* * *

He knew she was there. Standing down there all pressed and tidy with her wild hair pulled back and shaded glasses hiding her big blue eyes.

He'd wondered when she would come nag him on a job, as it appeared to him she was a woman born
to nag. At least she had the sense not to interrupt.

Then again, she seemed to be nothing but sense.

Maybe she'd surprise him. He liked surprises, and he'd gotten one when he met her kids. He'd expected to see a couple of polite little robots. The sort that looked to their domineering mother before saying a word. Instead he'd found them normal, interesting, funny kids. Surely it took some imagination to
manage two active boys.

Maybe she was only a pain in the ass when it came to work.

Well, he grinned a little as he cut through a branch. So was he.

He let her wait while he finished. It took him another thirty minutes, during which he largely ignored her. Though he did see her take a camera—Jesus—then a notebook out of her purse.

He also noticed she'd gone over to speak to his men and that Dick sent occasional glances in Stella's direction.

Dick was a social moron, Logan thought, particularly when it came to women. But he was a tireless worker, and he would take on the filthiest job with a blissful and idiotic grin. Sam, who had more common sense in his big toe than Dick had in his entire skinny body, was, thank God, a tolerant and patient man.

They went back to high school, and that was the sort of thing that set well with Logan. The continuity
of it, and the fact that because they'd known each other around twenty years, they didn't have to gab
all the damn time to make themselves understood.

Explaining things half a dozen times just tried his patience. Which he had no problem admitting he had
in short supply to begin with.

Between the three of them, they did good work, often exceptional work. And with Sam's brawn and Dick's energy, he rarely had to take on any more laborers.

Which suited him. He preferred small crews to large. It was more personal that way, at least from his point of view. And in Logan's point of view, every job he took was personal.

It was his vision, his sweat, his blood that went into the land. And his name that stood for what he
created with it.

The Yankee could harp about forms and systemic bullshit all she wanted. The land didn't give a rat's
ass about that. And neither did he.

He called out a warning to his men, then topped the old, dead oak. When he shimmied down, he unhooked his harness and grabbed a bottle of water. He drank half of it down without taking a breath.

"Mr...." No, friendly, Stella remembered. She boosted up her smile, and started over. "Nice job.
I didn't realize you did the tree work yourself."

"Depends. Nothing tricky to this one. Out for a drive?"

"No, though I did enjoy looking at the neighborhood. It's beautiful." She looked around the yard,
gestured to encompass it. "This must have been, too, once. What happened?"

"Couple lived here fifty years. He died a while back. She couldn't handle the place on her own, and
none of their kids still live close by. She got sick, place got rundown. She got sicker. Kids finally got
her out and into a nursing home."

"That's hard. It's sad."

"Yeah, a lot of life is. They sold the place. New owners got a bargain and want the grounds done up. We're doing them up."

"What've you got in mind?"

He took another slug from the water bottle. She noticed the mulcher had stopped grinding, and after Logan sent a long, narrowed look over her shoulder, it got going again.

"I've got a lot of things in mind."

"Dealing with this job, specifically?"

"Why?"

"Because it'll help me do my job if I know more about yours. Obviously you're taking out the oak and
I assume the maple out front."

"Yeah. Okay, here's the deal. We clear everything out that can't or shouldn't be saved. New sod, new fencing. We knock down the old shed, replace it. New owners want lots of color. So we shape up the azaleas, put a weeping cherry out front, replacing the maple. Lilac over there, and a magnolia on that
side. Plot of peonies on that side, rambling roses along the back fence. See they got that rough little hill toward the back there, on the right? Instead of leveling it, we'll plant it."

He outlined the rest of it quickly, rolling out Latin terms and common names, taking long slugs from his water bottle, gesturing.

He could see it, he always could—the finished land. The small details, the big ones, fit together into one attractive whole.

Just as he could see the work that would go into each and every step, as he could look forward to the process nearly as much as the finished job.

He liked having his hands in the dirt. How else could you respect the landscape or the changes you
made in it? And as he spoke he glanced down at her hands. Smirked a little at her tidy fingernails
with their coat of glossy pink polish.

Paper pusher, he thought. Probably didn't know crab-grass from sumac.

Because he wanted to give her and her clipboard the full treatment and get her off his ass, he switched
to the house and talked about the patio they intended to build and the plantings he'd use to accent it.

When he figured he'd done more talking than he normally did in a week, he finished off the water. Shrugged. He didn't expect her to follow everything he'd said, but she couldn't complain that he hadn't cooperated.

"It's wonderful. What about the bed running on the south side out front?"

He frowned a little. "We'll rip out the ivy, then the clients want to try their hand at that themselves."

"Even better. You've got more of an investment if you dig some yourself."

Because he agreed, he said nothing and only jingled some change in his pocket.

"Except I'd rather see winter creeper than yews around the shed. The variegated leaves would show
off well, as would the less uniform shape."

"Maybe."

"Do you work from a landscape blueprint or out of your head?"

"Depends."

Should I pull all his teeth at once, or one at a time, she thought, but maintained the smile. "It's just that
I'd like to see one of your designs, on paper, at some point. Which leads me to a thought I'd had."

"Bet you got lots of them."

"My boss told me to play nice," she said, coolly now. "How about you?"

He moved his shoulder again. "Just saying."

"My thought was, with some of the reorganizing and transferring I'm doing, I could cull out some office space for you at the center."

He gave her the same look he'd sent his men over her shoulder. A lesser woman, Stella told herself, would wither under it. "I don't work in a frigging office."

"I'm not suggesting that you spend all your time there, just that you'd have a place to deal with your paperwork, make your phone calls, keep your files."

"That's what my truck's for."

"Are you trying to be difficult?"

"Nope. I can do it without any effort at all. How about you?"

"You don't want the office, fine. Forget the office."

"I already have."

"Dandy. But I need an office. I need to know exactly what stock and equipment, what materials you'll need for this job." She "yanked out her notebook again. "One red maple, one magnolia. Which variety
of magnolia?"

"Southern. Grandiflora gloriosa."

"Good choice for the location. One weeping cherry" she continued, and to his surprise and reluctant admiration, she ran down the entire plan he'd tossed out at her.

Okay, Red, he thought. Maybe you know a thing or two about the horticulture end of things after all.

"Yews or winter creeper?"

He glanced back at the shed, tried both out in his head. Damn if he didn't think she was right, but he didn't see why he had to say so right off. "I'll let you know."

"Do, and I'll want the exact number and specimen type of other stock as you take them."

"I'd be able to find you ... in your office?"

"Just find me." She turned around, started to march off.

"Hey, Stella."

When she glanced back, he grinned. "Always wanted to say that."

Her eyes lit, and she snapped her head around again and kept going.

"Okay, okay. Jesus. Just a little humor." He strode after her. "Don't go away mad."

"Just go away?"

"Yeah, but there's no point in us being pissed at each other. I don't mind being pissed as a rule."

"I never would've guessed."

"But there's no point, right at the moment." As if he'd just remembered he had them on, he tugged off
his work gloves, stuck them finger-first in his back pocket. "I'm doing my job, you're doing yours. Roz thinks she needs you, and I set a lot of store by Roz."

"So do I."

"I get that. Let's try to stay out from under each other's skin, otherwise we're just going to give each
other a rash."

She inclined her head, lifted her eyebrows. "Is this you being agreeable?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I'm being agreeable so we can both do what Roz pays us to do. And because your kid has a copy of Spider-Man Number 121. If you're mad, you won't let him show it to me."

Now she tipped down her sunglasses, peered at him over the tops. "This isn't you being charming, is it?"

"No, this is me being sincere. I really want to see that issue, firsthand. If I was being charming,
I guarantee you'd be in a puddle at my feet. It's a terrible power I have over women, and I try to use
it sparingly."

"I just bet."

But she was smiling as she got into her car.

SIX

Hayley Phillips was riding on fumes and a dying transmission. The radio still worked, thank God, and
she had it cranked up with the Dixie Chicks blasting out. It kept her energy flowing.

Everything she owned was jammed into the Pontiac Grandville, which was older than she was and a lot more temperamental. Not that she had much at this point. She'd sold everything that could be sold. No point in being sentimental. Money took you a lot more miles than sentiment.

She wasn't destitute. What she'd banked would get her through the rough spots, and if there were more rough spots than she anticipated, she'd earn more. She wasn't aimless. She knew just where she was going. She just didn't know what would happen when she got there.

But that was fine. If you knew everything, you'd never be surprised.

Maybe she was tired, and maybe she'd pushed the rattling old car farther than it wanted to go that day. But if she and it could just hang on a few more miles, they'd get a break.

She didn't expect to get tossed out on her ear. But, well, if she was, she'd just do what needed to be
done next.

She liked the look of the area, especially since she'd skirted around the tangle of highways that surrounded Memphis. On this north edge beyond the city, the land rolled a bit, and she'd seen snatches
of the river and the steep bluffs that fell toward it. There were pretty houses— the neat spread of the suburbs that fanned out from the city limits, and now the bigger, richer ones. There were plenty of big
old trees, and despite some walls of stone or brick, it felt friendly.

She sure could use a friend.

When she saw the sign for In the Garden, she slowed. She was afraid to stop, afraid the old Pontiac would just heave up and die if she did. But she slowed enough to get a look at the main buildings, the space in the security lights.

Then she took a lot of slow breaths as she kept driving. Nearly there. She'd planned out what she would say, but she kept changing her mind. Every new approach gave her a dozen different scenes to play out
in her head. It had passed the time, but it hadn't gelled for her.

Maybe some could say that changing her mind was part of her problem. But she didn't think so. If you never changed your mind, what was the point of having one? It seemed to Hayley she'd known too many people who were stuck with one way of thinking, and how could that be using the brain God gave you?

As she headed toward the drive, the car began to buck and sputter.

"Come on, come on. Just a little more. If I'd been paying attention I'd've got you gas at the last place."

Then it conked on her, half in, half out of the entrance between the brick pillars.

She gave the wheel a testy little slap, but it was halfhearted. Nobody's fault but her own, after all. And maybe it was a good thing. Tougher to kick her out if her car was out of gas, and blocking the way.

She opened her purse, took out a brush to tidy her hair. After considerable experimentation, she'd settled back on her own oak-bark brown. At least for now. She was glad she'd gotten it cut and styled before she'd headed out. She liked the longish sweep of side bangs and the careless look of the straight bob with its varying lengths.

It made her look easy, breezy. Confident.

She put on lipstick, powdered off the shine.

"Okay. Let's get going."

She climbed out, hooked her purse over her shoulder, then started the walk up the long drive. It took money—old or new—to plant a house so far from the road. The one she'd grown up in had been so close, people driving by could practically reach out and shake her hand.

But she didn't mind that. It had been a nice house. A good house, and part of her had been sorry to sell
it. But that little house outside Little Rock was the past. She was heading toward the future.

Halfway up the drive, she stopped. Blinked. This wasn't just a house, she decided as her jaw dropped.
It was a mansion. The sheer size of it was one thing—she'd seen big-ass houses before, but nothing like this. This was the most beautiful house she'd ever laid eyes on outside of a magazine. It was Tara and Manderley all in one. Graceful and female, and strong.

Lights gleamed against windows, others flooded the lawn. As if it were welcoming her. Wouldn't that be nice?

Even if it wasn't, even if they booted her out again, she'd had the chance to see it. That alone was worth the trip.

She walked on, smelling the evening, the pine and woodsmoke.

She crossed her fingers on the strap of her purse for luck and walked straight up to the ground-level doors.

Lifting one of the brass knockers, she gave three firm raps.

Inside, Stella came down the steps with Parker. It was her turn to walk him. She called out, "I'll get it."

Parker was already barking as she opened the door.

She saw a girl with straight, fashionably ragged brown hair, a sharply angled face dominated by huge
eyes the color of a robin's egg. She smiled, showing a bit of an overbite, and bent down to pet Parker when he sniffed at her shoes.

She said, "Hi."

"Hi." Where the hell had she come from? Stella wondered. There was no car parked outside.

The girl looked to be about twelve. And very pregnant.

"I'm looking for Rosalind Ashby. Rosalind Harper Ashby," she corrected. "Is she home?"

"Yes. She's upstairs. Come in."

"Thanks. I'm Hayley." She held out a hand. "Hayley Phillips. Mrs. Ashby and I are cousins, in a complicated southern sort of way."

"Stella Rothchild. Why don't you come in, sit down. I'll go find Roz."

"That'd be great." Swiveling her head back and forth, Hayley tried to see everything as Stella led her
into the parlor. "Wow. You've just got to say wow."

"I did the first time I saw it. Do you want anything? Something to drink?"

"I'm okay. I should probably wait until..." She stayed on her feet, wandered to the fireplace. It was like something on a television show, or the movies. "Do you work in the house? Are you, like, the housekeeper?"

"No. I work at Roz's nursery. I'm the manager. I'll just go get Roz. You should sit down."

"It's okay." Hayley rubbed her pregnant belly. "We've been sitting."

"Be right back." With Parker in tow, Stella dashed off.

She hurried up the stairs, turned into Roz's wing. She'd only been in there once, when David had taken her on the grand tour, but she followed the sounds of the television and found Roz in her sitting room.

There was an old black-and-white movie on TV. Not that Roz was watching. She sat at an antique secretary, wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt as she sketched on a pad. Her feet were bare, and to Stella's surprise, her toe-nails were painted a bright candy pink.

She knocked on the doorjamb.

"Hmm? Oh, Stella, good. I was just sketching out an idea I had for a cutting garden along the northwest side of the nursery. Thought it might inspire customers. Come take a look."

"I'd love to, but there's someone downstairs to see you. Hayley Phillips. She says she's your cousin."

"Hayley?" Roz frowned. "I don't have a cousin Hayley. Do I?"

"She's young. Looks like a teenager. Pretty. Brown hair, blue eyes, taller than me. She's pregnant."

"Well, for God's sake." Roz rubbed the back of her neck. "Phillips. Phillips. My first husband's grandmother's sister—or maybe it was cousin—married a Phillips. I think."

"Well, she did say you were cousins in a complicated southern sort of way."

"Phillips." She closed her eyes, tapped a finger in the center of her forehead as if to wake up memory. "She must be Wayne Phillips's girl. He died last year. Well, I'd better go see what this is about."

She got up. "Your boys settled down for the night?"

"Yes, just."

"Then come on with me."

"Don't you think you should—"

"You've got a good level head. So come on, bring it with you."

Stella scooped Parker up and, hoping his bladder would hold, went downstairs with Roz.

Hayley turned as they came in. "I think this is the most completely awesome room. It makes you feel cozy and special just to be in it. I'm Hayley. I'm Wayne Phillips's daughter. My daddy was a connection of your first husband's, on his mother's side. You sent me a very nice note of condolence when he
passed last year."

"I remember. I met him once. I liked him."

"So did I. I'm sorry to come this way, without calling or asking, and I didn't mean to get here so late.
I had some car trouble earlier."

"That's all right. Sit down, Hayley. How far along are you?"

"Heading toward six months. The baby's due end of May. I should apologize, too, because my car ran
out of gas right at the front of your driveway."

"We can take care of that. Are you hungry, Hayley? Would you like a little something to eat?"

"No, ma'am, I'm fine. I stopped to eat earlier. Forgot to feed the car. I have money. I don't want you to think I'm broke or here for a handout."

"Good to know. We should have tea, then. It's a cool night. Hot tea would be good."

"If it's not too much trouble. And if you've got decaffeinated." She stroked her belly. "Hardest thing
about being pregnant's been giving up caffeine."

"I'll take care of it. Won't be long."

"Thanks, Stella." Roz turned back to Hayley as Stella went out. "So, did you drive all the way from... Little Rock, isn't it?"

"I did. I like to drive. Like to better when the car's not acting up, but you have to do what you have to do." She cleared her throat. "I hope you've been well, Cousin Rosalind."

"I have been, very well. And you? Are you and the baby doing well?"

"We're doing great. Healthy as horses, so the doctor said. And I feel just fine. Feel like I'm getting big as
a house, but I don't mind that, or not so much. It's kind of interesting. Um, your children, your sons? They're doing fine?"

"Yes, they are. Grown now. Harper, that's my oldest, lives here in the guest house. He works with me
at the nursery."

"I saw it—the nursery—when I was driving in." Hayley caught herself rubbing her hands on the thighs
of her jeans and made herself stop. "It looks so big, bigger than I expected. You must be proud."

"I am. What do you do back in Little Rock?"

"I worked in a bookstore, was helping manage it by the time I left. A small independent bookstore and coffee shop."

"Managed? At your age?"

"I'm twenty-four. I know I don't look it," she said with a hint of a smile. "I don't mind that, either. But I can show you my driver's license. I went to college, on partial scholarship. I've got a good brain. I worked summers there through high school and college. I got the job initially because my daddy was friends with the owner. But I earned it after."

"You said managed. You don't work there now."

"No." She was listening, Hayley thought. She was asking the right questions. That was something.
"I resigned a couple of weeks ago. But I have a letter of recommendation from the owner. I'd decided
to leave Little Rock."

"It seems a difficult time to leave home, and a job you're secure in."

"It seemed like the right time to me." She looked over as Stella wheeled in a tea cart. "Now that is just like the movies. I know saying that makes me sound like a hick or something, but I can't help it."

Stella laughed. "I was thinking exactly the same as I loaded it up. I made chamomile."

"Thanks. Stella, Hayley was just telling me she's left her home and her job. I'm hoping she's going to
tell us why she thinks this was the right time to make a couple of drastic moves."

"Not drastic," Hayley corrected. "Just big. And I made them because of the baby. Well, because of
both of us. You've probably figured out I'm not married."

"Your family isn't supportive?" Stella asked.

"My mother took off when I was about five. You may not remember that," she said to Roz. "Or you were too polite to mention it. My daddy died last year. I've got aunts and uncles, a pair of grandmothers left, and cousins. Some are still in the Little Rock area. Opinion is ... mixed about my current situation. Thanks," she added after Roz had poured out and offered her a cup.

"Well, the thing is, I was awfully sad when Daddy passed. He got hit by a car, crossing the street. Just one of those accidents that you can never understand and that, well, just don't seem right. I didn't have time to prepare for it. I guess you never do. But he was just gone, in a minute."

She drank tea and felt it soothe her right down to the bones she hadn't realized were so tired. "I was sad, and mad and lonely. And there was this guy. It wasn't a one-night stand or anything like that. We liked each other. He used to come in the bookstore, flirt with me. I used to flirt back. When I was alone, he was comforting. He was sweet. Anyway, one thing led to another. He's a law student. Then he went
back to school, and a few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. I didn't know what I was going to do. How I was going to tell him. Or anybody. I put it off for a few more weeks. I didn't know what I was going to do."

"And when you did?"

"I thought I should tell him face-to-face. He hadn't been coming into the store like he used to. So I went by the college to look him up. Turned out he'd fallen in love with this girl. He was a little embarrassed to tell me, seeing as we'd been sleeping together. But it wasn't like we'd made each other any promises, or been in love or anything. We'd just liked each other, that's all. And when he talked about this other girl, he got all lit up. You could just see how crazy he was about her. So I didn't tell him about the baby."

She hesitated, then took one of the cookies Stella had arranged on a plate. "I can't resist sweets. After
I'd thought about it, I didn't see how telling him would do any of us any good."

"That was a very hard decision," Roz told her.

"I don't know that it was. I don't know what I expected him to do when I went to tell him, except I thought he had a right to know. I didn't want to marry him or anything. I wasn't even sure, back that
far, that I was going to keep the baby."

She nibbled on the cookie while she rubbed a hand gently over the mound of her belly. "I guess that's
one of the reasons I went out there, to talk to him. Not just to tell him about it, but to see what he
thought we should do. But sitting with him, listening to him go on about this girl—"

She stopped, shook her head. "I needed to decide what to do about it. All telling him would've done was made him feel bad, or resentful or scared. Mess up his life when all he'd really tried to do was help me through a bad time."

"And that left you alone," Stella pointed out.

"If I'd told him, I still would've been alone. The thing is, when I decided I'd keep the baby, I thought about telling him again, and asked some people how he was doing. He was still with that girl, and they were talking about getting married, so I think I did the right thing. Still, once I started to show, there was
a lot of gossip and questions, a lot of looks and whispers. And I thought, What we need is a fresh start. So I sold the house and just about everything in it. And here I am."

"Looking for that fresh start," Roz concluded.

"I'm looking for a job." She paused, moistened her lips. "I know how to work. I also know a lot of
people would step back from hiring a woman nearly six months along. Family, even distant, through-marriage sort of family, might be a little more obliging."

She cleared her throat when Roz said nothing. "I studied literature and business in college. I graduated with honors. I've got a solid employment record. I've got money—not a lot. My partial scholarship didn't cover everything, and my daddy was a teacher, so he didn't make much. But I've got enough to take care of myself, to pay rent, buy food, pay for this baby. I need a job, any kind of a job for now. You've got your business, you've got this house. It takes a lot of people to help run those. I'm asking for a chance to be one of them."

"Know anything about plants, about gardening?"

"We put in flower beds every year. Daddy and I split the yard work. And what I don't know, I can learn. I learn quick."

"Wouldn't you rather work in a bookstore? Hayley managed an independent bookstore back home,"
Roz told Stella.

"You don't own a bookstore," Hayley pointed out. "I'll work without pay for two weeks."

"Someone works for me, she gets paid. I'll be hiring the seasonal help in a few weeks. In the meantime... Stella, can you use her?"

"Ah ..." Was she supposed to look at that young face and bulging belly and say no? "What were your responsibilities as manager?"

"I wasn't, like, officially the manager. But that's what I did, when you come down to it. It was a small operation, so I did some of everything. Inventory, buying, customer relations, scheduling, sales, advertising. Just the bookstore end of it. There was a separate staff for the coffee shop."

"What would you say were your strengths?"

She had to take a breath, calm her nerves. She knew it was vital to be clear and concise. And just as
vital to her pride not to beg. "Customer relations, which keyed into sales. I'm good with people, and I don't mind taking the extra time you need to take to make sure they get what they want. If your customers are happy, they come back, and they buy. You take the extra steps, personalize service,
you get customer loyalty."

Stella nodded. "And your weaknesses?"

"The buying," she said without hesitation. "I'd just want to buy everything if it was up to me. I had to keep reminding myself whose money I was spending. But sometimes I didn't hear myself."

"We're in the process of reorganizing, and some expanding. I could use some help getting the new
system in place. There's still a lot of computer inputting—some of it very tedious—to deal with."

"I can handle a keyboard. PC and Mac."

"We'll go for the two weeks," Roz decided. "You'll get paid, but we'll consider the two weeks a trial balloon for all of us. If it doesn't work out, I'll do what I can to help you find another job."

"Can't say fairer than that. Thanks, Cousin Rosalind."

"Just Roz. We've got some gas out in the shed. I'll go get it, and we'll get your car up here so you can
get your things in."

"In? In here?" Shaking her head, Hayley set her cup aside. "I said I wasn't after a handout. I appreciate the job, the chance at the job. I don't expect you to put me up."

"Family, even distant-through-marriage family, is welcome here. And it'll give us all a chance to get to know each other, to see if we're going to suit"

"You live here?" Hayley asked Stella.

"Yes. And my boys—eight and six. They're upstairs asleep."

"Are we cousins?"

"No."

"I'll get the gas." Roz got to her feet and started out.

"I'll pay rent" Hayley rose as well, instinctively laying a hand on her belly. "I pay my way."

"We'll adjust your salary to compensate for it."

When she was alone with Stella, Hayley let out a long, slow bream. "I thought she'd be older. And
scarier. Though I bet she can be plenty scary when she needs to. You can't have what she has, and
keep it, grow it, without knowing how to be scary."

"You're right. I can be scary, too, when it comes to work."

"I'll remember. Ah, you're from up north?"

"Yes. Michigan."

"That's a long way. Is it just you and your boys?"

"My husband died about two and a half years ago."

"That's hard. It's hard to lose somebody you love. I guess all three of us know about that. I think it can make you hard if you don't have something, someone else to love. I've got the baby."

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

"No. Baby had its back turned during the sonogram." She started to chew on her thumbnail, then tucked the thumb in her fist and lowered it. "I guess I should go out, take the gas Roz is getting."

"I'll go with you. We'll take care of it together."

* * *

In an hour they had Hayley settled in one of the guest rooms in the west wing. She knew she gawked. She knew she babbled. But she'd never seen a more beautiful room, had never expected to be in one. Much less to be able to call it her own, even temporarily.

She put away her things, running her fingers over the gleaming wood of the bureau, the armoire, the etched-glass lampshades, the carving of the headboard.

She would earn this. That was a promise she made to herself, and her child, as she indulged in a long, warm bath. She would earn the chance she'd been given and would pay Roz back in labor and in loyalty.

She was good at both.

She dried off, then rubbed oil over her belly, her breasts. She wasn't afraid of childbirth—she knew how to work hard toward a goal. But she was really hoping she could avoid stretch marks.

She felt a little chill and slipped hurriedly into her nightshirt. Just at the edge of the mirror, just at the corner of her vision, she caught a shadow, a movement.

Rubbing her arms warm, she stepped through to the bedroom. There was nothing, and the door was closed, as she'd left it. -

Dog-tired, she told herself and rubbed her eyes. It had been a long trip from the past to the verge of the future.

She took one of the books she'd had in her suitcase—the rest, ones she hadn't been able to bring herself to sell, were still packed in the trunk of her car—and slipped into bed.

She opened it to where she'd left it bookmarked, prepared to settle herself down, as she did most nights, with an hour of reading.

And was asleep with the light burning before she'd finished the first page.

* * *

At Roz's request, Stella once again went into her sitting room and sat. Roz poured them each a glass of wine.

"Honest impression?" she asked.

"Young, bright, proud. Honest. She could have spun us a sob story about being betrayed by the baby's father, begged for a place to stay, used her pregnancy as an excuse for all manner of things. Instead she took responsibility and asked to work. I'll still check her references."

"Of course. She seemed fearless about the baby."

"It's after you have them you learn to be afraid of everything."

"Isn't that the truth?" Roz scooped her fingers through her hair twice. "I'll make a few calls, find out a little more about that part of the Ashby family. I honestly don't remember very well. We never had much contact, even when he was alive. I do remember the scandal when the wife took off, left him with the baby. From the impression she made on me, and you, apparently he managed very well."

"Her managerial experience could be a real asset."

"Another manager." Roz, in a gesture Stella took as only half mocking, cast her eyes to heaven.
"Pray for me."

SEVEN

It didn't take two weeks. After two days, Stella decided Hayley was going to be the answer to her personal prayer. Here was someone with youth, energy, and enthusiasm who understood and
appreciated efficiency in the workplace.

She knew how to read and generate spreadsheets, understood instructions after one telling, and
respected color codes. If she was half as good relating to customers as she was with filing systems,
she would be a jewel.

When it came to plants, she didn't know much more than the basic this is a geranium, and this is a
pansy. But she could be taught.

Stella was already prepared to beg Roz to offer Hayley part-time work when May got closer.

"Hayley?" Stella poked her head in the now efficient and tidy office. "Why don't you come out with
me? We've got nearly an hour before we open. We'll have a lesson on shade plants iN Greenhouse Number Three."

"Cool. We're input through the H's in perennials. I don't know what half of them are, but I'm doing
some reading up at night. I didn't know sunflowers were called Helia ... wait. Helianthus."

"It's more that Helianthus are called sunflowers. The perennial ones can be divided in spring, or propagated by seeds—in the spring—or cuttings in late spring. Seeds from annual Helianthus can be harvested—from that big brown eye—in late summer or early fall. Though the cultivars hybridize
freely, they may not come true from the seeds collected. And I'm lecturing."

"That's okay. I grew up with a teacher. I like to learn."

As they passed through the counter area, Hayley glanced out the window. "Truck just pulled in over by the ... what do y'all call them? Pavers," she said before Stella could answer. "And, mmmm, just look at what's getting out of that truck. Mister tall, dark, and totally built. Who's the hunk?"

Struggling not to frown, Stella lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "That would be Logan Kitridge, Roz's landscape designer. I suppose he does score fairly high on the hunk-o-meter."

"Rings my bell." At Stella's expression, Hayley pressed a hand to her belly and laughed. "I'm pregnant. Still have all working parts, though. And just because I'm not looking for a man doesn't mean I don't
want to look at one. Especially when he's yummy. He really is all tough and broody-looking, isn't he? What is it about tough, broody-looking men that gives you that tickle down in the belly?"

"I couldn't say. What's he doing over there?"

"Looks like he's loading pavers. If it wasn't so cool, he'd pull off that jacket. Bet we'd get a real muscle show. God, I do love my eye candy."

"That sort'll give you cavities," Stella mumbled. "He's not scheduled for pavers. He hasn't put in the
order for pavers. Damn it!"

Hayley's eyebrows shot up as Stella stomped to the door and slammed out. Then she pressed her nose
to the window, prepared to watch the show.

"Excuse me?"

"Uh-huh?" Hayley's answer was absent as she tried to get a better look outside. Then she popped back from the window, remembering spying was one thing, getting caught at it another. She turned, put on
an innocent smile. And decided she'd gotten a double serving of eye candy.

This one wasn't big and broody, but sort of lanky and dreamy. And hot damn. It took an extra beat for her brain to engage, but she was quick.

"Hey! You must be Harper. You look just like your mama. I didn't get a chance to meet you yet, 'cause you never seemed to be around wherever I was around. Or whenever. I'm Hayley. Cousin Hayley from Little Rock? Maybe your mama told you I was working here now."

"Yeah. Yeah." He couldn't think of anything else. Could barely think at all. He felt lightning-struck and stupid.

"Do you just love working here? I do already. There's so much of everything, and the customers are so friendly. And Stella, she's just amazing, that's all. Your mama's like, I don't know, a goddess, for giving me a chance this way."

"Yeah." He winced. Could he be any more lame? "They're great. It's great." Apparently he could. And damn it, he was good with women. Usually. But one look at this one had given him some sort of concussion. "You, ah, do you need anything?"

"No." She gave him a puzzled smile. "I thought you did."

"I need something? What?"

"I don't know." She laid a hand on the fascinating mound of her belly and laughed, all throaty and free. "You're the one who came in."

"Right. Right. No, nothing. Now. Later. I've got to get back." Outside, in the air, where he should be
able to breathe again.

"It was nice meeting you, Harper."

"You, too." He glanced back as he retreated and saw she was already back at the window.

* * *

Outside, Stella sped across the parking area. She called out twice, and the second time got a quick
glance and an absent wave. Building up steam as she went, she pumped it out the minute she reached
the stacks of pavers.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Playing tennis. What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're taking material you haven't ordered, that you haven't been authorized to take."

"Really?" He hauled up another stack. "No wonder my backhand is rusty." The truck shuddered as he loaded. "Hey."

Much to her amazement, he leaned toward her, sniffed. "Different shampoo. Nice."

"Stop smelling me." She waved him away by flapping a hand at his chin as she stepped back.

"I can't help it. You're standing right there. I have a nose."

"I need the paperwork on this material."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine, fine, fine. I'll come in and take care of it after I'm loaded."

"You're supposed to take care of it before you load."

He turned, aimed a hot look with those mossy green eyes. "Red, you're a pain in the ass."

"I'm supposed to be. I'm the manager."

He had to smile at that, and he tipped down his sunglasses to look over them at her. "You're real good
at it, too. Think of it this way. The pavers are stored on the way to the building. By loading first, then coming in, I'm actually being more efficient."

The smile morphed into a smirk. "That'd be important, I'd think, if we were doing, say, a projection of man-hours."

He took a moment to lean against the truck and study her. Then he loaded another stack of pavers.
"You standing here watching me means you're wasting time, and likely adding to your own man-hours."

"You don't come in to handle the paperwork, Kitridge, I'll hunt you down."

"Don't tempt me."

He took his time, but he came in.

He was calculating how best to annoy Stella again. Her eyes went the color of Texas bluebonnets
when she was pissed off. But when he stepped in, he saw Hayley.

"Hey."

"Hey," she said back and smiled. "I'm Hayley Phillips. A family connection to Roz's first husband?
I'm working here now."

"Logan. Nice to meet you. Don't let this Yankee scare you." He nodded toward Stella. "Where are the sacred forms, and the ritual knife so I can slice open a vein and sign them in blood?"

"My office."

"Uh-huh." But he lingered rather than following her. "When's the baby due?" he asked Hayley.

"May."

"Feeling okay?"

"Never better."

"Good. This here's a nice outfit, a good place to work most of the time. Welcome aboard." He sauntered into Stella's office, where she was already at her computer, with the form on the screen.

"I'll type this one up to save time. There's a whole stack of them in that folder. Take it. All you have to do is fill them in as needed, date, sign or initial. Drop them off."

"Uh-huh." He looked around the room. The desk was cleared off. There were no cartons, no books sitting on the floor or stacked on chairs.

That was too bad, he thought. He'd liked the workaday chaos of it.

"Where's all the stuff in here?"

"Where it belongs. Those pavers were the eighteen-inch round, number A-23?"

"They were eighteen-inch rounds." He picked up the framed photo on her desk and studied the picture
of her boys and their dog. "Cute."

"Yes, they are. Are the pavers for personal use or for a scheduled job?"

"Red, you ever loosen up?"

"No. We Yankees never do."

He ran his tongue over his teeth. "Ura-hmm."

"Do you know how sick I am of being referred to as 'the Yankee,' as though it were a foreign species, or a disease? Half the customers who come in here look me over like I'm from another planet and may not be coming in peace. Then I have to tell them I was born here, answer all sorts of questions about why I left, why I'm back, who my people are, for Christ's sake, before I can get down to any sort of business. I'm from Michigan, not the moon, and the Civil damn War's been over for quite some time."

Yep, just like Texas bluebonnets. "That would be the War Between the damn States this side of the Mason-Dixon, honey. And looks to me like you loosen up just fine when you get riled enough."

"Don't 'honey' me in that southern-fried twang."

"You know, Red, I like you better this way."

"Oh, shut up. Pavers. Personal or professional use?"

"Well, that depends on your point of view." Since there was room now, he edged a hip onto the corner
of the desk. "They're for a friend. I'm putting in a walkway for her— my own time, no labor charge. I told her I'd pick up the materials and give her a bill from the center."

"We'll consider that personal use and apply your employee discount." She began tapping keys.
"How many pavers?"

"Twenty-two."

She tapped again and gave him the price per paver, before discount, after discount.

Impressed despite himself, he tapped the monitor. "You got a math nerd trapped in there?"

"Just the wonders of the twenty-first century. You'd find it quicker than counting on your fingers."

"I don't know. I've got pretty fast fingers." Drumming them on his thigh, he kept his gaze on her face.
"I need three white pine."

"For this same friend?"

"No." His grin flashed, fast and crooked. If she wanted to interpret "friend" as "lover," he couldn't see
any point in saying the pavers were for Mrs. Kingsley, his tenth-grade English teacher. "Pine's for a
client. Roland Guppy. Yes, like the fish. You've probably got him somewhere in your vast and
mysterious files. We did a job for him last fall."

Since there was a coffeemaker on the table against the wall, and the pot was half full, he got up, took a mug, and helped himself.

"Make yourself at home," Stella said dryly.

"Thanks. As it happens, I recommended white pine for a windbreak. He hemmed and hawed. Took him this long to decide to go for it. He called me at home yesterday. I said I'd pick them up and work him in."

"We need a different form."

He sampled the coffee. Not bad. "Somehow I knew that."

"Are the pavers all you're taking for personal use?"

"Probably. For today."

She hit Print, then brought up another form. "That's three white pine. What size?"

"We got some nice eight-foot ones."

"Balled and burlapped?"

"Yeah."

Tap, tap, tap, he thought, with wonder, and there you go. Woman had pretty fingers, he noted. Long
and tapered, with that glossy polish on them, the delicate pink of the inside of a rose petal.

She wore no rings.

"Anything else?"

He patted his pockets, eventually came up with a scrap of paper. "That's what I told him I could put
them in for."

She added the labor, totaled, then printed out three copies while he drank her coffee. "Sign or initial,"
she told him. "One copy for my files, one for yours, one for the client."

"Gotcha."

When he picked up the pen, Stella waved a hand. "Oh, wait, let me get that knife. Which vein did you plan to open?"

"Cute." He lifted his chin toward the door. "So's she."

"Hayley? Yeah, she is. And entirely too young for you."

"I wouldn't say entirely. Though I do prefer women with a little more..." He stopped, smiled again.
"We'll just say more, and stay alive."

"Wise."

"Your boys getting a hard time in school?"

"Excuse me?"

"Just considering what you said before. Yankee."

"Oh. A little, maybe, but for the most part the other kids find it interesting that they're from up north, lived near one of the Great Lakes. Both their teachers pulled up a map to show where they came from."

Her face softened as she spoke of it. "Thanks for asking."

"I like your kids."

He signed the forms and found himself amused when she groaned—actually groaned—watching him carelessly fold his and stuff them in his pocket.

"Next time could you wait until you're out of the office to do that? It hurts me."

"No problem." Maybe it was the different tone they were ending on, or maybe it was the way she'd softened up and smiled when she spoke of her children. Later, he might wonder what possessed him,
but for now, he went with impulse. "Ever been to Graceland?"

"No. I'm not a big Elvis fan."

"Ssh!" Widening his eyes, he looked toward the door. "Legally, you can't say that around here. You
could face fine and imprisonment, or depending on the jury, public flogging."

"I didn't read that in the Memphian handbook."

"Fine print. So, I'll take you. When's your day off?"

"I... It depends. You'll take me to Graceland?"

"You can't settle in down here until you've experienced Graceland. Pick a day, I'll work around it."

"I'm trying to understand here. Are you asking me for a date?"

"I wasn't heading into the date arena. I'm thinking of it more as an outing, between associates." He set
the empty mug on her desk. "Think about it, let me know."

* * *

She had too much to do to think about it. She couldn't just pop off to Graceland. And if she could, and had some strange desire to do so, she certainly wouldn't pop off to Graceland with Logan.

The fact that she'd admired his work—and all right, bis build—didn't mean she liked him. It didn't mean she wanted to spend her very valuable off-time in his company.

But she couldn't help thinking about it, or more, wondering why he'd asked her. Maybe it was some
sort of a trick, a strange initiation for the Yankee. You take her to Graceland, then abandon her in a
forest of Elvis paraphernalia and see if she can find her way out.

Or maybe, in his weird Logan way, he'd decided that hitting on her was an easier away around her new system than arguing with her.

Except he hadn't seemed to be hitting on her. Exactly. It had seemed more friendly, off the cuff, or impulsive. And he'd asked about her children. There was no quicker way to cut through her annoyance, any shield, any defense than a sincere interest in her boys.

And if he was just being friendly, it seemed only polite, and sensible, to be friendly back.

What did people wear to Graceland, anyway?

Not that she was going. She probably wasn't. But it was smart to prepare. Just in case.

In Greenhouse Three, supervising while Hayley watered propagated annuals, Stella pondered on the situation.

"Ever been to Graceland?"

"Oh, sure. These are impatiens, right?"

Stella looked down at the flat. "Yeah. Those are Busy Lizzies. They're doing really well."

"And these are impatiens too. The New Guinea ones."

"Right. You do learn fast."

"Well, I recognize these easier because I've planted them before. Anyway, I went to Graceland with
some pals when I was in college. It's pretty cool. I bought this Elvis bookmark. Wonder what ever happened to that? Elvis is a form of Elvin. It means 'elf-wise friend.' Isn't that strange?"

"Stranger to me that you'd know that."

"Just one of those things you pick up somewhere."

"Okay. So, what's the dress code?"

"Hmm?" She was trying to identify another flat by the leaves on the seedlings. And struggling not to
peek at the name on the spike. "I don't guess there is one. People just wear whatever. Jeans and stuff."

"Casual, then."

"Right. I like the way it smells in here. All earthy and damp."

"Then you made the right career choice."

"It could be a career, couldn't it?" Those clear blue eyes shifted to Stella. "Something I could learn to
be good at. I always thought I'd run my own place one day. Always figured on a bookstore, but this is sort of the same."

"How's that?"

"Well, like you've got your new stuff, and your classics. You've got genres, when it comes down to it. Annuals, biennials, perennials, shrubs and trees and grasses. Water plants and shade plants. That sort
of thing."

"You know, you're right. I hadn't thought of it that way."

Encouraged, Hayley walked down the rows. "And you're learning and exploring, the way you do with books. And we—you know, the staff—we're trying to help people find what suits them, makes them happy or at least satisfied. Planting a flower's like opening a book, because either way you're starting something. And your garden's your library. I could get good at this."

"I don't doubt it."

She turned to see Stella smiling at her. "When I am good at it, it won't just be a job anymore. A job's okay. It's cool for now, but I want more than a paycheck at the end of the week. I don't just mean money—though, okay, I want the money too."

"No, I know what you mean. You want what Roz has here. A place, and the satisfaction of being part
of that place. Roots," Stella said, touching the leaves of a seedling. "And bloom. I know, because I
want it too."

"But you have it. You're so totally smart, and you know where you're going. You've got two great kids, and a... a position here. You worked toward this, this place, this position. I feel like I'm just starting."

"And you're impatient to get on with it. So was I at your age."

Hayley's face beamed good humor. "And, yeah, you're so old and creaky now."

Laughing, Stella pushed back her hair. "I've got about ten years on you. A lot can happen, a lot can change— yourself included—in a decade. In some ways I'm just starting, too—a decade after you. Transplanting myself, and my two precious shoots here."

"Do you get scared?"

"Every day." She laid a hand on Hayley's belly. "It comes with the territory."

"It helps, having you to talk to. I mean, you were married when you went through this, but you—well, both you and Roz had^o deal with being a single parent. It helps that you know stuff. Helps having
other women around who know stuff I need to know."

With the job complete, Hayley walked over to turn off the water. "So," she asked, "are you going to Graceland?"

"I don't know. I might."

* * *

With his crew split between the white pines and the landscape prep on the Guppy job, Logan set to
work on the walkway for his old teacher. It wouldn't take him long, and he could hit both the other
work sites that afternoon. He liked juggling jobs. He always had.

Going directly start to finish on one too quickly cut out the room for brainstorms or sudden inspiration. There was little he liked better than that pop, when he just saw something in his head that he knew he could make with his hands.

He could take what was and make it better, maybe blend some of what was with the new and create a different whole.

He'd grown up respecting the land, and the whims of Nature, but more from a farmer's point of view. When you grew up on a small farm, worked it, fought with it, he thought, you understood what the
land meant. Or could mean.

His father had loved the land, too, but in a different way, Logan supposed. It had provided for his family, cost them, and in the end had gifted them with a nice bonanza when his father had opted to sell out.

He couldn't say he missed the farm. He'd wanted more than row crops and worries about market prices. But he'd wanted, needed, to work the land.

Maybe he'd lost some of the magic of it when he'd moved north. Too many buildings, too much concrete, too many limitations for him. He hadn't been able to acclimate to the climate or culture any more than Rae had been able to acclimate here.

It hadn't worked. No matter how much both of them had tried to nurture things along, the marriage had just withered on them.

So he'd come home, and ultimately, with Roz's offer, he'd found his place—personally, professionally, creatively. And was content.

He ran his lines, then picked up his shovel.

And jabbed the blade into the earth again.

What had he been thinking? He'd asked the woman out. He could call it whatever he liked, but when
a guy asked a woman out, it was a frigging date.

He had no intention of dating toe-the-line Stella Rothchild. She wasn't his type.

Okay, sure she was. He set to work turning the soil between his lines to prep for leveling and laying the black plastic. He'd never met a woman, really, who wasn't his type.

He just liked the breed, that's all. Young ones and old ones, country girls and city-slicked. Whip smart
or bulb dim, women just appealed to him on most every level.

He'd ended up married to one, hadn't he? And though that had been a mistake, you had to make them along the way.

Maybe he'd never been particularly drawn to the structured, my-way-or-the-highway type before. But there was always a first time. And he liked first times. It was the second times and the third times that could wear on a man.

But he wasn't attracted to Stella.

Okay, shit. Yes, he was. Mildly. She was a good-looking woman, nicely shaped, too. And there was the hair. He was really gone on the hair. Wouldn't mind getting his hands on that hair, just to see if it felt as sexy as it looked.

But it didn't mean he wanted to date her. It was hard enough to deal with her professionally. The
woman had a rule or a form or a damn system for everything.

Probably had them in bed, too. Probably had a typed list of bullet points, dos and don'ts, all with a mission statement overview.

What the woman needed was some spontaneity, a little shake of the order of things. Not that he was interested in being the one to provide it.

It was just that she'd looked so pretty that morning, and her hair had smelled good. Plus she'd had that sexy little smile going for her. Before he knew it, he'd been talking about taking her to Graceland.

Nothing to worry about, he assured himself. She wouldn't go. It wasn't the sort of thing a woman like
her did, just for the hell of it. As far as he could tell, she didn't do anything for the hell of it.

They'd both forget he'd even brought it up.

* * *

Because she felt it was imperative, at least for the first six months of her management, Stella insisted
on a weekly progress meeting with Roz.

She'd have preferred a specific time for these meetings, and a specific location. But Roz was hard to
pin down.

She'd already held them in the propagation house and in the field. This time she cornered Roz in her
own sitting room, where she'd be unlikely to escape.

"I wanted to give you your weekly update."

"Oh. Well, all right." Roz set aside a book on hybridizing that was thick as a railroad tie, and took off
her frameless reading glasses. 'Time's zipping by. Ground's warming up."

"I know. Daffodils are ready to pop. So much earlier than I'm used to. We've been selling a lot of bulbs. Back north, we'd sell most of those late summer or fall."

"Homesick?"

"Now and then, but less and less already. I can't say I'm sorry to be out of Michigan as we slog through February. They got six inches of snow yesterday, and I'm watching daffodils spearing up."

Roz leaned back in the chair, crossed her sock-covered feet at the ankles. "Is there a problem?"

"So much for the illusion that I conceal my emotions under a composed facade. No, no problem. I did
the duty call home to my mother a little while ago. I'm still recovering."

"Ah."

It was a noncommittal sound, and Stella decided she could interpret it as complete non-interest or a tacit invitation to unload. Because she was brimming, she chose to unload.

"I spent the almost fifteen minutes she spared me out of her busy schedule listening to her talk about her current boyfriend. She actually calls these men she sees boyfriends. She's fifty-eight years old, and she just had her fourth divorce two months ago. When she wasn't complaining that Rocky—and he's actually named Rocky— isn't attentive enough and won't take her to the Bahamas for a midwinter getaway, she was talking about her next chemical peel and whining about how her last Botox injection hurt. She never asked about the boys, and the only reference she made to the fact that I was living and working down here was to ask if I was tired of being around the jerk and his bimbo—her usual terms for my father
and Jolene."

When she'd run out of steam, Stella rubbed her hands over her face. "Goddamn it."

"That's a lot of bitching, whining, and venom to pack into a quarter of an hour. She sounds like a very talented woman."

It took Stella a minute—a minute where she let her hands slide into her lap so she could stare into Roz's face. Then she let her own head fall back with a peal of laughter.

"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, she's loaded with talent. Thanks."

"No problem. My mama spent most of her time—at least the time we were on earth together—sighing wistfully over her health. Not that she meant to complain, so she said. I very nearly put that on her tombstone. 'Not That I Mean to Complain.'"

"I could put 'I Don't Ask for Much' on my mother's."

"There you go. Mine made such an impression on me that I went hell-bent in the opposite direction. I could probably cut off a limb, and you wouldn't hear a whimper out of me."

"God, I guess I've done the same with mine. I'll have to think about that later. Okay, on to business. We're sold out of the mixed-bulb planters we forced. I don't know if you want to do others this late
in the season."

"Maybe a few. Some people like to pick them up, already done, for Easter presents and so on."

"All right. How about if I show Hayley how it's done? I know you usually do them yourself, but—"

"No, it's a good job for her. I've been watching her." At Stella's expression, she inclined her head.
"I don't like to look like I'm watching, but generally I am. I know what's going on in my place, Stella, even if I do occasionally miss crossing a T."

"And I'm there to cross them, so that's all right."

"Exactly. Still, I've left her primarily to you. She working out for you?"

"More than. You don't have to tell her something twice, and when she claimed she learned fast she
wasn't kidding. She's thirsty."

"We've got plenty to drink around here."

"She's personable with customers—friendly, never rushed. And she's not afraid to say she doesn't know, but she'll find out. She's outside right now, poking around your beds and shrubs. She wants to know
what she's selling."

She moved to the window as she spoke, to look out. It was nearly twilight, but there was Hayley
walking the dog and studying the perennials. "At her age, I was planning my wedding. It seems like a million years ago."

"At her age, I was raising two toddlers and was pregnant with Mason. Now that was a million years ago. And five minutes ago."

"It's off topic, again, of the update, but I wanted to ask if you'd thought about what you'll do when we
get to May."

"That's still high season for us, and people like to freshen up the summer garden. We sell—"

"No, I meant about Hayley. About the baby."

"Oh. Well, she'll have to decide that, but I expect if she decides to stay on at the nursery, we'll find her sit-down work."

"She'll need to find child care, when she's ready to go back to work. And speaking of nurseries ..."

"Hmm. That's thinking ahead."

"Time zips by," Stella repeated.

"We'll figure it out."

Because she was curious, Roz rose to go to the window herself. Standing beside Stella she looked out.

It was a lovely thing, she decided, watching a young woman, blooming with child, wandering a winter garden.

She'd once been that young woman, dreaming in the twilight and waiting for spring to bring life.

Time didn't just zip by, she thought. It damn near evaporated on you.

"She seems happy now, and sure of what she's going to do. But could be after she has the baby, she'll change her mind about having the father involved." Roz watched Hayley lay a hand on her belly and look west, to where the sun was sinking behind the trees and into the river beyond them. "Having a live baby in your arms and the prospect of caring for it single-handed's one hell of a reality check. We'll see when the time comes."

"You're right. And I don't suppose either of us knows her well enough to know what's best. Speaking
of babies, it's nearly time to get mine in the tub. I'm going to leave the weekly report with you."

"All right. I'll get to it. I should tell you, Stella, I like what you've done. What shows, like in the customer areas, and what doesn't, in the office management. I see spring coming, and for the first time in years,
I'm not frazzled and overworked. I can't say I minded being overworked, but I can't say I mind not
being, either."

"Even when I bug you with details?"

"Even when. I haven't heard any complaints about Logan in the past few days. Or from him. Am I living in a fool's paradise, or have you two found your rhythm?"

"There are still a few hitches in it, and I suspect there'll be others, but nothing for you to worry about.
In fact, he made a very friendly gesture and offered to take me to Graceland."

"He did?" Roz's eyebrows drew together. "Logan?"

"Would that be out of the ordinary for him?"

"I couldn't say, except I don't know that he's dated anyone from work before."

"It's not a date, it's an outing."

Intrigued, Roz sat again. You never knew what you'd learn from a younger woman, she decided.
"What's the difference?"

"Well, a date's dinner and a movie with potential, even probable, romantic overtones. Taking your kids
to the zoo is an outing."

Roz leaned back, stretched out her legs. "Things do change, don't they? Still, in my book, when a man and a woman go on an outing, it's a date."

"See, that's my quandary." Since conversation seemed welcomed, Stella walked over again, sat on the arm of the chair facing Roz. "Because that's my first thought. But it seemed like just a friendly gesture, and the 'outing' term was his. Like a kind of olive branch. And if I take it, maybe we'd find that common ground, or that rhythm, whatever it is we need to smooth out the rough spots in our working relationship."

"So, if I'm following this, you'd go to Graceland with Logan for the good of In the Garden."

"Sort of."

"And not because he's a very attractive, dynamic, and downright sexy single man."

"No, those would be bonus points." She waited until Roz stopped laughing. "And I'm not thinking of wading in that pool. Dating's a minefield."

"Tell me about it. I've got more years in that war zone than you."

"I like men." She reached back to tug the band ponytail-ing her hair a little higher. "I like the company
of men. But dating's so complicated and stressful."

"Better complicated and stressful than downright boring, which too many of my experiences in the field have been."

"Complicated, stressful, or downright boring, I like the sound of 'outing' much better. Listen, I know Logan's a friend of yours. But I'd just like to ask if you think, if I went with him, I'd be making a
mistake, or giving the wrong impression. The wrong signal. Or maybe crossing that line between coworkers. Or—"

"That's an awful lot of complication and stress you're working up over an outing."

"It is. I irritate myself." Shaking her head, she pushed off the chair. "I'd better get bath time started.
Oh, and I'll get Hayley going on those bulbs tomorrow."

"That's fine. Stella—are you going on this outing?"

She paused at the doorway. "Maybe. I'll sleep on it."

EIGHT

She was dreaming of flowers. An enchanting garden, full of young, vital blooms, flowed around her. It was perfect, tidied and ordered, its edges ruler-straight to form a keen verge against the well-trimmed grass.

Color swept into color, whites and pinks, yellows and silvery greens, all soft and delicate pastels that shimmered in subtle elegance in the golden beams of the sun.

Their fragrance was calming and drew a pretty bevy of busy butterflies, the curiosity of a single shimmery hummingbird. No weed intruded on its flawlessness, and every blossom was full and ripe, with dozens upon dozens of buds waiting their turn to open.

She'd done this. As she circled the bed it was with a sense of pride and satisfaction. She'd turned the
earth and fed it, she'd planned and selected and set each plant in exactly the right place. The garden so precisely matched her vision, it was like a photograph.

It had taken her years to plan and toil and create. But now everything she'd wanted to accomplish was here, blooming at her feet.

Yet even as she watched, a stem grew up, sharp and green, crowding the others, spoiling the symmetry. Out of place, she thought, more annoyed than surprised to see it breaking out of the ground, growing
up, unfurling its leaves.

A dahlia? She'd planted no dahlias there. They belonged in the back. She'd specifically planted a trio of tall pink dahlias at the back of the bed, exactly one foot apart.

Puzzled, she tilted her head, studied it as the stems grew and thickened, as buds formed fat and healthy. Fascinating, so fascinating and unexpected.

Even as she started to smile, she heard—felt?—a whisper over the skin, a murmur through her brain.

It's wrong there. Wrong. It has to be removed. It will take and take until there's nothing left.

She shivered. The air around her was suddenly cool, with a hint of raw dampness, with bleak clouds creeping in toward that lovely golden sun.

In the pit of her belly was a kind of dread.

Don't let it grow. It will strangle the life out of everything you 've done.

That was right. Of course, that was right. It had no business growing there, muscling the others aside, changing the order.

She'd have to dig it out, find another place for it. Reorganize everything, just when she'd thought she
was finished. And look at that, she thought, as the buds formed, as they broke open to spread their
deep blue petals. It was entirely the wrong color. Too bold, too dark, too bright.

It was beautiful; she couldn't deny it. In fact, she'd never seen a more beautiful specimen. It looked so strong, so vivid. It was already nearly as tall as she, with flowers as wide as dinner plates.

It lies. It lies.

That whisper, somehow female, somehow raging, slithered into her sleeping brain. She whimpered a
little, tossed restlessly in her chilly bed.

Kill it! Kill it. Hurry before it's too late.

No, she couldn't kill something so beautiful, so alive, so vivid. But that didn't mean she could just leave
it there, out of its place, upsetting the rest of the bed.

All that work, the preparation, the planning, and now this. She'cf just have to plan another bed and work it in. With a sigh, she reached out, feathered her fingers over those bold blue petals. It would be a lot of work, she thought, a lot of trouble, but—

"Mom."

"Isn't it pretty?" she murmured. "It's so blue."

"Mom, wake up."

"What?" She tumbled out of the dream, shaking off sleep as she saw Luke kneeling in the bed beside her.

God, the room was freezing.

"Luke?" Instinctively she dragged the spread over him. "What's the matter?"

"I don't feel good in my tummy."

"Aw." She sat up, automatically laying a hand on his brow to check for fever. A little warm, she thought. "Does it hurt?"

He shook his head. She could see the gleam of his eyes, the sheen of tears. "It feels sick. Can I sleep in your bed?"

"Okay." She drew the sheets back. "Lie down and bundle up, baby. I don't know why it's so cold in here. I'm going to take your temperature, just to see." She pressed her lips to his forehead as he snuggled onto her pillow. Definitely a little warm.

Switching on the bedside lamp, she rolled out to get the thermometer from the bathroom.

"Let's find out if I can see through your brain." She stroked his hair as she set the gauge to his ear.
"Did you feel sick when you went to bed?"

"Nuh-uh, it was ..." His body tightened, and he made a little groan.

She knew he was going to retch before he did. With a mother's speed, she scooped him up, dashed into the bathroom. They made it, barely, and she murmured and stroked and fretted while he was sick.

Then he turned his pale little face up to hers. "I frew up."

"I know, baby. I'm sorry. We're going to make it all better soon."

She gave him a little water, cooled his face with a cloth, then carried him back to her bed. Strange, she thought, the room felt fine now.

"It doesn't feel as sick in my tummy anymore."

"That's good." Still, she took his temperature—99.1, not too bad—and brought the wastebasket over beside the bed. "Does it hurt anywhere?"

"Nuh-uh, but I don't like to frow up. It makes it taste bad in my throat. And my other tooth is loose, and maybe if I frow up again, it'll come out and I won't have it to put under my pillow."

"Don't you worry about that. You'll absolutely have your tooth for under your pillow, just like the other one. Now, I'll go down and get you some ginger ale. You stay right here, and I'll be back in just a minute. Okay?"

"Okay."

"If you have to be sick again, try to use this." She set the wastebasket beside him on the bed. "I'll be
right back, baby."

She hurried out, jogging down the stairs in her nightshirt. One of the disadvantages of a really big house, she realized, was that the kitchen was a mile away from the bedrooms.

She'd see about buying a little fridge, like the one she'd had in her dorm room at college, for the upstairs sitting room.

Low-grade fever, she thought as she rushed into the kitchen. He'd probably be better by tomorrow.
If he wasn't, she'd call the doctor.

She hunted up ginger ale, filled a tall glass with ice, grabbed a bottle of water, and dashed back upstairs.

"I get ginger ale," she heard Luke say as she walked back down the hall to her room. "Because I was
sick. Even though I feel better, I can still have it. You can have some, too, if you want."

"Thanks, honey, but—" When she swung into the room, she saw Luke was turned away from the door, sitting back against the pillows. And the room was cold again, so cold that she saw the vapor of her
own breath.

"She went away," Luke said.

Something that was more than the cold danced up her spine. "Who went away?"

"The lady." His sleepy eyes brightened a bit when he saw the ginger ale. "She stayed with me when
you went downstairs."

"What lady, Luke? Miss Roz? Hayley?"

"Nuh-uh. The lady who comes and sings. She's nice. Can I have all the ginger ale?"

"You can have some." Her hands shook lightly as she poured. "Where did you see her?"

"Right here." He pointed to the bed, then took the glass in both hands and drank. "This tastes good."

"You've seen her before?"

"Uh-huh. Sometimes I wake up and she's there. She sings the dilly-dilly song."

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly. Lavender's green. That's the song she'd heard, Stella realized with a numb fear. The song she'd caught herself humming.

"Did she—" No, don't frighten him, she warned herself. "What does she look like?"

"She's pretty, I guess. She has yellow hair. I think she's an angel, a lady angel? 'Member the story
about the guard angel?"

"Guardian angel."

"But she doesn't have wings. Gavin says she's maybe a witch, but a good one like in Harry Potter!'

Her throat went desert dry. "Gavin's seen her too?"

"Yeah, when she comes to sing." He handed the glass back to Stella, rubbed his eyes. "My tummy feels better now, but I'm sleepy. Can I still sleep in your bed?"

"Absolutely." But before she got into bed with him, Stella turned on the bathroom light.

She looked in on Gavin, struggled against the urge to pluck him out of his bed and carry him into hers.

Leaving the connecting doors wide open, she walked back into her room.

She turned off the bedside lamp, then slid into bed with her son.

And gathering him close, she held him as he slept.

* * *

He seemed fine the next morning. Bright and bouncy, and cheerfully told David over breakfast that
he'd thrown up and had ginger ale.

She considered keeping him home from school, but there was no fever and, judging by his appetite,
no stomach problems.

"No ill effects there," David commented when the boys ran up to get their books. "You, on the other hand, look like you put in a rough one." He poured her another cup of coffee.

"I did. And not all of it because Luke was sick. After he 'frew up,' he settled down and slept like a baby. But before he settled down, he told me something that kept me awake most of the night."

David rested his elbows on the island counter, leaned forward. "Tell Daddy all."

"He says ..." She glanced around, cocking an ear so she'd hear the boys when they came back down. "There's a lady with yellow hair who comes into his room at night and sings to him."

"Oh." He picked up his dishcloth and began to mop the counter.

"Don't say 'oh' with that silly little smile."

"Hey, I'll have you know this is my amused smirk. Nothing silly about it."

"David."

"Stella," he said with the same stern scowl. "Roz told you we have a ghost, didn't she?"

"She mentioned it. But there's just one little problem with that. There are no such things as ghosts."

"So, what, some blonde sneaks into the house every night, heads to the boys' room, and breaks out in song? That's more plausible?"

"I don't know what's going on. I've heard someone singing, and I've felt..." Edgy, she twisted the band
of her watch. "Regardless, the idea of a ghost is ridiculous. But something's going on with my boys."

"Is he afraid of her?"

"No. I probably just imagined the singing. And Luke, he's six. He can imagine anything."

"Have you asked Gavin?"

"No. Luke said they'd both seen her, but..."

"So have I."

"Oh, please."

David rinsed the dishcloth, squeezed out the excess water, then laid it over the lip of the sink to dry.
"Not since I was a kid, but I saw her a few times when I'd sleep over. Freaked me out at first, but she'd just sort of be there. You can ask Harper. He saw her plenty."

"Okay. Just who is this fictional ghost supposed to be?" She threw up a hand as she heard the thunder
of feet on the stairs. "Later."

* * *

She tried to put it out of her mind, and succeeded from time to time when the work took over. But it snuck back into her brain, and played there, like the ghostly lullaby.

By midday, she left Hayley working on bulb planters and Ruby at the counter, and grabbing a clipboard, headed toward the grafting house.

Two birds, she thought, one stone.

The music today was Rachmaninoff. Or was it Mozart? Either way, it was a lot of passionate strings
and flutes. She passed the staging areas, the tools, the soils and additives rooting mediums.

She found Harper down at the far end at a worktable with a pile of five-inch pots, several cacti as stock plants, and a tray of rooting medium. She noted the clothespins, the rubber bands, the raffia, the jar of denatured alcohol.

"What do you use on the Christmas cactus?"

He continued to work, using his knife to cut a shoot from the joint of a scion plant. He had beautiful hands, she noted. Long, artistic fingers. "Apical-wedge, then? Tricky, but probably best with that
specimen because of the flat stems. Are you creating a standard, or hybridizing?"

He made his vertical slit into the vascular bundle and still didn't answer.

"I'm just wondering because—" She set her hand on his shoulder, and when he jumped and let out a muffled shout, she stumbled back and rammed into the table behind her.

"Shit!" He dropped the knife and stuck the thumb it had nicked in his mouth. "Shit!" he said again,
around his thumb, and tugged headphones off with his free hand.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! How bad are you cut? Let me see."

"It's just a scratch." He took it out of his mouth, rubbed it absently on his grimy jeans. "Not nearly as fatal as the heart attack you just brought on."

"Let me see the thumb." She grabbed his hand. "You've got dirt in it now."

He saw her gaze slide over toward the alcohol and ripped his hand out of hers. "Don't even think
about it."

"Well, it should at least be cleaned. And I really am sorry. I didn't see the headphones. I thought you heard me."

"It's okay. No big. The classical's for the plants. If I listen to it for too long, my eyes get glassy."

"Oh?" She picked up the headphones, held one side to one ear. "Metallica?"

"Yeah. My kind of classical." Now he looked warily at her clipboard. "What's up?"

"I'm hoping to get an idea of what you'll have ready in here to put out for our big spring opening next month. And what you have at the stage you'd want it moved out to the stock greenhouse."

"Oh, well..." He looked around. "A lot of stuff. Probably. I keep the staging records on computer."

"Even better. Maybe you could just make me a copy. Floppy disk would be perfect."

"Yeah, okay. Okay, wait." He shifted his stool toward the computer.

"You don't have to do it this minute, when you're in the middle of something else."

"If I don't, I'll probably forget."

With a skill she admired, he tapped keys with somewhat grungy fingers, found what he was after. He dug out a floppy, slid it into the data slot. "Look, I'd rather you didn't take anything out when I'm not here."

"No problem."

"How's, um, Hayley working out?"

"An answer to a prayer."

"Yeah?" He reached for a can of Coke, took a quick drink. "She's not doing anything heavy or working around toxics. Right?"

"Absolutely not. I've got her doing bulb planters right now."

"Here you go." He handed her the floppy.

"Thanks, Harper. This makes my life easier. I've never done a Christmas cactus graft." She clipped the floppy to her board. "Can I watch?"

"Sure. Want to do one? I'll talk you through."

"I'd really like to."

"I'll finish this one up. See, I cut a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-inch shoot, straight through the joint.
I've cut the top couple inches from the stem of the stock plant. And on the way to slicing my finger—"

"Sorry."

"Wouldn't be the first time. I made this fine, vertical cut into the vascular bundle."

"I got that far."

"From here, we pare slivers of skin from both sides of the base of the scion, tapering the end, and exposing the central core." Those long, artistic fingers worked cleverly and patiently. "See?"

"Mmm. You've got good hands for this."

"Came by them naturally. Mom showed me how to graft. We did an ornamental cherry when I was
about Luke's age. Now we're going to insert the scion into the slit on the stock stem. We want the exposed tissues of both in contact, and match the cut surfaces as close as you can. I like to use a long cactus spine...." He took one from a tray and pushed it straight into the grafted area.

"Neat and organic."

"Uh-huh. I don't like binding with raffia on these. Weakened clothespins are better. Right across the
joint, see, so it's held firm but not too tight. The rooting medium's two parts cactus soil mix to one part fine grit. I've already got the mix. We get our new baby in the pot, cover the mix with a little fine gravel."

"So it stays moist but not wet."

"You got it. Then you want to label it and put it in an airy position, out of full sun. The two plants should unite in a couple of days. Want to give it a shot?"

"Yeah." She took the stool when he vacated it, and began, following his directions carefully. "Ah, David was telling me about the house legend this morning."

"That's good." His gaze stayed focused on her hands, and the plant. "Keep the slice really thin. Legend?"

"You know, woo-woo, ghost."

"Oh, yeah, the sad-eyed blonde. Used to sing to me when I was a kid."

"Come on, Harper."

He shrugged, took another sip of Coke. "You want?" He tipped the can from side to side. "I've got more in the cooler under'here."

"No, but thanks. You're saying a ghost used to come in your room and sing to you."

"Up until I was about twelve, thirteen. Same with my brothers. You hit puberty, she stops coming around. You need to taper the scion now."

She paused in her work only long enough to slide a glance up at his face. "Harper, don't you consider yourself a scientist?"

He smiled at her with those somewhat dreamy brown eyes. "Not so much. Some of what I do is science, and some of what I do requires knowing some science. But down at it, I'm a gardener."

He two-pointed the Coke can into his waste bin, then bent down to get another out of his cooler. "But
if you're asking if I find ghosts at odds with science, not so much either. Science is an exploration, it's experimentation, it's discovery."

"I can't argue with your definition." She went back to the work. "But—"

He popped the top. "Gonna Scully me?"

She had to laugh. "It's one thing for a young boy to believe in ghosts, and Santa Claus, and—"

"You're trying to say there's no Santa Claus?" He looked horrified. "That's just sick."

"But," she continued, ignoring him, "it's entirely another when it's a grown man."

"Who are you calling a grown man? I think I'm going to have to order you out of my house. Stella." He patted her shoulder, transferred soil, then casually brushed it off her shirt. "I saw what I saw, I know what I know. It's just part of growing up in the house. She was always ... a benign presence, at least
to me and my brothers. She gave Mom grief now and then."

"What do you mean, grief?"

"Ask Mom. But I don't know why you'd bother, since you don't believe in ghosts anyway." He smiled. "That's a good graft. According to family lore, she's supposed to be one of the Harper brides, but she's not in any of the paintings or pictures we have." He lifted a shoulder. "Maybe she was a servant who
died there. She sure knows her way around the place."

"Luke told me he saw her."

"Yeah?" His gaze sharpened as Stella labeled the pot. "If you're worried that she might hurt him, or Gavin, don't. She's, I don't know, maternal."

"Perfect, then—an unidentified yet maternal ghost who haunts my sons' room at night."

"It's a Harper family tradition."

* * *

After a conversation like that, Stella needed something sensible to occupy her mind. She grabbed a flat
of pansies and some trailing vinca from a greenhouse, found a couple of nice free-form concrete planters in storage, loaded them and potting soil onto a flatbed cart. She gathered tools, gloves, mixed up some starter solution, and hauled everything out front.

Pansies didn't mind a bit of chill, she thought, so if they got a few more frosts, they wouldn't be bothered. And their happy faces, their rich colors would splash spring right at the entry way.

Once she'd positioned the planters, she got her clipboard and noted down everything she'd taken from stock. She'd enter it in her computer when she was finished.

Then she knelt down to do something she loved, something that never failed to comfort her. Something that always made sense.

She planted.

When the first was done, the purple and yellow flowers cheerful against the dull gray of the planter, she stepped back to study it. She wanted its mate to be as close to a mirror image as she could manage.

She was half done when she heard the rumble of tires on gravel. Logan, she thought, as she glanced around and identified his truck. She saw him start to turn toward the material area, then swing back
and drive toward the building.

He stepped out, worn boots, worn jeans, bad-boy black-lensed sunglasses.

She felt a little itch right between her shoulder blades.

"Hey," he said.

"Hello, Logan."

He stood there, his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his work pants and a trio of fresh scratches
on his forearms just below the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt.

"Picking up some landscape timbers and some more black plastic for the Dawson job."

"You're moving right along there."

"It's cooking." He stepped closer, studied her work. "Those look good. I could use them."

"These are for display."

"You can make more. I take those over to Miz Dawson, the woman's going to snap them up. Sale's a sale, Red."

"Oh, all right." She'd hardly had a minute to think of them as her own. "Let me at least finish them.
You tell her she'll need to replace these pansies when it gets hot. They won't handle summer. And if she puts perennials in them, she should cover the planters over for winter."

"It happens I know something about plants myself."

"Just want to make sure the customer's satisfied."

He'd been polite, she thought. Even cooperative. Hadn't he come to give her a materials list? The least she could do was reciprocate. "If Graceland's still on, I can take off some time next Thursday." She
kept her eyes on the plants, her tone casual as a fistful of daisies. "If that works for you."

"Thursday?" He'd been all prepared with excuses if she happened to bring it up. Work was jamming
him up, they'd do it some other time.

But there she was, kneeling on the ground, with that damn hair curling all over the place and the sun hitting it. Those blue eyes, that cool Yankee voice.

"Sure, Thursday's good. You want me to pick you up here or at the house?"

"Here, if that's okay. What time works best for you?"

"Maybe around one. That way I can put the morning in."

"That'll be perfect." She rose, brushed off her gloves and set them neatly on the cart. "Just let me put together a price for these planters, make you up an order form. If she decides against them, just bring them back."

"She won't. Go ahead and do the paperwork." He dug a many folded note out of his pocket. "On these and the materials I've got down here. I'll load up."

"Good. Fine." She started inside. The itch had moved from her shoulder blades to just under her belly button.

It wasn't a date, it wasn't a date, she reminded herself. It wasn't even an outing, really. It was a gesture.
A goodwill gesture on both sides.

And now, she thought as she walked into her office, they were both stuck with it.

NINE

"I don't know how it got to be Thursday."

"It has something to do with Thor, the Norse god." Hayley hunched her shoulders sheepishly. "I know
a lot of stupid things. I don't know why."

"I wasn't looking for the origin of the word, more how it got here so fast. Thor?" Stella repeated, turning from the mirror in the employee bathroom.

"Pretty sure."

"I'll just take your word on that one. Okay." She spread out her arms. "How do I look?"

"You look really nice."

"Too nice? You know, too formal or prepared?"

"No, just right nice." The fact was, she envied the way Stella looked in simple gray pants and black sweater. Sort of tailored, and curvy under it. When she wasn't pregnant, she herself tended to be on
the bony side and flat-chested.

"The sweater makes you look really built," she added.

"Oh, God!" Horrified, Stella crossed her arms, pressing them against her breasts. "Too built? Like,
hey, look at my boobs?"

"No." Laughing, Hayley tugged Stella's arms down. "Cut it out. You've got really excellent boobs."

"I'm nervous. It's ridiculous, but I'm nervous. I hate being nervous, which is why I hardly ever am."
She tugged at the sleeve of her sweater, brushed at it. "Why do something you hate?"

"It's just a casual afternoon outing." Hayley avoided the D word. They'd been over that. "Just go and have fun."

"Right. Of course. Stupid." She shook herself off before walking out of the room. "You've got my cell number."

"Everybody has your cell number, Stella." She cast a look at Ruby, who answered it with chuckle.
"I think the mayor probably has it on speed dial."

"If there are any problems at all, don't hesitate to use it. And if you're not sure about anything, and
can't find Roz or Harper, just call me."

"Yes, Mama. And don't worry, the keg's not coming until three." She slapped a hand over her mouth. "Did I say keg? Peg's what I meant. Yeah, I meant Peg."

"Ha ha."

"And the male strippers aren't a definite." She got a hoot of laughter out of Ruby at that and grinned madly. "So you can chill."

"I don't think chilling's on today's schedule."

"Can I ask how long it's been since you've been on a date—I mean, an outing?"

"Not that long. A few months." When Hayley rolled her eyes, Stella rolled hers right back. "I was busy. There was a lot to do with selling the house, packing up, arranging for storage, researching schools and pediatricians down here. I didn't have time."

"And didn't have anyone who made you want to make time. You're making it today."

"It's not like that. Why is he late?" she demanded, glancing at her watch. "I knew he'd be late. He has
'I'm chronically late for mostly everything' written all over him."

When a customer came in, Hayley patted Stella's shoulder. "That's my cue. Have a good time. May I help you?" she asked, strolling over to the customer.

Stella waited another couple of minutes, assuring herself that Hayley had the new customer in hand.
Ruby rang up two more. Work was being done where work needed to be done, and she had nothing
to do but wait.

Deciding to do her waiting outside, she grabbed her jacket.

Her planters looked good, and she figured her display of them was directly responsible for the flats of pansies they'd moved in the past few days. That being the case, they could add a few more planters,
do a couple of half whiskey barrels, add some hanging pots.

Scribbling, she wandered around, picking out the best spots to place displays, to add other touches that would inspire customers to buy.

* * *

When Logan pulled up at quarter after one, she was sitting on the steps, listing the proposed displays
and arrangements and dividing up the labor of creating them.

She got up even as he climbed out of the truck. "I got hung up."

"No problem. I kept busy."

"You okay riding in the truck?"

"Wouldn't be the first time." She got in, and as she buckled her seat belt, studied the forest of notes
and reminders, sketches and math calculations stuck to his dashboard.

"Your filing system?"

"Most of it." He turned on the CD player, and Elvis rocked out with "Heartbreak Hotel." "Seems only right."

"Are you a big fan?"

"You've got to respect the King."

"How many times have you been to Graceland?"

"Couldn't say. People come in from out of town, they want to see it. You visit Memphis, you want Graceland, Beale Street, ribs, the Peabody's duck walk."

Maybe she could chill, Stella decided. They were just talking, after all. Like normal people. "Then this
is the first tic on my list."

He looked over at her. Though his eyes were shielded by the black lenses, she knew, from the angle of his head, that they were narrowed with speculation. "You've been here, what, around a month, and you haven't gone for ribs?"

"No. Will I be arrested?"

"You a vegetarian?"

"No, and I like ribs."

"Honey, you haven't had ribs yet if you haven't had Memphis ribs. Don't your parents live down here?
I thought I'd met them once."

"My father and his wife, yeah. Will and Jolene Dooley."

"And no ribs?"

"I guess not. Will they be arrested?"

"They might, if it gets out. But I'll give you, and them, a break and keep quiet about it for the time being."

"Guess we'll owe you."

"Heartbreak Hotel" moved into "Shake, Rattle, and Roll." This was her father's music, she thought. It
was odd, and kind of sweet, to be driving along, tapping her foot, on the way to Memphis listening to
the music her father had listened to as a teenager.

"What you do is you take the kids to the Reunion for ribs," Logan told her. "You can walk over to Beale from there, take in the show. But before you eat, you go by the Peabody so they can see the ducks.
Kids gotta see the ducks."

"My father's taken them."

"That might keep him out of the slammer."

"Whew." It was easier than she'd thought it would be, and she felt foolish knowing she'd prepared several avenues for small talk. "Except for the time you moved north, you've always lived in the Memphis area?"

"That's right."

"It's strange for me, knowing I was born here, but having no real memory of it. I like it here, and I like to think— overlooking the lack of ribs to date—that there's a connection for me here. Of course, I haven't been through a summer yet—that I can remember—but I like it. I love working for Roz."

"She's a jewel."

Because she heard the affection in his tone, she shifted toward him a bit. "She thinks the same of you.
In fact, initially, I thought the two of you were ..."

His grin spread. "No kidding?"

"She's beautiful and clever, and you've got a lot in common. You've got a history."

"All true. Probably the history makes anything like that weird. But thanks."

"I admire her so much. I like her, too, but I have such admiration for everything she's accomplished. Single-handedly. Raising her family, maintaining her home, building a business from the ground up.
And all the while doing it her own way, calling her own shots."

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't want my own business. I thought about it a couple of years ago. But that sort of leap with no parachute and two kids?" She shook her head. "Roz is gutsier than I am. Besides, I realized it wasn't
what I really wanted. I like working for someone else, sort of troubleshooting and coming in with a creative and efficient plan for improvement or expansion. Managing is what I do best."

She waited a beat. "No sarcastic comments to that?"

"Only on the inside. That way I can save them up until you tick me off again."

"I can hardly wait. In any case, it's like, I enjoy planting a garden from scratch—that blank slate. But more, I like taking one that's not planned very well, or needs some shaping up, and turning it around."

She paused, frowned. "Funny, I just remembered. I had a dream about a garden a few nights ago. A really strange dream with ... I don't know, something spooky about it. I can't quite get it back, but there was something ... this huge, gorgeous blue dahlia. Dahlias are a particular favorite of mine, and blue's
my favorite color. Still, it shouldn't have been there, didn't belong there. I hadn't planted it. But there it was. Strange."

"What did you do with it? The dahlia?"

"Can't remember. Luke woke me up, so my garden and the exotic dahlia went poof." And the room,
she thought, the room had been so cold. "He wasn't feeling well, a little tummy distress."

"He okay now?"

"Yeah." Another point for his side, Stella thought. "He's fine, thanks."

"How about the tooth?"

Uh-oh, second point. The man remembered her baby'd had a loose tooth. "Sold to the Tooth Fairy for
a crisp dollar bill. Second one's about to wiggle out. He's got the cutest little lisp going on right now."

"His big brother teach him how to spit through the hole yet?"

She grimaced. "Not to my knowledge."

"What you don't know... I bet it's still there—the magic dahlia—blooming in dreamland."

"That's a nice thought." Kill it. God, where did that come from? she wondered, fighting off a shudder.
"It was pretty spectacular, as I recall."

She glanced around as he pulled into a parking lot. "Is this it?"

"It's across the road. This is like the visitors' center, the staging area. We get our tickets inside, and they take groups over in shuttles."

He turned off the engine, shifted to look at her. "Five bucks says you're a convert when we come back out."

"An Elvis convert? I don't have anything against him now."

"Five bucks. You'll be buying an Elvis CD, minimum, after the tour."

"That's a bet."

* * *

It was so much smaller than she'd imagined. She'd pictured something big and sprawling, something mansionlike, close to the level of Harper House. Instead, it was a relatively modest-sized home, and
the rooms—at least the ones the tour encompassed—rather small.

She shuffled along with the rest of the tourists, listening to Lisa Marie Presley's recorded memories
and observations through the provided headset.

She puzzled over the pleated fabric in shades of curry, blue, and maroon swagged from the ceiling and covering every inch of wall in the cramped, pool-table-dominated game room. Then wondered at the waterfall, the wild-animal prints and tiki-hut accessories all crowned by a ceiling of green shag carpet in the jungle room.

Someone had lived with this, she thought. Not just someone, but an icon—a man of miraculous talent
and fame. And it was sweet to listen to the woman who'd been a child when she'd lost her famous
father, talk about the man she remembered, and loved.

The trophy room was astonishing to her, and immediately replaced her style quibbles with awe. It seemed like miles of walls in the meandering hallways were covered, cheek by jowl, with Elvis's gold and platinum records. All that accomplished, all that earned in fewer years, really, than she'd been alive.

And with Elvis singing through her headset, she admired his accomplishments, marveled over his elaborate, splashy, and myriad stage costumes. Then was charmed by his photographs, his movie
posters, and the snippets of interviews.

* * *

You learned a lot about someone walking through Graceland with her, Logan discovered. Some
snickered over the dated and debatably tacky decor. Some stood glassy-eyed with adoration for the
dead King. Others bopped along, rubbernecking or chatting, moving on through so they could get it
all in and push on to the souvenir shops. Then they could go home and say, been there, done that.

But Stella looked at everything. And listened. He could tell she was listening carefully to the recording,
the way her head would cock just an inch to the right. Listening soberly, he thought, and he'd bet a lot more than five bucks that she followed the instructions on the tape, pressing the correct number for the next segment at exactly the proper time.

It was kind of cute actually.

When they stepped outside to make the short pilgrimage to Elvis's poolside grave, she took off her headphones for the first time.

"I didn't know all that," she began. "Nothing more than the bare basics, really. Over a billion records
sold? It's beyond comprehension, really. I certainly can't imagine what it would be like to do all that
and ... what are you grinning at?"

"I bet if you had to take an Elvis test right now, you'd ace it."

"Shut up." But she laughed, then sobered again when she walked through the sunlight with him to the Meditation Garden, and the King's grave.

There were flowers, live ones wilting in the sun, plastic ones fading in it. And the little gravesite beside
the swimming pool seemed both eccentric and right. Cameras snapped around them now, and she heard someone quietly sobbing.

"People claim to have seen his ghost, you know, back there." Logan gestured. "That is, if he's really dead."

"You don't believe that."

"Oh, yeah, Elvis left the building a long time ago."

"I mean about the ghost."

"Well, if he was going to haunt any place, this would be it."

They wound around toward the shuttle pickup. "People are awfully casual about ghosts around here."

It took him a minute. "Oh, the Harper Bride. Seen her yet?"

"No, I haven't. But that may only be because, you know, she doesn't exist. You're not going to tell me you've seen her."

"Can't say I have. Lot of people claim to, but then some claim to have seen Elvis eating peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches at some diner ten years after he died."

"Exactly!" She was so pleased with his good sense, she gave him a light punch on the arm. "People see what they want to see, or have been schooled to see, or expect to. Imaginations run wild, especially under the right conditions or atmosphere. They ought to do more with the gardens here, don't you think?"

"Don't get me started."

"You're right. No shop talk. Instead, I'll just thank you for bringing me. I don't know when I'd've gotten around to it on my own."

"What'd you think?"

"Sad and sweet and fascinating." She passed her headphones back to the attendant and stepped on the shuttle. "Some of the rooms were, let's say, unique in decor."

Their arms bumped, brushed, stayed pressed to each other in the narrow confines of the shuttle's seats. Her-hair skimmed along his shoulder until she shoved it back. He was sorry when she did.

"I knew this guy, big Elvis fan. He set about duplicating Graceland in his house. Got fabric like you saw
in the game room, did his walls and ceilings."

She turned to face him, stared. "You're kidding."

He simply swiped a finger over his heart. "Even put a scar on his pool table to match the one on Elvis's. When he talked about getting those yellow appliances—"

"Harvest gold."

"Whatever. When he starting making noises about putting those in, his wife gave him notice. Her or Elvis."

Her face was alive with humor, and he stopped hearing the chatter of other passengers. There was something about her when she smiled, full out, that blew straight through him.

"And which did he choose?"

"Huh?"

"Which did he choose? His wife or Elvis?"

"Well." He stretched out his legs, but couldn't really shift his body away from hers. The sun was blasting through the window beside her, striking all that curling red hair. "He settled on re-creating it in his basement, and was trying to talk her into letting him put a scale model of the Meditation Garden in their backyard."

She laughed, a delightful roll of sound. When she dropped her head back on the seat, her hair tickled his shoulder again. "If he ever does, I hope we get the job."

"Count on it. He's my uncle."

She laughed again, until she was breathless. "Boy, I can't wait to meet your family." She angled around
so she could face him. "I'm going to confess the only reason I came today was because I didn't want to spoil a nice gesture by saying no. I didn't expect to have fun."

"It wasn't a nice gesture so much as a spur of the moment thing. Your hair smelled good, and that clouded my better judgment."

Humor danced over her face as she pushed her hair back. "And? You're supposed to say you had fun, too."

"Actually, I did."

When the shuttle stopped, he got up, stepped back so she could slide out and walk in front of him.
"But then, your hair still smells good, so that could be it."

She shot him a grin over her shoulder, and damn it, he felt that clutch in the belly. Usually the clutch meant possibilities of fun and enjoyment. With her, he thought it meant trouble.

But he'd been raised to follow through, and his mama would be horrified and shocked if he didn't feed
a woman he'd spent the afternoon with.

"Hungry?" he asked when he stepped down after her.

"Oh... Well, it's too early for dinner, too late for lunch. I really should—"

"Walk on the wild side. Eat between meals." He grabbed her hand, and that was such a surprise she
didn't think to protest until he'd pulled her toward one of the on-site eateries.

"I really shouldn't take the time. I told Roz I'd be back around four."

"You know, you stay wrapped that tight for any length of time, you're going to cut your circulation off."

"I'm not wrapped that tight," she objected. "I'm responsible."

"Roz doesn't have a time clock at the nursery, and it doesn't take that long to eat a hot dog."

"No, but..." Liking him was so unexpected. As unexpected as the buzz along her skin at the feel of that big, hard hand gripping hers. It had been a long while since she'd enjoyed a man's company. Why cut it short?

"Okay." Though, she realized, her assent was superfluous, as he'd already pulled her inside and up to
the counter. "Anyway. Since I'm here, I wouldn't mind looking in the shops for a minute. Or two."

He ordered two dogs, two Cokes and just smiled at her.

"All right, smart guy." She opened her purse, dug out her wallet. And took out a five-dollar bill. "I'm buying the CD. And make mine a Diet Coke."

She ate the hot dog, drank the Coke. She bought the CD. But unlike every other female he knew, she didn't have some religious obligation to look at and paw over everything in the store. She did her
business and was done—neat, tidy, and precise.

And as they walked back to his truck, he noticed she glanced at the readout display of her cell phone. Again.

"Problem?"

"No." She slipped the phone back into her bag. "Just checking to see if I had any messages." But it seemed everyone had managed without her for an afternoon.

Unless something was wrong with the phones. Or they'd lost her number. Or—

'The nursery could've been attacked by psychopaths with a petunia fetish." Logan opened the passenger-side door. "The entire staff could be bound and gagged in the propagation house even as
we speak."

Deliberately, Stella zipped her bag closed. "You won't think that's so funny if we get there and that's
just what happened."

"Yes, I will."

He walked around the truck, got behind the wheel.

"I have an obsessive, linear, goal-oriented personality with strong organizational tendencies."

He sat for a moment. "I'm glad you told me. I was under the impression you were a scatterbrain."

"Well, enough about me. Why—"

"Why do you keep doing that?"

She paused, her hands up in her hair. "Doing what?"

"Why do you keep jamming those pins in your hair?"

"Because they keep coming out."

To her speechless shock, he reached over, tugged the loosened bobby pins free, then tossed them on
the floor of his truck. "So why put them in there in the first place?"

"Well, for God's sake." She scowled down at the pins. "How many times a week does someone tell
you you're pushy and overbearing?"

"I don't count." He drove out of the lot and into traffic. "You've got sexy hair. You ought to leave it alone."

"Thanks very much for the style advice."

"Women don't usually sulk when a man tells them they're sexy."

"I'm not sulking, and you didn't say I was sexy. You said my hair was."

He took his eyes off the road long enough to give her an up-and-down glance. "Rest of you works, too."

Okay, something was wrong when that sort of half-assed compliment had heat balling in her belly. Best
to return to safe topics. "To return to my question before I was so oddly interrupted, why did you go
into landscape design?"

"Summer job that stuck."

She waited a beat, two. Three. "Really, Logan, must you go on and on, boring me with details?"

"Sorry. I never know when to shut up. I grew up on a farm."

"Really? Did you love it or hate it?"

"Was used to it, mostly. I like working outside, and don't mind heavy, sweaty work."

"Blabbermouth," she said when he fell silent again.

"Not that much more to it. I didn't want to farm, and my daddy sold the farm some years back, anyway. But I like working the land. It's what I like, it's what I'm good at. No point in doing something you don't like or you're not good at."

"Let's try this. How did you know you were good at it?"

"Not getting fired was an indication." He didn't see how she could possibly be interested, but since she was pressing, he'd pass the time. "You know how you're in school, say in history, and they're all Battle
of Hastings or crossing the Rubicon or Christ knows? In and out," he said, tapping one side of his head, then the other. "I'd jam it in there long enough to skin through the test, then poof. But on the job, the boss would say we're going to put cotoneasters in here, line these barberries over there, and I'd remember. What they were, what they needed. I liked putting them in. It's satisfying, digging the hole, prepping the soil, changing the look of things. Making it more pleasing to the eye."

"It is," she agreed. "Believe it or not, that's the same sort of deal I have with my files."

He slanted her a look that made her lips twitch. "You say. Anyway, sometimes I'd get this idea that,
you know, those cotoneasters would look better over there, and instead of barberries, golden mops
would set this section off. So I angled off into design."

"I thought about design for a while. Not that good at it," she said. "I realized I had a hard time adjusting my vision to blend with the team's—or the client's. And I'd get too hung up in the math and science of
it, and bogged down when it came time to roll over into the art."

"Who did your landscaping up north?"

"I did. If I had something in mind that took machines, or more muscle than Kevin and I could manage,
I had a list." She smiled. "A very detailed and specific list, with the design done on graph paper. Then
I hovered. I'm a champion hoverer."

"And nobody shoved you into a hole and buried you?"

"No. But then, I'm very personable and pleasant. Maybe, when the time comes and I find my own
place, you could consult on the landscaping design."

"I'm not personable and pleasant."

"Already noted."

"And isn't it a leap for an obsessive, linear, detail freak to trust me to consult when you've only seen
one of my jobs, and that in its early stages?"

"I object to the term 'freak.' I prefer 'devotee.' And it happens I've seen several of your jobs, complete.
I got some of the addresses out of the files and drove around. It's what I do," she said when he braked
at a Stop sign and stared at her. "I've spent some time watching Harper work, and Roz, as well as the employees. I made it a point to take a look at some of your completed jobs. I like your work."

"And if you hadn't?"

"If I hadn't, I'd have said nothing. It's Roz's business, and she obviously likes your work. But I'd have done some quiet research on other designers, put a file together and presented it to her. That's my job."

"And here I thought your job was to manage the nursery and annoy me with forms."

"It is. Part of that management is to make sure that all employees and subcontractors, suppliers and equipment are not only suitable for In the Garden but the best Roz can afford. You're pricey," she
added, "but your work justifies it."

When he only continued to frown, she poked a finger into his arm. "And men don't usually sulk when
a woman compliments their work."

"Huh. Men never sulk, they brood."

But she had a point. Still, it occurred to him that she knew a great deal about him—personal matters. How much he made, for instance. When he asked himself how he felt about that, the answer was,
Not entirely comfortable.

"My work, my salary, my prices are between me and Roz."

"Not anymore," she said cheerfully. "She has the last word, no question, but I'm there to manage. I'm saying that, in my opinion, Roz showed foresight and solid business sense in bringing you into her business. She pays you very well because you're worth it. Any reason you can't take that as a
compliment and skip the brooding phase?"

"I don't know. What's she paying you?"

"That is between her and me, but you're certainly free to ask her." The Star Wars theme erupted in her purse. "Gavin's pick," she said as she dug it out. The readout told her the call came from home. "Hello? Hi, baby."

Though he was still a little irked, he watched everything about her light up. "You did? You're amazing. Uh-huh. I absolutely will. See you soon."

She closed the phone, put it back in her purse. "Gavin aced his spelling test."

"Yay."

She laughed. "You have no idea. I have to pick up pepperoni pizza on the way home. In our family,
it's not a carrot at the end of the stick used as motivation—or simple bribery—it's pepperoni pizza."

"You bribe your kids?"

"Often, and without a qualm."

"Smart. So, they're getting along in school?"

"They are. All that worry and guilt wasted. I'll have to set it aside for future use. It was a big move for them—new place, new school, new people. Luke makes friends easily, but Gavin can be a little shy."

"Didn't seem shy to me. Kid's got a spark. Both of them do."

"Comic book connection. Any friend of Spidey's, and so on, so they were easy with you. But they're
both sliding right along. So I can scratch traumatizing my sons by ripping them away from their friends
off my Things to Worry About list."

"I bet you actually have one."

"Every mother has one." She let out a long, contented sigh as he pulled into the lot at the nursery. "This has been a really good day. Isn't this a great place? Just look at it. Industrious, attractive, efficient, welcoming. I envy Roz her vision, not to mention her guts."

"You don't seem deficient in the guts department."

"Is that a compliment?"

He shrugged. "An observation."

She liked being seen as gutsy, so she didn't tell him she was scared a great deal of the time. Order and routine were solid, defensive walls that kept the fear at bay.

"Well, thanks. For the observation, and the afternoon. I really appreciated both." She opened the door, hopped out. "And I've got a trip into the city for ribs on my list of must-dos."

"You won't be sorry." He got out, walked around to her side. He wasn't sure why. Habit, he supposed. Ingrained manners his mother had carved into him as a boy. But it wasn't the sort of situation where
you walked the girl to her door and copped a kiss good night.

She thought about offering her hand to shake, but it seemed stiff and ridiculous. So she just smiled.
"I'll play the CD for the boys." She shook her bag. "See what they think."

"Okay. See you around."

He started to walk back to his door. Then he cursed under his breath, tossed his sunglasses on the hood, and turned back. "Might as well finish it out."

She wasn't slow, and she wasn't naive. She knew what he intended when he was still a full stride away. But she couldn't seem to move.

She heard herself make some sound—not an actual word—then his hand raked through her hair, his fingers cupping her head with enough pressure to bring her up on her toes. She saw his eyes. There
were gold flecks dusted over the green.

Then everything blurred, and his mouth was hard and hot on hers.

Nothing hesitant about it, nothing testing or particularly friendly. It was all demand, with an irritable
edge. Like the man, she thought dimly, he was doing what he intended to do, was determined to see it through, but wasn't particularly pleased about it.

And still her heart rammed into her throat, throbbing there to block words, even breath. The fingers of
the hand that had lifted to his shoulder in a kind of dazed defense dug in. They slid limply down to his elbow when his head lifted.

With his hand still caught in her hair, he said, "Hell."

He dragged her straight up to her toes again, banded an arm around her so that her body was plastered
to his. When his mouth swooped down a second time, any brains that hadn't already been fried drained out of her ears.

He shouldn't have thought of kissing her. But once he had, it didn't seem reasonable to walk away and leave it undone. And now he was in trouble, all wound up in that wild hair, that sexy scent, those soft lips.

And when he deepened the kiss, she let out this sound, this catchy little moan. What the hell was a man supposed to do but want?

Her hair was like a maze of madly coiled silk, and that pretty, curvy body of hers vibrated against him
like a well-tuned machine, revving for action. The longer he held her, the more he tasted her, the dimmer the warning bells sounded to remind him he didn't want to get tangled up with her. On any level.

When he managed to release her, to step back, he saw the flush riding along her cheeks. It made her
eyes bluer, bigger. It made him want to toss her over his shoulder and cart her off somewhere, anywhere at all where they could finish what the kiss had started. Because the urge to do so was an ache in the belly, he took another step back.

"Okay." He thought he spoke calmly, but couldn't be sure with the blood roaring in his ears. "See you around."

He walked back to the truck, got in. Managed to turn over the engine and shove into reverse. Then he
hit the brakes again when the sun speared into his eyes.

He sat, watching Stella walk forward, retrieve the sunglasses that had bounced off the hood and onto
the gravel. He lowered the window as she stepped to it.

His eyes stayed on hers when he reached out to take them from her. "Thanks."

"Sure."

He slipped them on, backed out, turned the wheel and drove out of the lot.

Alone, she let out a long, wheezing breath, sucked in another one; and let that out as she ordered her
limp legs to carry her to the porch.

She made it as far as the steps before she simply lowered herself down to sit. "Holy Mother of God,"
she managed.

She sat, even as a customer came out, as another came in, while everything inside her jumped and jittered. She felt as though she'd fallen off a cliff and was even now, barely—just barely—clinging to
a skinny, crumbling ledge by sweaty fingertips.

What was she supposed to do about this? And how could she figure it out when she couldn't think?

So she wouldn't try to figure it out until she could think. Getting to her feet, she rubbed her damp palms on the thighs of her pants. For now, she'd go back to work, she'd order pizza, then go home to her boys. Go home to normal.

She did better with normal.

TEN

Harper spaded the dirt at the base of the clematis that wound its way up the iron trellis. It was quiet on this edge of the garden. The shrubs and ornamental trees, the paths and beds separated what he still thought of as the guest house from the main.

Daffodils were just opening up, with all that bright yellow against the spring green. Tulips would be coming along next. They were one of his favorite things about this leading edge of spring, so he'd
planted a bed of bulbs right outside the kitchen door of his place.

It was a small converted carriage house and according to every female he'd ever brought there, it was charming. "Dollhouse" was the usual term. He didn't mind it. Though he thought of it more as a cottage, like a groundskeeper's cottage with its whitewashed cedar shakes and pitched roof. It was comfortable, inside and out, and more than adequate for his needs.

There was a small greenhouse only a few feet out the back door, and that was his personal domain.
The cottage was just far enough from the house to be private, so he didn't have to feel weird having overnight guests of the female persuasion. And close enough that he could be at the main house in minutes if his mother needed him.

He didn't like the idea of her being alone, even with David on hand. And thank God for David. It didn't matter that she was self-sufficient, the strongest person he knew. He just didn't like the idea of his
mother rattling around in that big old house alone, day after day, night after night.

Though he certainly preferred that to having her stuck in it with that asshole she'd married. Words couldn't describe how he despised Bryce Clerk. He supposed having his mother fall for the guy proved she wasn't infallible, but it had been a hell of a mistake for someone who rarely made one.

Though she'd given him the boot, swiftly and without mercy, Harper had worried how the man would handle being cut off—from Roz, the house, the money, the whole ball.

And damned if he hadn't tried to break in once, the week before the divorce was final. Harper didn't doubt his mother could've handled it, but it hadn't hurt to be at hand.

And having a part in kicking the greedy, cheating, lying bastard out on his ass couldn't be overstated.

But maybe enough time had passed now. And she sure as hell wasn't alone in the house these days. Two women, two kids made for a lot of company. Between them and the business, she was busier than ever.

Maybe he should think about getting a place of his own.

Trouble was, he couldn't think of a good reason. He loved this place, in a way he'd never loved a
woman. With a kind of focused passion, respect, and gratitude.

The gardens were home, maybe even more than the house, more than his cottage. Most days he could walk out his front door, take a good, healthy hike, and be at work.

God knew he didn't want to move to the city. All that noise, all those people. Memphis was great for a night out—a club, a date, meeting up with friends. But he'd suffocate there inside a month.

He sure as hell didn't want suburbia. What he wanted was right where he was. A nice little house, extensive gardens, a greenhouse and a short hop to work.

He sat back on his heels, adjusted the ball cap he wore to keep the hair out of his eyes. Spring was coming. There was nothing like spring at home. The way it smelled, the way it looked, even the way
it sounded.

The light was soft now with approaching evening. When the sun went down, the air would chill, but it wouldn't have that bite of winter.

When he was done planting here, he'd go in and get himself a beer. And he'd sit out in the dark and the cool, and enjoy the solitude.

He took a bold yellow pansy out of the cell pack and began to plant.

He didn't hear her walk up. Such was his focus that he didn't notice her shadow fall over him. So her friendly "Hey!" nearly had him jumping out of his skin.

"Sorry." With a laugh, Hayley rubbed a hand over her belly. "Guess you were a million miles away."

"Guess." His fingers felt fat and clumsy all of a sudden, and his brain sluggish. She stood with the setting sun at her back, so when he squinted up at her, her head was haloed, her face shadowed.

"I was just walking around. Heard your music." She nodded toward the open windows where REM spilled out. "I saw them in concert once. Excellent. Pansies? They're a hot item right now."

"Well, they like the cool."

"I know. How come you're putting them here? You've got this vine thing happening."

"Clematis. Likes its roots shaded. So you ... you know, put annuals over them."

"Oh." She squatted down for a closer look. "What color is the clematis?"

"It's purple." He wasn't sure pregnant women should squat. Didn't it crowd things in there? "Ah, you want a chair or something?"

"No, I'm set. I like your house."

"Yeah, me too."

"It's sort of storybook here, with all the gardens. I mean, the big house is amazing. But it's a little intimidating." She grimaced. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful."

"No, I get you." It helped to keep planting. She didn't smell pregnant. She smelled sexy. And that had
to be wrong. "It's a great place, and you couldn't get my mother out of it with dynamite and wild mules. But it's a lot of house."

"Took me a week to stop walking about on tiptoe and wanting to whisper. Can I plant one?"

"You don't have any gloves. I can get—"

"Hell, I don't mind a little dirt under my nails. A lady was in today? She said it's like good luck for a pregnant woman to plant gardens. Something about fertility, I guess."

He didn't want to think about fertility. There was something terrifying about it. "Go ahead."

"Thanks. I wanted to say ..." And it was easier with her hands busy. "Well, just that I know how it
might look, me coming out of nowhere, landing on your mama's doorstep. But I'm not going to take advantage of her. I don't want you to think I'd try to do that."

"I've only known one person to manage it, and he didn't manage it for long."

"The second husband." She nodded as she patted the dirt around her plant. "I asked David about him so
I wouldn't say something stupid. He said how he'd stuck his hand in the till, and cheated on her with another woman." She chose another pansy. "And when Roz got wind of it, she booted him out so hard and fast he didn't land till he was halfway to Memphis. You gotta admire that, because you know even with a mad on, it had to hurt her feelings. Plus, it's just embarrassing when somebody—oops."

She pressed a hand to her side, and had the blood draining out of Harper's face.

"What? What?"

"Nothing. Baby's moving around. Sometimes it gives me a jolt is all."

"You should stand up. You should sit down."

"Let me just finish this one. Back home, when I started to show? People, some people, just figured I'd got myself in trouble and the boy wouldn't stand up for me. I mean, Jesus, are we in the twenty-first century or what? Anyway, that made me mad, but it was embarrassing, too. I guess that's partly why I left. It's hard being embarrassed all the damn time. There." She patted the dirt. "They look really pretty."

He popped up to help her to her feet. "You want to sit for a minute? Want me to walk you back?"

She patted her belly. "This makes you nervous."

"Looks like."

"Me too. But I'm fine. You'll want to get the rest of those planted before it gets dark." She looked
down at the flowers again, at the house, at the gardens surrounding it, and those long, lake-colored eyes seemed to take in everything.

Then they zeroed in on his face and made his throat go dry.

"I really like your place. See you at work."

He stood, rooted, as she walked off, gliding along the path, around the curve of it, into the twilight.

He was exhausted, he realized. Like he'd run some sort of crazed race. He'd just have that beer now, settle himself down. Then he'd finish with the pansies.

* * *

With the kids outside taking Parker for his after-dinner walk, Stella cleaned up the mess two boys and
a dog could make in the kitchen over a pepperoni pizza.

"Next pizza night, I buy," Hayley said as she loaded glasses into the dishwasher.

"That's a deal." Stella glanced over. "When I was carrying Luke, all I wanted was Italian. Pizza,
spaghetti, manicotti. I was surprised he didn't pop out singing 'That's Amore.'"

"I don't have any specific cravings. I'll just eat anything." In the wash of the outside floodlights, she
could see boys and dog racing. "The baby's moving around a lot. That's normal, right?"

"Sure. Gavin just sort of snuggled and snoozed. I'd have to poke him or sip some Coke to get him moving. But Luke did gymnastics in there for months. Is it keeping you up nights?"

"Sometimes, but I don't mind. It feels like we're the only two people in the world. Just me and him—
or her."

"I know just what you mean. But Hayley, if you're awake, worried or just not feeling well, whatever,
you can come get me."

The tightness in her throat loosened instantly. "Really? You mean it?"

"Sure. Sometimes it helps to talk to somebody who's been there and done that."

"I'm not on my own," she said quietly, with her eyes on the boys outside the window. "Not like I thought I'd be. Was ready to be—I think." When those eyes filled, she blinked them, rubbed at them. "Hormones. God."

"Crying can help, too." Stella rubbed Hayley's shoulders. "And I want you to tell me if you want someone to go with you to your doctor's appointments."

"He said, when I went in, that everything looks good. Right on schedule. And that I should sign up for
the classes, you know? Childbirth classes. But they like you to have a partner."

"Pick me!"

Laughing, Hayley turned. "Really? You're sure? It's a lot to ask."

"I would love it. It's almost as good as having another one of my own."

"Would you? If..."

"Yes. Two was the plan, but as soon as Luke was born, I thought, how can I not do this again—and wouldn't it be fun to try for a girl? But another boy would be great." She leaned forward on the counter, looked out the window. "They're terrific, aren't they? My boys."

"They are."

"Kevin was so proud, so in love with them. I think he'd have had half a dozen."

Hayley heard the change in tone, and this time, she rubbed a hand on Stella's shoulder. "Does it hurt to talk about him?"

"Not anymore. It did for a while, for a long while." She picked up the dishrag to wipe the counter.
"But now it's good to remember. Warm, I guess. I ought to call those boys in."

But she turned at the sound of heels clicking on wood. When Roz breezed in, Stella's mouth dropped open.

She recalled her first impression of Rosalind Harper had been of beauty, but this was the first time she'd seen Roz exploit her natural attributes.

She wore a sleek, form-fitting dress in a muted copper color that made her skin glow. It, along with ice-pick-heeled sandals, showed off lean, toned legs. A necklace of delicate filigree with a teardrop of citrine lay over her breasts.

"David?" Roz scanned the room, then rolled dark, dramatic eyes. "He's going to make me late."

Stella let out an exaggerated breath. "Just let me say, Wow!"

"Yeah." She grinned, did a little half turn. "I must've been insane when I bought the shoes. They're going to kill me. But when I have to drag myself out to one of these charity deals, I like to make a statement."

"If the statement's 'I'm totally hot,'" Hayley put in, "you hit it dead on."

"That was the target."

"You look absolutely amazing. Sex with class. Every man there's going to wish he was taking you
home tonight."

"Well." With a half laugh, Roz shook her head. "It's great having women in the house. Who knew?
I'm going to go nag David. He'll primp for another hour if I don't give his ass a kick."

"Have a wonderful time."

"She sure didn't look like anybody's mother," Stella said under her breath.

* * *

What would she look like in twenty years? Hayley wondered.

She studied herself in the mirror while she rubbed Vitamin E oil over her belly and breasts. Would she
still be able to fix herself up and know she looked good?

Of course, she didn't have as much to work with as Roz. She remembered her grandmother saying once that beauty was in the bones. Looking at Roz helped her understand just what that meant.

She'd never be as stunning as Roz, or as eye-catching as Stella, but she looked okay. She took care of
her skin, tried out the makeup tricks she read about in magazines.

Guys were attracted.

Obviously, she thought with a self-deprecating smile as she looked down at her belly.

Or had been. Most guys didn't get the hots for pregnant women. And that was fine, because she wasn't interested in men right now. The only thing that mattered was her baby.

"It's all about you now, kid," she said as she pulled on an oversized T-shirt.

After climbing into bed, plumping up her pillows, she reached for one of the books stacked on her nightstand. She had books on childbirth, on pregnancy, on early-childhood development. She read from one of them every night.

When her eyes began to droop, she closed the book.

Switching off the light, she snuggled down. "'Night, baby," she whispered.

And felt it just as she was drifting off. The little chill, the absolute certainty that she wasn't alone. Her heartbeat quickened until she could hear it in her ears. Gathering courage, she let her eyes open to slits.

She saw the figure standing over the bed. The light-colored hair, the lovely sad face. She thought about screaming, just as she did every time she saw the woman. But she bit it back, braced herself, and
reached out.

When her hand passed through the woman's arm, Hayley did let out a muffled scream. Then she was alone, shivering in bed and fumbling for the light.

"I'm not imagining it. I'm not!"

* * *

Stella climbed up the stepstool to hook another hanging basket for display. After looking over last year's sales, crunching numbers, she'd decided to increase the number offered by 15 percent.

"I could do that," Hay ley insisted. "I'm not going to fall off a stupid stepstool."

"No chance. Hand me up that one. The begonias."

"They're really pretty. So lush."

"Roz and Harper started most of these over the winter. Begonias and impatiens are big-volume sellers. With growers like Roz and Harper, we can do them in bulk, and our cost is low. These are bread-and-butter plants for us."

"People could make up their own cheaper."

"Sure." Stella climbed down, moved the ladder, climbed up again. "Ivy geranium," she decided. "But it's tough to resist all this color and bloom. Even avid gardeners, the ones who do some propagating on their own, have a hard time passing up big, beautiful blooms. Blooms, my young apprentice, sell."

"So we're putting these baskets everywhere."

"Seduction. Wait until we move some of the annuals outside, in front. All that color will draw the customers. Early-blooming perennials too."

She selected another basket. "I've got this. Page Roz, will you? I want her to see these, and get her clearance to hang a couple dozen in Greenhouse Three with the extra stock. And pick out a pot. One of the big ones that didn't move last year. I want to do one up, put it by the counter. I'll move that sucker.
In fact, pick out two. Clean off the discount price. When I'm done, they'll not only move, they'll move
at a fat profit."

"Gotcha."

"Make sure one of them's that cobalt glaze," she called out. "You know the one? And don't pick it up yourself."

In her mind, Stella began to plan it. White flowers— heliotrope, impatiens, spills of sweet alyssum,
silvery accents from dusty miller and sage. Another trail of white petunias. Damn, she should've told Hayley to get one of the stone-gray pots. Good contrast with die cobalt. And she'd do it up hot. Bold
red geraniums, lobelia, verbena, red New Guineas.

She added, subtracted plants in her mind, calculated the cost of pots, stock, soil. And smiled to herself
as she hung another basket.

"Shouldn't you be doing paperwork?"

She nearly tipped off the stool, might have if a hand hadn't slapped onto her butt to keep her upright.

"It's not all I do." She started to get down, but realized being on the stool kept her at eye level with him. "You can move your hand now, Logan."

"It doesn't mind being there." But he let it fall, slipped it into his pocket. "Nice baskets."

"In the market?"

"Might be. You had a look on your face when I came in."

"I usually do. That's why it's called a face."

"No, the kind of look a woman gets when she's thinking about how to make some guy drool."

"Did I? Mind?" she added, gesturing to a basket. "You're off the mark. I was thinking how I was going
to turn two over-stock pots on the discount rack into stupendous displays and considerable profit."

Even as she hung the basket, he was lifting another, and by merely raising his arm, set it in place. "Showoff."

"Shorty."

Hayley came through the doorway, turned briskly on her heel and headed out.

"Hayley."

"Forgot something," she called out and kept going.

Stella blew out a breath and would've asked for another basket, but he'd already picked one up, hung it. "You've been busy," she said.

"Cool, dry weather the last week."

"If you're here to pick up the shrubs for the Pitt job, I can get the paperwork."

"My crew's out loading them. I want to see you again."

"Well. You are."

He kept his eyes on hers. "You're not dim."

"No, I'm not. I'm not sure—"

"Neither am I," he interrupted. "Doesn't seem to stop me from wanting to see you again. It's irritating, thinking about you."

"Thanks. That really makes me want to sigh and fall into your arms."

"I don't want you to fall into them. If I did, I'd just kick your feet out from under you."

She laid a hand on her heart, fluttered her lashes, and did her best woman of the south accent.
"My goodness, all this soppy romance is too much for me."

Now he grinned. "I like you, Red. Some of the time. I'll pick you up at seven."

"What? Tonight?" Reluctant amusement turned to outright panic in a fmgersnap. "I can't possibly just
go out, spur of the moment. I have two kids."

"And three adults in the house. Any reason you can think of why any or all of them can't handle your boys for a few hours tonight?"

"No. But I haven't asked, a concept you appear to be unfamiliar with. And—" She shoved irritably at
her hair. "I might have plans."

"Do you?"

She angled her head, looked down her nose. "I always have plans."

"I bet. So flex them. You take the boys for ribs yet?"

"Yes, last week after—"

"Good."

"Do you know how often you interrupt me in the middle of a sentence?"

"No, but I'll start counting. Hey, Roz."

"Logan. Stella, these look great." She stopped in the center of the aisle, scanning, nodding as she
absently slapped her dirty gloves against her already dirt-smeared jeans. "I wasn't sure displaying so
many would work, but it does. Something about the abundance of bloom."

She took off her ball cap, stuffed it in the back pocket of her work pants, stuffed the gloves in the other. "Am I interrupting?"

"No."

"Yes," Logan corrected. "But it's okay. You up to watching Stella's boys tonight?"

"I haven't said—"

"Absolutely. It'll be fun. You two going out?"

"A little dinner. I'll leave the invoice on your desk," he said to Stella. "See you at seven."

Tired of standing, Stella sat on the stool and scowled at Roz when Logan sauntered out. "You didn't help."

"I think I did." Reaching up, she turned one of the baskets to check the symmetry of the plants. "You'll go out, have a good time. Your boys'll be fine, and I'll enjoy spending some time with them. If you
didn't want to go out with Logan, you wouldn't go. You know how to say no loud enough."

"That may be true, but I might've liked a little more notice. A little more ... something."

"He is what he is." She patted Stella's knee. "And the good thing about that is you don't have to wonder what he's hiding, or what kind of show he's putting on. He's ... I can't say he's a nice man, because he can be incredibly difficult. But he's an honest one. Take it from me, there's a lot to be said for that."

ELEVEN

This, Stella thought, was why dating was very rarely worth it. In her underwear, she stood in front of
her closet, debating, considering, despairing over what to wear.

She didn't even know where she was going. She hated not knowing where she was going. How was
she supposed to know what to prepare for?

"Dinner" was not enough information. Was it little-black-dress dinner, or dressy-casual on-sale-designer-suit dinner? Was it jeans and a shirt and jacket dinner, or jeans and a silk blouse dinner?

Added to that, by picking her up at seven, he'd barely left her enough time to change, much less decide what to change into.

Dating. How could something that had been so desired, so exciting and so damn much fun in her teens, so easy and natural in her early twenties, have become such a complicated, often irritating chore in her thirties?

It wasn't just that marriage had spoiled her, or rusted her dating tools. Adult dating was complex and exhausting because the people involved in the stupid date had almost certainly been through at least one serious relationship, and breakup, and carried that extra baggage on their backs. They were already set
in their ways, had defined their expectations, and had performed this societal dating ritual so often that they really just wanted to cut to the chase—or go home and watch Letterman.

Add to that a man who dropped the date on your head out of the clear blue, then didn't have the sense
to give you some guidelines so you knew how to present yourself, and it was just a complete mess
before it started.

Fine, then. Fine. He'd just get what he got.

She was stepping into the little black dress when the connecting bathroom door burst open and Gavin rushed in. "Mom! I finished my homework. Luke didn't, but I did. Can I go down now? Can I?"

She was glad she'd decided on the open-toed slides and no hose, as Parker was currently trying to
climb up her leg. "Did you forget something?" she asked Gavin.

"Nuh-uh. I did all the vocabulary words."

"The knocking something?"

"Oh." He smiled, big and innocent. "You look pretty."

"Smooth talker." She bent down to kiss the top of his head. "But when a door's closed, you knock."

"Okay. Can I go down now?"

"In a minute." She walked over to her dresser to put on the silver hoops she'd laid out. "I want you to promise you'll be good for Miss Roz."

"We're going to have cheeseburgers and play video games. She says she can take us in Smackdown,
but I don't think so."

"No fighting with your brother." Hope springs, she thought. "Consider this your night off from your mission in life."

"Can I go-down?"

"Get." She gave him a light slap on the rump. "Remember, I'll have my phone if you need me."

When he rushed out, she slipped on her shoes and a thin black sweater. After a check in the mirror,
she decided the accessories took the dress into the could-be-casual, could-be-more area she'd been shooting for.

She picked up her bag and, checking the contents as she went, walked into the next bedroom. Luke
was sprawled belly-down on the floor—his favored position—frowning miserably over his arithmetic book.

"Trouble, handsome?"

He lifted his head, and his face was aggrieved in the way only a young boy could manage. "I hate homework."

"Me too."

"Gavin did the touchdown dance, with his fingers in the air, 'cause he finished first."

Understanding the demoralization, she sat on the floor beside him. "Let's see what you've got."

"How come I have to know two plus three, anyway?"

"How else would you know how many fingers you have on each hand?"

His brow beetled, then cleared with a delighted smile. "Five!"

With the crisis averted, she helped him with the rest of the problems. "There, all done. That wasn't
so bad."

"I still hate homework."

"Maybe, but what about the touchdown dance?"

On a giggle, he leaped up and did his strut around the room.

And all, she thought, was right in her little world once more.

"How come you're not going to eat here? We're having cheeseburgers."

"I'm not entirely sure. You'll behave for Miss Roz?"

"Uh-huh. She's nice. Once she came out in the yard and threw the ball for Parker. And she didn't even mind when it got slobbered. Some girls do. I'm going down now, okay? 'Cause I'm hungry."

"You bet."

Alone, she got to her feet, automatically picking up the scatter of toys and clothes that hadn't made it
back onto the shelf or into the closet.

She ran her fingers over some of their treasures. Gavin's beloved comic books, his ball glove. Luke's favorite truck, and the battered bear he wasn't yet ashamed to sleep with.

The prickle between her shoulder blades had her stiffening. Even under the light sweater her arms broke out in gooseflesh. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shape— a reflection, a shadow—in the mirror over the bureau.

When she spun, Hayley swung around the door and into the room.

"Logan's just pulling up in front of the house," she began, then stopped. "You okay? You look all pale."

"Fine. I'm fine." But she pushed a not-quite-steady hand at her hair. "I just thought... nothing. Nothing. Besides pale, how do I look?" And she made herself turn to the mirror again. Saw only herself, with Hayley moving toward her.

"Two thumbs up. I just love your hair."

"Easy to say when you don't wake up with it every morning. I thought about putting it up, but it seemed too formal."

"It's just right." Hayley edged closer, tipping her head toward Stella's. "I did the redhead thing once. Major disaster. Made my skin look yellow."

"That deep, dense brown's what's striking on you." And look at that face, Stella thought with a tiny
twist of envy. Not a line on it.

"Yeah, but the red's so now. Anyway, I'm going to go on down. I'll keep Logan busy until. You wait
just a few more minutes before you head down, then we'll all be back in the kitchen. Big burger feast."

She didn't intend to make an entrance, for heaven's sake. But Hayley had already gone off, and she did want to check her lipstick. And settle herself down.

At least her nerves over this date—it was a date this time—had taken a backseat to others. It hadn't
been Hayley's reflection in the mirror. Even that quick glimpse had shown her the woman who'd
stood there had blond hair.

Steadier, she walked out, started down the hall. From the top of the steps, she heard Hayley laugh.

"She'll be right down. I guess you know how to make yourself at home. I'm going on back to the kitchen with the rest of the gang. Let Stella know I'll say bye from her to everyone. Y'all have fun."

Was the girl psychic? Stella wondered. Hayley had timed her exit so adroitly that as she walked down
the hall, Stella hit the halfway point on the steps.

And Logan's attention shifted upward.

Good black trousers, she noted. Nice blue shirt, no tie, but with a casual sport coat over it. And still he didn't look quite tame.

"Nice," he said.

"Thanks. You, too."

"Hayley said she'd tell everyone you were leaving. You ready?"

"Sure."

She stepped out with him, then studied the black Mustang. "You own a car."

"This is not merely a car, and to call it such is very female."

"And to say that is very sexist. Okay, if it's not a car, what is it?"

"It's a machine."

"I stand corrected. You never said where we were going."

He opened her door. "Let's find out."