Red Lily

wouldn’t mind a little more time on Lily patrol. She wandered the path toward where he worked in the cutting garden.
    Summer still had her world in its sweaty clutches, but the heat was strong and vital. Real. She’d take all thereality she could get. Mammoth blue balls of hydrangeas weighed down the bushes, daylilies speared up with their elegant cheer, and passionflowers twined their arbor in bursts of purple.
    The air was thick with fragrance and birdsong, and through it rode the frantic wings of butterflies.
    Around the curve Harper stood, legs spread, body slightly bent as his quick, skilled fingers twisted off deadheads, then dropped them in a bag knotted to his belt. At his feet was a small, shallow basket where daisies and snapdragons, larkspur and cosmos already lay.
    It was, somehow, so sweepingly romantic—the man, the evening, the sea of flowers—that her heart floated up to her throat and ached there.
    A hummingbird, a sapphire and emerald whir, arrowed past him to hover over the feathery cup of a deep red blossom of monarda and drink.
    She saw him pause to watch it, going still with his hand on a stem and his other holding a seed head. And she wished she could paint. All those vivid colors of late summer, bold and strong, and the man so still, so patient, stopping his work to share his flowers with a bird.
    Love saturated her.
    The bird flew off, a small, electric jewel. He watched it, as she watched him.
    “Harper.”
    “The hummingbirds like the bee balm,” he said, then took his sheers and clipped a monarda. “But there’s enough for all of us. It’s a good spreader.”
    “Harper,” she said again and walked up to slide her arms around him, press her cheek to his back. “I know you’re worried, and I won’t ask you not to be. But please don’t be mad.”
    “I’m not. I came out here to cool off. It usually works. I’m down to irritated and worried.”

    “I was set to come out here, argue with you.” She rubbed her cheek over his shirt. She could smell soap and sweat, both healthy and male. “Then I saw you, and I just don’t want to argue. I just don’t want to fight. I can’t do what you want when everything inside me pulls the other way. Even if it’s wrong, I can’t.”
    “I don’t have any choice about that.” He clipped more flowers for the basket, deadheaded others. “And you don’t have any say about this. I’m moving in. I’d rather you and Lily shift over to my place, but it makes more sense for me to move into your room for now since there are two of you and one of me. When this is over, we’ll reevaluate.”
    “Reevaluate.”
    “That’s right.” He’d yet to look at her, really look, and now moved off a few paces to cut more blooms. “It’s a little hard to figure out where we’re going, what we’re doing under the circumstances.”
    “So you figure we’ll live together, under the circumstances, and when those circumstances change, we’ll take another look at the picture.”
    “That’s right.”
    Maybe she did feel like arguing. “Ever heard of asking?”
    “Heard of it. Not doing it. At the nursery, you work with Stella, Mama, or me, at all times.”
    “Who suddenly made you the boss of me?”
    With steady hands, unerring eye, he just kept working. “One of us will drive back and forth with you.”
    “One of you coming with me every time I have to pee?”
    “If necessary. You’ve got your mind set on staying, those are the terms.”
    The hummingbird whizzed back, but this time she wasn’t caught by its charm. “Terms? Somebody die and make you king? Listen, Harper—”
    “No. This is how it’s going to be. You’re determined tostay, see this through. I’m just as determined you’ll be looked after. I love you, so that’s the end of it.”
    She opened her mouth, closed it again, and took a calming breath. “If you’d said that—the I love you part—right off, I might’ve been more open to discussion.”
    “There is no discussion.”
    Her eyes narrowed. He’d yet to stop what he was doing and face her fully. “You sure can be a hard-ass when you put your mind to it.”
    “This didn’t take much effort.” He reached down, gathered the flowers in the basket, tucking their stems into a casual bouquet. Now he turned, and those long brown eyes met hers. “Here.”
    She took them, frowned at him over them. “Did you cut these for me?”
    The slow, lazy smile moved over his face. “Who else?”
    She blew out a breath.