Red Lily

by Nora Roberts

  again, looked into Lily’s happy face. And reached for the home pregnancy test.

  SHE DROPPED LILY off, kept a smile plastered on her face until she walked out the door to her car. Afraid to do otherwise, she kept her mind blank while she drove home. She wouldn’t think, she wouldn’t project. She would just go home, take the test. Twice. When it came out negative, which of course it would, she’d hide the packages somewhere until she could dispose of them without anyone knowing she’d had a panic attack.

  She wasn’t pregnant again. She absolutely couldn’t be pregnant again.

  She parked, and made certain the boxes were buried at the bottom of her bag and well hidden. But she’d taken two steps into the house when David appeared like some magic genie.

  “Hi, sugar, want a hand with that?”

  “No.” She gripped the bag to her chest like a cache of gold. “No,” she repeated more calmly. “I’m just going to take these things up. And I have to pee, if that’s all the same to you.”

  “It is. I often have to pee myself.”

  Knowing her tone had been nasty, she rubbed a hand over her face. “I’m sorry. I’m in a mood.”

  “Something else I often have.” He pulled an open tube of Life Savers from his pocket, thumbed out a cherry circle. “Open up.”

  She smiled, obeyed.

  “Let’s see if that sweetens your mood,” he said as he popped the candy into her mouth. “Can’t help worrying about you, honey.”

  “I know. If I’m not back down in fifteen minutes, you can call out the cavalry. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  She hurried up, then dumped the contents of the bag on her bed—for God’s sake, she’d forgotten the diapers. Cursing, she snatched both pregnancy tests and bolted to the bathroom.

  For a moment she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to pee. Wouldn’t that just be her luck? She ordered herself to calm down, took several long breaths. Added a prayer.

  Moments later, with the sweetness of cherry candy still on her tongue, she was staring at the stick with PREGNANT reading clear as day in its window.

  “No.” She gripped the stick, shook it as if it were a thermometer and the action would drop things back down to normal. “No, no, no, no! What is this? What are you?” She looked down at herself, rapped a fist lightly below her navel. “Some kind of sperm magnet?”

  Undone, she sat on the toilet lid, buried her face in her hands.

  THOUGH SHE MIGHT have preferred to crawl into the cabinet under the sink, curl up in the dark, and stay there for the next nine months, she didn’t have much time to indulge in a pity fest. She washed her face, slapping on cold water to eradicate the signs of her bathroom crying jag.

  “Yeah, crying’s going to make a difference,” she berated herself. “That’ll do the trick, all right. It’ll change everything so when you look at that stupid test again the damn stick will read: Why no, Hayley, you’re not pregnant. You just needed to sit on the toilet and bawl for ten minutes. Idiot.”

  She sniffled back what felt like another flood of tears and faced herself in the mirror. “You played, now you pay. Deal with it.”

  A quick makeup session helped. The sunglasses she grabbed out of her purse helped more.

  She buried the home pregnancy test boxes in the bottom of her underwear drawer, jumpy as a drug addict hiding his stash.

  When she went out, David was already halfway up the stairs.

  “I was about to get my bugle.”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “To call the cavalry, honey. You were longer than fifteen.”

  “Sorry. I got . . . Sorry.”

  He started to smile and brush it off, then shook his head. “Nope, not going to pretend I don’t know you’ve been crying. What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t.” Even on those two words her voice shook, broke. “I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Somehow the world will keep turning. What you’re going to do is sit right down here in my office.” Taking her hand, he tugged until she sat on the steps with him. “And tell Uncle David your troubles.”

  “I don’t have troubles. I’m in trouble.” She didn’t mean to tell him, to tell anyone. Not until she had time to think, to deal. To bury her head in the sand for a few days. But he draped an arm around her shoulders to hug her, and the words leaped out of her mouth.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh.” His hand stroked up and down her arm. “Well, that’s something my secret horde of super chocolate truffles won’t fix.”

  She turned her head, pressed her face to his shoulder. “I’m like some sort of fertility bomb, David. What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?”

  “What’s right for you. You’re sure now?”

  Sniffling, she boosted her butt off the steps, tugged the stick out of her pocket. “What’s that say in there?”

  “Mmm. The eagle has landed.” Gently, he caught her chin in his hand, lifted her face. “How are you feeling?”

  “Sick, scared. Stupid! So damn stupid. We used protection, David. It’s not like we were a couple of lust-crazed teenagers in the back of a Chevy. I think I have some sort of übereggs or something, and they just spit on barriers and suck the sperm in.”

  He laughed, then gave her another squeeze. “Sorry. I know it’s not funny to you. Let’s calm down here and take a look at the big picture. You’re in love with Harper.”

  “Of course I am, but—”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “Yes, but—Oh, David, we’re just getting started on that. On being in love, on being together. Maybe I let myself imagine how it might be down the road some. But we haven’t made any plans about the long-term. We haven’t talked about it at all.”

  “That’s why sooner comes before later, honey. You’ll talk now.”

  “How can any man in the world not feel trapped when a woman comes up and tells him she’s pregnant?”

  “You manage to get that way all by yourself?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Hayley.” He drew back, tipped her sunglasses down her nose so he could look into her eyes. “That’s exactly the point. With Lily, you did what was right for you, and what you felt in your heart was right for the father, and for the baby. Right or wrong—and personally I think it was right—but either way, I think it was brave. Now you’ve got to be brave again, do what’s right for everybody concerned. You’ve got to tell Harper.”

  “I don’t know how. I get sick thinking about it.”

  “Then you might love him, but you’re not giving him credit for being the man he is.”

  “I am, that’s the trouble.” She stared back down at the stick and the word in that window seemed to scream in her head. “He’ll stand up. How will I know if he did because he loves me, or because he feels responsible?”

  David leaned over, kissed her temple. “Because you will.”

  IT ALL SOUNDED good. It sounded reasonable, logical, and adult. But it didn’t make it any easier to do what she was about to do.

  She wished she could delay it, just ignore it all for a few days. Even pretend it would go away. And that was small and selfish and childish.

  When she reached the nursery, she slipped into one of the employee bathrooms to take the second test. She glugged down most of a pint of water, turned the spigot on for good measure. She started to cross her fingers, but told herself not to be a complete ass.

  Still, she read the results with eyes squinted half shut.

  It didn’t change the outcome.

  Well, still pregnant, she thought. There was no crying this time, no cursing fate. She simply tucked the stick back in her pocket, opened the door, and prepared to do what needed to be done next. She had to tell Harper.

  Why? Why did he have to know? She could go away now, she thought. Pack up and go. The baby was hers.

  He was rich, he was powerful. He would take the child and toss her aside. Take her son. For the glory of the
great Harper name he would use her like a vessel, then rip away what grew in her.

  He had no right to what was hers. No right to what she carried inside her.

  “Hayley.”

  “What?” She jolted like a thief, then blinked at Stella.

  She was standing among the shade plants, surrounded by hostas green as Ireland. Yards away from the restroom.

  How long had she been standing there, thinking thoughts not her own?

  “Are you all right?”

  “A little turned around.” She drew in a long breath. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I’ll make it up. But I need . . . I have to talk to Harper. Before I get started I need to talk to him.”

  “In the grafting house. He wanted to know when you got in. Hayley, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I need to talk to Harper first.” Before she lost her nerve, or her mind.

  She hurried away, walking quickly between the tables of plants, across the asphalt skirt, past the greenhouses. Business was picking up, she noted, after the high summer slump. Temperatures were easing off, just a little, and made people think about their fall plantings. Stella’s boys were going back to school. Days were getting shorter.

  The world didn’t stop just because she had a crisis on her hands.

  She hesitated outside of the grafting house, struck by the fact that her mind—so full a moment before—was now a complete blank.

  There was only one thing to do, she decided. That was to go in.

  The house was warm and full of music. It so well suited him, full of plants in various stages of growth and development, smelling of soil and green.

  She didn’t know the music that played, something with harps and flutes. But she knew whatever it was wouldn’t be playing through his headphones.

  He was down at the far end, and it seemed like the longest walk of her life. Even when he turned, saw her, and flashed a grin.

  “Hey, just who I wanted to see.” He made a come-ahead gesture with one hand as he drew his headset off with the other. “Take a look.”

  “At what?”

  “Our babies.”

  Since he shifted to the plants, he didn’t see her jerk in response. “They’re right on schedule,” he continued. “See, the ovary sections have already swelled.”

  “They’re not the only ones,” she mumbled, but moved forward to stand beside him and study the plants they’d grafted a few weeks before.

  “See? The pods are fully formed. We give them another three, four weeks for the seeds to ripen. The top’ll split. We’ll gather the seeds, plant them in pots. Keep ’em outdoors, exposed. And in the spring, they’ll germinate. Once they’re about three inches, we’ll plant them out in nursery beds.”

  It wasn’t procrastinating to stand there talking about a mutual project. It was . . . polite. “Then what?”

  “Usually we’ll get blooms the second season. Then we’ll study and record the differences, the likenesses, the characteristics. What we’re hoping for is at least one—and I’m banking on more—mini with a strong pink color, and that blush of red. We get that, we’ve got Hayley’s Lily.”

  “If we don’t.”

  “Pessimism isn’t the gardener’s friend, but if we don’t, we’ll have something else cool. And we’ll try again. Anyway, I thought you might want to work with me on a rose, for my mother.”

  “Oh, um . . .” If it was a girl, should they name her Rose? “That’d be nice. Sweet of you.”

  “Well, it’s Mitch’s idea, but the guy couldn’t grow a Chia Pet. He wants to try for a black. Nobody’s ever managed a true black rose, but I thought we could play around and see what we came up with. It’s the right time of year—time to wash down, disinfect, air and dry out this place. Hygiene’s a big for this kind of work, and roses are pretty fussy. They’re time-consuming, too, but it’d be fun.”

  He looked so excited, she thought, at the idea of starting something new. Just how would he look when she told him they already had?

  “Um, when you do all this, you pick the parents—the pollen plant, the seed plant. Deliberate selection, for specific characteristics.”

  Her blue eyes, Harper’s brown. His patience, her impulse. What would you get?

  “Right. You’re trying to cross them, to create something with the best—or at least the desired characteristics—of both.”

  His temper, her stubbornness. Oh God. “People don’t work that way.”

  “Hmm.” He turned to his computer, keying data into a file. “No, guess not.”

  “And with people, they can’t always—or don’t always—plan it all out like this. They don’t always get together and say, hey, let’s hybridize.”

  He shot a laugh over his shoulder. “Now that’s a line I never thought to use in a bar, picking up a girl. I’d put it in the file, but since I’ve already got a girl, it’d be wasted.”

  “You never used a line on me,” she told him. “Anyway, hybridizing’s about creating something, a separate something. Not just about the fun and games.”

  “Hmm. Hey, did I show you the viburnum? Suckering’s been a problem, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming along.”

  “Harper.” Tears wanted to spurt and spill again. “Harper, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not a big,” he said absently. “I know how to deal with suckering.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  There, she thought. She said it. Fast and clean. Like ripping a bandage off a wound.

  “You said what?” He stopped typing, slowly swiveled on his stool.

  She didn’t know how to read his face. Maybe it was because her own vision seemed blurry and half blind. She couldn’t read the tone of his voice, not with the roaring going on in her ears.

  “I should’ve known. I should have. I’ve been so tired, and I missed my period—I just forgot about it—and I’ve been queasy on and off, and so damn moody. I thought, I didn’t think. I thought it was what was happening with Amelia. I didn’t put it together. I’m sorry.”

  The entire burst came out in a disjointed ramble that she could barely comprehend herself. She dropped into silence when he held up a hand.

  “Pregnant. You said you were pregnant.”

  “God, do I have to spell the word out for you?” Not sure if she wanted to weep or rage, she yanked the test stick out of her pocket. “There, read it yourself. P-R-E—”

  “Hold it.” He took the stick from her, stared at it. “When did you find out?”

  “Just today, now. A little while ago. I was in Wal-Mart, getting some things. I forgot Lily’s diapers and bought mascara. What kind of a mother am I?”

  “Quiet down.” He rose, took her shoulders and nudged her onto the stool. “You’re all right? I mean it doesn’t hurt or anything.”

  “Of course it doesn’t hurt. For Christ’s sake.”

  “Look, don’t crawl up my ass.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he studied her. Much, she thought, as he did his plants-in-progress. “It’s my first day on the job. How much are you pregnant?”

  “Pretty much all the way.”

  “Damn it, Hayley, I mean how far along, or whatever you call it?”

  “I think about six weeks. Five or six.”

  “How big is it in there?”

  She dragged a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. About as big as a kernel of rice.”

  “Wow.” He stared at her belly, laid a hand on it. “Wow. When does it start to move around? When does it get, like, fingers or toes?”

  “Harper, can we focus here?”

  “I don’t know any of this stuff. I want to know. You need to go to the doctor, right?” He grabbed her hand. “We should go now.”

  “I don’t need to go to the doctor now. Harper, what are we going to do?”

  “What do you mean what are we going to do. We’re going to have a baby. Holy shit!” He plucked her right off the stool and a half a foot o
ff the ground. The face he tilted up to hers was split with a dazzled grin. “We’re going to have a baby.”

  She had to brace her hands on his shoulders. “You’re not mad.”

  “Why would I be mad?”

  Now she felt dizzy, overwhelmed, shaken to the core. “Because. Because.”

  He lowered her, slowly, back onto the stool. And now his voice was careful and cool. “You don’t want the baby.”

  “I don’t know. How can I think about what I want? How can I think at all?”

  “Pregnancy affects brain waves. Interesting.”

  “I—”

  “But, okay, I’ll do the thinking. You go to the doctor so we’re sure everything’s okay in there. We get married. And next spring we have a baby.”

  “Married? Harper, people shouldn’t get married just because—”

  Though he leaned back against the worktable, he still managed to hedge her in. “In my world, where the sky’s blue, people who love each other and are having babies get married all the time. Maybe this is a little ahead of our regularly scheduled program, but it’s the kind of bulletin you pay attention to.”

  “We had a regularly scheduled program?”

  “I did.” He reached over to tuck her hair behind her ears, then tugged gently at the ends. “I want you, you know I do. I want the baby. We’re going to do this right, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “So you’re ordering me to marry you.”

  “I had planned to charm you into it, at some point a little farther down the road. But since the timing’s changed—and pregnancy’s jammed your power of thought—we’re going this way.”

  “You’re not even upset.”

  “No, I’m not upset.” He paused a moment as if taking stock. “A little scared, a lot awed. Man, Lily’s going to love this. Baby brother or sister to torment. Wait till I tell my brothers they’re going to be uncles. What till I tell Mama she’s going to be a . . .”

  “Grandmother,” Hayley finished and nodded, subversively pleased to see a flicker of doubt in his eyes at last. “Just how do you think she’s going to feel about that?”

  “I guess I’ll find out.”

  “I can’t—just can’t take all this in.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples as if it would stop her head from spinning. “I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” Dropping her hands in her lap, she stared at him. “Harper, you don’t think this is a mistake?”

  “Our baby’s not a mistake.” He gathered her in, felt her breath give a hitch as she struggled with tears. “But it’s one hell of a surprise.”

  eighteen

  HE WENT IN and out of a daze for the rest of the day. There was a lot to be considered, worked out, planned. The initial steps were crystal to him, as clear and precise as the initial steps in any graft.

  They would get Hayley into the doctor, get her and the baby checked out. He’d start reading up on baby stuff—womb stuff—so that he understood the process, got sharper images in his head of what was going on in there.

  They’d get married as soon as possible, but not so fast it had to be