Red Lily

for kissing customers before she waved bye-bye.
    She was nearly to the grafting house when she saw him out in the field. He was already crouched down, examining grafts on the magnolias she’d helped him graft and plant weeks before.
    He flicked her a glance and a smile as she approached. “Take a look. These are coming along. Couple of weeks we can remove the tape.”
    “If you say so.”
    “Yeah, they’re looking good. I need to check some of the other ornamentals. I think we’re going to have somenice weeping pears and cherries for next season. Have I shown you the fruiting pears I did? The dwarfs?”
    “No. Did your friend get what she was after?”
    “Hmm. Yeah.” He rose, walked across to check the balance of the canopies on his weepers. “Kept it simple,” he said absently as he studied the tree. “Low maintenance. What I did here was use pyrus communis for stock—three-year-olds, and grafted three pendulas. You gotta make sure you get the spacing right, so you produce a nice shape.”
    “And you know all about shapes.”
    “Yeah. I like chip-budding these. I did these two springs ago, and these this spring. See how they develop?”
    “I see how a lot of things develop. I was surprised you didn’t go with her, carry the plants to her door.”
    “Who? Oh, Dory?” He flipped Hayley an absent look as sarcasm sailed, visibly, over his head. “She’ll be able to handle it. A couple trips.”
    He continued to walk, continued to examine.
    “Here? For these weeping cherries, I used a semi-dwarfing rootstock. Should make a nice specimen tree for smaller spaces. ’Round October, I’m going to take some ripe shoots from the Colt stock. What you do is bundle them, and drop them root-end down in a trench in the nursery bed, and hill ’em up so they’re about three-quarters buried. Then next spring, we’ll lift the bundles, plant the cuttings, and by summer they’ll be ready to use for rootstocks.”
    “That’s all just fascinating, Harper. Did you spend all that time with Dory lecturing her on how to make a damn rootstock?”
    “Huh.” His distraction was evident on his face as he glanced around. “She’s not interested in this kind of work. She’s in public relations.”
    “Private ones from what I saw.”
    “What?”

    “I was about to come back and suggest the two of you get a room. You ought to know better than to make out in one of the retail areas.”
    This time his mouth dropped open. “ What? We weren’t. We were just—”
    “Those doors are glass, Harper, in case you’ve forgotten. I saw you, and you ought to have more respect for your workplace than to fool around in one of the public areas during working hours. But as you’re the boss, I guess you can do what the hell you like.”
    “My mother’s the boss, and I wasn’t fooling around anywhere. Dory and I are old friends. We were just—”
    “Kissing, touching, flirting, making dates. It’s unprofessional, in my opinion, to do that during work hours. But it’s downright rude to do it in front of me.”
    “Behind your back would be better?”
    Because it echoed her own nasty thoughts, her eyes went hot, searing like suns. “Let me just say, fuck you, Harper.”
    Since it was as good an exit line as she could think of when her brain was ready to explode, she turned on her heel. And spun right back when he grabbed her arm.
    He didn’t look distracted now, she noted. He looked ice-cold mad. “I wasn’t flirting or making dates.”
    “Just kissing and touching then.”
    “I kissed her because she’s a friend, a good one, who I haven’t seen in a while. I kissed her the way you kiss a friend. Which is nothing like this, for instance.”
    He gave her a yank that threw her off balance so her body collided with his. Then was scooped up, pulled in. He got a fistful of her hair, gave it a quick tug. And had his mouth crushed to hers.
    Not sweetly, not warmly, but with the stark heat of raw temper. She struggled, shocked that she was clamped sohard and tight she couldn’t fight her way free. A thread of fear snaked through her anger, and began to tighten just before he let her go.
    “That’s how I kiss women I don’t feel friendly toward.”
    “You think you have the right to treat me that way?”
    “As much as you do to accuse me of doing something, of being something I’m not. I don’t cheat and I don’t lie, and I’m not going to apologize for my behavior. If you want to know something about my