Red Lily Read Free

foolishness? It was terrifying to think of it.
    She’d been so ridiculously optimistic and confident, and stupid, she thought now.
    Sailing along, she remembered, nearly six months pregnant, quitting her job, selling most of her things and packing up that rattletrap car to head out.
    God, if she’d known then what she knew now, she’d never have done it.
    So maybe it was good she hadn’t known. Because she wasn’t alone. Closing her eyes, she rested her cheek on Lily’s soft, dark hair. She had friends—no, family—people who cared about her and Lily and were willing to help.
    They didn’t just have a roof over their heads, but the gorgeous roof of Harper House. She had Roz, distant cousin and then only through marriage, who’d offered her a home, a job, a chance. She had Stella, her best friend in the world to talk to, bitch to, learn from.
    Both Roz and Stella had been single parents—and they’d coped, she reminded herself. They’d better than coped, and Stella had had two young boys to raise alone. Roz three .
    And here she was wondering how she’d ever manage one, even with all the help only an offer away.
    There was David, running the house, cooking the meals. And just being wonderfully David. What if she had to cook every night after work? What if she had to do all theshopping, the cleaning, the hauling, the everything in addition to holding up her end at her job and caring for a fourteen-month-old baby?
    Thank God she didn’t have to find out.
    There was Logan, Stella’s gorgeous new husband, who was willing to tinker around with her car when it acted up. And Stella’s little guys, Gavin and Luke, who not only liked to play with Lily but were giving Hayley a hint of the sort of things she had coming in the next few years.
    There was Mitch, so smart and sweet, who liked to scoop Lily up and cart her around on his shoulders while she laughed. He’d be officially here all the time now, she thought, once he and Roz got back from their honeymoon.
    It had been so nice, so much fun, to watch both Stella and Roz fall in love. She’d felt a part of it all—the excitement, the changes, the expansion of her new family circle.
    Of course, Roz’s marriage meant Hayley’d have to stop dragging her feet on finding a place of her own. Newlyweds were entitled to privacy.
    She wished there was a place close by. Even on the estate. Like the carriage house. Harper’s house. She sighed a little as she rubbed a hand over Lily’s back.
    Harper Ashby. Rosalind Harper Ashby’s firstborn, and one delicious piece of eye candy. Of course she didn’t think about him that way. Much. He was a friend, a co-worker, and her baby girl’s first crush. From all appearances, that love affair was mutual.
    She yawned again, lulled like the baby by the rhythm of the rocking and the early-morning quiet.
    Harper was, well, just flat-out amazing with Lily. Patient and funny, easy and loving. Secretly she thought of him as Lily’s surrogate father—without the benefits of smoochies with Lily’s mother.
    Sometimes she played pretend—and what was the harm in that?—and the surrogate part of father didn’t apply. The smoochies did. After all, what red-blooded American girl—currently very sex-deprived girl—wouldn’t fantasize now and again about the tall, dark, and ridiculously handsome type, especially when he came with a killer grin, heart-melting brown eyes, and a pinchable butt?
    Not that she’d ever pinched it. But in theory.
    Plus he was completely smart. He knew everything there was to know about plants and flowers. She loved to watch him working in the grafting house at In the Garden. The way his hands held a knife or tied raffia.
    He was teaching her, and she appreciated it. Appreciated it too much to indulge herself and take a nice hungry bite out of him.
    But imagining doing it didn’t hurt a thing.
    She eased the rocker to a stop, held her breath and waited. Lily’s back continued to rise and fall steadily under