The dark brooding look was back in Harper’s eyes again. She leaned over the bed, stroked Presley’s hair away from her face with one hand, and kissed her so softly Presley felt tears come to her eyes. “You’re not alone.”

Presley caught her hand. “Do I need to say last night was amazing?”

“No,” Harper said softly. “For me too.”

Presley shivered, hid it with a smile. “I need a shower.”

Harper straightened. “Go ahead. My pants won’t fit you, but I’ve got some cut-off sweats and a T-shirt that will. Not your usual style, but it’ll do for now.”

“It’ll do just fine,” Presley said, ridiculously pleased by the idea of wearing Harper’s clothes.

She waited until Harper put the clothes on the bottom of the bed and left the room before rising. She didn’t trust herself anywhere near her for a few minutes. How was it possible she could still want her so fiercely? And how was she possibly going to hide that from her?

*

The phone rang while Harper was rummaging in the refrigerator for food. She grabbed her cell off the table, swiped answer, and automatically tapped speaker. “Dr. Rivers,” she said as she pulled eggs and spinach from the fridge.

“I’m making breakfast,” her mother said. “Why don’t you come on over. Flann is here and says you’ve been up all night.”

“I…” Harper listened and couldn’t hear the shower running upstairs any longer. She turned off the speaker and lowered her voice. “Thanks, but I can’t.”

Her mother was silent for what felt like half a lifetime. “You’re welcome to bring company.”

Harper groaned. “Mama, please.”

Ida laughed. “Harper, darlin’, I know you’re an adult. You think I don’t know what adults get up to on a Saturday night? In fact, your father and I—”

“Come on, give me a break here.”

“I promise Flannery will not embarrass you.”

“Yes, I will,” Flann yelled from the background.

“Flannery O’Connor Rivers. Hush, now,” Ida said sternly. “The invitation stands. You do what you think best, but I expect to see you to dinner later today.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be there.” Harper hung up, smiling, and walked upstairs. Presley was pulling on one of her old T-shirts as she walked into the bedroom. “My mother invited us to breakfast.”

Presley stopped, sheer horror freezing her blood. “Your mother? Oh my God. How does your mother know I’m here?”

“She didn’t exactly invite us, just me and my guest.”

“Then she doesn’t know it was me?”

“No,” Harper said slowly. “Would that be a problem?”

“Harper, think of the situation.” Presley put her hands on her hips. She hadn’t wanted to have this conversation now, not yet. She’d wanted to sit with Harper in the big kitchen in the sunlight for a few more minutes and pretend that none of this had to end. She should know by now that the things she wished for were almost always the things she could never have. “I’m not the woman to take home to your family on Sunday morning, for God’s sake.”

“Are you ashamed or embarrassed that you slept with me?”

“What? No, of course not. But—”

“But what? Which one is it? Embarrassed or ashamed?”

“Neither, damn it.” To give herself time to formulate some kind of rational response, Presley gathered up her underwear and the pants and shirt she’d shed in her haste to get Harper’s hands on her the night before. “But it wasn’t very wise.”

“Why not?”

Presley clutched the bundle of clothes to keep from tearing her hair out. “You know why not. You know why I’m here. I have to make some hard decisions that are going to make a lot of people unhappy. It won’t do your reputation or mine any good for people to think—” She broke off in exasperation. “Damn it.”

“To think what, Presley? Our personal life is our own business.”

“We do not have a personal life. Not together. We just slept together.”

The muscles along Harper’s jaw might have been made of stone, they moved so little as she said in a low ominous tone, “We just slept together. Just a little sex—seven or was it eight times? Is that what you think it was?”

“I wasn’t counting,” Presley said archly. “I wasn’t aware you were.”

“Don’t try turning this around. I’m not some flunky in the boardroom. Just sex—is that what you think it was?”

“What else could it be?” Presley gestured to the ridiculously beautiful scene outside the bedroom window. Blue skies, fluffy clouds, birds singing, for goodness’ sake. “You live in this fairy-tale world, but you can’t possibly believe in fairy tales. You know why I’m here. The hospital is dead, Harper. It’s been dying for years. Everything is going to change, some people are going to be very unhappy, and the last thing either of us needs is rumor about collusion or special favors.”

“You’ve already decided, haven’t you,” Harper said. “All this vague talk about analyzing usage and patient referral patterns and all the rest of the doublespeak was just smoke and mirrors to placate the simple country folk.”

“The simple country folk who thought they could seduce me or charm me or appeal to my sense of personal responsibility in order to change my mind?” Presley shot back. Damn her for refusing to see reason. Why did this have to be so hard?

Harper cursed under her breath. “You’re wrong about me and you’re wrong about the Rivers.”

“You can’t see it,” Presley said softly, “because you’re built to fight death.”

“I don’t give up, if that’s what you mean,” Harper said slowly. “Not everything changes. Not me. Not who I am, what I care about, what I feel.”

“I’m sorry. Really, I am.” Presley meant it. She was sorry she would likely destroy a part of Harper’s world, sorry their goals were so opposed, sorry she couldn’t go back a few months, a few years, and change the future of the Rivers.

“For what? For not being able to see beyond the cold, empty numbers you fill your life with? Sorry for touching me, for letting me touch you? Sorry for feeling something—anything?” Harper shook her head. “No, I don’t need you to feel sorry for me about anything at all.”

Presley’s chin lifted, and she kept her voice steady despite the pain. She had lots of practice at that. “I think it would be better if I go.”

Harper stepped aside. “You’ve already left.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Harper didn’t look up from the book she’d been staring at for the last hour when she felt the tree house sway and someone enter.

“I saw your truck.” Flann, wearing her usual weekend uniform of T-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers, dropped onto the sofa next to Harper and put her feet on the crate that served as a coffee table. “You missed a good breakfast.”

Harper lifted the book without looking at Flann. “Reading here.”

Flannery craned her neck. “The Case of the Missing Girlfriend.”

“I should have put up the no-visitors sign,” Harper said.

“I came to see why you’re brooding. Night didn’t turn out the way you thought?”

With a sigh, Harper closed the book, The Secret of the Old Clock, and set it aside. “What exactly did you tell Mama this morning?”

“Not a thing. Except that I’d seen you at the hospital and figured you’d been up all night. Were you?”

“Almost.”

“I heard about Jimmy Reynolds.”

“How?”

“I ran into Presley in the cafeteria last night. She said you thought he had leukemia.”

“AML—confirmed. Frank Cisco did the bone marrow biopsy a few hours ago.”

“Hell. That sucks.”

“Yeah. I just came from seeing him. He got his first dose of chemo already.”

“How are Emmy and Don?”

“Don broke down, but Emmy is a rock. Jimmy takes after her that way.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Flann said.

“Thanks. For now we wait and see how he responds after a round or two.”

Flann nodded. “So getting back to last night. Was your missing breakfast a good sign or bad?”

Harper scrubbed her face with her palms, put her head back, and laced her fingers behind her neck. Her back ached faintly—pleasantly sore from propping her body up over Presley, from Presley’s fingers digging into her when she came. “Goddamn it.”

“That doesn’t tell me much.”

Harper stared at the ceiling, tracing the grain in the wood, fascinated as she always was by the thoughts of where the wood had been before it became part of this sanctuary. Part of a barn, most likely, felled on some farm a couple hundred years ago. The wood had survived long after the lives of those who had hewn it had ended, would continue on long after her too, unless someone came along and knocked the tree house down and used the wood for kindling or left it in the underbrush to rot. “The night—or what was left of it after I got Jimmy squared away—was fine. The morning was the problem.”

Flann laughed wryly. “Aren’t they always? Of course, knowing you, you’d want to talk, and that always leads to trouble.”

“What do you do? Sneak away in the dead of night?”

“Of course not. I don’t sneak away until dawn. Most women like a repeat first thing in the morning after a night of great sex.”

Harper clenched her jaw. Presley had wanted her again in the morning too. She wished she could think of the night with Presley as just great sex, but she couldn’t. The sex had been wonderful, to be sure, but it was the hitch in her heart every time she thought about Presley that kept her tethered to the memory, that kept alive the longing to touch her again, to hear her sounds of pleasure again, to lose herself in the beauty of her coming and the annihilation of coming with her. “Fuck.”

“That good, huh?”

“Have you ever been with a woman who makes you forget everything except her?”

Flann’s face closed the way it always did when something cut too close to the bone. “No. And I hope you haven’t either.”