Red Lily (In the Garden 3)

“I’m saying, if I were you, I’d want to find out for sure.”

“He slept with her. Okay, okay,” she muttered when Stella stared at her. “Before, and before is before, blah blah. But she was so pretty. She had a great body, and those dark, exotic eyes. And this sheen, you know, this polish. Oh, hell.”

“You’re going to go talk to him.”

“I guess.”

“Want me to keep Lily while you do?”

“No.” Hayley let out a long sigh. “She needs her supper soon, and besides, if I take her with me we’re not as likely to yell at each other.”

“All right. You can call me if you want, let me know how it goes. Or you can just come back over. I’ll break out the Ben and Jerry’s.”

“Way I’m feeling, I’ll need a full quart.”

SHE HAD LILY’S hand in hers when she knocked on the door of the carriage house. He hadn’t been long out of the shower, she noted when he answered. His hair was still damp. But if the grim set of his face was any barometer, it hadn’t cooled him off.

“I’d like to talk to you.” She said it briskly. “If you have the time.”

He simply bent down to pick up Lily who’d already wrapped her arms around his leg. He turned, without a word for Hayley, and carried the baby back toward the kitchen. “Hey, pretty girl. Look what we got here.”

One-handed, he opened a cupboard, took out a couple of plastic bowls, then rooted through a drawer for a big plastic spoon. He set them, and Lily, on the floor where she immediately went to town banging.

“Want a drink?” he said to Hayley.

“No, no, I don’t. I want to ask you—”

“I’m having a beer. You want any milk or juice for Lily?”

“I didn’t bring her sippy cup.”

“I have one.”

“Oh.” The fact that he did threw her off, made her heart start to melt. “She could have a little juice. You have to dilute it.”

“I’ve seen the routine.” He fixed the juice, handed it to Lily, then got out a beer. “So?” He took a long gulp.

“I wanted to ask—No, I wanted to say that I know we haven’t made any sort of commitment to each other. But sleeping with someone is a form of commitment to me, enough of one that it’s insulting to see the person I’m sleeping with kissing and flirting with another woman. And I don’t find that unreasonable.”

He took another pull, slowly, thoughtfully. “You know if you’d put it that way to begin with, you wouldn’t have insulted me, or pissed me off. I’m going to repeat that I was flirting with Dory, but not the way you mean.”

“If you come on to all women the way—”

“Or coming on to her. And be careful or you’ll piss me off again. If you want to know what was going on, why don’t you ask?”

“I don’t like being in this position.”

“Well, neither do I. If that’s the way you want to leave it, I need to throw something together for dinner. I missed lunch.”

“Fine.” She started to bend down for Lily, then stopped. “Why are you so hard?”

“Why are you so mistrustful?”

“I saw you. She had her arms around you. She put her hands in your damn pockets and felt your ass. You weren’t exactly fighting her off, Harper.”

“Okay, you’ve got a point. It was something she used to do, and I didn’t think much about it when she did it today. I was thinking more how I was going to tell her I couldn’t pick things up with her, couldn’t see her beyond the friendship thing because I was with somebody else.”

“How long does it take to say that?”