Red Lily

natural with children. Harper seemed to be one of them.
    “What’s next on her agenda?”
    “I usually let her play for another hour or so, tires her out. Then maybe we’ll read a book—or part of one—if she’ll sit still long enough. Harper, don’t you want to get rid of us?”
    “No. I’m hoping you’ll stay. I can set that portable deal up in the spare room. We’ll hear her if she wakes up. Then you could be with me.” He took Hayley’s hands, leaned in to take her lips. “I want you to be with me tonight.”
    “Harper . . .” She eased away, then hurried after Lily. “Wait,” she said, and stopped in the living room when Lily made a beeline for a pile of plastic trucks and cars. “Where’d they come from?”
    “They were mine. Some things you keep.”
    She imagined Harper as a little boy, playing with his trucks and making engine noises, much as her baby was doing now. “Harper, this is so hard.”
    “What’s hard?”
    “Not falling dead stupid in love with you.”
    He said nothing for a moment, then turned her around to face him. “What if you did?”
    “That’s what I don’t know. See, that’s what I don’t know.” Her voice hitched, and she swallowed to even it out. “There’s a lot tangled up in this. We only started being with each other a few weeks ago, and there’s all this stuffhappening. I don’t know what you want, what you’re looking for.”
    “I’m still figuring it out.”
    “That’s fine for you, Harper. I mean it really is, it’s just fine. But what if I love you? I love you, and you figure out what you want is a trip to Belize and six months bumming on the beach? I’ve got Lily to consider. I can’t—”
    “Hayley, if I wanted to be a beach bum, I think I’d know it by now.”
    “You know what I’m talking about.”
    “Okay, yeah. What if I fall for you, what if I love you and you decide you want to go back to Little Rock with Lily and open your own nursery?”
    “I couldn’t—”
    He held up a hand. “Sure you could. It’s the kind of risk people take when they get involved this way. Maybe you’ll fall, and maybe the other person won’t want what you’re looking for.”
    “So we’re sensible? Take it a day at a time.”
    “We could. We could do that.”
    “What if I don’t want to be sensible?” she fired back. “What if I want to stand here right now and tell you I’m in love with you? What are you going to do about it?”
    “I’m not sure since it’s pissing you off.”
    “Of course I’m pissed off.” She threw up her arms. “I’m in love with you, damn it, Harper, and you want to be sensible, take it a day at a time. And from where I’m standing your way just sucks sideways.”
    He considered himself a fairly laid-back sort of man, albeit one with a dangerous temper, which he was careful to control most of the time. How, he wondered, had he fallen so completely for a women whose moods tended to bounce around like a pinball?
    Proved, he supposed, that there was no logic in love.

    “Instead of going off, you should listen. I said we could be sensible. We could take it a day at a time. But since I’m in love with you right back, I’m not so crazy about that idea either.”
    “You go around doing romantic stuff, movie-time romantic stuff. And then the sweet things like giving my little girl a bath, and I’m supposed to stay sensible? I mean, what do you expect, Harper, what do you expect when you . . .”
    She caught her breath, then took a long one while he just looked at her, that lazy half smile on his face. “What was that part after how I should listen?”
    “I said I was in love with you right back.”
    “Oh. Oh.” She crouched when Lily brought her one of the trucks. “That’s nice, honey. Why don’t you go get it?” She rolled the truck across the room, got back up. “You’re not saying that because I’m being bitchy?”
    “Generally, my policy doesn’t include telling a woman I’m in love with her when she’s being bitchy. Fact is, I haven’t said it to anyone before, because it’s the kind of thing that has weight. Should have weight. So you’re the first.”
    “It’s not because you’re so stuck on Lily?”
    He cast his eyes to heaven. “For Christ’s sake.”
    “I’m picking it apart.” She held her hands up, wagged them. “I hear myself. I’m just breathless. You make me so happy I’ve been miserable.”
    “Yeah, I can see how that works. Completely