Нора Робертс - Red lily

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 off 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.”

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 something rushed and cold and practical. He didn’t want that for Hayley, or when he thought it through, for himself.

He wanted to get married at Harper House. In the gardens he helped tend, in the shadow of the house where he’d grown up. He wanted to make his promises to Hayley there, and he realized, to make them to Lily there, and to this new child who was now the size of a grain of rice.

This was what he wanted, what he had, somehow, been moving toward all of his life. It was something he’d never thought about before, and knew now as surely as he knew his own name.

Hayley and Lily would move into the carriage house. He’d speak to his mother about adding on to it, giving it more space while staying true to the heart and the traditional style.

More space for their children, he thought, so that they, too, could grow up in Harper House, with its gardens, its woods, its history that would be theirs as it was his.

He could see all of that, he could know all of that. But what he couldn’t see was the child. The child he’d helped create.

A grain of rice? How could something so small be so huge? And already be so loved?

But now there was a step that had to be taken before the others.

He found his mother in the garden, adding a few asters and mums to one of her beds.

She wore thin cotton gloves, soiled with seasons of work. Cropped cotton pants, the color of bluebonnets that were already smudged with the greens and browns of the task she performed. Her feet were bare, and he could see the backless slides she’d stepped out of before she’d knelt at the border.

When he’d been a child, he’d believed her to be invincible, almost supernatural. She knew everything whether you wanted her to or not. She’d had the answers when he’d needed them, had given him hugs—and the occasional licks. Some of which he’d still like to dispute.

Most of all she’d been there, unfailingly been there. In the best times, in the worst, and all the times between.

Now, it would be his turn.

She tilted her head up as he approached, absently brushed the back of her hand over her brow. It struck him how beautiful she was, her hat tipped over her eyes, her face serene.

“Had a good day,” she said. “Thought I’d extend it and fluff up this bed. Gonna rain tonight.”

“Yeah.” Automatically he glanced up at the sky. “Hoping for a nice soaker.”

“Your mouth, God’s ear.” She squinted against the sun as she studied him. “My, don’t you have your serious face on. You gonna sit down here so I don’t get a crick in my neck?”

He crouched. “I need to talk to you.”

“You usually do when you have your serious face on.”

“Hayley’s pregnant.”

“Well.” She set down her trowel, very carefully. “Well, well, well.”

“She just found out today. She thinks about six weeks. She got the symptoms—I guess you call them symptoms—mixed up with everything else that’s going on.”

“I can see how that might happen. Is she all right?”

“A little upset, a little scared, I guess.”

She reached up, took off his sunglasses, looked into his eyes. “How about you?”

“I’ve been taking it in. I love her, Mama.”

“I know you do. Are you happy, Harper?”

“I’m a lot of things. Happy’s one of them. I know this isn’t how you’d hoped I would do things.”