Нора Робертс - Red lily

She paused, breathed. “I think she was already a little bit crazy.”

“And how was that a bid for sympathy?” Harper asked her. “Why would you feel sorry for someone like that?”

“It was the change. It was feeling the baby move. I felt it, too. That shock of feeling, the sudden realization that there’s life inside you. And there’s this wave of love along with it. In that moment, the baby was hers. Not a ploy or an inconvenience, but her child, and she loved it.” She looked at Roz.

“Yes.”

“So she was showing me. I loved my child, wanted it. And the man, the kind of man who’d use a woman like me, took it from me. She was wearing the bracelet. The heart bracelet. And I did feel for her. I don’t think she was a good person, certainly not a nice one, and even then, before the rest happened, I don’t think she was balanced. But she loved the child, wanted it. I think what she showed me was real, and she showed me because I’d understand it more than anyone else. Yeah, I felt sorry for her.”

“Sympathy is fine,” Mitch said. “But you can’t let down your guard. She’s using you, Hayley.”

“I know, and I won’t. I can feel for her, but I don’t have to trust her.”

DAYS PASSED, AND she waited for the next move, the next experience, but August boiled quietly toward September. The most wrenching experience was having her ancient car break down between work and the sitter’s, and finally having to accept it was time to replace it.

“It’s not just the money,” she told Harper as she strolled Lily through the used-car lot. “It’s one of my last links to childhood, I guess. My daddy bought that car, secondhand. I learned to drive with it.”

“It’ll go to a good home.”

“Hell, Harper, it’s going on the scrap heap, and we both know it. Poor, pitiful old thing. I know I’ve got to be sensible, too. I can’t be hauling Lily around in an unreliable car. I’ll be lucky if that salesman who took it off for appraisal doesn’t come back and say I owe him just for dumping it on him.”

“Just let me handle it.”

“I will not.” She stopped by a hatchback, kicked its tires. “You know what I hate? I hate that a lot of car salesmen and mechanics and that whole breed treat women who come in like brainless bimbos just because they don’t have a penis. Like all the automotive data and know-it-all is stored in their dicks.”

“Jesus, Hayley.” He had to laugh, even as he winced.

“It’s true. So, I’ve done my research. I know what I want and how much I should have to pay. He doesn’t want to deal with me, then I’ll just take my business elsewhere.”

She stopped by a sedan, braced one hand on the fender and waved the other in front of her face. “God almighty, it’s hot. Feel like every fluid in my body’s boiled away.”

“You look a little pale. Why don’t we go inside, sit down for a minute?”

“I’m okay. Just not resting well. Even when I sleep, I feel like I’m on alert, like the first few weeks after Lily was born. Makes me draggy and irritable. So if I end up snapping at you, try to bear with me.”

He rubbed the small of her back. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I appreciate you coming with me today, I really do. But don’t feel like you’ve got to step in.”

“Ever bought a car?”

She sent him a sidelong, annoyed look as she continued to push Lily’s stroller. “Just because I haven’t, doesn’t mean I’m some rube down from the hills. I’ve bought lots of other things, and I can guarantee I know more about negotiating prices than you. Rich boy.”

He grinned. “I’m just a working gardener.”

“You may work for a living, but you’ve got a few silver spoons tucked away for rainy days. Now here’s what I’m after.”

She stopped to study a sturdy-looking five-door Chevy. “It’s got plenty of room, but it’s not big and bulky, and it’s clean. It’s bound to get better mileage than my old car and it’s not flashy.”

She frowned over the listed price. “I’ll just get him to come down a bit, and it’ll be in my range. Sort of.”

“Don’t tell him you—”

“Harper.”

“Backing off.” He shook his head, stuck his hands in his pockets.

And had to saw his tongue in half when the salesman came out, big smiles, and announced the meager offer on the trade-in.

“Oh, is that all?” Hayley widened her baby blues and fluttered her lashes. “I guess sentiment doesn’t count, does it? But maybe, maybe you could just ease that up, a little bit, depending on what I buy. This one’s pretty. I like the color.”

Playing him, Harper realized, noting how she’d bumped up her accent. He went along for the ride as the salesman steered her toward a couple of pricier options, watched her chew her lip, flash her smile, and steer him right back to what she wanted.

Guy’s toast, he decided as she finagled the price down, took Lily out of the stroller to sit with her behind the wheel. Harper concluded nobody could resist the pair of them.

Two hours later, they were driving off the lot with Lily dozing in her carseat and Hayley beaming behind the wheel.

“ ‘Oh, Mr. Tanner, I just don’t know a thing about cars. You’re so sweet to help me out this way.’ ” Harper shook his head. “When we were sitting in there doing the paperwork I wanted to warn him to lift up his feet. It was sure getting deep.”

“He made a nice sale, got his commission, and I got what I went in for. That’s what counts.” But she let out a hoot of laughter. “I liked when he tried to bring you into it, showed you under the hood and you just scratched your head like you were looking at a cruise missile or something. I think we made him feel good, like he was giving me what I needed for the price I could pay. And that counts, too. Next time I have to buy, I’d go right back to Mr. Tanner.”

“Didn’t hurt for you to tear up a couple times.”

“That was real. I was sad to sell that old heap—and don’t think these car payments aren’t going to sting some.” More, she thought, it had put an ache in her throat when Mr. Tanner had assumed they were a family.

“If you need some help—”

“Don’t go there, Harper.” But she reached over to pat his hand, to show she appreciated the offer. “We’ll be fine, Lily and me.”

“Why don’t I take you out to lunch to celebrate then?”

“That’s a deal. I’m starving.”

They had looked like a family, she thought. A normal young family buying a secondhand car, having lunch in a diner, treating the baby to a cup of ice cream.

But putting them there was rushing it, for all of them. They were a man and a single mother who were romantically involved. Not a unit.

At home, she decided to take advantage of the rest of her day off by curling up with Lily for an afternoon nap.

“We’re all right, aren’t we, baby?” she murmured as Lily played with her mother’s hair, her big eyes heavy, her pretty mouth going slack. “I’m doing right by you? I’m sure trying.”

She snuggled down a little closer. “I’m so tired. Got a million things I ought to be doing, but I’m so tired. I’ll get them all done sooner or later, right?”

She closed her eyes, started to calculate her finances in her head, juggling funds, changing weekly deposits. But her brain wouldn’t focus.

It drifted back to the used-car lot, and Mr. Tanner shaking hands with her before she drove off. How he’d smiled at her and wished her and her charming family well.

Drifted to sitting out on her terrace with Harper, drinking cold wine in the heat-soaked night.

Dancing with him in the shimmering romance of the suite at the Peabody.

Working with him in the grafting house.

Watching him lift Lily onto his shoulders.

It should be easier to be in love, she thought sleepily. It should be simpler. It shouldn’t make you want more when love was everything.

She sighed once, and told herself to enjoy what she had, and let the rest come.

And the pain was like knives in the belly, shocking, sharp, and horrid. Her whole body fought against them, and she screamed at the sensation of being ripped in two.

The heat, the pain. Unbearable. How could something so loved, so desired, punish her this way? She would die from it, surely she would die. And never see her son.

Sweat streamed off her, and the utter weariness was nearly as severe as the pain.

Blood and sweat and agony. All for her child, her son. Her world. No price too dear to pay for giving him life.

And as the pain sliced her, sent her tumbling toward the dark, she heard the thin cry of birth.

Hayley woke drenched in sweat, her body still radiating from the pain. And her own child blissfully asleep in the protective crook of her arm.

She eased free, fumbled for the bedside phone.

“Harper? Can you come?”

“Where are you?”

“In my room. Lily’s sleeping right here. I can’t leave her. We’re all right,” she said quickly. “We’re fine, but something just happened. Please can you come?”

“Two minutes.”

She made a wall of pillows around the baby, but knew even then she couldn’t leave the room. Lily might roll off somehow, or certainly climb over and fall. But she could pace, even on her weakened legs she could pace.

She flung open the doors even as Harper ran up the steps.

“They told her it was stillborn.” She swayed, and her knees nearly folded. “They told her her baby was dead.”

IN THE PARLOR where the light was soft through gauzy curtains and the air was sweet with roses, Harper stood by the front window with his fists balled in his pockets.

“She was wrecked,” he said with his back to the room. “She just sort of folded up when I got there, and even when she pulled it together, she looked sick.”

“She wasn’t hurt.” Mitch held up a hand when Harper whirled. “I know how you feel. I do. But she wasn’t physically harmed, and that’s important.”