“Yeah.” Automatically he glanced up at the sky. “Hoping for a nice soaker.”

“Your mouth, God’s ear.” She squinted against the sun as she studied him. “My, don’t you have your serious face on. You gonna sit down here so I don’t get a crick in my neck?”

He crouched. “I need to talk to you.”

“You usually do when you have your serious face on.”

“Hayley’s pregnant.”

“Well.” She set down her trowel, very carefully. “Well, well, well.”

“She just found out today. She thinks about six weeks. She got the symptoms—I guess you call them symptoms—mixed up with everything else that’s going on.”

“I can see how that might happen. Is she all right?”

“A little upset, a little scared, I guess.”

She reached up, took off his sunglasses, looked into his eyes. “How about you?”

“I’ve been taking it in. I love her, Mama.”

“I know you do. Are you happy, Harper?”

“I’m a lot of things. Happy’s one of them. I know this isn’t how you’d hoped I would do things.”

“Harper, it doesn’t matter what I hoped or want.” Carefully she selected a blue aster, set it in the hole she’d already dug. Her hands worked, tucking it in, patting the earth as she spoke. “What matters is what you and Hayley want. What matters is that little girl, and the child you’ve started.”

“I want Lily. I want to marry Hayley and make Lily mine, legally. I want this baby. And I know it might seem like I’ve just dropped a pill into a glass of water. Pow, instant family, but . . . Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

“I’m entitled to cry when my firstborn tells me he’s making me a grandmother. I’m damn well entitled to a few tears. Where the hell is my bandanna?”

He pulled it out of her back pocket, handed it to her.

“I’ve got to sit all the way down a minute.” She plopped down on her butt, wiped her eyes, blew her nose. “You know this day’s going to come. From the moment you hold your child in your arms, you know. It’s not your first thought, even a conscious one, but it’s there, this knowledge that the thread’s spinning out. Life cycles. Women know them. And gardeners. Harper.”

She opened her arms to him. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

“Yeah.” Because he could, he always could, he pressed his face to the strong line of her neck.

“And I’m going to be a grandmama. Two for one.” She drew back, kissed his cheeks. “I love that little girl. She’s already ours. I want you and Hayley to know I feel that way. That I’m happy for you. Even if you did manage to do this so the new baby arrives during our busiest season.”

“Oops. Didn’t think of that.”

“I forgive you.” She laughed, then pulled off her gloves so she could take his hands, flesh to flesh. “You asked her to marry you?”

“Sort of. Mostly I told her she was going to. And don’t give me that look.”

Her eyebrows stayed raised, her eyes steely. “It’s exactly the look you deserve.”

“I’m going to take care of it.” He looked down at their joined hands, then lifted hers, one by one, to his lips. “I love you, Mama. You set the bar high.”

“What bar is that?”

He looked back up, into her eyes. “I couldn’t settle for anybody I loved or respected less than I love and respect you.”

Tears swam again. “I’m going to need more than that bandanna in a minute.”

“I’m going to give her the best I’ve got. And to start, I’d like to have Grandmama’s rings. Grandmama Harper’s engagement and wedding rings. You said once when I got married—”

“That’s my boy.” With her lips curved, she kissed him lightly. “That’s the man I raised. I’ll get them for you.”

ONE OF THE other things he’d never imagined was how he’d propose to a woman. To the woman. A fancy dinner and wine? A lazy picnic? A giant WILL YOU MARRY ME? on the scoreboard screen at a game.

How weak was that?

The best, he decided, was the place and the tone that suited them both.

So he took her for a walk in the gardens at twilight.

“I don’t feel right about your mother riding herd on Lily again. I’m pregnant, not handicapped.”

“She wanted to. And I wanted an hour alone with you. Don’t—don’t go there. God, it’s getting so I can see what’s going on in your head. I’m crazy about Lily, and I’m not going to spend time telling you what’s so damn obvious.”

“I know. I know you are. I just can’t settle into all this. It’s not like I went jumping into bed all over two states. But here I am, for the second time.”

“No, this time is different. This is the first time. See that flowering plum?”

“I can only tell—or tell sometimes—when they’re blooming.”

“This one.” He stopped, reached up to touch one of the glossy green leaves. “My parents planted this right after I was born. We’ll plant one for Lily, and we’ll plant one for this baby. But see this one? It’s got nearly thirty years on it now, and they planted it for me. I always felt good about that. Always felt this was one of my places, right here. We’ll be making other places, you and me, but we’ll start here, with one that already is.”

He took the box out of his pocket, watched her lips tremble open, her gaze shoot up to his face. “Oh my God.”

“I’m not getting down on one knee. I’m not going to feel like an ass when I do this.”

“I think it had something to do with him pledging his loyalty. I mean that’s why guys started the one-knee thing.”

“You’ll just have to take my word on mine. I want this life we’ve started. Not just the baby, but what we’ve started together. You and me, and Lily, and now this baby. I want to live that life with you. You’re the first woman I’ve loved. You’ll be the last.”

“Harper, you—you really do take my breath away.”

He opened the box, smiled a little when he saw her eyes widen. “This was my grandmother’s. Kind of an old-fashioned setting, I guess.”