Red Lily Read Free Page B

relieved. “You felt that way, too. I didn’t want to say, didn’t want you to feel like you weren’t enough company or something. ’Cause you are.”
    “You, too, my treasure. But we’ve gotten spoiled, haven’t we? Had a houseful for a year around here.” He glanced toward the empty seats at the table. “I miss those kids.”
    “Aw, you softie. We still see them, everybody, all the time, but it’s weird, having everything so quiet.”
    As if she understood, Lily launched her sip-cup so that it slapped the center island and thudded on the floor.
    “Atta girl,” David told her.
    “And you know what else?” Hayley rose to retrieve the cup. She was tall and lanky, and much to her disappointment, her breasts had reverted to their pre-pregnancy size. She thought of them as an A-minus cup. “I think I’m getting in some sort of mood. I don’t mean rut, exactly, because I love working at the nursery, and I was just thinking last night—when Lily woke up for the millionth time—how lucky I am to be here, to be able to have all these people in our lives.”
    She spread her arms, let them fall. “But, I don’t know, David, I feel sort of . . . blah.”
    “Need shopping therapy.”
    She grinned and got a washcloth to wipe Lily’s syrupy face. “It is the number-one cure for almost everything. But I think I want a change. Something bigger than new shoes.”
    Deliberately, he widened his eyes, let his jaw go slack. “There’s something bigger?”
    “I think I’m going to cut my hair. Do you think I should cut my hair?”
    “Hmm.” He cocked his head, studied her with his handsome blue eyes. “It’s gorgeous hair, that glossy mahogany. But I absolutely loved it the way you wore it when you first moved here.”
    “Really?”
    “All those different lengths. Tousled, casual, kicky. Sexy.”
    “Well . . .” She ran her hand down it. She’d grown it out, nearly to her shoulders. An easy length to pull back for work or motherhood. And maybe that was just the problem. She’d started taking the easy way because she’d stopped finding the time or making the effort to worry about how she looked.
    She wiped Lily off, freed her from the high chair so she could wander around the kitchen. “Maybe I will then. Maybe.”
    “And toss in the new shoes, sweetie. They never fail.”
    I N HIGH SUMMER business slowed at the garden center. It never trickled down too far at In the Garden, but in July, the heady late winter through spring rush was long over. Wet heat smothered west Tennessee, and only the most avid of gardeners would suffer through it to pump new life into their beds.
    Taking advantage of it, and her mood, Hayley wheedled a salon appointment, and an extra hour off from Stella.
    When she drove back into work after her extended lunch break, it was with a new do, two new pair of shoes, and a much happier attitude.
    Trust David, she decided.
    She loved In the Garden. Most days, she didn’t feel as if she was going to work at all. There couldn’t be a better quality in a job than that, in her opinion.
    She enjoyed just looking at the pretty white building that looked more like someone’s well-tended home than a business, with the seasonal beds spreading out from its porch, and the pots full of colorful blooms by its door.
    She liked the industry across the wide gravel lot—thestacks of peat and mulch, the pavers and landscape timbers. The greenhouses that were full of plants and promises, the storage buildings.
    When it was busy with customers, winding along the paths, pulling wagons or flatbeds full of plants and pots—everyone full of news or plans—it was more like a small village than a retail space.
    And she was a part of it all.
    She stepped in, and did a turn for Ruby, the white-haired clerk who manned the counter.
    “Don’t you look sassy,” Ruby commented.
    “I feel sassy.” She ran her fingers through her short shaggy hair, then let it fall again. “I haven’t done anything new