“A place to what?”
“Live.”
“Something wrong with this place?”
“It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.” And here she was, Hayley Phillips from Little Rock, living in it, living in a house that had a parlor furnished with beautiful antiques and deep rich cushions, with generous windows that opened up to acres of more beauty.
“I was thinking I should look for a place, but I don’t want to. At least, well, not right now.” She looked down, watched Lily struggle to carry the doll around the room. “But I want you to tell me, and I know we’re good enough friends that you will, when you want me to start looking.”
“All right. That settled then?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t you want to see what we brought you?”
“I got something, too?” Hayley’s lake blue eyes went bright with anticipation. “I
“I hope you like this one.” She took a box out of the bag, offered it.
Wasting no time, Hayley took off the top. “Oh, oh! They’re gorgeous.”
“I thought the red coral would suit you best.”
“I
She dashed back to give a chuckling Roz a hug. “They’re just beautiful. Thank you, thank you. I can hardly wait to wear them.”
“You can give them a test drive tonight if you want. Stella, Logan, and the boys will be over. David tells me we’re having a welcome-home dinner.”
“Oh, but you’ll be tired.”
“Tired? What am I, eighty? I just got back from vacation.”
“Honeymoon,” Hayley corrected with a smirk. “Bet you didn’t get a lot of rest either.”
“We slept in every morning, you smart-ass.”
“In that case, we’ll party. Lily and I’ll go upstairs and get ourselves all clean and pretty.”
“I’ll give you a hand up with all these things.”
“Thanks. Roz?” Everything inside her had settled down to a glow. “I’m really glad you’re home.”
IT WAS SO much fun to put on her new earrings, to dress Lily in one of her pretty new outfits, to fuss a little over both herself and her daughter. She shook her head just for the pleasure of feeling the way her hair fell and her earrings swung.
There now, she thought, not feeling dull and blah anymore. Since she was feeling celebratory, she capped it off with new shoes. The thin-heeled strappy black sandals were impractical and unnecessary. Which made them perfect.
“And they were on sale,” she told Lily. “Gotta say, they’ve got to be more fun than Prozac or whatever.”
It felt great to wear a dress—a short dress—and sexy shoes. A new haircut. Red lipstick.
She gave a turn for the mirror and struck a pose. Maybe she had a skinny build, but there was nothing much she could do about that. Still, she wore clothes pretty well, if she did say so. Kind of like a clothes hanger. Add new hair, new earrings, new shoes, and you had something.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe I’m back.”
DOWNSTAIRS, HARPER WAS sprawled in a chair, sipping a beer and watching the way Mitch touched his mother—her hair, her arm—while they related some of the highlights of their trip for Logan and Stella and the boys.
He’d heard some of it already when he’d buzzed home for an hour that afternoon. He wasn’t really listening. He was just watching, and thinking it was good, it was time his mother had someone so obviously besotted with her.
He was happy for her—and relieved. No matter how well his mother could take care of herself, and God knew she could do just that, it was a comfort to know she had a smart, able man at her side.
After what had happened last spring, if Mitch hadn’t moved in, he’d have done so himself. And that might’ve been a little sticky with Hayley living there.
It was more . . . comfortable, he decided, for everybody, if he continued to live in the carriage house. It might not have been much distance geographically, but psychologically it did the job.
“I told him he was crazy,” Roz continued, gesturing with her wine in one hand, patting the other on Mitch’s thigh. “Windsurfing? Why in God’s name would we want to teeter around on a little hunk of wood with a sail attached? But he just had to try it.”
“I tried it once.” Stella sat, her curling mass of red hair spilling over her shoulders. “Spring break in college. It was fun once I got the hang of it.”
“So I hear.” Mitch’s mutter had Roz grinning.
“He’d get up on the thing, and in two seconds, splash. Get up, and wait, I think he’s got it. Splash.”
“I had a defective board,” Mitch claimed, and poked Roz in the ribs.
“Of course you did.” Roz rolled her eyes. “One thing you can say about our Mitchell is he’s game. I don’t know how many times he hauled himself out of the drink and back on that board.”
“Six hundred and fifty-two.”
“How about you?” Logan, big and built and rugged beside Stella, gestured toward Roz with his beer.
“Oh, well, I don’t like to brag,” Roz said and examined her fingernails.
“Yes, she does.” Mitch gulped down club soda, stretched out his long, long legs. “Oh, yes, she does.”
“But I enjoyed the experience quite a lot.”
“She just . . .” Mitch sailed his hand through the air to illustrate. “Sailed off as if she’d been born on one of the damn things.”
“We Harpers do tend to have excellent athletic abilities and superior balance.”
“But she doesn’t like to brag,” Mitch pointed out, then glanced over at the click of heels on hardwood.
Harper did the same, and felt his reputed superior balance falter.
She looked frigging amazing. The skinny little red dress, the mile-high shoes combined to make her legs look endless. The sort of legs a man could imagine cruising over for miles and miles. Her hair was so damn sexy that way, and her mouth was all hot and red.
She had a baby on her hip, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t be thinking about what he’d like to do to that mouth, that body when she was carrying Lily. It had to be wrong.
Across the room, Logan let out a long, low whistle that had Hayley’s face lighting up.
“Hello, beautiful. You look good enough to eat. You look good, too, Hayley.”
At that, she gave one of those husky rolls of laughter, and hip-swayed over to drop Lily in Logan’s lap. “Just for that.”
“How about some wine?” Roz offered.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve been wanting a cold beer.”
“I’ll get it.” Harper all but sprang out of his chair, and was heading out of the parlor before she could respond. He hoped the trip to the kitchen and back would bring his blood pressure back to normal.
She was a cousin, sort of, he reminded himself. And an employee. His mother’s houseguest. A mother. Any one of those reasons meant hands-off. Tally them up, and it put Hayley way off-limits. Added to that, she didn’t think of him that way, not even close.
A guy made a move on a woman under those circumstances, he was just asking to screw up a nice, pleasant friendship.
He got out a beer, got out a pilsner. As he was pouring, he heard the squeal, and the rapid clip of heels on wood. He glanced over and spotted Lily running, with Hayley scrambling behind her.
“She want a beer, too?”
With a laugh, Hayley started to scoop Lily up, only to have her baby girl go red in the face and arch away. “You. Like always.”
