* * *

He drove into the city, with music she didn't recognize on low. She knew it was blues—or supposed it was, but she didn't know anything about that area of music. Mentioning that, casually, not only seemed
to shock him but kept conversation going through the trip.

She got a nutshell education on artists like John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, B. B. King and Taj Mahal.

And it occurred to her after they'd crossed into the city, that conversation between them never seemed
to be a problem. After he parked, he shifted to take a long look at her. "You sure you were born down here?"

"It says so on my birth certificate."

He shook his head and climbed out. "Since you're that ignorant of the blues, you better check it again."

He took her inside a restaurant where the tables were already crowded with patrons and the noise level high with chatter. Once they were seated, he waved the waiter away. "Why don't we just wait on drinks until you know what you want to eat. We'll get a bottle of wine to go with it."

"All right." Since it seemed he'd nixed the pre-dinner conversation, she opened her menu.

"They're known for their catfish here. Ever had it?" he asked.

She lifted her gaze over the top of her menu, met his. "No. And whether or not that makes me a
Yankee, I'm thinking I'll go for the chicken."

"Okay. You can have some of mine to give you a sample of what you've been missing. There's a good California Chardonnay on their wine list that'll go with both the fish and the bird. It's got a nice finish."

She set her menu down, leaned forward. "Do you really know that, or are you just making it up?"

"I like wine. I make it a point to know what I like."

She sat back when he motioned the waiter over. Once they'd ordered, she angled her head. "What are
we doing here, Logan?"

"Speaking for myself, I'm going to have a really fine catfish dinner and a glass of good wine."

"We've had some conversations, mostly business-oriented."

"We've had some conversations, and some arguments," he corrected.

"True. We had an outing, an enjoyable one, which ended on a surprisingly personal note."

"I do like listening to you talk sometimes, Red. It's almost like listening to a foreign language. Are you laying all those things down like pavers, trying to make some sort of path from one point to the next?"

"Maybe. The fact is, I'm sitting here with you, on a date. That wasn't my intention twenty-four hours ago. We've got a working relationship."

"Uh-huh. And speaking of that, I still find your system mostly annoying."

"Big surprise. And speaking of that, you neglected to put that invoice on my desk this afternoon."

"Did I?" He moved a shoulder. "I've got it somewhere."

"My point is—"

She broke off when the waiter brought the wine to the table, turned the label toward Logan.

"That's the one. Let the lady taste it."

She bided her time, then picked up the glass holding the testing sip. She sampled, lifted her eyebrows. "It's very good ... has a nice finish."

Logan grinned. "Then let's get started on it."

"The point I was trying to make," she began again, "is that while it's smart and beneficial all around for you and me to develop a friendly relationship, it's probably not either for us to take it to any other level."

"Uh-huh." He sampled the wine himself, kept watching her with those big-cat eyes. "You think I'm not going to kiss you again because it might not be smart or beneficial?"

"I'm in a new place, with a new job. I've taken my kids to a new place. They're first with me."

"I expect they would be. But I don't expect this is your first dinner with a man since you lost your husband."

"I'm careful."

"I never would've guessed. How'd he die?"

"Plane crash. Commuter plane. He was on his way back from a business trip. I had the TV on, and
there was a bulletin. They didn't give any names, but I knew it was Kevin's plane. I knew he was gone before they came to tell me."

"You know what you were wearing when you heard the bulletin, what you were doing, where you were standing." His voice was quiet, his eyes were direct. "You know every detail about that day."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it was the worst day of your life. You'll be hazy on the day before, the day after, but you'll never forget a single detail of that day."

"You're right." And his intuition surprised her, touched her. "Have you lost someone?"

"No, not like what you mean, or how you mean. But a woman like you? She doesn't get married, stay married, unless the man's at the center of her life. Something yanks that center out of you, you never forget."

"No, I won't." It was carved into her heart. "That's the most insightful and accurate, and comforting expression of sympathy anyone's given me. I hope I don't insult you by saying it comes as a surprise."

"I don't insult that easy. You lost their father, but you've built a life—looks like a good one—for your kids. That takes work. You're not the first woman I've been interested in who's had children. I respect motherhood, and its priorities. Doesn't stop me from looking across this table and wondering when I'm going to get you naked."

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Cleared her throat, sipped wine. "Well. Blunt."

"Different sort of woman, I'd just go for the mattress." At her strangled half laugh, he lifted his wine.
And waited while their first course was served. "But as it is, you're a... since we're having this nice
meal together I'll say you're a cautious sort of woman."

"You wanted to say tight-ass."

He grinned, appreciating her. "You'll never know. Added to that, we both work for Roz, and I wouldn't do anything to mess her up. Not intentionally. You've got two kids to worry about. And I don't know
how tender you might be yet over losing your husband. So instead of my hauling you off to bed, we're having dinner conversation."

She took a minute to think it through. At the root, she couldn't find anything wrong with his logic. In fact, she agreed with it. "All right. First Roz. I won't do anything to mess her up either. So whatever happens here, we agree to maintain a courteous working relationship."

"Might not always be courteous, but it'll be about the work."

"Fair enough. My boys are my priority, first and last. Not only because they have to be," she added,
"but because I want them to be. Nothing will change that."

"Anything did, I wouldn't have much respect for you."

"Well." She waited just a moment because his response had not only been blunt again, but was one she appreciated a great deal. "As for Kevin, I loved him very much. Losing him cut me in two, the part that just wanted to lie down and die, and the part that had to go through the grief and the anger and the motions—and live."

"Takes courage to live."

Her eyes stung, and she took one very careful breath. "Thank you. I had to put myself back together.
For the kids, for myself. I'll never feel for another man exactly what I felt for him. I don't think I should. But that doesn't mean I can't be interested in and attracted to someone else. It doesn't mean I'm fated to live my life alone."

He sat for a moment. "How can such a sensible woman have an emotional attachment to forms and invoices?"

"How can such a talented man be so disorganized?" More relaxed than she'd imagined, she enjoyed her salad. "I drove by the Dawson job again."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I realize you still have a few finishing touches that have to wait until all danger of frost is over, but I wanted to tell you it's good work. No, that's wrong. It's not. It's exceptional work."

"Thanks. You take more pictures?"

"I did. We'll be using some of them—before and after—in the landscaping section of the Web site I'm designing."

"No shit."

"None whatsoever. I'm going to make Roz more money, Logan. She makes more, you make more.
The site's going to generate more business for the landscaping arm. I guarantee it."

"It's hard to find a downside on that one."

"You know what I envy you most?"

"My sparkling personality."

"No, you don't sparkle in the least. Your muscle."

"You envy my muscle? I don't think it'd look so good on you, Red."

"Whenever I'd start a project at home—back home—I couldn't do it all myself. I have vision—not as creative as yours, maybe, but I can see what I want, and I've got considerable skill. But when it comes
to the heavy, manual labor of it, I'm out. It's frustrating because with some of it, I'd really like to do it
all myself. And I can't. So I envy you the muscle that means you can."

"I imagine whether you're doing it or directing it, it's done the way you want."

She smiled into her wine. "Goes without saying. I've heard you've got a place not far from Roz's."

"About two miles out." When their main courses were served, Logan cut a chunk off his catfish, laid it
on her plate.

Stella stared at it. "Well. Hmmm."

"I bet you tell your kids they don't know if they like something or not until they've tried it."

"One of the advantages of being a grown-up is being able to say things like that without applying them to yourself. But okay." She forked off a tiny bite, geared herself up for the worst, and ate it. "Interestingly," she said after a moment, "it tastes nothing like cat. Or like what one assumes cat might taste like. It's actually good."

"You might just get back some of your southern. We'll have you eating grits next."

"I don't think so. Those I have tried. Anyway, are you doing the work yourself? On your house."

"Most of it. Land's got some nice gentle rises, good drainage. Some fine old trees on the north side. A couple of pretty sycamores and some hickory, with some wild azalea and mountain laurel scattered around. Some open southern exposure. Plenty of frontage, and a small creek running on the back edge."

"What about the house?"

"What?"

"The house. What kind of house is it?"

"Oh. Two-story frame. It's probably too much space for me, but it came with the land."

"It sounds like the sort of thing I'll be looking for in a few months. Maybe if you hear of anything on the market you could let me know."

"Sure, I can do that. Kids doing all right at Roz's?"

"They're doing great. But at some point we'll need to have our own place. It's important they have their own. I don't want anything elaborate—couldn't afford it, anyway. And I don't mind fixing something up. I'm fairly handy. And I'd really prefer it wasn't haunted."

She stopped herself when he sent her a questioning look. Then shook her head. "Must be the wine because I didn't know that was in my head."

"Why is it?"

"I saw—thought I saw," she corrected, "this ghost reputed to haunt the Harper house. In the mirror, in my bedroom, just before you picked me up. It wasn't Hayley. She came in an instant later, and I tried to convince myself it had been her. But it wasn't. And at the same time, it could hardly have been anyone else because ... it's just not possible."

"Sounds like you're still trying to convince yourself."

"Sensible woman, remember." She tapped a finger on the side of her head. "Sensible women don't see ghosts, or hear them singing lullabies. Or feel them."

"Feel them how?"

"A chill, a.. .feeling'' She gave a quick shudder and tried to offset it with a quick laugh. "I can't explain it because it's not rational. And tonight, that feeling was very intense. Brief, but intense. And hostile. No, that's not right. 'Hostile' is too strong a word. Disapproving."

"Why don't you talk to Roz about it? She could give you the history, as far as she knows it."

"Maybe. You said you've never seen it?"

"Nope."

"Or felt it?"

"Can't say I have. But sometimes when I've been working a job, walking some land, digging into it,
I've felt something. You plant something, even if it dies off, it leaves something in the soil. Why
shouldn't a person leave something behind?"

It was something to think about, later, when her mind wasn't so distracted. Right now she had to think about the fact that she was enjoying his company. And there was the basic animal attraction to consider. If she continued to enjoy his company, and the attraction didn't fade off, they were going to end up in bed.

Then there were all the ramifications and complications that would entail. In addition, their universe was finite. They worked for the same person in the same business. It wasn't the sort of atmosphere where
two people could have an adult affair without everyone around them knowing they were having it.

So she'd have to think about that, and just how uncomfortable it might be to have her private life as public knowledge.

After dinner, they walked over to Beale Street to join the nightly carnival. Tourists, Memphians out on the town, couples, and"clutches of young people wandered the street lit by neon signs. Music trickled
out of doorways, and people flooded in and out of shops.

"Used to be a club along here called the Monarch. Those shoes going to give you any trouble with this?"

"No."

"Good. Great legs, by the way."

"Thanks. I've had them for years."

"So, the Monarch," he continued. "Happened it shared a back alley with an undertaker. Made it easy
for the owners to dispose of gunshot victims."

"That's a pretty piece of Beale Street trivia."

"Oh, there's plenty more. Blues, rock—it's the home of both—voodoo, gambling, sex, scandal, bootleg whiskey, pickpockets, and murder."

Music pumped out of a club as he talked, and struck Stella as southern-fried in the best possible way.

"It's all been right here," he continued. "But you oughta just enjoy the carnival the way it is now."

They joined a crowd lining the sidewalk to watch three boys do running flips and gymnastics up and down the center of the street.

"I can do that." She nodded toward one of the boys as he walked on his hands back to their tip box.

"Uh-huh."

"I can. I'm not going to demonstrate here and now, but I certainly can. Six years of gymnastic lessons.
I can bend my body like a pretzel. Well, half a pretzel now, but at one time..."

"You trying to get me hot?"

She laughed. "No."

"Just a side effect, then. What does half a pretzel look like?"

"Maybe I'll show you sometime when I'm more appropriately dressed."

"You are trying to make me hot."

She laughed again and watched the performers. After Logan dropped money in the tip box, they strolled along the sidewalk. "Who's Betty Paige and why is her face on these shirts?"

He stopped dead. "You've got to be kidding."

"I'm not."

"I guess you didn't just live up north, you lived up north in a cave. Betty Paige, legendary fifties pinup and general sex goddess."

"How do you know? You weren't even born in the fifties."

"I make it a point to learn my cultural history, especially when it involves gorgeous women who strip. Look at that face. The girl next door with the body of Venus."

"She probably couldn't walk on her hands," Stella said, and casually strolled away when he laughed.

They walked off the wine, and the meal, meandering down one side of the street and back up the
other. He tempted her with a blues club, but after a brief, internal debate she shook her head.

"I really can't. It's already later than I'd planned. I've got a full day tomorrow, and I've imposed on
Roz long enough tonight."

"We'll rain-check it."

"And a blues club will go on my list. Got more checks tonight. Beale Street and catfish. I'm practically
a native now."

"Next thing you know you'll be frying up the cat and putting peanuts in your Coke."

"Why in the world would I put peanuts in my Coke? Never mind." She waved him away as he drove
out of town. "It's a southern thing. How about if I just say I had a good time tonight?"

"That'll work."

It hadn't been complicated, she realized, or boring, or stressful. At least not after the first few minutes. She'd forgotten, or nearly, what it could be like to be both stimulated and relaxed around a man.

Or to wonfler, and there was no point pretending she wasn't wondering, what it would be like to have those hands—those big, work-hardened hands—on her.

Roz had left lights on for her. Front porch, foyer, her own bedroom. She saw the gleam of them as they drove up, and found it a motherly thing to do. Or big sisterly, Stella supposed, as Roz wasn't nearly old enough to be her mother.

Her mother had been too busy with her own life and interests to think about little details like front porch lights. Maybe, Stella thought, that was one of the reasons she herself was so compulsive about them.

"Such a beautiful house," Stella said. "The way it sort of glimmers at night. It's no wonder she loves it."

"No place else quite like it. Spring comes in, the gardens just blow you away."

"She ought to hold a house and garden tour."

"She used to, once a year. Hasn't done it since she peeled off that asshole Clerk. I wouldn't bring it up," he said before Stella spoke. "If she wants to do that kind of thing again, she will."

Knowing his style now, Stella waited for him to come around and open her door. "I'm looking forward
to seeing the gardens in their full glory. And I'm grateful for the chance to live here a while and have the kids exposed to this kind of tradition."

"There's another tradition. Kiss the girl good night."

He moved a little slower this time, gave her a chance to anticipate. Those sexy nerves were just
beginning to dance over her skin when his mouth met hers.

Then they raced in a shivering path to belly, to throat as his tongue skimmed over her lips to part them. His hands moved through her hair, over her shoulders, and down her body to her hips to take a good, strong hold.

Muscles, she thought dimly. Oh, God. He certainly had them. It was like being pressed against warm, smooth steel. Then he moved in so she swayed back and was trapped between the wall of him and the door. Imprisoned there, her blood sizzling as he devastated her mouth, she felt fragile and giddy, and
alive with need.

"Wait a minute," she managed. "Wait."

"Just want to finish this out first."

He wanted a great deal more than that, but already knew -he'd have to hold himself at a kiss. So he
didn't intend to rush through it. Her mouth was sumptuous, and that slight tremor in her body brutally erotic. He imagined himself gulping her down whole, with violence, with greed. Or savoring her nibble
by torturous nibble until he was half mad from the flavor.

When he eased back, the drugged, dreamy look in her eyes told him he could do either. Some other
time, some other place.

"Any point in pretending we're going to stop things here?"

"I can't—"

"I don't mean tonight," he said when she glanced back at the door.

"Then, no, there'd be no point in that."

"Good."

"But I can't just jump into something like this. I need to—"

"Plan," he finished. "Organize."

"I'm not good at spontaneity, and spontaneity—this sort—is nearly impossible when you have two children."

"Then plan. Organize. And let me know. I'm good at spontaneity." He kissed her again until she felt her knees dissolve from the knee down.

"You've got my numbers. Give me a call." He stepped back. "Go on inside, Stella. Traditionally, you don't just kiss the girl good night, you wait until she's inside before you walk off wondering when you'll have the chance to do it again."

"Good night then." She went inside, drifted up the stairs, and forgot to turn off the lights.

She was still floating as she started down the hall so the singing didn't register until she was two paces away from her sons' bedroom.

She closed the distance in one leap. And she saw, she saw the silhouette, the glint of blond hair in the nightlight, the gleam of eyes that stared into hers.

The cold hit her like a slap, angry and sharp. Then, it, and she, were gone.

On unsteady legs, she rushed between the beds, stroked Gavin's hair, Luke's. Laid her hands on their cheeks, then their backs as she'd done when they were infants. A nervous mother's way to assure
herself that her child breathed.

Parker rolled lazily over, gave a little greeting growl, a single thump of his tail, then went back to sleep.

He senses me, smells me, knows me. Is it the same with her? Why doesn't he bark at her?

Or am I just losing my mind?

She readied for bed, then took a blanket and pillow into their room. She laid down between her sons
and passed the rest of the night between them, guarding them against the impossible.

TWELVE

In the greenhouse, Roz watered flats of annu-als she'd grown over the winter.. It was nearly time to
put them out for sale. Part of her was always a little sad to know she wouldn't be the one planting them. And she knew that not all of them would be tended properly.

Some would die of neglect, others would be given too much sun, or not enough. Now they were lush
and sweet and full of potential.

And hers.

She had to let them go, the way she'd let her sons go. She had to hope, as with her boys, that they
found their potential and bloomed,, lavishly.

She missed her little guys. More than she'd realized now that her house had boys in it again with all their chatter and scents and debris. Having Harper close helped, so much at times that it was hard for her not to lean too heavily on him, not to surround him with need.

But he'd passed the stage when he was just hers. Though he lived within shouting distance, and they often worked together side by side, he would never be just hers again.

She had to content herself with occasional visits, with phone calls and e-mails from her other sons. And with the knowledge that they were happy building their own lives.

She'd rooted them, and tended them, nurtured and trained. And let them go.

She wouldn't be one of those overbearing, smothering mothers. Sons, like plants, needed space and air. But oh, sometimes she wanted to go back ten years, twenty, and just hold on to those precious boys a little bit longer. •

And sentiment was only going to make her blue, she reminded herself. She switched off the water just
as Stella came into the greenhouse.

Roz drew a deep breath. "Nothing like the smell of damp soil, is there?"

"Not when you're us. Look at these marigolds. They're going to fly out the door. I missed you this morning."

"I wanted to get here early. I've got that Garden Club meeting this afternoon. I want to put together a couple dozen six-inch pots as centerpieces."

"Good advertising. I just wanted to thank you again for watching the boys for me last night."

"I enjoyed it. A lot. Did you have a good time?"

"I really did. Is it going to be a problem for you if Logan and I see each other socially?"

"Why would it be?"

"In a work situation ..."

"Adults should be able to live their own lives, just like in any situation. You're both unattached adults.
I expect you'll figure out for yourself if there's any problem with you socializing."

"And we're both using 'socializing' as a euphemism."

Roz began pinching back some petunias. "Stella, if you didn't want to have sex with a man who looks
like Logan, I'd worry about you."

"I guess you've got nothing to worry about, then. Still, I want to say ... I'm working for you, I'm living
in your house, so I want to say I'm not promiscuous."

"I'm sure you aren't." She glanced up briefly from her work. "You're too careful, too deliberate, and a
bit too bound up to be promiscuous."

"Another way of calling me a tight-ass," Stella muttered.

"Not precisely. But if you were promiscuous, it would still be your business and not mine. You don't
need my approval."

"I want it—because I'm working for you and living in your house. And because I respect you."

"All right, then." Roz moved on to impatiens. "You have it. One of the reasons I wanted you to live in
the house was because I wanted to get to know you, on a personal level. When I hired you, I was giving you a piece of something very important to me, personally important. So if I'd decided, after the first few weeks, that you weren't the sort of person I could like and respect, I'd have fired you." She glanced back. "No matter how competent you were. Competent just isn't that hard to find."

"Thanks. I think."

"I think I'll take in some of these geraniums that are already potted. Saves me time and trouble, and
we've got a good supply of them."

"Let me know how many, and I'll adjust the inventory. Roz, there was something else I wanted to talk
to you about."

'Talk away," Roz invited as she started to select her plants.                                             ;

"It's about the ghost."

Roz lifted a salmon-pink geranium, studied it from all sides. "What about her?"

"I feel stupid even talking about this, but... have you ever felt threatened by her?"

"Threatened? No. I wouldn't use a word that strong." Roz set the geranium in a plastic tray, chose another. "Why?"

"Because, apparently, I've seen her."

"That's not unexpected. The Harper Bride tends to show herself to mothers, and young boys. Young girls, occasionally. I saw her myself a few times when I was a girl, then fairly regularly once the boys started coming along."

"Tell me what she looks like."

"About your height." As she spoke, Roz continued to select her geraniums for the Garden Club. "Thin. Very thin. Mid- to late twenties at my guess, though it's hard to tell. She doesn't look well. That is," she added with an absent smile, "even for a ghost. She strikes me as a woman who had a great deal of beauty, but was ill for some time. She's blond, and her eyes are somewhere between green and gray.
And very sad. She wears a gray dress—or it looks gray, and it hangs on her as if she'd lost weight."

Stella let out a breath. "That's who I saw. What I saw. It's too fantastic, but I saw."

"You should be flattered. She rarely shows herself to anyone outside the family—or so the legend goes. You shouldn't feel threatened, Stella."

"But I did. Last night, when I got home, and went in to check on the boys. I heard her first. She sings some sort of lullaby."

" 'Lavender's Blue.' It's what you could call her trademark." Taking out small clippers, Roz trimmed off
a weak side stem. "She's never spoken that I've heard, or heard of, but she sings to the children of the house at night."

" 'Lavender's Blue.' Yes, that's it. I heard her, and rushed in. There she was, standing between their beds. She looked at me. It was only for a second, but she looked at me. Her eyes weren't sad, Roz, they were angry. There was a blast of cold, like she'd thrown something at me in temper. Not like the other times, when I'd just felt a chill."

Interested now, Roz studied Stella's face. "I felt as if I'd annoyed her a few times, on and off. Just a change of tone. Very like you described, I suppose."

"It happened."

"I believe you, but primarily, from most of my experiences, she's always been a benign sort of presence.
I always took those temper snaps to be a kind of moodiness. I expect ghosts get moody."

"You expect ghosts get moody," Stella repeated slowly. "I just don't understand a statement like that."

"People do, don't they? Why should that change when they're dead?"

"Okay," Stella said after a moment. "I'm going to try to roll with all this, like it's not insanity. So, maybe she doesn't like me being here."

"Over the last hundred years or so, Harper House has had a lot of people live in it, a lot of houseguests. She ought to be used to it. If you'd feel better moving to the other wing—"

"No. I don't see how that would make a difference. And though I was unnerved enough last night to
sleep in the boys' room with them, she wasn't angry with them. It was just me. Who was she?"

"Nobody knows for sure. In polite company, she's referred to as the Harper Bride, but it's assumed she was a servant. A nurse or governess. My theory is one of the men in the house seduced her, maybe cast her off, especially if she got pregnant. There's the attachment to children, so it seemed most logical she had a connection to kids. It's a sure bet she died in or around the house."

"There'd be records, right? A family Bible, birth and death records, photographs, tintypes, whatever."

"Oh, tons."

"I'd like to go through them, if it's all right with you. I'd like to try to find out who she was. I want to know who, or what, I'm dealing with."

"All right." Clippers still in hand, Roz set a fist on her hip. "I guess it's odd no one's ever done it before, including myself. I'll help you with it. It'll be interesting."

* * *

"This is so awesome." Hayley looked around the library table, where Stella had arranged the photograph albums, the thick Bible, the boxes of old papers, her laptop, and several notebooks. "We're like the Scooby gang."

"I can't believe you saw her, too, and didn't say anything."

Hayley hunched up her shoulders and continued to wander the room. "I figured you'd think I'd wigged. Besides, except for the once, I only caught a glimpse, like over here." She held up a hand at the side of her head. "I've never been around an actual ghost. This is completely cool."

"I'm glad someone's enjoying herself."

She really was. As she and her father had both loved books, they'd used their living room as a kind of library, stuffing the shelves with books, putting in a couple of big, squishy chairs.

It had been nice, cozy and nice.

But this was a library. Beautiful bookcases of deep, dark wood flanked long windows, then rose up and around the walls in a kind of platform where the long table stood. There had to be hundreds of books, but it didn't seem overwhelming, not with the dark, restful green of the walls and the warm cream granite of the fireplace. She liked the big black candlesticks and the groupings of family pictures on the mantel.

There were more pictures scattered around here and there, and things. Fascinating things like bowls and statues and a dome-shaped crystal clock. Flowers, of course. There were flowers in nearly every room
of the house. These were tulips with deep, deep purple cups that sort of spilled out of a wide, clear glass vase.

There were lots of chairs, wide, butter-soft leather chairs, and even a leather sofa. Though a chandelier dripped from the center of the tray ceiling, and even the bookcases lit up, there were lamps with those cool shades that looked like stained glass. The rugs were probably really old, and so interesting with their pattern of exotic birds around the borders.

She couldn't imagine what it must have been like to have a room like this, much less to know just how
to decorate it so it would be—well, gorgeous was the only word she could think of—and yet still be as cozy as the little library she'd had at home.

But Roz knew. Roz, in Hayley's opinion, was the absolute bomb.

"I think this is my favorite room of the house," she decided. "Of course, I think that about every room after I'm in it for five minutes. But I really think this wins the prize. It's like a picture out of Southern Living or something, but the accent's on living. You wouldn't be afraid to take a nap on the couch."

"I know what you mean." Stella set aside the photo album she'd looked through. "Hayley, you have to remember not to say anything about this to the kids."

"Of course, I won't." She came back to the table, and finally sat. "Hey, maybe we could do a seance. That would be so spooky and great."

"I'm not that far gone yet," Stella replied. She glanced over as David came in.

"Ghost hunter snacks," he announced and set the tray on the table. "Coffee, tea, cookies. I considered angel food cake, but it seemed too obvious."

"Having fun with this?"

"Damn right. But I'm also willing to roll up my sleeves and dive into all this stuff. It'll be nice to put a name to her after all this time." He tapped a finger on Stella's laptop. "And this is for?"

"Notes. Data, facts, speculation. I don't know. It's my first day on the job."

Roz came in, carting a packing box. There was a smudge of dust on her cheek and silky threads of cobwebs in her hair. "Household accounts, from the attic. There's more up there, but this ought to
give us a start."

She dumped the box on the table, grinned. "This should be fun. Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. Where do y'all want to start?"

"I was thinking we could have a seance," Hayley began. "Maybe she'll just tell us who she is and why
her spirit's, you know, trapped on this plane of existence. That's the thing with ghosts. They get trapped, and sometimes they don't even know they're dead. How creepy is that?"

"A seance." David rubbed his hands together. "Now where did I leave my turban?"

When Hayley burst into throaty laughter, Stella rapped her knuckles on the table. "If we could control
the hilarity? I thought we'd start with something a little more mundane. Like trying to date her."

"I've never dated a ghost," David mused, "but I'm up for it."

"Get her time period," Stella said with a slanted look for David. "By what she's wearing. We might be able to pinpoint when she lived, or at least get an estimate."

"Discovery through fashion." Roz nodded as she picked up a cookie. "That's good."

"Smart," Hayley agreed. "But I didn't really notice what she had on. I only got a glimpse."

"A gray dress," Roz put in. "High-necked. Long sleeves."

"Can any of us sketch?" Stella asked. "I'm all right with straight lines and curves, but I'd be hopeless
with figures."

"Roz is your girl." David patted Roz on the shoulder.

"Can you draw her, Roz? Your impression of her?"

"I can sure give it a shot."

"I bought notebooks." Stella offered one and made Roz smile.

"Of course you did. And I bet your pencils are all nicely sharpened, too. Just like the first day of school."

"Hard to write with them otherwise. David, while she's doing that, why don't you tell us your experiences with ... I guess we'll call her the Harper Bride for now."

"Only had a few, and all back when I was a kid, hanging out here with Harper."

"What about the first time?"

"You never forget your first." He winked at her, and after sitting, poured himself coffee. "I was bunking in with Harper, and we were pretending to be asleep so Roz didn't come in and lower the boom. We
were whispering—"

"They always thought they were," Roz said as she sketched.

"I think it was spring. I remember we had the windows open, and there was a breeze. I'd have been around nine. I met Harper in school, and even though he was a year behind me, we hit it off. We hadn't known each other but a few weeks when I came over to spend the night. So we were there, in the dark, thinking we were whispering, and he told me about the ghost. I thought he was making it up to scare me, but he swore all the way up to the needle in his eye that it was true, and he'd seen her lots of times.

"We must've fallen asleep. I remember waking up, thinking somebody had stroked my head. I thought it was Roz, and I was a little embarrassed, so I squinted one eye open to see."

He sipped coffee, narrowing his eyes as he searched for the memory. "And I saw her. She walked over
to Harper's bed and bent over him, the way you do when you kiss a child on the top of the head. Then she walked across the room. There was a rocking chair over in the corner. She sat down and started to rock, and sing."

He set the coffee down. "I don't know if I made some sound, or moved, or what, but she looked right
at me. She smiled. I thought she was crying, but she smiled. And she put her finger to her lips as if to
tell me to hush. Then she disappeared."

"What did you do?" Hayley whispered the question, reverently.

"I pulled the covers over my head, and stayed under till morning."

"You were afraid of her?" Stella prompted.

"Nine-year-old, ghost—and I have a sensitive nature, so sure. But I didn't stay afraid. In the morning it seemed like a dream, but a nice one. She'd stroked my hair and sung to me. And she was pretty. No rattling chains or bloodless howls. She seemed a little like an angel, so I wasn't afraid of her. I told
Harper about it in the morning, and he said we must be brothers, because none of his other friends
got to see her."

He smiled at the memory. "I felt pretty proud of that, and looked forward to seeing her again. I saw her a few more times when I was over. Then, when I was about thirteen the—we'll say visitations—stopped."

"Did she ever speak to you?"

"No, she'd just sing. That same song."

"Did you only see her in the bedroom, at night?"

"No. There was this time we all camped out back. It was summer, hot and buggy, but we nagged Roz until she let all of us sleep out there in a tent. We didn't make it through the night 'cause Mason cut his foot on a rock. Remember that, Roz?"

"I do. Two o'clock in the morning, and I'm packing four kids in the car so I can take one of them to the ER for stitches."

"We were out there before sunset, out near the west edge of the property. By ten we were all of us half sick on hot dogs and marshmallows, and had spooked ourselves stupid with ghost stories. Lightning bugs were out," he murmured, closing his eyes. "Past midsummer then, and steamy. We'd all stripped down
to our underwear. The younger ones fell asleep, but Harper and I stayed up for a while. A long while. I must've conked out, because the next thing I knew, Harper was shaking my shoulder. 'There she is,' he said, and I saw her, walking in the garden."

"Oh, my God," Hayley managed, and edged closer to David as Stella continued to type. "What happened then?"

"Well, Harper's hissing in my ear about how we should go follow her, and I'm trying to talk him out of it without sacrificing my manhood. The other two woke up, and Harper said he was going, and we could stay behind if we were yellow coward dogs."

"I bet that got you moving," Stella commented.

"Being a yellow coward dog isn't an option for a boy in the company of other boys. We all got moving. Mason couldn't've been but six, but he was trotting along at the rear, trying to keep up. There was moonlight, so we could see her, but Harper said we had to hang back some, so she didn't see us.

"I swear there wasn't a breath of air that night, not a whisper of it to stir a leaf. She didn't make a sound as she walked along the paths, through the shrubs. There was something different about her that night.
I didn't realize what it was until long after."

"What?" Breathless, Hayley leaned forward, gripped his arm. "What was different about her that night?"

"Her hair was down. Always before, she'd had it up. Sort of sweet and old-fashioned ringlets spiraling down from the top of her head. But that night it was down, and kind of wild, spilling down her back, over her shoulders. And she was wearing something white and floaty. She looked more like a ghost that night than she ever did otherwise. And I was afraid of her, more than I was the first time, or ever was again. She moved off the path, walked over the flowers without touching them. I could hear my own breath pant in and out, and I must've slowed down because Harper was well ahead. She was going toward the old stables, or maybe the carriage house."

"The carriage house?" Hayley almost squealed it. "Where Harper lives?"

"Yeah. He wasn't living there then," he added with a laugh. "He wasn't more than ten. It seemed like she was heading for the stables, but she'd have to go right by the carriage house. So, she stopped, and she turned around, looking back. I know I stopped dead then, and the blood just drained out of me."

"I guess!" Hayley said, with feeling.

"She looked crazy, and that was worse than dead somehow. Before" I could decide whether to run after Harper, or hightail it like a yellow coward dog, Mason screamed. I thought somehow she'd gotten him, and damn near screamed myself. But Harper came flying back. Turned out Mason had gashed his foot open on a rock. When I looked back toward the old stables, she was gone."

He stopped, shuddered, then let out a weak laugh. "Scared myself."

"Me, too," Hayley managed.

"He needed six stitches." Roz scooted the notebook toward Stella. "That's how she looks to me."

"That's her." Stella studied the sketch of the thin, sad-eyed woman. "Is this how she looked to you, David?"

"Except that one night, yeah."

"Hayley?"

"Best I can tell."

"Same for me. This shows her in fairly simple dress, nipped-in waist, high neck, front buttons. Okay, the sleeves are a little poufed down to the elbow, then snug to the wrist. Skirt's smooth over the hips, then widens out some. Her hair's curly, lots of curls that are scooped up in a kind of topknot. I'm going to do an Internet search on fashion, but it's obviously after the 1860s, right? Scarlett O'Hara hoop skirts were the thing around then. And it'd be before, say, the 1920s and the shorter skirts."

"I think it's near the turn of the century," Hayley put in, then shrugged when gazes shifted to her.
"I know a lot of useless stuff. That looks like what they called hourglass style. I mean, even though
she's way thin, it looks like that's the style. Gay Nineties stuff."

"That's good. Okay, let's look it up and see." Stella tapped keys, hit Execute.

"I gotta pee. Don't find anything important until I get back." Hayley dashed out, as fast as her condition would allow.

Stella scanned the sites offered, and selected one on women's fashion in the 1890s.

"Late Victorian," she stated as she read and skimmed pictures. "Hourglass. These are all what I'd think
of as more stylish, but it seems like the same idea."

She moved to the end of the decade, and over into the early twentieth century. "No, see, these sleeves
are a lot bigger at the shoulder. They're calling them leg-o'-mutton, and the bodices on the daywear
seem a little sleeker."

She backtracked in the other direction. "No, we're getting into bustles here. I think Hayley may have it. Somewhere in the 1890s."

"Eighteen-nineties?" Hayley hurried back in. "Score one for me."

"Not so fast. If she was a servant," Roz reminded them, "she might not have been dressed fashionably."

"Damn." Hayley mimed erasing a Scoreboard.

"But even so, we could say between 1890 and, what, 1910?" Stella suggested. "And if we go with that, and an approximate age of twenty-five, we could estimate that she was born between 1865 and 1885."

She huffed out a breath. "That's too much scope, and too much margin for error."

"Hair," David said. "She may have been a servant, may have had secondhand clothes, but there'd be nothing to stop her from wearing her hair in the latest style."

"Excellent." She typed again, picked through sites. "Okay, the Gibson Girl deal—the smooth pompadour— was popularized after 1895. If we take a leap of faith, and figure our heroine dressed her hair stylishly, we'd narrow this down to between 1890 and 1895, or up to, say '98 if she was a little behind the times. Then we'd figure she died in that decade, anyway, between the ages of... oh, let's say between twenty-two and twenty-six."

"Family Bible first," Roz decided. "That should tell us if any of the Harper women, by blood or marriage, and of that age group, died in that decade."

She dragged it in front of her. The binding was black leather, ornately carved. Someone—Stella imagined it was Roz herself—kept it dusted and oiled.

Roz paged through to the family genealogy. "This goes back to 1793""and the marriage of John Andrew Harper to Fiona MacRoy. It lists the births of their eight children."

"Eight?" Hayley widened her eyes and laid a hand on her belly. "Holy God."

"You said it. Six of them lived to adulthood," Roz continued. "Married and begat, begat, begat." She turned the thin pages carefully. "Here we've got several girl children born through Harper marriages between 1865 and 1870. And here, we've got an Alice Harper Doyle, died in childbirth October of
1893, at the age of twenty-two."

"That's awful," Hayley said. "She was younger than me."

"And already gave birth twice," Roz stated. "Tough on women back then, before Margaret Sanger."

"Would she have lived here, in this house?" Stella asked. "Died here?"

"Might have. She married Daniel Francis Doyle, of Natchez, in 1890. We can check the death records on her. I've got three more who died during the period we're using, but the ages are wrong. Let's see here, Alice was Reginald Harper's youngest sister. He had two more, no brothers. He'd have inherited the house, and the estate. A lot of space between Reggie and each of his sisters. Probably miscarriages."

At Hayley's small sound, Roz looked up sharply. "I don't want this to upset you."

"I'm okay. I'm okay," she said again and took a long breath. "So Reginald was the only son on that branch of the family tree?"

"He was. Lots of cousins, and the estate would've passed to one of them after his death, but he had a son— several daughters first, then the boy, in 1892."

"What about his wife?" Stella put in. "Maybe she's the one."

"No, she lived until 1925. Ripe age."

"Then we look at Alice first," Stella decided.

"And see what we can find on servants during that period. Wouldn't be a stretch for Reginald to have diddled around with a nurse or a maid while his wife was breeding. Seeing as he was a man."

"Hey!" David objected.

"Sorry, honey. Let me say he was a Harper man, and lived during a period where men of a certain
station had mistresses and didn't think anything of taking a servant to bed."

"That's some better. But not a lot."

"Are we sure he and his family lived here during that period?"

"A Harper always lived in Harper House," Roz told Stella. "And if I remember my family history, Reginald's the one who converted from gaslight to electricity. He'd have lived here until his death in..." She checked the book. "Nineteen-nineteen, and the house passed to his son, Reginald Junior, who'd married Elizabeth Harper McKinnon—fourth cousin—in 1916."

"All right, so we find out if Alice died here, and we go through records to find out if there were any servants of the right age who died during that period." Using her notebook now, Stella wrote down the points of the search. "Roz, do you know when the—let's call them sightings for lack of better. Do you know when they began?"

"I don't, and I'm just realizing that's odd. I should know, and I should know more about her than I do. Harper family history gets passed down, orally and written. But here we have a ghost who as far as I know's been wandering around here for more than a century, and I know next to nothing about her.
My daddy just called her the Harper Bride."

"What do you know about her?" Stella readied herself to take notes.

"What she looks like, the song she sings. I saw her when I was a girl, when she came to my room to sing that lullaby, just as she's reputed to have done for generations before. It was... comforting. There was a gentleness about her. I tried to talk to her sometimes, but she never talked back. She'd just smile. Sometimes she'd cry. Thanks, sweetie," she said when David poured her more coffee. "I didn't see her through my teenage years, andbeing a teenage girl I didn't think about her much. I had my mind on other things. But I remember the next time I saw her."

"Don't keep us in suspense," Hayley demanded.

"It was early in the summer, end of June. John and I hadn't been married very long, and we were staying here. It was already hot, one of those hot, still nights where the air's like a wet blanket. But I couldn't sleep, so I left the cool house for the hot garden. I was restless and nervy. I thought I might be pregnant. I wanted it—we wanted it so much, that I couldn't think about anything else. I went out to the garden and sat on this old teak glider, and dreamed up at the moon, praying it was true and we'd started a baby."

She let out a little sigh. "I was barely eighteen. Anyway, while I sat there, she came. I didn't see or hear her come, she was just there, standing on the path. Smiling. Something in the way she smiled at me, something about it, made me know—absolutely know—I had child in me. I sat there, in the midnight
heat and cried for the joy of it. When I went to the doctor a couple weeks later, I already knew I was carrying Harper."

"That's so nice." Hayley blinked back tears. "So sweet."

"I saw her off and on for years after, and always saw her at the onset of a pregnancy, before I was
sure. I'd see her, and I'd know there was a baby coming. When my youngest hit adolescence, I stopped seeing her regularly."

"It has to be about children," Stella decided, underlining "pregnancy" twice in her notes. "That's the common link. Children see her, women with children, or pregnant women. The died-in-childbirth theory is looking good." Immediately she winced. "Sorry, Hayley, that didn't sound right."

"I know what you mean. Maybe she's Alice. Maybe what she needs to pass over is to be acknowledged by name."

"Well." Stella looked at the cartons and books. "Let's dig in."

* * *

She dreamed again that night, with her mind full of ghosts and questions, of her perfect garden with the blue dahlia that grew stubbornly in its midst.

A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.

She heard the voice inside her head, a voice that wasn't her own.

"It's true. That's true," she murmured. "But it's so beautiful. So strong and vivid."

It seems so now, but it's deceptive. If it stays, it changes everything. It will take over, and spoil
everything you've done. Everything you have. Would you risk that, risk all, for one dazzling flower?
One that will only die away at the first frost?

"I don't know." Studying the garden, she rubbed her arms as her skin pricked with unease. "Maybe
I could change the plan. I might be able to use it as a focal point."

Thunder boomed and the sky went black, as she stood by the garden, just as she'd once stood through
a stormy evening in her own kitchen.

And the grief she'd felt then stabbed into her as if someone had plunged a knife into her heart.

Feel it? Would you feel it again? Would you risk that kind of pain, for this?

"I can't breathe." She sank to her knees as the pain radiated. "I can't breathe. What's happening to me?"

Remember it. Think of it. Remember the innocence of your children and hack it down. Dig it put. Before it's too late! Can't you see how it tries to overshadow the rest? Can't you see how it steals
the light? Beauty can be poison.

She woke, shivering with cold, with her heart beating against the pain that had ripped awake with her.

And knew she hadn't been alone, not even in dreams.

THIRTEEN

On her day off, Stella took the boys to meet her father and his wife at the zoo. Within an hour, the boys were carting around rubber snakes, balloons, and chowing down on ice cream cones.

Stella had long since accepted that a grandparent's primary job was to spoil, and since fate had given
her sons only this one set, she let them have free rein.

When the reptile house became the next objective, she opted out, freely handing the controls of the next stage to Granddad.

"Your mom's always been squeamish about snakes," Will told the boys.

"And I'm not ashamed to admit it. You all just go ahead. I'll wait."

"I'll keep you company." Jolene adjusted her baby-blue ball cap. "I'd rather be with Stella than a boa constrictor any day."

"Girls." Will exchanged a pitying look with each of his grandsons. "Come on, men, into the snake pit!"

On a battle cry, the three of them charged the building.

"He's so good with them," Stella said. "So natural and easy. I'm so glad we're living close now, and they can see each other regularly."

"You couldn't be happier about it than we are. I swear that man's been like a kid himself the last couple
of days, just waiting for today to get here. He couldn't be more proud of the three of you."

"I guess we both missed out on a lot when I was growing up."

"It's good you're making up for it now."

Stella glanced at Jolene as they walked over to a bench. "You never say anything about her. You never criticize."

"Sugar pie, I bit my tongue to ribbons more times than I can count in the last twenty-seven years."

"Why?"

"Well, honey, when you're the second wife, and the stepmama on top of that, it's the smartest thing you can do. Besides, you grew up to be a strong, smart, generous woman raising the two most handsome, brightest, most charming boys on God's green earth. What's the point of criticizing?"

She does you, Stella thought. "Have I ever told you I think you're the best thing that ever happened to
my father?"

"Maybe once or twice." Jolene pinked prettily. "But I never mind hearing it repeated."

"Let me add, you're one of the best things that ever happened to me. And the kids."

"Oh, now." This time Jolene's eyes filled. "Now you've got me going." She dug in her purse, dug out a lace hankie. "That's the sweetest thing. The sweetest thing." She sniffled, tried to dab at her eyes and
hug Stella at the same time. "I just love you to pieces. I always did."

"I always felt it." Tearing up herself, Stella pushed through her own purse for a more mundane tissue. "God, look at the mess we've made of each other."

"It was worth it. Sometimes a good little cry's as good as some sex. Do I have mascara all down my face?"

"No. Just a little ..." Stella used the corner of her tissue to wipe away a smear under Jolene's eye.
"There. You're fine."

"I feel like a million tax-free dollars. Now, tell me how you're getting on before I start leaking again."

"Work-wise it couldn't be better. It really couldn't. We're about to hit the spring rush dead-on, and I'm
so revved for it. The boys are happy, making friends at school. Actually, between you and me, I think Gavin's got a crush on this little curly-headed blond in his class. Her name's Melissa, and the tips of his ears get red when he mentions her."

"That's so sweet. Nothing like your first crush, is there? I remember mine. I was crazy for this boy. He had a face full of freckles and a cowlick. I just about died with joy the day he gave me a little hop-toad
in a shoe box."

"A toad."

"Well, honey, I was eight and a country girl, so it was a thoughtful gift all in all. He ended up marrying
a friend of mine. I was in the wedding and had to wear the most godawful pink dress with a hoop skirt wide enough I could've hidden a horse under it and rode to the church. It was covered with ruffles, so
I looked like a human wedding cake."

She waved a hand while Stella rolled with laughter. "I don't know why I'm going on about that, except
it's the sort of traumatic experience you never forget, even after more than thirty years. Now they live
on the other side of the city. We get together every now and then for dinner. He's still got the freckles, but the cowlick went, along with most of his hair."

"I guess you know a lot of the people and the history of the area, since you've lived here all your life."

"I guess I do. Can't go to the Wal-Mart, day or night, without seeing half a dozen people I know."

"What do you know about the Harper ghost?"

"Hmm." Jolene took out a compact and her lipstick and freshened her face. "Just that she's always roamed around there, or at least as far back as anybody can remember. Why?"

"This is going to sound insane, especially coming from me, but... I've seen her."

"Oh my goodness." She snapped the compact closed. "Tell me everything."

"There isn't a lot to tell."

But she told her what there was, and what she'd begun to do about it.

"This is so exciting! You're like a detective. Maybe your father and I could help. You know how he loves playing on that computer of his. Stella!" She clamped a hand on Stella's arm. "I bet she was murdered, just hacked to death with an ax or something and buried in a shallow grave. Or dumped in the river—pieces of her. I've always thought so."

"Let me just say—ick—and her ghost, at least is whole. Added to that, our biggest lead is the ancestor who died in childbirth," Stella reminded her.

"Oh, that's right." Jolene sulked a moment, obviously disappointed. "Well, if it turns out it's her, that'd
be sad, but not nearly as thrilling as murder. You tell your daddy all about this, and we'll see what we
can do. We've both got plenty of time on our hands. It'll be fun."

"It's a departure for me," Stella replied. "I seem to be doing a lot of departing from the norm recently."

"Any of that departing have to do with a man? A tall, broad-shouldered sort of man with a wicked grin?"

Stella's eyes narrowed. "And why would you ask?"

"My third cousin, Lucille? You met her once. She happened to be having dinner in the city a couple
nights ago and told me she saw you in the same restaurant with a very good-looking young man. She didn't come by your table because she was with her latest beau. And he's not altogether divorced from
his second wife. Fact is, he hasn't been altogether divorced for a year and a half now, but that's Lucille for you."

Jolene waved it away. "So, who's the good-looking young man?"

"Logan Kitridge."

"Oh." It came out in three long syllables. "That is a good-looking young man. I thought you didn't like him."

"I didn't not like him, I just found him annoying and difficult to work-with. We're getting along a little better at work, and somehow we seem to be dating. I've been trying to figure out if I want to see him again."

"What's to work out? You do or you don't."

"I do, but... I shouldn't ask you to gossip."

Jolene wiggled closer on the bench. "Honey, if you can't ask me, who can you ask?"

Stella snickered, then glanced toward the reptile house to be sure her boys weren't heading out.
"I wondered, before I get too involved, if he sees a lot of women."

"You want to know if he cats around."

"I guess that's the word for it."

"I'd say a man like that gets lucky when he has a mind to, but you don't hear people saying, "That
Logan Kitridge is one randy son of a gun.' Like they do about my sister's boy, Curtis. Most of what
you hear about Logan is people—women mostly—wondering how that wife of his let him get loose,
or why some other smart woman hasn't scooped him up. You thinking about scooping?"

"No. No, definitely not."

"Maybe he's thinking about scooping you up."

"I'd say we're both just testing the ground." She caught sight of her men. "Here come the Reptile
Hunters. Don't say anything about any of this in front of the boys, okay?"

"Lips are sealed."

* * *

In the Garden opened at eight, prepared for its advertised spring opening as for a war. Stella had
mustered the troops, supervised with Roz the laying out of supplies. They had backups, seasoned
recruits, and the field of combat was—if she said so herself—superbly organized and displayed.

By ten they were swamped, with customers swarming the showrooms, the outside areas, the public greenhouses. Cash registers rang like church bells.

She marched from area to area, diving in where she felt she was most needed at any given time. She answered questions from staff and from customers, restacked wagons and carts when the staff was too overwhelmed to get to them, and personally helped countless people load purchases in their cars, trucks, or SUVs.

She used the two-way on her belt like a general.

"Miss? Do you work here?"

Stella paused and turned to the woman wearing baggy jeans and a ragged sweatshirt. "Yes, ma'am, I do. I'm Stella. How can I help you?"

"I can't find the columbine, or the foxglove or... I can't find half of what's on my list. Everything's changed around."

"We did do some reorganizing. Why don't I help you find what you're looking for?"

"I've got that flat cart there loaded already." She nodded toward it. "I don't want to have to be hauling
it all over creation."

"You're going to be busy, aren't you?" Stella said cheerfully. "And what wonderful choices. Steve?
Would you take this cart up front and tag it for Mrs ... I'm sorry?"

"Haggerty." She pursed her lips. "That'd be fine. Don't you let anybody snatch stuff off it, though.
I spent a good while picking all that out."

"No, ma'am. How are you doing, Mrs. Haggerty?"

"I'm doing fine. How's your mama and your daddy?"

"Doing fine, too," Steve lifted the handle of her cart. "Mrs. Haggerty's got one of the finest gardens in
the county," he told Stella.

"I'm putting in some new beds. You mind my cart, Steve, or I'll come after you. Now where the hell's
the columbine?"

"It's out this way. Let me get you another cart, Mrs. Haggerty."

Stella grabbed one on the way.

"You that new girl Rosalind hired?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"From up north."

"Guilty."

She pursed her lips, peered around with obvious irritation. "You sure have shuffled things around."

"I know. I hope the new scheme will save the customer time and trouble."

"Hasn't saved me any today. Hold on a minute." She stopped, adjusting the bill of her frayed straw hat against the sun as she studied pots of yarrow.

"That achillea's good and healthy, isn't it? Does so well in the heat and has a nice long blooming season."

"Wouldn't hurt to pick up a few things for my daughter while I'm here." She chose three of the pots,
then moved on. As they did, Stella chatted about the plants, managed to draw Mrs. Haggerty into conversation. They'd filled the second cart and half of a third by the time they'd wound through the perennial area.

"I'll say this, you know your plants."

"I can certainly return the compliment And I envy you the planting you've got ahead of you."

Mrs. Haggerty stopped, peering around again. But this time with speculation. "You know, the way you got things set up here, I probably bought half again as much as I planned on."

This time Stella offered a wide, wide smile. "Really?"

"Sneaky. I like that. All your people up north?"

"No, actually my father and his wife live in Memphis. They're natives."

"Is that so. Well. Well. You come on by and see my gardens sometime. Roz can tell you where to find me."

"I'd absolutely love to. Thanks."

* * *

By noon Stella estimated she'd walked ten miles.

By three, she gave up wondering how many miles she'd walked, how many pounds she'd lifted, how many questions she'd answered.

She began to dream about a long, cool shower and a bottomless glass of wine.

"This is wild," Hayley managed as she dragged wagons away from the parking area.

"When did you take your last break?"

"Don't worry, I've been getting plenty of sit-down time. Working the counter, chatting up the customers.
I wanted to stretch my legs, to tell you the truth."

"We're closing in just over an hour, and things are slowing down a bit. Why don't you find Harper or
one of the seasonals and see about restocking?"

"Sounds good. Hey, isn't that Mr. Hunky's truck pulling in?"

Stella looked over, spotted Logan's truck. "Mr. Hunky?"

"When it fits, it fits. Back to work for me."

It should have been for her, too. But she watched as Logan drove over the gravel, around the mountains formed by huge bags of mulch and soil. He climbed out one side of the truck, and his two men piled out the other. After a brief conversation, he wandered across the gravel lot toward her.

So she wandered across to him.

"Got a client who's decided on that red cedar mulch. You can put me down for a quarter ton."

"Which client?"

"Jameson. We're going to swing back by and get it down before we knock off. I'll get the paperwork to you tomorrow."

"You could give it to me now."

"Have to work it up. I take time to work it up, we're not going to get the frigging mulch down today. Client won't be happy."

She used her forearm to swipe at her forehead. "Fortunately for you I don't have the energy to nag."

"Been busy."

"There's no word for what we've been. It's great. I'm betting we broke records. My feet feel like a
couple of smoked sausages. By the way, I was thinking I'd like to come by, see your house."

His eyes stared into hers until she felt fresh pricks of heat at the base of her spine. "You could do that. I've got time tonight."

"I can't tonight. Maybe Wednesday, after we close? If Roz is willing to watch the boys."

"Wednesday's no problem for me. Can you find the place all right?"

"Yeah, I'll find it. About six-thirty?"

"Fine. See you."

As he walked back to his truck, Stella decided it was the strangest conversation she'd ever had about sex.

* * *

That evening, after her kids were fed, and engaged in their play hour before bed, Stella indulged in that long shower. As the aches and fatigue of the day washed away, her excitement over it grew.

They'd kicked ass she thought.

She was still a little concerned about overstock in some areas, and what she saw as understock in others. But flushed with the day's success, she told herself not to question Roz's instincts as a grower.

If today was any indication, they were in for a rock-solid season.

She pulled on her terry-cloth robe, wrapped her hair in a towel, then did a kind of three-step boogie out
of the bathroom.

And let out a short, piping scream at the woman in her bedroom doorway.

"Sorry. Sorry." Roz snorted back a laugh. "Flesh and blood here."

"God!" Since her legs had gone numb, Stella sank onto the side of the bed. "God! My heart just about stopped."

"I got something that should start it up again." From behind her back, Roz whipped out a bottle of champagne.

"Dom Perignon? Woo, and two hoos! Yes, I think I detect a beat."

"We're going to celebrate. Hayley's across in the sitting room. And I'm giving her half a glass of this.
No lectures."

"In Europe pregnant women are allowed, if not encouraged, to have a glass of wine a week. I'm willing
to pretend we're in France if I get a full glass of that."

"Come on over. I sent the boys down to David. They're having a video game contest."

"Oh. Well, I guess that's all right. They've got a half hour before bath and bed. Is that caviar?" she
asked when she stepped into the sitting room.

"Roz says I can't have any." Hayley leaned over and sniffed the silver tray with its silver bowl of glossy black caviar. "Because it's not good for the baby. I don't know as I'd like it, anyway."

"Good. More for me. Champagne and caviar. You're a classy boss, Ms. Harper."

"It was a great day. I always start off the first of the season a little blue." She popped the cork. "All my babies going off like that. Then I get too busy to think about it." She poured the glasses. "And by the
end I'm reminded that I got into this to sell and to make a profit—while doing something I enjoy doing. Then I come on home and start feeling a little blue again. But not tonight."

She passed the glasses around. "I may not have the figures and the facts and the data right at my fingertips, but I know what I know. We've just had the best single day ever."

'Ten percent over last year." Stella lifted her glass in a toast. "I happen to have facts and data at my fingertips."

"Of course you do." With a laugh, Roz stunned Stella by throwing an arm around her shoulders, squeezing once, then pressing a kiss to her cheek. "Damn right you do. You did a hell of a job. Both
of you. Everyone. And it's fair to say, Stella, that I did myself and In the Garden a favor the day I
hired you."

"Wow!" She took a sip to open her throat. "I won't argue with that." Then another to let the wine fizz on her tongue before she went for the caviar. "However, as much as I'd love to take full credit for that ten percent increase, I can't. The stock is just amazing. You and Harper are exceptional growers. I'll take credit for five of the ten percent."

"It was fun," Hayley put in. "It was crazy a lot of the time, but fun. All those people, and the noise, and carts sailing out the door. Everybody seemed so happy. I guess being around plants, thinking about
having them for yourself, does that."

"Good customer service has a lot to do with those happy faces. And you"—Stella tipped her glass to Hayley—"have that knocked."

"We've got a good team." Roz sat, wiggled her bare toes. They were painted pale peach today. "We'll take a good overview in the morning, see what areas Harper and I should add to." She leaned forward
to spread caviar on a toast point. "But tonight we'll just bask."

"This is the best job I've ever had. I just want to say that." Hayley looked at Roz. "And not just because
I get to drink fancy champagne and watch y'all eat caviar."

Roz patted her arm. "I should bring up another subject. I've already told David. The calls I've made
about Alice Harper Doyle's death certificate? Natchez," she said. "According to official records, she
died in Natchez, in the home she shared with her husband and two children."

"Damn." Stella frowned into her wine. "I guess it was too easy."

"We'll just have to keep going through the household records, noting down the names of the female servants during that time period."

"Big job," Stella replied.

"Hey, we're good." Hayley brushed off the amount of work. "We can handle it. And, you know, I was thinking. David said they saw her going toward the old stables, right? So maybe she had a thing going
with one of the sta-blehands. They got into a fight over something, and he killed her. Maybe an accident, maybe not. Violent deaths are supposed to be one of the things that trap spirits."

"Murder," Roz speculated. "It might be."

"You sound like my stepmother. I talked to her about it," Stella told Roz. "She and my father are willing and able to help with any research if we need them. I hope that's all right."

"It's all right with me. I wondered if she'd show herself to one of us, since we started looking into it. Try to point us in the right direction."

"I had a dream." Since it made her feel silly to talk about it, Stella topped off her glass of champagne.
"A kind of continuation of one I had a few weeks ago. Neither of them was very clear—or the details of them go foggy on me. But I know it—they—have to do with a garden I've planted, and a blue dahlia."

"Do dahlias come in blue?" Hayley wondered.

"They do. They're not common," Roz explained, "but you can hybridize them in shades of blue."

"This was like nothing I've ever seen. It was ... electric, intense. This wildly vivid blue, and huge. And
she was in the dream. I didn't see her, but I felt her."

"Hey!" Hayley pushed herself forward. "Maybe her name was Dahlia."

'That's a good thought," Roz commented. "If we're researching ghosts, it's not a stretch to consider that
a dream's connected in some way."

"Maybe." Frowning, Stella sipped again. "I could hear her, but I couldn't see her. Even more, I could
feel her, and there was something dark about it, something frightening. She wanted me to get rid of it.
She was insistent, angry, and, I don't know how to explain it, but she was there. How could she be in
a dream?"

"I don't know," Roz replied. "But I don't care for it."

"Neither do I. It's too ... intimate. Hearing her inside my head that way, whispering." Even now, she shivered.

"When I woke up, I knew she'd been there, in the room, just as she'd been there, in the dream."

"It's scary," Hayley agreed. "Dreams are supposed to be personal, just for ourselves, unless we want to share them. Do you think the flower had something to do with her? I don't get why she wants you to
get rid of it."

"I wish I knew. It could've been symbolic. Of the gardens here, or the nursery. I don't know. But dahlias are a particular favorite of mine, and she wanted it gone."

"Something else to put in the mix." Roz took a long sip of champagne. "Let's give it a rest tonight, before we spook ourselves completely. We can try to carve out some time this week to look for names."

"Ah, I've made some tentative plans for Wednesday after work. If you wouldn't mind watching the boys for a couple of hours."

"I think between us we can manage them," Roz agreed.

"Another date with Mr. Hunky?"

With a laugh, Roz ate more caviar. "I assume that would be Logan."

"According to Hayley," Stella stated. "I was going to go by and see his place. I'd like a firsthand look at how he's landscaping it." She downed more champagne. "And while that's perfectly true, the main reason I'm going is to have sex with him. Probably. Unless I change my mind. Or he changes his. So." She set down her empty glass. "There it is."

"I'm not sure what you'd like us to say," Roz said after a moment.

"Have fun?" Hayley suggested. Then looked down at her belly. "And play safe."

"I'm only telling you because you'd know anyway, or suspect, or wonder. It seems better not to dance around it. And it doesn't seem right for me to ask you to watch my kids while I'm off ... while I'm off without being honest about it."

"It is your life, Stella," Roz pointed out.

"Yeah." Hayley took the last delicious sip of her champagne. "Not that I wouldn't be willing to hear the details. I think hearing about sex is as close as I'm getting to it for a long time. So if you want to share ..."

"I'll keep that in mind. Now I'd better go down and round up my boys. Thanks for the celebration, Roz."

"We earned it."

As Stella walked away, she heard Roz's questioning "Mr. Hunky?" And the dual peals of female laughter.

FOURTEEN

Guilt tugged at Stella as she buzzed home to clean up before her date with Logan. No, not date, she corrected as she jumped into the shower. It wasn't a date unless there were plans. This was a drop-by.

So now they'd had an outing, a date, and a drop-by. It was the strangest relationship she'd ever had.

But whatever she called it, she felt guilty. She wasn't the one giving her kids their evening meal and listening to their day's adventures while they ate.

It wasn't that she had to be with them every free moment, she thought as she jumped back out of the shower again. That sort of thing wasn't good for them—or for her. It wasn't as if they'd starve if she wasn't the one to put food in front of them.

But still, it seemed awfully selfish of her to give them over to someone else's care just so she could be with a man.

Be intimate with a man, if things went as she expected.

Sorry, kids, Mom can't have dinner with you tonight. She's going to go have some hot, sweaty sex.

God.

She slathered on cream as she struggled between anticipation and guilt.

Maybe she should put it off. Unquestionably she was rushing this step, and that wasn't like her. When
she did things that weren't like her, it was usually a mistake.

She was thirty-three years old, and entitled to a physical relationship with a man she liked, a man who stirred her up, a man, who it turned out, she had considerable in common with.

Thirty-three. Thirty-four in August, she reminded herself and winced. Thirty-four wasn't early thirties anymore. It was mid-thirties. Shit.

Okay, she wasn't going to think about that. Forget the numbers. She'd just say she was a grown woman. That was better.

Grown woman, she thought, and tugged on her robe so she could work on her face. Grown, single woman. Grown, single man. Mutual interests between them, reasonable sense of companionship.
Intense sexual tension.

How could a woman think straight when she kept imagining what it would be like to have a man's hands—

"Mom!"

She stared at her partially made-up face in the mirror. "Yes?"

The knocking was like machine-gun fire on the bathroom door.

"Mom! Can I come in? Can I? Mom!"

She pulled open the door herself to see Luke, rosy with rage, his fists bunched at his side. "What's the matter?"

"He's looking at me."

"Oh, Luke."

"With the face, Mom. With ... the ... face."

She knew the face well. It was the squinty-eyed, smirky sneer that Gavin had designed to torment his brother. She knew damn well he practiced it in,the mirror.

"Just don't look back at him."

"Then he makes the noise."

The noise was a hissing puff, which Gavin could keep up for hours if called for. Stella was certain that even the most hardened CIA agent would crack under its brutal power.

"All right." How the hell was she supposed to gear herself up for sex when she had to referee? She swung out of the bath, through the boys' room and into the sitting room across the hall, where she'd hoped her sons could spend the twenty minutes it took her to get dressed companion-ably watching cartoons.

Foolish woman, she thought. Foolish, foolish woman.

Gavin looked up from his sprawl on the floor when she came in. His face was the picture of innocence under his mop of sunny hair.

Haircuts next week, she decided, and noted it in her mental files.

He held a Matchbox car and was absently spinning its wheels while cartoons rampaged on the screen. There were several other cars piled up, lying on their sides or backs as if there'd been a horrendous
traffic accident. Unfortunately the miniature ambulance and police car appeared to have had a nasty head-on collision.

Help was not on the way.

"Mom, your face looks crooked."

"Yes, I know. Gavin, I want you to stop it."

"I'm not doing anything."

She felt, actually felt, the sharp edges of the shrill scream razor up her throat. Choke it back, she
ordered herself. Choke it back. She would not scream at her kids the way her mother had screamed
at her.

"Maybe you'd like to not do anything in your room, alone, for the rest of the evening."

"I wasn't—"

"Gavin!" She cut off the denial before it dragged that scream out of her throat. Instead her voice was
full of weight and aggravation. "Don't look at your brother. Don't hiss at your brother. You know it annoys him, which is exactly why you do it, and I want you to stop."

Innocence turned into a scowl as Gavin rammed the last car into the tangle of disabled vehicles. "How come I always get in trouble?"

"Yes, how come?" Stella shot back, with equal exasperation.

"He's just being a baby."

"I'm not a baby. You're a dickhead."

"Luke!" Torn between laughter and shock, Stella rounded on Luke. "Where did you hear that word?"

"Somewhere. Is it a swear?"

"Yes, and I don't want you to say it again." Even when it's apt, she thought as she caught Gavin making the face.

"Gavin, I can cancel my plans for this evening. Would you like me to do that, and stay home?" She
spoke in calm, almost sweet tones. "We can spend your play hour cleaning your room."

"No." Outgunned, he poked at the pileup. "I won't look at him anymore."

"Then if it's all right with you, I'll go finish getting ready."

She heard Luke whisper, "What's a dickhead?" to Gavin as she walked out. Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she kept going.

* * *

"They're at each other tonight, " Stella warned Roz.

"Wouldn't be brothers if they weren't at each other now and then." She looked over to where the boys, the dog, and Hayley romped in the yard. "They seem all right now."

"It's brewing, under the surface, like a volcano. One of them's just waiting for the right moment to
spew over the other."

"We'll see if we can distract them. If not, and they get out of hand, I'll just chain them six separate corners until you get back. I kept the shackles I used on my boys. Sentimental."

Stella laughed, and felt completely reassured. "Okay. But you'll call me if they decide to be horrible
brats. I'll be home in time to put them to bed."

"Go, enjoy yourself. And if you're not back, we can manage it."

"You make it too easy," Stella told her.

"No need for it to be hard. You know how to get there now?"

"Yes. That's the easy part."

She got in her car, gave a little toot of the horn and a wave. They'd be fine, she thought, watching in the rearview as her boys tumbled onto the ground with Parker. She couldn't have driven away if she wasn't sure of that.

It was tougher to be sure she'd be fine.

She could enjoy the drive. The early-spring breeze sang through the windows to play across her face. Tender green leaves hazed the trees, and the redbuds and wild dogwoods teased out blooms to add flashes of color.

She drove past the nursery and felt the quick zip of pride and satisfaction because she was a part of it now.

Spring had come to Tennessee, and she was here to experience it. With her windows down and the wind streaming over her, she thought she could smell the river. Just a hint of something great and powerful, contrasting with the sweet perfume of magnolia.

Contrasts, she supposed, were the order of the day now. The dreamy elegance and underlying strength
of the place that was now her home, the warm air that beat the calendar to spring while the world she'd left behind still shoveled snow.

Herself, a careful, practical-natured woman driving to the bed of a man she didn't fully understand.

Nothing seemed completely aligned any longer. Blue dahlias, she decided. Her life, like her dreams, had big blue dahlias cropping up to change the design.

For tonight at least, she was going to let it bloom.

She followed the curve of the road, occupying her mind with how they would handle the weekend rush
at the nursery.

Though "rush," she admitted, wasn't precisely the word. No one, staff or customer, seemed to rush—unless she counted herself.

They came, they meandered, browsed, conversed, ambled some more. They were served, with unhurried gracious-ness and a lot more conversation.

The slower pace sometimes made her want to grab something and just get the job done. But the fact that it often took twice as long to ring up an order than it should—in her opinion—didn't bother anyone.

She had to remind herself that part of her duties as manager was to blend efficiency with the culture of the business she managed.

One more contrast.

In any case, the work schedule she'd set would ensure that there were enough hands and feet to serve
the customers. She and Roz had already poured another dozen concrete planters, and would dress
them tomorrow. She could have Hayley do a few. The girl had a good eye.

Her father and Jolene were going to take the boys on Saturday, and that she couldn't feel guilty about,
as all involved were thrilled with the arrangement.

She needed to check on the supply of plastic trays and carrying boxes, oh, and take a look at the field plants, and...

Her thoughts trailed off when she saw the house. She couldn't say what she'd been expecting, but it hadn't been this.

It was gorgeous.

A little run-down, perhaps, a little tired around the edges, but beautiful. Bursting with potential.

Two stories of silvered cedar stood on a terraced rise, the weathered wood broken by generous windows. On the wide, covered- porch—she supposed it might be called a veranda—were an old rocker, a porch swing, a high-backed bench. Pots and baskets of flowers were arranged among them.

On the side, a deck jutted out, and she could see a short span of steps leading from it to a pretty patio.

More chairs there, more pots—oh, she was falling in love—then the land took over again and spread out to a lovely grove of trees.

He was doing shrubberies in the terraces—Japanese andromeda with its urn-shaped flowers already in bud, glossy-leaved bay laurels, the fountaining old-fashioned weigela, and a sumptuous range of azalea just waiting to explode into bloom.

And clever, she thought, creeping the car forward, clever and creative to put phlox and candytuft and ground junipers on the lowest terrace to base the shrubs and spill over the wall.

He'd planted more above in the yard—a magnolia, still tender with youth, and a dogwood blooming Easter pink. On the far side was a young weeping cherry.

Some of these were the very trees he'd hammered her over moving the first time they'd met. Just what did it say about her feelings for him that it made her smile to remember that?

She pulled into the drive beside his truck and studied the land.

There were stakes, with thin rope riding them in a kind of meandering pattern from drive to porch. Yes, she saw what he had in mind. A lazy walkway to the porch, which he would probably anchor with other shrubs or dwarf trees. Lovely. She spotted a pile of rocks and thought he must be planning to build a
rock garden. There, just at the edge of the trees, would be perfect.

The house needed its trim painted, and the fieldstone that rose from its foundation repointed. A cutting garden over there, she thought as she stepped out, naturalized daffodils just inside the trees. And along
the road, she'd do ground cover and shrubs, and plant daylilies, maybe some iris.

The porch swing should be painted, too, and there should be a table there—and there. A garden bench near the weeping cherry, maybe another path leading from there to around the back. Flagstone, perhaps. Or pretty stepping-stones with moss or creeping thyme growing between them.

She stopped herself as she stepped onto the porch. He'd have his own plans, she reminded herself. His house, his plans. No matter how much the place called to her, it wasn't hers.

She still had to find hers.

She took a breath, fluffed a hand through her hair, and knocked.

It was a long wait, or it seemed so to her while she twisted her watchband around her finger. Nerves began to tap-dance in her belly as she stood there in the early-evening breeze.

When he opened the door, she had to paint an easy smile on her face. He looked so male. The long, muscled length of him clad in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was mussed; she'd never seen it any other way. There was too much of it, she thought, to be tidy. And tidy would never suit him.

She held out the pot of dahlias she'd put together. "I've had dahlias on the mind," she told him. "I hope you can use them."

"I'm sure I can. Thanks. Come on in."

"I love the house," she began, "and what you're doing with it. I caught myself mentally planting—"

She stopped. The door led directly into what she supposed was a living room, or family room. Whatever it was, it was completely empty. The space consisted of bare dry-wall, scarred floors, and a smoke-stained brick fireplace with no mantel.

"You were saying?"

"Great views." It was all she could think of, and true enough. Those generous windows brought the outdoors in. It was too bad it was so sad.

"I'm not using this space right now."

"Obviously."

"I've got plans for it down the road, when I get the time, and the inclination. Why don't you come on back before you start crying or something."

"Was it like this, when you bought it?"

"Inside?" He shrugged a shoulder as he walked back through a doorway into what might have been a dining room. It, too, was empty, its walls covered with faded, peeling wallpaper. She could see brighter squares on it where pictures must have hung.

"Wall-to-wall carpet over these oak floors," he told her. "Leak upstairs had water stains all over the ceiling. And there was some termite damage. Tore out the walls last winter."

"What's this space?"

"Haven't decided yet."

He went through another door, and Stella let out a whistle of breath.

"Figured you'd be more comfortable in here." He set the flowers on a sand-colored granite counter and just leaned back to let her look.

It was his mark on the kitchen, she had no doubt. It was essentially male and strongly done. The sand tones of the counters were echoed in the tiles on the floor and offset by a deeper taupe on the walls. Cabinets were a dark, rich wood with pebbled-glass doors. There were herbs growing in small terra-cotta pots on the wide sill over the double sinks, and a small stone hearth in the corner.

Plenty of workspace on the long L of the counter, she calculated, plenty of eating space in the diagonal run of the counter that separated the kitchen area from a big, airy sitting space where he'd plopped down a black leather couch and a couple of oversized chairs.

And best of all, he'd opened the back wall with glass. You would sit there, Stella thought, and be a part
of the gardens he was creating outside. Step through to the flagstone terrace and wander into flowers
and trees.

"This is wonderful. Wonderful. Did you do it yourself?"

Right at the moment, seeing that dreamy look on her face, he wanted to tell her he'd gathered the sand
to make the glass. "Some. Work slows down in the winter, so I can deal with the inside of the place
when I get the urge. I know people who do good work. I hire, or I barter. Want a drink?"

"Hmm. Yes. Thanks. The other room has to be your formal dining room, for when you entertain, or
have people over for dinner. Of course, everyone's going to end up in here. It's irresistible."

She wandered back into the kitchen and took the glass of wine he offered. "It's going to be fabulous
when you're done. Unique, beautiful, and welcoming. I love the colors you've picked in here."

"Last woman I had in here said they seemed dull."

"What did she know?" Stella sipped and shook her head. "No, they're earthy, natural—which suits you and the space."

She glanced toward the counter, where there were vegetables on a cutting board. "And obviously you cook, so the space needs to suit you. Maybe I can get a quick tour along with this wine, then I'll let
you get to your dinner."

"Not hungry? I got some yellowfin tuna's going to go to waste, then."

"Oh." Her stomach gave a little bounce. "I didn't intend to invite myself to dinner. I just thought..."

"You like grilled tuna?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"Fine. You want to eat before or after?"

She felt the blood rush to her cheeks, then drain out again. "Ah..."

"Before or after I show you around?"

There was enough humor in his voice to tell her he knew just where her mind had gone. "After." She
took a bracing sip of wine. "After. Maybe we could start outside, before we lose the light."             

He took her out on the terrace, and her nerves eased back again as they talked about the lay of his land, his plans for it.

She studied the ground he'd tilled and nodded as he spoke of kitchen gardens, rock gardens, water gardens. And her heart yearned.

"I'm getting these old clinker bricks," he told her. "There's a mason I know. I'm having him build a three-sided wall here, about twenty square feet inside it."

"You're doing a walled garden? God, I am going to cry. I always wanted one. The house in Michigan
just didn't work for one. I promised myself when I found a new place I'd put one in. With a little pool, and stone benches and secret corners."

She took a slow turn. A lot of hard, sweaty work had already gone into this place, she knew. And a lot
of hard, sweaty work was still to come. A man who could do this, would do it, wanted to do this, was worth knowing.

"I envy you—and admire you—every inch of this. If you need some extra hands, give me a call. I miss gardening for the pleasure of it."

"You want to come by sometime, bring those hands and the kids, I'll put them to work." When she just lifted her eyebrows, he added. "Kids don't bother me, if that's what you're thinking. And there's no point planning a yard space where kids aren't welcome."

"Why don't you have any? Kids?"

"Figured I would by now." He reached out to touch her hair, pleased that she hadn't bothered with pins. "Things don't always work out like you figure."

She walked with him back toward the house. "People often say divorce is like death."

"I don't think so." He shook his head, taking his time on the walk back. "It's like an end. You make a mistake, you fix it, end it, start over from there. It was her mistake as well as mine. We just didn't
figure that out until we were already married."

"Most men, given the opportunity, will cheerfully trash an ex."

"Waste of energy. We stopped loving each other, then we stopped liking each other. That's the part I'm sorry about," he added, then opened the wide glass door to the kitchen. "Then we stopped being married, which was the best thing for both of us. She stayed where she wanted to be, I came back to where I wanted to be. It was a couple years out of our lives, and it wasn't all bad."

"Sensible." But marriage was a serious business, she thought. Maybe the most serious. The ending of it should leave some scars, shouldn't it?

He poured more wine into their glasses, then took her hand. "I'll show you the rest of the house."

Their footsteps echoed as they moved through empty spaces. "I'm thinking of making a kind of library here, with work space. I could do my designs here."

"Where do you do them now?"

"Out of the bedroom mostly, or in the kitchen. Whatever's handiest. Powder room over there, needs a complete overhaul, eventually. Stairs are sturdy, but need to be sanded and buffed up."

He led her up, and she imagined paint on the walls, some sort of technique, she decided, mat blended earthy colors and brought out the tones of wood.

"I'd have files and lists and clippings and dozens of pictures cut out of magazines." She slanted him a look. "I don't imagine you do."

"I've got thoughts, and I don't mind giving them time to stew a while. I grew up on a farm, remember? Farm's got a farmhouse, and my mama loved to buy old furniture and fix it up. Place was packed with tables—she had a weakness for tables. For now, I'm enjoying having nothing much but space around."

"What did she do with all of it when they moved? Ah, someone mentioned your parents moved to Montana," she added when he stopped to give her a speculative look.

"Yeah, got a nice little place in Helena. My daddy goes fly-fishing nearly every damn day, according to my mama, anyway. And she took her favorite pieces with her, filled a frigging moving van with stuff.
She sold some, gave some to my sister, dumped some on me. I got it stored. Gotta get around to going through it one of these days, see what I can use."

"If you went through it, you'd be able to decide how you want to paint, decorate, arrange your rooms. You'd have some focal points."

"Focal points." He leaned against the wall, just grinned at her.

"Landscaping and home decorating have the same basic core of using space, focal points, design—and you know that very well or you couldn't have done what you did with your kitchen. So I'll shut up now."

"Don't mind hearing you talk."

"Well, I'm done now, so what's the next stop on the tour?"

"Guess this would be. I'm sort of using this as an office." He gestured to a door. "And I don't think you want to look in there."

"I can take it."

"I'm not sure I can." He tugged her away, moved on to another door. "You'll get all steamed up about filing systems and in and out boxes or whatever, and it'll screw up the rhythm. No point in using the grounds as foreplay if I'm going to break the mood by showing you something that'll insult your sensibilities."

"The grounds are foreplay?"

He just smiled and drew her through a door.

It was his bedroom and, like the kitchen, had been finished in a style that mirrored him. Simple, spacious, and male, with the outdoors blending with the in. The deck she'd seen was outside atrium doors, and beyond it the spring green of trees dominated the view. The walls were a dull, muted yellow, set off by warm wood tones in trim, in floor, in the pitched angles of the ceiling, where a trio of skylights let in the evening glow.

His bed was wide. A man of his size would want room there, she concluded. For sleeping, and for sex. Black iron head- and footboards and a chocolate-brown spread.

There were framed pencil drawings on the walls, gardens in black and white. And when she moved closer, she saw the scrawled signature at the lower corner. "You did these? They're wonderful."

"I like to get a visual of projects, and sometimes I sketch them up. Sometimes the sketches aren't half bad."

"These are a lot better than half bad, and you know it." She couldn't imagine those big, hard hands drawing anything so elegant, so lovely and fresh. "You're a constant surprise to me, Logan. A study
of contrasts. I was thinking about contrasts on the way over here tonight, about how things aren't
lined up the way I thought they would be. Should be."

She turned back to him, gestured toward his sketches. "These are another blue dahlia."

"Sorry—not following you. Like the one in your dream?"

"Dreams. I've had two now, and neither was entirely comfortable. In fact, they're getting downright
scary. But the thing is the dahlia, it's so bold and beautiful, so unexpected. But it's not what I planned. Not what I imagined. Neither is this."

"Planned, imagined, or not, I wanted you here."

She took another sip of wine. "And here I am." She breathed slow in and out. "Maybe we should talk about... what we expect and how we'll—"

He moved in, pulled her against him. "Why don't we plant another blue dahlia and just see what happens."

Or we could try that, she thought when his mouth was on hers. The low tickle in her belly spread, and
the needy part of her whispered, Thank God, inside her head.

She rose on her toes, all the way up, like a dancer on point, to meet him. And angling her body more
truly to his, let him take the glass out of her hand.

Then his hands were in her hair, fingers streaming through it, clutching at it, and her arms were locked around him.

"I feel dizzy," she whispered. "Something about you makes me dizzy."

His blood fired, blasting a bubbling charge of lust straight to his belly. "Then you should get off your feet." In one quick move he scooped her up in his arms. She was, he thought, the sort of woman a man wanted to scoop up. Feminine and slight and curvy and soft. Holding her made him feel impossibly strong, uncommonly tender.

"I want to touch you everywhere. Then start right back at the beginning and touch you everywhere again." When he carried her to the bed, he felt sexy little tremors run through her. "Even when you
annoy me, I want my hands on you."

"You must want them on me all the time, then."

"Truer words. Your hair drives me half crazy." He buried his face in it as he lowered the two of them
to the bed.

"Me too." Her skin sprang to life with a thousand nerves as his lips wandered down to her throat. "But probably for different reasons."

He bit that sensitive skin, lightly, like a man helping himself to a sample. And the sensation rippled through her in one long, sweet stream. "We're grown-ups," she began.

"Thank God."

A shaky laugh escaped. "What I mean is we ..." His teeth explored the flesh just above her collarbone
in that same testing nibble, and had a lovely fog settling over her brain. "Never mind."

He touched, just as he'd told her he wanted to. A long, smooth stroke from her shoulders down to her fingertips. A lazy pass over her hips, her thigh, as if he were sampling her shape as he'd sampled her flavor.

Then his mouth was on hers again, hot and greedy. Those nerve endings exploded, electric jolts as his hands, his lips ran over her as if he were starved now for each separate taste. Hard hands, rough at the palms, rushed over her with both skill and desperation.

Just as she'd imagined. Just as she'd wanted.

Desires she'd ruthlessly buried broke the surface and screamed into life. Riding on the thrill, she dragged at his shirt until her hands found the hot, bare skin and dug in.

Man and muscle.

He found her breast, had her arching in delicious pleasure as his teeth nipped over shirt and bra to tantalize the flesh beneath, to stir the blood beneath into feverish, pulsing life. Everything inside her
went full, and ripe, and ready.

As senses awakened, slashing one against the other, in an edgy tangle of needs, she gave herself over to them, to him. And she yearned for him, for that promise of release, in a way she hadn't yearned for in
so long. She wanted, craved, the heat that washed through her as the possessive stroke of those labor-scarred hands, the demanding crush of those insatiable lips, electrified her body.

She wanted, craved, all these quivering aches, these madly churning needs and the freedom to meet them.

She rose with him, body to body, moved with him, flesh to flesh. And drove him toward delirium with that creamy skin, those lovely curves. In the softening light, she looked beyond exquisite lying against
the dark spread—that bright hair tumbled, those summer-blue eyes clouded with pleasure.

Passion radiated from her, meeting and matching his own. And so he wanted to give her more, and take more, and simply drown himself in what they brought to each other. The scent of her filled him like breath.

He murmured her name, savoring and exploiting as they explored each other. And there was more, he discovered, more than he'd expected.

Her heart lurched as those rugged hands guided her up, over, through the steep rise of desire. The crest rolled through her, a long, endless swell of sultry heat. She arched up again, crying out as she clamped
her arms around him, pulses galloping.

Her mouth took his in a kind of ravenous madness, even as her mind screamed—Again!

He held on, held strong while she rode the peak, and the thrill her response brought him made him tremble. He ached, heart, mind, loins, ached to the point of pain.

And when he could bear it no longer, he drove into her.

She cried out once more, a sound of both shock and triumph. And she was already moving with him,
a quick piston of hips, as her hands came up to frame his face.

She watched him, those blue eyes swimming, those lush lips trembling with each breath as they rose
and fell together.

In the whole of his life, he'd never seen such beauty bloom.

When those eyes went blind, when they closed on a sobbing moan, he let himself go.

* * *

He was heavy. Very heavy. Stella lay still beneath Logan and pondered the wonder of being pinned, helplessly, under a man. She felt loose and sleepy and utterly relaxed. She imagined there was probably
a nice pink light beaming quietly out of her fingers and toes.

His heart was thundering still. What woman wouldn't feel smug and satisfied knowing she'd caused a
big, strong man to lose his breath?

Cat-content, she stroked her hands over his back.

He grunted, and rolled off of her.

She felt immediately exposed and self-conscious. Reaching out, she started to give the spread a little
tug, to cover herself at least partially. Then he did something that froze her in place, and had her heart teetering.

He took her hand and kissed her fingers.

He said nothing, nothing at all, and she stayed very still while she tried to swallow her heart back into place.

"Guess I'd better feed you now," he said at length.

"Ah, I should call and make sure the boys are all right."

"Go ahead." He sat up, patting her naked thigh before he rolled out of bed and reached for his jeans.
"I'll go get things started in the kitchen."

He didn't bother with his shirt, but started out. Then he stopped, turned and looked at her.

"What?" She lifted an arm, casually, she hoped, over her breasts.

"I just like the way you look there. All mussed and flushed. Makes me want to muss and flush you
some more, first chance I get."

"Oh." She tried to formulate a response, but he was already sauntering off. And whistling.

FIFTEEN

The man could cook. With little help from Stella, Logan put together a meal of delicately grilled tuna, herbed-up brown rice, and chunks of sauteed peppers and mushrooms. He was the sort of cook who dashed and dumped ingredients in by eye, or impulse, and seemed to enjoy it.

The results were marvelous.

She was an adequate cook, a competent one. She measured everything and considered cooking just
one of her daily chores.

It was probably a good analogy for who they were, she decided. And another reason why it made little sense for her to be eating in his kitchen or being naked in his bed.

The sex had been ... incredible. No point in being less than honest about it. And after good, healthy
sex she should've been feeling relaxed and loose and comfortable. Instead she felt tense and tight and awkward.

It had been so intense, then he'd just rolled out of bed and started dinner. They might just as easily
have finished a rousing match of tennis.

Except he'd kissed her fingers, and that sweet, affectionate gesture had arrowed straight to her heart.

Her problem, her problem, she reminded herself. Over-analyzing, over-compensating, over-something. But if she didn't analyze something how did she know what it was?

"Dinner okay?"

She broke out of her internal debate to see him watching her steadily, with those strong jungle-cat eyes. "It's terrific."

"You're not eating much."

Deliberately she forked off more tuna. "I've never understood people who cook like you, like they do on some of the cooking shows. Tossing things together, shaking a little of this in, pinches of that. How do you know it's right?"

If that was really what she'd been thinking about with her mouth in that sexy sulk, he'd go outside and
eat a shovelful of mulch. "I don't know. It usually is, or different enough to be right some other way."

Maybe he couldn't get inside her head, but he had to figure whatever was in there had to do with sex, or the ramifications of having it. But they'd play it her way for the moment. "If I'm going to cook, and since I don't want to spend every night in a restaurant, I'm going to cook, I want to enjoy it. If I regimented it, it'd start to piss me off."

"If I don't regiment it to some extent, I get nervous. Is it going to be too bland, or overly spiced? Overcooked, underdone? I'd be a wreck by the time I had a meal on the table." Worry flickered over
her face. "I don't belong here, do I?"

"Define here."

"Here, here." She gestured wide with both arms. "With you, eating this really lovely and inventive meal, in your beautifully designed kitchen in your strangely charming and neglected house after relieving some sort of sexual insanity upstairs in your I'm-a-man-and-I-know-it bedroom."

He sat back and decided to clear the buzz from his head with a long drink of wine. He'd figured her
right, he decided, but he just never seemed to figure her enough. "I've never heard that definition of
here before. Must come from up north."

"You know what I mean," she fired back. "This isn't... It isn't—"

"Efficient? Tidy? Organized?"

"Don't take that placating tone with me."

"That wasn't my placating tone, it was my exasperated tone. What's your problem, Red?"

"You confuse me."

"Oh." He shrugged a shoulder. "If that's all." And went back to his meal.

"Do you think that's funny?"

"No, but I think I'm hungry, and that I can't do a hell of. a lot about the fact that you're confused. Could be I don't mind all that much confusing you, anyway, since otherwise you'd start lining things up in alphabetical order."

Those bluebell eyes went to slits. "A, you're arrogant and annoying. B, you're bossy and bullheaded. C—"

"C, you're contrary and constricting, but that doesn't bother me the way it once did. I think we've got something interesting between us. Neither one of us was looking for it, but I can roll with that. You
pick it apart. Hell if I know why I'm starting to like that about you."

"I've got more to risk than you do."

He sobered. "I'm not going to hurt your kids."

"If I believed you were the sort of man who would, or could, I wouldn't be with you on this level."

"What's this level'?"

"Evening sex and kitchen dinners."

"You seemed to handle the sex better than the meal."

"You're exactly right. Because I don't know what you expect from me now, and I'm not entirely sure what I expect from you."

"And this is your equivalent of tossing ingredients in a pot."

She huffed out a breath. "Apparently you understand me better than I do you."

"I'm not that complicated."

"Oh, please. You're a maze, Logan." She leaned forward until she could see the gold flecks on the green of his eyes. "A goddamn maze without any geometric pattern. Professionally, you're one of the most creative, versatile, and knowledgeable landscape designers I've ever worked with, but you do half of your designing and scheduling on the fly, with little scraps of papers stuffed into your truck or your pockets."

He scooped up more rice. "It works for me."

"Apparently, but it shouldn't work for anyone. You thrive in chaos, which this house clearly illustrates. Nobody should thrive in chaos."

"Now wait a minute." This time he gestured with his fork. "Where's the chaos? There's barely a frigging thing in the place."

"Exactly!" She jabbed a finger at him. "You've got a wonderful kitchen, a comfortable and stylish bedroom—"

"Stylish?" Mortification, clear as glass, covered his face. "Jesus."

"And empty rooms. You should be tearing your hair out wondering what you're going to do with them, but you're not. You just—just—" She waved her hand in circles. "Mosey along."

"I've never moseyed in my life. Amble sometimes," he decided. "But I never mosey."

"Whatever. You know wine and you read comic books. What kind of sense does that make?"

"Makes plenty if you consider I like wine and comic books."

"You were married, and apparently committed enough to move away from your home."

"What's the-damn point in getting married if you're not ready and willing to do what makes the other person happy? Or at least try."

"You loved her," Stella said with a nod. "Yet you walked away from a divorce unscarred. It was broken, too bad, so you ended it. You're rude and abrupt one minute, and accommodating the next. You knew why I'd come here tonight, yet you went to the trouble to fix a meal—which was considerate and, and civilized—there, put that in the C column."

"Christ, Red, you kill me. I'd move on to D, and say you're delicious, but right now it's more like demented."

Despite the fact he was laughing, she was wound up and couldn't stop. "And we have incredible, blow-the-damn-roof-off sex, then you bounce out of bed as if we'd been doing this every night for
years. I can't keep up."

Once he decided she'd finished, he picked up his wine, drank thoughtfully. "Let's see if I can work my way back through that. Though I've got to tell you, I didn't detect any geometric pattern."

"Oh, shut up."

His hand clamped over hers before she could shove back from the table. "No, you just sit still. It's my turn. If I didn't work the way I do? I wouldn't be able to do what I do, and I sure as hell wouldn't love it. I found that out up north. My marriage was a failure. Nobody likes to fail, but nobody gets through life without screwing up. We screwed it up, didn't hurt anybody but ourselves. We took our lumps and moved on."

"But—"

"Hush. If I'm rude and abrupt it's because I feel rude and abrupt. If I'm accommodating, it's because
I want to be, or figure I have to be at some point."

He thought, What the hell, and topped off his wine. She'd barely touched hers. "What was next? Oh, yeah, you being here tonight. Yeah, I knew why. We're not teenagers, and you're a pretty straightforward woman, in your way. I wanted you, and made that clear. You wouldn't come knocking on my door unless you were ready. As for the meal, there are a couple of reasons for that. One, I like to eat. And two, I wanted you here. I wanted to be with you here, like this. Before, after, in between. However it worked out."

Somewhere, somehow, during his discourse, her temper had ebbed. "How do you make it all sound sane?"

"I'm not done. While I'm going to agree with your take on the sex, I object to the word 'bounce.' I don't bounce anymore than I mosey. I got out of bed because if I'd breathed you in much longer, I'd have asked you to stay. You can't, you won't. And the fact is, I don't know that I'm ready for you to stay anyway. If you're the sort who needs a lot of postcoital chat, like 'Baby, that was amazing'—"

"I'm not." There was something in his aggravated tone that made her lips twitch. "I can judge for myself, and I destroyed you up there."

His hand slid up to her wrist, back down to her fingers. "Any destruction was mutual."

"All right. Mutual destruction. The first time with a man, and I think this holds true for most women, is
as nerve-racking as it is exciting. It's more so afterward if what happened between them touched something in her. You touched something in me, and it scares me."

"Straightforward," he commented.

"Straightforward, to your maze. It's a difficult combination. Gives us a lot to think about. I'm sorry
I made an issue out of all of this."

"Red, you were born to make issues out of every damn thing. It's kind of interesting now that I'm getting used to it."

"That may be true, and I could say that the fact your drummer certainly bangs a different tune's fairly interesting, too. But right now, I'm going to help you clean up your kitchen. Then I have to get home."

He rose when she did, then simply took her shoulders and backed her into the refrigerator. He kissed her blind and deaf—pent-up temper, needs, frustration, longings all boiled together.

"Something else to think about," he said.

"I'll say."                 

* * *

Roz didn't pry into other people's business. She didn't mind hearing about it when gossip came her way, but she didn't pry. She didn't like—more she didn't permit—others to meddle in her life, and afforded them the same courtesy.

So she didn't ask Stella any questions. She thought of plenty, but she didn't ask them.

She observed.

Her manager conducted business with her usual calm efficiency. Roz imagined Stella could be standing
in the whirling funnel of a tornado and would still be able to conduct business efficiently.

An admirable and somewhat terrifying trait.

She'd grown very fond of Stella, and she'd come— unquestionably—to depend on her to handle the details of the business so she herself could focus on the duties, and pleasures, of being the grower. She adored the children. It was impossible for her not to. They were charming and bright, sly and noisy, entertaining and exhausting.

Already, she was so used to them, and Stella and Hayley, being in her house she could hardly imagine them not being there.

But she didn't pry, even when Stella came home from her evening at Logan's with the unmistakable
look of a woman who'd been well pleasured.

But she didn't hush Hayley, or brush her aside when the girl chattered about it.

"She won't get specific," Hayley complained while she and Roz weeded a bed at Harper House. "I really like it when people get specific. But she said he cooked for her. I always figure when a man cooks, he's either trying to get you between the sheets, or he's stuck on you."

"Maybe he's just hungry."

"A man's hungry, he sends out for pizza. At least the guys I've known. I think he's stuck on her." She waited, the pause obviously designed for Roz to comment. When there was none, Hayley blew out a breath. "Well? You've known him a long time."

"A few years. I can't tell you what's in his mind. But I can tell you he's never cooked for me."

"Was his wife a real bitch?"

"I couldn't say. I didn't know her."

"I'd like it if she was. A real stone bitch who tore him apart and left him all wounded and resentful of women. Then Stella comes along and gets him all messed up in the head even as she heals him."

Roz sat back on her heels and smiled. "You're awfully young, honey."

"You don't have to be young to like romance. Um ... your second husband, he was terrible, wasn't he?"

"He was—is—a liar, a cheat, and a thief. Other than that he's charming."

"Did he break your heart?"

"No. He bruised my pride and pissed me off. Which was worse, in my opinion. That's yesterday's news, Hayley. I'm going to plug some silene armeria in these pockets," she continued. 'They've got a long blooming season, and they'll fill in nice here."

"I'm sorry."

"No need to be sorry."

"It's just that this woman was in this morning, Mrs. Peebles?"

"Oh, yes, Roseanne." After studying the space, Roz picked up her trowel and began to turn the earth in the front of the mixed bed. "Did she actually buy anything?"

"She dithered around for an hour, said she'd come back."

"Typical. What did she want? It wouldn't have been plants."

"I clued in there. She's the nosy sort, and not the kind with what you'd call a benign curiosity. Just
comes in for gossip—to spread it or to harvest it. You see her kind most everywhere."

"I suppose you do."

"So, well. She'd gotten word I was living here, and was a family connection, so she was pumping me.
I don't pump so easy, but I let her keep at it."

Roz grinned under the brim of her cap as she reached for a plant. "Good for you."

"I figured what she really wanted was for me to pass on to you the news that Bryce Clerk is back in Memphis."

A jerk of her fingers broke off part of the stem. "Is he?" Roz said, very quietly.

"He's living at the Peabody for now and has some sort of venture in the works. She was vague about
that. She says he plans to move back permanent, and he's taking office space. Said he looked very prosperous."

"Likely he hosed some other brainless woman."

"You aren't brainless, Roz."

"I was, briefly. Well, it's no matter to me where he is or what he's doing. I don't get burned twice by
the same crooked match."

She set the plant, then reached for another. "Common name for these is none-so-pretty. Feel these sticky patches on the stems? They catch flies. Shows that something that looks attractive can be dangerous, or at least a big pain in the ass."

* * *

She buried it as she cleaned up. She wasn't con-cerned with a scoundrel she'd once been foolish enough to marry. A woman was entitled to a few mistakes along the way, even if she made them out of loneliness or foolishness, or—screw it—vanity.

Entitled, Roz thought, as long as she corrected the mistakes and didn't repeat them.

She put on a fresh shirt, skimmed her fingers through her damp hair as she studied herself in the mirror. She could still look good, damn good, if she worked at it. If she wanted a man, she could have one—and not because he assumed she was dim-witted and had a depthless well of money to draw from. Maybe what had happened with Bryce had shaken her confidence and self-esteem for a little while, but she
was all right now. Better than all right.

She hadn't needed a man to fill in the pockets of her life before he'd come along. She didn't need one now. Things were back the way she liked them. Her kids were happy and productive, her business was thriving, her home was secure. She had friends she enjoyed and acquaintances she tolerated.

And right now, she had the added interest of researching her family ghost.

Giving her hair another quick rub, she went downstairs to join the rest of the crew in the library. She heard the knock as she came to the base of the stairs, and detoured to the door.

"Logan, what a nice surprise."

"Hayley didn't tell you I was coming?"

"No, but that doesn't matter. Come on in."

"I ran into her at the nursery today, and she asked if I'd come by tonight, give y'all a hand with your research and brainstorming. I had a hard time resisting the idea of being a ghostbuster."

"I see." And she did. "I'd best warn you that our Hayley's got a romantic bent and she currently sees
you as Rochester to Stella's Jane Eyre."

"Oh. Uh-oh."

She only smiled. "Jane's still with the boys, getting them settled down for the night. Why don't you go
on up to the West wing? Just follow the noise. You can let her know we'll entertain ourselves until she comes down."

She walked away before he could agree or protest.

She didn't pry into other people's business. But that didn't mean she didn't sow the occasional seeds.

Logan stood where he was for a moment, tapping his fingers on the side of his leg. He was still tapping them as he started up the stairs.

Roz was right about the noise. He heard the laughter and squeals, the stomping feet before he'd hit the top. Following it, he strolled down the hall, then paused in the open doorway.

It was obviously a room occupied by boys. And though it was certainly tidier than his had been at those tender ages, it wasn't static or regimented. A few toys were scattered on the floor, books and other
debris littered the desk and shelves. It smelled of soap, shampoo, wild youth, and crayons.

In the midst of it, Stella sat on the floor, mercilessly tickling a pajama-clad Gavin while a blissfully
naked Luke scrambled around the room making crazed hooting sounds through his cupped hands.

"What's my name?" Stella demanded as she sent her oldest son into helpless giggles.

"Mom!"

She made a harsh buzzing sound and dug fingers into his ribs. 'Try again, small, helpless boy child.
What is my name?"

"Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom!" He tried to wiggle away and was flipped over.

"I can't hear you."

"Empress," he managed on hitching giggles.

"And? The rest, give it all or the torment continues."

"Empress Magnificent of the Entire Universe!"

"And don't you forget it." She gave him a loud, smacking kiss on his cotton-clad butt, and sat back.
"And now you, short, frog-faced creature." She got to her feet, rubbing her hands together as Luke screamed in delight.

And stumbled back with a scream of her own when she saw Logan in the doorway. "Oh, my God!
You scared me to death!"

"Sorry, just watching the show. Your Highness. Hey, kid." He nodded at Gavin, who lay on the floor. "How's it going?"

"She defeated me. Now I have to go to bed, 'cause that's the law of the land."

"I've heard that." He picked up the bottom half of a pair of X-Men pj's, lifted an eyebrow at Luke. "These your mom's?"

Luke let out a rolling gut laugh, and danced, happy with his naked state. "Uh-uh. They're mine. I don't have to wear them unless she catches me."

Luke started to make a break for the adjoining bath and was scooped up, one-armed, by his mother.

Stronger than she looks, Logan mused as she hoisted her son over her head.

"Foolish boy, you'll never escape me." She lowered him. "Into the pj's, and into bed." She glanced over
at Logan. "Is there something ..."

"I got invited to the ... get-together downstairs."

"Is it a party?" Luke wanted to know when Logan handed him the pajama bottoms. "Are there cookies?"

"It's a meeting, a grown-up meeting, and if there are cookies," Stella said as she turned down Luke's bed, "you can have some tomorrow."

"David makes really good cookies," Gavin commented. "Better than Mom's."

"If that wasn't true, I'd have to punish you severely." She turned to his bed, where he sat grinning at
her, and using the heel of her hand shoved him gently onto his back.

"But you're prettier than he is."

"Clever boy. Logan, could you tell everyone I'll be down shortly? We're just going to read for a bit first."

"Can he read?" Gavin asked.

"I can. What's the book?"

'Tonight we get Captain Underpants." Luke grabbed the book and hurried over to shove it into Logan's hands.

"So is he a superhero?"

Luke's eyes widened like saucers. "You don't know about Captain Underpants?"

"Can't say I do." He turned the book over in his hands, but he was looking at the boy. He'd never read
to kids before. It might be entertaining. "Maybe I should read it, then I can find out. If that suits the Empress."

"Oh, well, I—"

"Please, Mom! Please!"

At the chorus on either side of her, Stella eased back with the oddest feeling in her gut. "Sure. I'll just
go straighten up the bath."

She left them to it, mopping up the wet, gathering bath toys, while Logan's voice, deep and touched
with ironic amusement, carried to her.

She hung damp towels, dumped bath toys into a plastic net to dry, fussed. And she felt the chill roll in around her. A hard, needling cold that speared straight to her bones.

Her creams and lotions tumbled over the counter as if an angry hand swept them. The thuds and rattles sent her springing forward to grab at them before they fell to the floor.

And each one was like a cube of ice in her hand.

She'd seen them move. Good God, she'd seen them move.

Shoving them back, she swung instinctively to the connecting doorway to shield her sons from the chill, from the fury she felt slapping the air.

There was Logan, with the chair pulled between the beds, as she did herself, reading about the silly adventures of Captain Underpants in that slow, easy voice, while her boys lay tucked in and drifting off.

She stood there, blocking that cold, letting it beat against her back until he finished, until he looked up at her.

"Thanks." She was amazed at how calm her voice sounded. "Boys, say good night to Mr. Kitridge."

She moved into the room as they mumbled it. When the cold didn't follow her, she took the book, managed a smile. "I'll be down in just a minute."

"Okay. See you later, men."

The interlude left him feeling mellow and relaxed. Reading bedtime stories was a kick. Who knew? Captain Underpants. Didn't that beat all.

He wouldn't mind doing it again sometime, especially if he could talk Mama into letting them read a graphic novel.

He'd liked seeing her wrestling on the floor with her boy. Empress Magnificent, he thought with a half laugh.

Then the breath was knocked out of him. The force of the cold came like a tidal wave at his back, swamping him even as it shoved him forward.

He pitched at the top of the stairs, felt his head go light at the thought of the fall. Flailing out, he managed to grab the rail and, spinning his body, hook his other hand over it while tiny black dots swam in front of his eyes. For another instant he feared he would simply tumble over the railing, pushed by the momentum.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shape, vague but female. And from it he felt a raw and bitter rage.

Then it was gone.

He could hear his own breath heaving in and out, and feel the clamminess of panic sweat down his back. Though his legs wanted to fold on him, he stayed where he was, working to steady himself until Stella came out.

Her half smile faded the minute she saw him. "What is it?" She moved to him quickly. "What happened?"

"She—this ghost of yours—has she ever scared the boys?"

"No. Exactly the opposite. She's ... comforting, even protective of them."

"All right. Let's go downstairs." He took her hand firmly in his, prepared to drag her to safety if necessary.

"Your hand's cold."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"You tell me."

"I intend to."

* * *

He told them all when they sat around the library table with their folders and books and notes. And he dumped a good shot of brandy in his coffee as he did.

"There's been nothing," Roz began, "in all the years she's been part of this house, that indicates she's a threat. People have been frightened or uneasy, but no one's ever been physically attacked."

"Can ghosts physically attack?" David wondered.

"You wouldn't ask if you'd been standing at the top of the stairs with me."

"Poltergeists can cause stuff to fly around," Hayley commented. "But they usually manifest around adolescent kids. Something about puberty can set them off. Anyway, this isn't that. It might be that an ancestor of Logan's did something to her. So she's paying him back."

"I've been in this house dozens of times. She's never bothered with me before."

"The children." Stella spoke softly as she looked over her own notes. "It centers on them. She's drawn
to children, especially little boys. She's protective of them. And she almost, you could say, envies me
for having them, but not in an angry way. More sad. But she was angry the night I was going out to dinner with Logan."

"Putting a man ahead of your kids." Roz held up a hand. "I'm not saying that's what I think. We have to think like she does. We talked about this before, Stella, and I've been thinking back on it. The only times I remember feeling anything angry from her was when I went out with men now and again, when my boys were coming up. But I didn't experience anything as direct or upsetting as this. But then, there was nothing to it. I never had any strong feelings for any of them."

"I don't see how she could know what I feel or think."

But the dreams, Stella thought. She's been in my dreams.

"Let's not get irrational now," David interrupted. "Let's follow this line through. Let's say she believes things are serious, or heading that way, between you and Logan. She doesn't like it, that's clear enough. The only people who've felt threatened, or been threatened are the two of you. Why? Does it make her angry? Or is she jealous?"

"A jealous ghost." Hayley drummed her hands on the table. "Oh, that's good. It's like she sympathizes, relates to you being a woman, a single woman, with kids. She'll help you look after them, even sort of look after you. But then you put a man in the picture, and she's all bitchy about it. She's like, you're
not supposed to have a nice, standard family—mom, dad, kids—because I didn't."

"Logan and I hardly ... All he did was read them a story."

"The sort of thing a father might do," Roz pointed out.

"I... well, when he was reading to them, I was putting the bathroom back in shape. And she was there.
I felt her. Then, well, my things. The things I keep on the counter started to jump, jumped."

"Holy shit," Hayley responded.

"I went to the door, and in the boy's room, everything was calm, normal. I could feel the warmth on the front of me, and this, this raging cold against my back. She didn't want to frighten them. Only me."

But buying a baby monitor went on her list. From now on, she wanted to hear everything that went on
in that room when her boys were up there without her.

"This is a good angle, Stella, and you're smart enough to know we should follow it." Roz laid her hands on the library table. "Nothing we've turned up indicates this spirit is one of the Harper women, as has been assumed all these years. Yet someone knew her, knew her when she was alive, knew that she died. So was it hushed up, ignored? Either way, it might explain her being here. If it was hushed up or ignored, it seems most logical she was a servant, a mistress, or a lover."

"I bet she had a child." Hayley laid a hand over her own. "Maybe she died giving birth to it, or had to
give it up, and died from a broken heart. It would have been one of the Harper men who got her into trouble, don't you think? Why would she stay here if it wasn't because she lived here or—"

"Died here," Stella finished. "Reginald Harper was head of the house during the period when we think she died. Roz, how the hell do we go about finding out if he had a mistress, a lover, or an illegitimate child?"

SIXTEEN

Logan had been in love twice in his life. He'd been in lust a number of times. He'd experienced extreme interest or heavy like, but love had only knocked him down and out twice. The first had been in his late teens, when both he and the girl of his dreams had been too young to handle it.

They'd burned each other and their love out with passion, jealousies, and a kind of crazed energy. He could look back at that time now and think of Lisa Anne Lauer with a sweet nostalgia and affection.

Then there was Rae. He'd been a little older, a little smarter. They'd taken their time, two years of time before heading into marriage. They'd both wanted it, though some who knew him were surprised, not only by the engagement but by his agreement to move north with her.

It hadn't surprised Logan. He'd loved her, and north was where she'd wanted to be. Needed to be, he corrected, and he'd figufed, naively as it turned out, that he could plant himself anywhere.

He'd left the wedding plans up to her and her mother, with some input from his own. He wasn't crazy. But he'd enjoyed the big, splashy, crowded wedding with all its pomp.

He'd had a good job up north. At least in theory. But he'd been restless and dissatisfied in the beehive
of it, and out of place in the urban buzz.

The small-town boy, he thought as he and his crew finished setting the treated boards on the roof of a twelve-foot pergola. He was just too small-town, too small-time, to fit into the urban landscape.

He hadn't thrived there, and neither had his marriage. Little things at first, picky things—things he knew
in retrospect they should have dealt with, compromised on, overcome. Instead, they'd both let those little things fester and grow until they'd pushed the two of them, not just apart, he thought, but in opposite directions.

She'd been in her element, and he hadn't. At the core he'd been unhappy, and she'd been unhappy he wasn't acclimating. Like any disease, unhappiness spread straight down to the roots when it wasn't treated.

Not all her fault. Not all his. In the end they'd been smart enough, or unhappy enough, to cut their losses.

The failure of it had hurt, and the loss of that once-promising love had hurt. Stella was wrong about the lack of scars. There were just some scars you had to live with.

The client wanted wisteria for the pergola. He instructed his crew where to plant, then took himself off
to the small pool the client wanted outfitted with water plants.

He was feeling broody, and when he was feeling broody, he liked to work alone as much as possible. He had the cattails in containers and, dragging on boots, he waded in to sink them. Left to themselves, the cats would spread and choke out everything, but held in containers they'd be a nice pastoral addition to the water feature. He dealt with a trio of water lilies the same way, then dug in the yellow flags. They liked their feet wet, and would dance with color on the edge of the pool.

The work satisfied him, centered him as it always did. It let another part of his mind work out separate problems. Or at least chew on them for a while.

Maybe he'd put a small pool in the walled garden he planned to build at home. No cattails, though. He might try some dwarf lotus, and some water canna as a background plant. It seemed to him it was more the sort of thing Stella would like.

He'd been in love twice before, Logan thought again. And now he could sense those delicate taproots searching inside him for a place to grow. He could probably cut them off. Probably. He probably should.

What was he going to do with a woman like Stella and those two ridiculously appealing kids? They were bound to drive each other crazy in the long term with their different approaches to damn near everything. He doubted they'd bum each other out, though, God, when he'd had her in bed, he'd felt singed. But
they might wilt, as he and Rae had wilted. That was more painful, more miserable, he knew, than the quick flash.

And this time there were a couple of young boys to consider.

Wasn't that why the ghost had given him a good kick in the ass? It was hard to believe he was sweating
in the steamy air under overcast skies and thinking about an encounter with a ghost. He'd thought he
was open-minded about that sort of thing—until he'd come face-to-face, so to speak, with it.

The fact was, Logan realized now, as he hauled mulch over for the skirt of the pool, he hadn't believed
in the ghost business. It had all been window dressing or legendary stuff to him. Old houses were supposed to have ghosts because it made a good story, and the south loved a good story. He'd accepted
it as part of the culture, and maybe, in some strange way, as something that might happen to someone else. Especially if that someone else was a little drunk, or very susceptible to atmosphere.

He'd been neither. But he'd felt her breath, the ice of it, and her rage, the power of it. She'd wanted to cause him harm, she'd wanted him away. From those children, and their mother.

So he was invested now in helping to find the identity of what walked those halls.

But a part of him wondered if whoever she was was right. Would they all be better off if he stayed away?

The phone on his belt beeped. Since he was nearly done, he answered instead of ignoring, dragging off
his filthy work gloves and plucking the phone off his belt.

"Kitridge."

"Logan, it's Stella."

The quick and helpless flutter around his heart irritated him. "Yeah. I've got the frigging forms in my truck."

"What forms?"

"Whatever damn forms you're calling to nag me about."

"It happens I'm not calling to nag you about anything." Her voice had gone crisp and businesslike,
which only caused the flutter and the irritation to increase.

"Well, I don't have time to chat, either. I'm on the clock."

"Seeing as you are, I'd like you to schedule in a consult. I have a customer who'd like an on-site consultation. She's here now, so if you could give me a sense of your plans for the day, I could let
her know if and when you could meet with her."

"Where?"

She rattled off an address that was twenty minutes away. He glanced around his current job site, calculated. 'Two o'clock."

"Fine. I'll tell her. The client's name is Marsha Fields. Do you need any more information?"

"No."

"Fine." He heard the firm click in his ear and found himself even more annoyed he hadn't thought to
hang up first.

* * *

By the time Logan got home that evening, he was tired, sweaty, and in a better mood. Hard physical work usually did the job for him, and he'd had plenty of it that day. He'd worked in the steam, then through the start of a brief spring storm. He and his crew broke for lunch during the worst of it and
sat in his overheated truck, rain lashing at the windows, while they ate cold po'boy sandwiches and
drank sweet tea.

The Fields job had strong possibilities. The woman ran that roost and had very specific ideas. Since he liked and agreed with most of them, he was eager to put some of them on paper, expand or refine them.

And since it turned out that Marsha's cousin on her mother's side was Logan's second cousin on his father's, the consult had taken longer than it might have, and had progressed cheerfully.

It didn't hurt that she was bound to send more work his way.

He took the last curve of the road to his house in a pleasant frame of mind, which darkened considerably when he saw Stella's car parked behind his.

He didn't want to see her now. He hadn't worked things out in his head, and she'd just muck up
whatever progress he'd made. He wanted a shower and a beer, a little quiet. Then he wanted to eat his dinner with ESPN in the background and his work spread out on the kitchen table.

There just wasn't room in that scenario for a woman.

He parked, fully intending to shake her off. She wasn't in the car, or on the porch. He was trying to determine if going to bed with him gave a woman like her the notion that she could waltz into his house when he wasn't there. Even as he'd decided it wouldn't, not for Stella, he heard the watery hiss of his own garden hose.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he wandered around the side of the house.

She was on the patio, wearing snug gray pants—the sort that stopped several inches above the ankle—and a loose blue shirt. Her hair was drawn back in a bright, curling tail, which for reasons he couldn't explain he found desperately sexy. As the sun had burned its way through the clouds, she'd shaded her eyes with gray-tinted glasses.

She looked neat and tidy, careful to keep her gray canvas shoes out of the wet.

"It rained today," he called out.

She kept on soaking his pots. "Not enough."

She finished the job, released the sprayer on the hose, but continued to hold it as she turned to face
him. "I realize you have your own style, and your own moods, and that's your business. But I won't
be spoken to the way you spoke to me today. I won't be treated like some silly female who calls her boyfriend in the middle of the workday to coo at him, or like some anal business associate who
interrupts you to harangue you about details. I'm neither."

"Not my girlfriend or not my business associate?"

He could see, quite clearly, the way her jaw tightened when she clenched her teeth. "If and when
I contact you during the workday, it will be for a reason. As it most certainly was this morning."

She was right, but he didn't have to say so. "We got the Fields job."

"Hooray."

He bit the inside of his cheek to hold back the grin at her sour cheer. "I'll be working up a design for
her, with a bid. You'll get a copy of both. That suit you?"

"It does. What doesn't—"

"Where are the kids?"

It threw her off stride. "My father and his wife picked them up from school today. They're having
dinner there, and spending the night, as I have a birthing class with Hayley later."

"What time?"

"What time what?"

"Is the class?"

"At eight-thirty. I'm not here for small talk, Logan, or to be placated. I feel very strongly that—" Her
eyes widened, then narrowed as she stepped back. He'd stepped forward, and there was no mistaking
the tone of that slow smile.

"Don't even think about it. I couldn't be less interested in kissing you at the moment."

"Then I'll kiss you, and maybe you'll get interested."

"I mean it." She aimed the hose like a weapon. "Just keep your distance. I want to make myself
perfectly clear."

"I'm getting the message. Go ahead and shoot," he invited. "I sweated out a gallon today, I won't mind
a shower."

"Just stop it." She danced back several steps as he advanced. "This isn't a game, this isn't funny."

"I just get stirred right up when your voice takes on that tone."

"I don't have a tone."

"Yankee schoolteacher. I'm going to be sorry if you ever lose it." He made a grab, and instinctively
she tightened her fist on the nozzle. And nailed him.

The spray hit him mid-chest and had a giggle bubbling out of her before she could stop it. "I'm not
going to play with you now. I'm serious, Logan."

Dripping, he made another grab, feinted left. This time she squealed, dropped the hose, and ran.

He snagged her around the waist, hauled her off her feet at the back end of the patio. Caught somewhere between shock and disbelief, she kicked, wiggled, then lost her breath as she landed on the grass on top
of him.

"Let me go, you moron."

"Don't see why I should." God, it felt good to be horizontal. Better yet to have her horizontal with him. "Here you are, trespassing, watering my pots, spouting off lectures." He rolled, pinning her. "I ought to
be able to do what I want on my own land."

"Stop it. I haven't finished fighting with you."

"I bet you can pick it up where you left off." He gave her a playful nip on the chin, then another.

"You're wet, you're sweaty, I'm getting grass stains on my—"

The rest of the words were muffled against his mouth, and she would have sworn the water on both of them went to steam.

"I can't—we can't—" But the reasons why were going dim. "In the backyard."

"Wanna bet?"

He couldn't help wanting her, so why was he fighting it? He wanted the solid, sensible core of her, and the sweet edges. He wanted the woman obsessed with forms who would wrestle on the floor with her children. He wanted the woman who watered his pots even while she skinned him with words.

And the one who vibrated beneath him on the grass when he touched her.

He touched her, his hands possessive as they molded her breasts, as they roamed down her to cup her hips. He tasted her, his lips hungry on her throat, her shoulder, her breast.

She melted under him, and even as she went fluid seemed to come alive with heat, with movement.

It was insane. It was rash and it was foolish, but she couldn't stop herself. They rolled over the grass,
like two frenzied puppies. He smelled of sweat, of labor and damp. And, God, of man. Pungent and gorgeous and sexy.

She clamped her hands in that mass of waving hair, already showing streaks from the sun, and dragged his mouth back to hers.

She nipped his lip, his tongue.

"Your belt." She had to fight to draw air. "It's digging—"

"Sorry."

He levered up to unbuckle it, then just stopped to look at her.

Her hair had come out of its band; her eyes were sultry, her skin flushed. And he felt those roots take hold.

"Stella."

He didn't know what he might have said, the words were jumbled in his brain and tangled with so much feeling he couldn't translate them.

But she smiled, slow and sultry as her eyes. "Why don't I help you with that?"

She flipped open the button of his jeans, yanked down the zipper. Her hand closed over him, a velvet vise. His body was hard as steel, and his mind and heart powerless.

She arched up to him, her lips skimmed over his bare chest, teeth scoring a hot little line that was a whisper away from pain.

Then she was over him, destroying him. Surrounding him.

She heard birdsong and breeze, smelled grass and damp flesh. And heliotrope that wafted on the air from the pot she'd watered. She felt his muscles, taut ropes, the broad plane of his shoulders, the surprisingly soft waves of his hair.

And she saw, as she looked down, that he was lost in her.

Throwing her head back, she rode, until she was lost as well.

* * *

She lay sprawled over him, damp and naked and muzzy-headed. Part of her brain registered that  his arms were clamped around her as if they were two survivors of a shipwreck.

She turned her head to rest it on his chest. Maybe they'd wrecked each other. She'd just made wild
love with a man in broad daylight, outside in the yard.

"This is insane," she murmured, but couldn't quite convince herself to move. "What if someone had
come by?"

"People come by without an invitation have to take potluck."

There was a lazy drawl to his voice in direct opposition to his grip on her. She lifted her head to study. His eyes were closed. "So this is potluck?"

The corners of his mouth turned up a little. "Seems to me this pot was plenty lucky."

"I feel sixteen. Hell, I never did anything like this when I was sixteen. I need my sanity. I need my clothes."

"Hold on." He nudged her aside, then rose.

Obviously, she thought, it doesn't bother him to walk around outside naked as a deer. "I came here to
talk to you, Logan. Seriously."

"You came here to kick my ass," he corrected. "Seriously. You were doing a pretty good job of it."

"I hadn't finished." She turned slightly, reached out for her hairband. "But I will, as soon as I'm dressed and—"

She screamed, the way a woman screams when she's being murdered with a kitchen knife.

Then she gurgled, as the water he'd drenched her with from the hose ran into her astonished mouth.

"Figured we could both use some cooling off."

It simply wasn't in her, even under the circumstances, to run bare-assed over the grass. Instead, she curled herself up, knees to breast, arms around knees, and cursed him with vehemence and creativity.

He laughed until he thought his ribs would crack. "Where'd a nice girl like you learn words like that?
How am I supposed to kiss that kind of mouth?"

She seared him with a look even when he held the hose over his own head and took an impromptu shower. "Feels pretty good. Want a beer?"

"No, I don't want a beer. I certainly don't want a damn beer. I want a damn towel. You insane idiot,
now my clothes are wet."

"We'll toss 'em into the dryer." He dropped the hose, scooped them up. "Come on inside, I'll get you a towel."

Since he sauntered across the patio to the door, still unconcerned and naked, she had no choice but to follow.

"Do you have a robe?" she asked in cold and vicious tones.

"What would I do with a robe? Hang on, Red."

He left her, dripping and beginning to shiver in his kitchen.

He came back a few minutes later, wearing ratty gym pants and carrying two huge bath sheets.
"These ought to do the trick. Dry off, I'll toss these in for you."

He carried her clothes through a door. Laundry room, she assumed as she wrapped one of the towels around her. She used the other to rub at her hair—which would be hopeless, absolutely hopeless now—while she heard the dryer click on.

"Want some wine instead?" he asked as he stepped back in. "Coffee or something."

"Now you listen to me—"

"Red, I swear I've had to listen to you more than any woman I can remember in the whole of my life.
It beats the living hell out of me why I seem to be falling in love with you."

"I don't like being ... Excuse me?"

"It was the hair that started it." He opened the refrigerator, took out a beer. "But that's just attraction. Then the voice." He popped the top and took a long drink from the bottle. "But that's just orneriness
on my part. It's a whole bunch of little things, a lot of big ones tossed in. I don't know just what it is,
but every time I'm around you I get closer to the edge."

"I—you—you think you're falling in love with me, and your way of showing it is to toss me on the ground and carry on like some sex addict, and when you're done to drench me with a hose?"

He took another sip, slower, more contemplative, rubbed a hand over his bare chest. "Seemed like the thing to do at the time."

"Well, that's very charming."

"Wasn't thinking about charm. I didn't say I wanted to be in love with you. In fact, thinking about it
put me in a lousy mood most of the day."

Her eyes narrowed until the blue of them was a hot, intense light. "Oh, really?"

"Feel better now, though."

"Oh, that's fine. That's lovely. Get me my clothes."

"They're not dry yet."

"I don't care."

"People from up north are always in a hurry." He leaned back comfortably on the counter. "There's
this other thing I thought today."

"I don't care about that either."

"The other thing was how I've only been in love—the genuine deal—twice before. And both times it... let's not mince words. Both times it went to shit. Could be this'll head the same way."

"Could be we're already there."

"No." His lips curved. "You're pissed and you're scared. I'm not what you were after."

"I wasn't after anything."

"Me either." He set the beer down, then killed her temper by stepping to her, framing her face with his hands. "Maybe I can stop what's going on in me. Maybe I should try. But I look at you, I touch you,
and the edge doesn't just get closer, it gets more appealing."

He touched his lips to her forehead, then released her and stepped back.

"Every time I figure some part of you out, you sprout something off in another direction," she said.
"I've only been in love once—the genuine deal—and it was everything I wanted. I haven't figured out what I want now, beyond what I have. I don't know, Logan, if I've got the courage to step up to that
edge again."

"Things keep going the way they are for me, if you don't step up, you might get pushed."

"I don't push easily. Logan." It was she who stepped to him now, and she took his hand. "I'm so
touched that you'd tell me, so churned up inside that you might feel that way about me. I need time
to figure out what's going on inside me, too."

"It'd help," he decided after a moment, "if you could work on keeping the pace."

* * *

Her clothes were dry but impossibly wrinkled, her hair had frizzed and was now, in Stella's opinion, approximately twice its normal volume.

She dashed out of the car, mortified to see both Hayley and Roz sitting on the glider drinking something out of tall glasses.

"Just have to change," she called out. "I won't be long."

"There's plenty of time," Hayley called back, and pursed her lips as Stella raced into the house. "You know," she began, "what it means when a woman shows up with her clothes all wrinkled to hell and
grass stains on the ass of her pants?"

"I assume she went by Logan's."

"Outdoor nookie."

Roz choked on a sip of tea, wheezed in a laugh. "Hayley. Jesus."

"You ever do it outdoors?"

Roz only sighed now. "In the dim, dark past."

* * *

Stella was sharp enough to know they were talking about her. As a result, the flush covered not only
her face but most of her body as she ran into the bedroom. She stripped off her clothes, threw them
into a hamper.

"No reason to be embarrassed," she muttered to herself as she threw open her armoire. "Absolutely none." She dug out fresh underwear and felt more normal after she put it on.

And reaching for her blouse, felt the chill.

She braced, half expecting a vase or lamp to fly across the room at her this time.

But she gathered her courage and turned, and she saw the Harper Bride. Clearly, for the first time, clearly, though the dusky light slipped through her as if she were smoke. Still, Stella saw her face, her form, the bright ringlets, the shattered eyes.

The Bride stood at the doorway that connected to the bath, then the boys' room.

But it wasn't anger Stella saw on her face. It wasn't disapproval she felt quivering on the air. It was
utter and terrible grief.

Her own fear turned to pity. "I wish I could help you. I want to help." With her blouse pressed against
her breasts, Stella took a tentative step forward. "I wish I knew who you were, what happened to you. Why you're so sad."

The woman turned her head, looked back with swimming eyes to the room beyond.

"They're not gone," Stella heard herself say. "I'd never let them go. They're my life. They're with my father and his wife—their grandparents. A treat for them, that's all. A night where they can be pampered and spoiled and eat too much ice cream. They'll be back tomorrow."

She took a cautious second step, even as her throat burned dry. "They love being with my father and Jolene. But it's so quiet when they're not around, isn't it?"

Good God, she was talking to a ghost. Trying to draw a ghost into conversation. How had her life
become so utterly strange?

"Can't you tell me something, anything that would help? We're all trying to find out, and maybe when
we do ... Can't you tell me your name?"

Though Stella's hand trembled, she lifted it, reached out. Those shattered eyes met hers, and Stella's
hand passed through. There was cold, and a kind of snapping shock. Then there was nothing at all.

"You can speak," Stella said to the empty room. "If you can sing, you can speak. Why won't you?"

Shaken, she dressed, fought her hair into a clip. Her heart was still thudding as she did her makeup, half expecting to see that other heartbroken face in the mirror.

Then she slipped on her shoes and went downstairs. She would leave death behind, she thought, and go prepare for new life.

SEVENTEEN

The pace might have been slow, but the hours were the killer. As spring turned lushly green and temperatures rose toward what Stella thought of as high summer, garden-happy customers flocked
to the nursery, as much, she thought, to browse for an hour or so and chat with the staff and other customers as for the stock.

Still, every day flats of bedding plants, pots of perennials, forests of shrubs and ornamental trees
strolled out the door.

She watched the field stock bagged and burlapped, and scurried to plug holes on tables by adding greenhouse stock. As mixed planters, hanging baskets, and the concrete troughs were snapped up,
she created more.

She made countless calls to suppliers for more: more fertilizers, more grass seed, more root starter,
more everything.

With her clipboard and careful eye she checked inventory, adjusted, and begged Roz to release some
of the younger stock.

"It's not ready. Next year."

"At this rate, we're going to run out of columbine, astilbes, hostas—" She waved the board. "Roz,
we've sold out a good thirty percent of our perennial stock already. We'll be lucky to get through
May with our current inventory."

"And things will slow down." Roz babied cuttings from a stock dianthus. "If I start putting plants out before they're ready, the customer's not going to be happy."

"But—"

"These dianthus won't bloom till next year. Customers want bloom, Stella, you know that. They want
to plug it in while it's flowering or about to. They don't want to wait until next year for the gratification."

"I do know. Still..."

"You're caught up." With her gloved hand, Roz scratched an itch under her nose. "So's everyone else. Lord, Ruby's beaming like she's been made a grandmother again, and Steve wants to high-five me
every time I see him."

"They love this place."

"So do I. The fact is, this is the best year we've ever had. Weather's part of it. We've had a pretty
spring. But we've also got ourselves an efficient and enthusiastic manager to help things along. But
 end of the day, quality's still the byword here. Quantity's second."

"You're right. Of course you're right. I just can't stand the thought of running out of something and
having to send a customer somewhere else."

"Probably won't come to that, especially if we're smart enough to lead them toward a nice substitution."

Stella sighed. "Right again."

"And if we do need to recommend another nursery ..."

"The customers will be pleased and impressed with our efforts to satisfy them. And this is why you're
the owner of a place like this, and I'm the manager."

"It also comes down to being born and bred right here. In a few more weeks, the spring buying and planting season will be over. Anyone who comes in after mid-May's going to be looking mostly for supplies, or sidelines, maybe a basket or planter already made up, or a few plants to replace something that's died or bloomed off. And once that June heat hits, you're going to want to be putting what we've got left of spring and summer bloomers on sale before you start pushing the fall stock."

"And in Michigan, you'd be taking a big risk to put anything in before mid-May."

Roz moved to the next tray of cuttings. "You miss it?"

"I want to say yes, because it seems disloyal otherwise. But no, not really. I didn't leave anything back there except memories."

It was the memories that worried her. She'd had a good life, with a man she'd loved. When she'd lost
him that life had shattered—under the surface. It had left her shaky and unstable inside. She'd kept that life together, for her children, but in her heart had been more than grief. There'd been fear.

She'd fought the fear, and embraced the memories.

But she hadn't just lost her husband. Her sons had lost their father. Gavin's memory of him was dimmer— dimmer every year—but sweet. Luke was too young to remember his father clearly. It
seemed so unfair. If she moved forward in her relationship with Logan while her boys were still
so young ...

It was a little like no longer missing home, she supposed. It seemed disloyal.

As she walked into the showroom, she spotted a number of customers with wagons, browsing the
tables, and Hayley hunkering down to lift a large strawberry pot already planted.

"Don't!"

Her sharp command had heads turning, but she marched right through the curious and, slapping her
hands on her hips, glared at Hayley. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

"We sold the point-of-purchase planters. I thought this one here would be good out by the counter."

"I'm sure it would. Do you know how pregnant you are?"

Hayley glanced down at her basketball belly. "Kind of hard to miss."

"You want to move a planter, then you ask somebody to move it for you."

"I'm strong as an ox."

"And eight months pregnant."

"You listen to her, honey." One of the customers patted Hayley on the arm. "You don't want to take chances. Once that baby pops out, you'll never stop hauling things around. Now's the time to take advantage of your condition and let people spoil you a little bit."

"I've got to watch her like a hawk," Stella said. "That lobelia's wonderful, isn't it?"

The woman looked down at her flatbed. "I just love that deep blue color. I was thinking I'd get some
of that red salvia to go beside it, maybe back it up with cosmos?"

"Sounds perfect. Charming and colorful, with a whole season of bloom."

"I've got some more room in the back of the bed, but I'm not sure what to put in." She bit her lip as she scanned the tables loaded with options. "I wouldn't mind some suggestions, if you've got the time."

"That's what we're here for. We've got some terrific mixed hollyhocks, tall enough to go behind the cosmos. And if you want to back up the salvia, I think those marigolds there would be fabulous. And have you seen the perilla?"

"I don't even know what it is," the woman said with a laugh.

Stella showed her the deep-purple foliage plant, had Hayley gatherup several good marigolds. Between them, they filled another flatbed.

"I'm glad you went with the alyssum, too. See the way the white pops the rest of your colors? Actually, the arrangement there gives you a pretty good idea what you'll have in your garden." Stella nodded toward the flatbeds. "You can just see the way those plants will complement each other."

"I can't wait to get them in. My neighbors are going to be green with envy."

"Just send them to us."

"Wouldn't be the first time. I've been coming here since you opened. Used to live about a mile from
here, moved down toward Memphis two years ago. It's fifteen miles or more now, but I always find something special here, so I keep coming back."

"That's so nice to hear. Is there anything else Hayley or I can help you with? Do you need any starter, mulch, fertilizer?"

"Those I can handle on my own. But actually"—she smiled at Hayley—"since this cart's full, if you'd have one of those strong young boys cart that pot out to the counter—and on out to my car after—I'll take it."

"Let me arrange that for you." Stella gave Hayley a last telling look. "And you, behave yourself."

"Y'all sisters?" the woman asked Hayley.

"No. She's my boss. Why?"

"Reminded me of my sister and me, I guess. I still scold my baby sister the way she did you, especially when I'm worried about her."

"Really?" Hayley looked off toward where Stella had gone. "I guess we sort of are, then."

* * *