Red Lily

struck a pose. Maybe she had a skinny build, but there was nothing much she could do about that. Still, she wore clothes pretty well, if she did say so. Kind of like a clothes hanger. Add new hair, new earrings, new shoes, and you had something.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe I’m back.”
    D OWNSTAIRS , H ARPER WAS sprawled in a chair, sipping a beer and watching the way Mitch touched his mother—her hair, her arm—while they related some of the highlights of their trip for Logan and Stella and the boys.
    He’d heard some of it already when he’d buzzed home for an hour that afternoon. He wasn’t really listening. He was just watching, and thinking it was good, it was time his mother had someone so obviously besotted with her.
    He was happy for her—and relieved. No matter howwell his mother could take care of herself, and God knew she could do just that, it was a comfort to know she had a smart, able man at her side.
    After what had happened last spring, if Mitch hadn’t moved in, he’d have done so himself. And that might’ve been a little sticky with Hayley living there.
    It was more . . . comfortable, he decided, for everybody, if he continued to live in the carriage house. It might not have been much distance geographically, but psychologically it did the job.
    “I told him he was crazy,” Roz continued, gesturing with her wine in one hand, patting the other on Mitch’s thigh. “Windsurfing? Why in God’s name would we want to teeter around on a little hunk of wood with a sail attached? But he just had to try it.”
    “I tried it once.” Stella sat, her curling mass of red hair spilling over her shoulders. “Spring break in college. It was fun once I got the hang of it.”
    “So I hear.” Mitch’s mutter had Roz grinning.
    “He’d get up on the thing, and in two seconds, splash. Get up, and wait, I think he’s got it. Splash.”
    “I had a defective board,” Mitch claimed, and poked Roz in the ribs.
    “Of course you did.” Roz rolled her eyes. “One thing you can say about our Mitchell is he’s game. I don’t know how many times he hauled himself out of the drink and back on that board.”
    “Six hundred and fifty-two.”
    “How about you?” Logan, big and built and rugged beside Stella, gestured toward Roz with his beer.
    “Oh, well, I don’t like to brag,” Roz said and examined her fingernails.
    “Yes, she does.” Mitch gulped down club soda, stretched out his long, long legs. “Oh, yes, she does.”

    “But I enjoyed the experience quite a lot.”
    “She just . . .” Mitch sailed his hand through the air to illustrate. “Sailed off as if she’d been born on one of the damn things.”
    “We Harpers do tend to have excellent athletic abilities and superior balance.”
    “But she doesn’t like to brag,” Mitch pointed out, then glanced over at the click of heels on hardwood.
    Harper did the same, and felt his reputed superior balance falter.
    She looked frigging amazing. The skinny little red dress, the mile-high shoes combined to make her legs look endless. The sort of legs a man could imagine cruising over for miles and miles. Her hair was so damn sexy that way, and her mouth was all hot and red.
    She had a baby on her hip, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t be thinking about what he’d like to do to that mouth, that body when she was carrying Lily. It had to be wrong.
    Across the room, Logan let out a long, low whistle that had Hayley’s face lighting up.
    “Hello, beautiful. You look good enough to eat. You look good, too, Hayley.”
    At that, she gave one of those husky rolls of laughter, and hip-swayed over to drop Lily in Logan’s lap. “Just for that.”
    “How about some wine?” Roz offered.
    “To tell you the truth, I’ve been wanting a cold beer.”
    “I’ll get it.” Harper all but sprang out of his chair, and was heading out of the parlor before she could respond. He hoped the trip to the kitchen and back would bring his blood pressure back to normal.
    She was a cousin, sort of, he reminded himself. And an employee. His mother’s houseguest. A mother. Any one ofthose reasons meant hands-off. Tally them up, and it put Hayley way off-limits. Added to that, she didn’t think of him that way, not even close.
    A guy made a move on a woman under those circumstances, he was just asking to screw up a nice, pleasant friendship.
    He got out a beer, got out a pilsner. As he was pouring, he heard the squeal, and the rapid clip of