“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.