She dashed back to give a chuckling Roz a hug. “They’re just beautiful. Thank you, thank you. I can hardly wait to wear them.”

“You can give them a test drive tonight if you want. Stella, Logan, and the boys will be over. David tells me we’re having a welcome-home dinner.”

“Oh, but you’ll be tired.”

“Tired? What am I, eighty? I just got back from vacation.”

“Honeymoon,” Hayley corrected with a smirk. “Bet you didn’t get a lot of rest either.”

“We slept in every morning, you smart-ass.”

“In that case, we’ll party. Lily and I’ll go upstairs and get ourselves all clean and pretty.”

“I’ll give you a hand up with all these things.”

“Thanks. Roz?” Everything inside her had settled down to a glow. “I’m really glad you’re home.”

IT WAS SO much fun to put on her new earrings, to dress Lily in one of her pretty new outfits, to fuss a little over both herself and her daughter. She shook her head just for the pleasure of feeling the way her hair fell and her earrings swung.

There now, she thought, not feeling dull and blah anymore. Since she was feeling celebratory, she capped it off with new shoes. The thin-heeled strappy black sandals were impractical and unnecessary. Which made them perfect.

“And they were on sale,” she told Lily. “Gotta say, they’ve got to be more fun than Prozac or whatever.”

It felt great to wear a dress—a short dress—and sexy shoes. A new haircut. Red lipstick.

She gave a turn for the mirror and struck a pose. Maybe she had a skinny build, but there was nothing much she could do about that. Still, she wore clothes pretty well, if she did say so. Kind of like a clothes hanger. Add new hair, new earrings, new shoes, and you had something.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe I’m back.”

DOWNSTAIRS, HARPER WAS sprawled in a chair, sipping a beer and watching the way Mitch touched his mother—her hair, her arm—while they related some of the highlights of their trip for Logan and Stella and the boys.

He’d heard some of it already when he’d buzzed home for an hour that afternoon. He wasn’t really listening. He was just watching, and thinking it was good, it was time his mother had someone so obviously besotted with her.

He was happy for her—and relieved. No matter how well his mother could take care of herself, and God knew she could do just that, it was a comfort to know she had a smart, able man at her side.

After what had happened last spring, if Mitch hadn’t moved in, he’d have done so himself. And that might’ve been a little sticky with Hayley living there.

It was more . . . comfortable, he decided, for everybody, if he continued to live in the carriage house. It might not have been much distance geographically, but psychologically it did the job.

“I told him he was crazy,” Roz continued, gesturing with her wine in one hand, patting the other on Mitch’s thigh. “Windsurfing? Why in God’s name would we want to teeter around on a little hunk of wood with a sail attached? But he just had to try it.”

“I tried it once.” Stella sat, her curling mass of red hair spilling over her shoulders. “Spring break in college. It was fun once I got the hang of it.”

“So I hear.” Mitch’s mutter had Roz grinning.

“He’d get up on the thing, and in two seconds, splash. Get up, and wait, I think he’s got it. Splash.”

“I had a defective board,” Mitch claimed, and poked Roz in the ribs.

“Of course you did.” Roz rolled her eyes. “One thing you can say about our Mitchell is he’s game. I don’t know how many times he hauled himself out of the drink and back on that board.”

“Six hundred and fifty-two.”

“How about you?” Logan, big and built and rugged beside Stella, gestured toward Roz with his beer.

“Oh, well, I don’t like to brag,” Roz said and examined her fingernails.

“Yes, she does.” Mitch gulped down club soda, stretched out his long, long legs. “Oh, yes, she does.”

“But I enjoyed the experience quite a lot.”

“She just . . .” Mitch sailed his hand through the air to illustrate. “Sailed off as if she’d been born on one of the damn things.”

“We Harpers do tend to have excellent athletic abilities and superior balance.”

“But she doesn’t like to brag,” Mitch pointed out, then glanced over at the click of heels on hardwood.

Harper did the same, and felt his reputed superior balance falter.

She looked frigging amazing. The skinny little red dress, the mile-high shoes combined to make her legs look endless. The sort of legs a man could imagine cruising over for miles and miles. Her hair was so damn sexy that way, and her mouth was all hot and red.

She had a baby on her hip, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t be thinking about what he’d like to do to that mouth, that body when she was carrying Lily. It had to be wrong.

Across the room, Logan let out a long, low whistle that had Hayley’s face lighting up.

“Hello, beautiful. You look good enough to eat. You look good, too, Hayley.”

At that, she gave one of those husky rolls of laughter, and hip-swayed over to drop Lily in Logan’s lap. “Just for that.”

“How about some wine?” Roz offered.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been wanting a cold beer.”

“I’ll get it.” Harper all but sprang out of his chair, and was heading out of the parlor before she could respond. He hoped the trip to the kitchen and back would bring his blood pressure back to normal.

She was a cousin, sort of, he reminded himself. And an employee. His mother’s houseguest. A mother. Any one of those reasons meant hands-off. Tally them up, and it put Hayley way off-limits. Added to that, she didn’t think of him that way, not even close.

A guy made a move on a woman under those circumstances, he was just asking to screw up a nice, pleasant friendship.

He got out a beer, got out a pilsner. As he was pouring, he heard the squeal, and the rapid clip of heels on wood. He glanced over and spotted Lily running, with Hayley scrambling behind her.

“She want a beer, too?”

With a laugh, Hayley started to scoop Lily up, only to have her baby girl go red in the face and arch away. “You. Like always.”

“That’s my girl.” He hoisted her up, gave her a toss. The mutinous little face went sugar sweet and bright with smiles. Pretending to pout, Hayley finished pouring her beer.

“Shows where I am in her pecking order.”

“You got the beer, I got the kid.”

Lily wrapped an arm around Harper’s neck, dipped her head to rest it on his cheek. Hayley nodded, lifted her glass. “Looks like.”

IT WAS WONDERFUL to have everyone around the table again, the whole Harper House family, as Hayley thought of them, sitting together, diving into David’s honey-glazed ham.

She’d missed having a big family. Growing up, it had been just Hayley and her father. Not that she’d felt deprived, she thought, not in any way. She and her father had been a team, a unit, and he was—had been—the kindest, funniest, warmest man she’d ever known.

But she’d missed having meals like this, a full table, lots of voices—even the arguments and drama that went hand-in-hand in her mind with big families.

Lily would grow up with that, because Roz had welcomed them. So Lily would have a lifetime of meals like this one, full of aunts and uncles and cousins. Grandparents, she thought, stealing a glance toward Roz and Mitch. And when Roz’s other sons, or Mitch’s son, came to visit, it would just add to the rich family stew.

One day, Roz’s sons, and Mitch’s Josh, would get married. Probably have a herd of kids between them.

She shifted her gaze toward Harper and ordered herself to ignore the little ache that came from thinking of him married, making babies with some woman whose face she couldn’t see.

Of course, she’d be beautiful, that was a given. Probably blonde and built and blue-blooded. The bitch.

Whoever she turned out to be, whatever she looked like or was like, Hayley determined she’d make friends. Even if it killed her.

“Something wrong with the potatoes?” David murmured beside her.

“Hmm. No. They’re awesome.”

“Just wondered why you looked like you were forcing down some bad-tasting medicine, sugar.”

“Oh, just thought about something I’m going to have to do, and won’t like. Life’s full of them. But that doesn’t include eating these potatoes. In fact, I was wondering if you could show me how to cook some things. I can cook pretty good. Daddy and I split that chore, and we were both okay with the basics—I could even get a little fancy now and then. But Lily’s growing up on your cooking, so I ought to be able to fix it for her myself when need be.”

“Hmm, a kitchen apprentice. One I can mold into my own likeness. Love to.”

When Lily began to drop the bits of food still on her tray delicately to the floor, Hayley popped up. “Guess who’s done.”

“Gavin, why don’t you and Luke take Lily outside and play awhile?”

“Oh.” Hayley shook her head at Stella’s suggestion. “I don’t want them to have to mind her.”

“We can do it,” Gavin piped up. “She likes to chase the ball and the Frisbee.”

“Well . . .” At nearly ten, Gavin was tall for his age. And at just-turned-eight, Luke was right behind him. They could—and had—handled Lily at play on the backyard grass. “I don’t mind if you don’t, and she’d love it. But when you’re tired of her, you just bring her back.”

“And as a reward, ice cream sundaes later.”

David’s announcement got a couple of cheers.

When playtime was over, the sundaes devoured, Hayley carried Lily up to get her ready for bed, and Stella brought the boys up to the sitting room they’d once shared to watch television.

“Roz and Mitch want an Amelia talk,” Stella told her. “I didn’t know if you’d gotten the word.”