“Pretty much all the way.”

“Damn it, Hayley, I mean how far along, or whatever you call it?”

“I think about six weeks. Five or six.”

“How big is it in there?”

She dragged a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. About as big as a kernel of rice.”

“Wow.” He stared at her belly, laid a hand on it. “Wow. When does it start to move around? When does it get, like, fingers or toes?”

“Harper, can we focus here?”

“I don’t know any of this stuff. I want to know. You need to go to the doctor, right?” He grabbed her hand. “We should go now.”

“I don’t need to go to the doctor now. Harper, what are we going to do?”

“What do you mean what are we going to do. We’re going to have a baby. Holy shit!” He plucked her right off the stool and a half a foot off the ground. The face he tilted up to hers was split with a dazzled grin. “We’re going to have a baby.”

She had to brace her hands on his shoulders. “You’re not mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

Now she felt dizzy, overwhelmed, shaken to the core. “Because. Because.”

He lowered her, slowly, back onto the stool. And now his voice was careful and cool. “You don’t want the baby.”

“I don’t know. How can I think about what I want? How can I think at all?”

“Pregnancy affects brain waves. Interesting.”

“I—”

“But, okay, I’ll do the thinking. You go to the doctor so we’re sure everything’s okay in there. We get married. And next spring we have a baby.”

“Married? Harper, people shouldn’t get married just because—”

Though he leaned back against the worktable, he still managed to hedge her in. “In my world, where the sky’s blue, people who love each other and are having babies get married all the time. Maybe this is a little ahead of our regularly scheduled program, but it’s the kind of bulletin you pay attention to.”

“We had a regularly scheduled program?”

“I did.” He reached over to tuck her hair behind her ears, then tugged gently at the ends. “I want you, you know I do. I want the baby. We’re going to do this right, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“So you’re ordering me to marry you.”

“I had planned to charm you into it, at some point a little farther down the road. But since the timing’s changed—and pregnancy’s jammed your power of thought—we’re going this way.”

“You’re not even upset.”

“No, I’m not upset.” He paused a moment as if taking stock. “A little scared, a lot awed. Man, Lily’s going to love this. Baby brother or sister to torment. Wait till I tell my brothers they’re going to be uncles. What till I tell Mama she’s going to be a . . .”

“Grandmother,” Hayley finished and nodded, subversively pleased to see a flicker of doubt in his eyes at last. “Just how do you think she’s going to feel about that?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

“I can’t—just can’t take all this in.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples as if it would stop her head from spinning. “I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” Dropping her hands in her lap, she stared at him. “Harper, you don’t think this is a mistake?”

“Our baby’s not a mistake.” He gathered her in, felt her breath give a hitch as she struggled with tears. “But it’s one hell of a surprise.”

Chapter Eighteen

HE WENT IN and out of a daze for the rest of the day. There was a lot to be considered, worked out, planned. The initial steps were crystal to him, as clear and precise as the initial steps in any graft.

They would get Hayley into the doctor, get her and the baby checked out. He’d start reading up on baby stuff—womb stuff—so that he understood the process, got sharper images in his head of what was going on in there.

They’d get married as soon as possible, but not so fast it had to be something rushed and cold and practical. He didn’t want that for Hayley, or when he thought it through, for himself.

He wanted to get married at Harper House. In the gardens he helped tend, in the shadow of the house where he’d grown up. He wanted to make his promises to Hayley there, and he realized, to make them to Lily there, and to this new child who was now the size of a grain of rice.

This was what he wanted, what he had, somehow, been moving toward all of his life. It was something he’d never thought about before, and knew now as surely as he knew his own name.

Hayley and Lily would move into the carriage house. He’d speak to his mother about adding on to it, giving it more space while staying true to the heart and the traditional style.

More space for their children, he thought, so that they, too, could grow up in Harper House, with its gardens, its woods, its history that would be theirs as it was his.

He could see all of that, he could know all of that. But what he couldn’t see was the child. The child he’d helped create.

A grain of rice? How could something so small be so huge? And already be so loved?

But now there was a step that had to be taken before the others.

He found his mother in the garden, adding a few asters and mums to one of her beds.

She wore thin cotton gloves, soiled with seasons of work. Cropped cotton pants, the color of bluebonnets that were already smudged with the greens and browns of the task she performed. Her feet were bare, and he could see the backless slides she’d stepped out of before she’d knelt at the border.

When he’d been a child, he’d believed her to be invincible, almost supernatural. She knew everything whether you wanted her to or not. She’d had the answers when he’d needed them, had given him hugs—and the occasional licks. Some of which he’d still like to dispute.

Most of all she’d been there, unfailingly been there. In the best times, in the worst, and all the times between.

Now, it would be his turn.

She tilted her head up as he approached, absently brushed the back of her hand over her brow. It struck him how beautiful she was, her hat tipped over her eyes, her face serene.

“Had a good day,” she said. “Thought I’d extend it and fluff up this bed. Gonna rain tonight.”