* * *
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."
