Tessa’s tanned, muscular arms!

And yet, for the first time since Tessa was twelve or thirteen and became conscious of her looks, shefeltbeautiful. It dawned on her that she had always felt the opposite of beautiful, no matter what others said or how they treated her because of her looks. It was the strangest moment of self-discovery, one she would never forget.Feelingbeautiful was better thanlookingbeautiful.

Tessa wasn’t sure if she felt beautiful because of the work that she loved, or the connection she felt to her field of flowers, or ifit might even have something to do with being around Dawson, who seemed oblivious to her looks. It was like he saw her on the inside, not the outside. Maybe it had something to do with sheer happiness. Whatever it was, she had discovered thatfeelingbeautiful really had nothing to do with one’s appearance.

Her reflections were interrupted by Dawson’s knock on the door. She opened the screen door for him to enter, but he hesitated. In the time they’d been working together, he’d never come into her little house. He stood there awkwardly, and then she felt awkward. She was used to being with him, but outside. Not inside.

That initial discomfiture got shrugged off, though, as Dawson went to work. He rigged up a growing space in her closet by adding shelving and wiring grow lights. Then he potted the tubers in soil that he called his “special sauce.” Peat moss, bonemeal, crushed eggshells, coffee grounds, and who knew what else. All this preparation was to trick the tubers into “waking up,” he said. To make them think spring had arrived.

He checked on the planted tubers every day, several times. More than once, Tessa had come into the house to get something and caught him singing to the plants in a gentle, rumbling, deep voice. Sweet! She had no idea he could sing, much lesswouldsing. Singing seemed so ... cheerful. So unlike him. In those moments, she would tiptoe back out of the house. For such a gruff, wild-looking guy, he had a charmingly tender underbelly.

And sure enough, seven days later, signs of green started to poke out of the soil. By fourteen days, all five tubers had sprouted. When they had fully leaved out, Dawson taught Tessa how to take cuttings to root. Carefully, he would trim a stem with some leaves, dip it in rooting hormone, and set it in a tray of potting soil. Her tiny kitchen was now turned into a temporary greenhouse. Dawson rigged up grow lights above the counters and insisted that Tessa keep the windows closed and the heat turned up to seventy-five degrees.

Each morning, while Tessa waited for the coffee to brew, she would check on the “babies.” She’d mist their little leaves and make sure the soil was damp but not soggy. All details that Dawson taught her to watch for.

One morning, she woke to see evidence that the cuttings were rooting—new leaves appeared on several plants. When Dawson arrived at the farm, she opened the door and called to him. “Come and see!”

He slammed his truck shut and bolted past her, into the house to examine the dahlias. He was as pleased as she’d ever seen him. So was she! “Dawson Greene, in just a few months, you have turned five dahlia tubers into hundreds of plants.”

He was bending over a tray to examine the leaves and didn’t even look up. “Not me. Growing is in the Almighty’s department.”

In February, Dawson rented the rototiller again to till under the clover crop. Watching him work, listening to the steady whir of the rototiller, Tessa felt a little sad to see the clover disappear into the dirt. These last few weeks, the verdant green of the clover field had filled her senses, taken her breath away. She knew, though, that its best work was happening now, as it decomposed and added much-needed nutrients to the soil.

In March, for three overcast and cool days, Dawson and Tessa planted the young dahlia plants in long rows in the field. Over the winter months, Dawson had fashioned hundreds of hoops made out of bamboo. As soon as a row was entirely planted, he would stake the hoops in the ground. Together, working on opposite sides of the row, Dawson and Tessa covered up the plants with a lightweight diaphanous material to protect them from frost and sun damage until they’d had time to harden off. It was slow, tedious work, and she was exhausted at the end of each day, yet Tessa had never felt so satisfied. She loved this work. Loved it.

A few months later, in late June, a miracle unfolded right before Tessa’s eyes. Small yellow pompon dahlias started to blossom inthe field of Mountain Blooms Farm. She would go out in the early morning with a cup of coffee, right before dawn, just to watch the sun start to touch the field for the day. If she squinted her eyes, it almost seemed as if the field was ablaze with yellow flames. The sight took her breath away.

Dawson had chosen an ideal variety to debut the flower farm—sturdy and long-lasting, with multiple blooms. They held up beautifully in bouquets. He never failed to amaze her. How would a soil guy have known to choose the best qualities for flower arrangements!

As blossoms ripened for harvest, Tessa took bundles of them into Asheville floral shops as gifts, just to introduce Mountain Blooms Farm and to leave her business card. Word must have spread, because a day or two after the first harvest, a wholesale floral supplier called Tessa. He’d heard about the Yellow Gem dahlias and wanted to buy a large quantity for an upcoming wedding.

After Tessa hung up with the supplier, she ran out to the field, screaming Dawson’s name.

He was harvesting blossoms at the far end of the field and dropped what he was doing to bolt toward her at full speed. “What’s wrong? Did you hurt yourself?”

She hadn’t meant to cause alarm! Relief poured into his eyes when she told him why she’d screamed. Sweet! Normally, he was all business. But in that one moment, when she caused him concern, when she saw the worry in his eyes, she realized that while she might technically be his boss (though you’d never know it because he was the one who told her what to do each day), he was also her friend.

Dawson Greene was the first male with whom Tessa felt as if she could be entirely herself—no makeup, baggy overalls, hair pulled back in a ponytail. It was like he was blind to her ...whatever. Whatever it was that drew most males to Tessa. Whatever it was that made it difficult for her to have girlfriends, because girls were jealous of her and thought she might steal their boyfriends. (Shewouldnever!) Tessa hadn’t had a friend like Dawson since working in the Sunrise flower shop alongside Claire and Jaime. They were blind to herwhatevertoo. At least, they were until the night that changed everything.

A night that Tessa did her best not to remember.

four

One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower.

—Susan Wittig Albert

The best time to harvest flowers was early in the morning, when temperatures were low and plant water content was high. Tessa and Dawson were out in the fields at dawn, cutting stems of every dahlia bloom that was ready for harvest, filling buckets to the brim. They were heading to Asheville’s City Market today. Or ... as close as they could get to it.

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