Exhausted and exhilarated, Stella stepped into the house. Though it was past their bedtime, she expected her boys to come running, but had to make do with an ecstatic Parker. She picked him up, kissed his nose as he tried to bathe her face.
"Guess what, my furry little pal? We had a baby today. Our first girl."
She shoved at her hair, and immediately got the guilts. Roz had left the hospital before she had, and was probably upstairs dealing with the kids.
She started toward the steps when Logan strolled into the foyer. "Big day."
"The biggest," she agreed. She hadn't considered he'd be there, and was suddenly and acutely aware that her duties as labor coach had sweated off all of her makeup. In addition, she couldn't imagine she was smelling, her freshest.
"I can't thank you enough for taking on the boys."
"No problem. I got a couple of good holes out of them. You may need to burn their clothes."
"They've got more. Is Roz up with them?"
"No. She's in the kitchen. David's back there whipping something together, and I heard a rumor about champagne."
"More champagne? We practically swam in it at the hospital. I'd better go up and settle down the troops."
"They're out for the count. Have been since just before nine. Digging holes wears a man out."
"Oh. I know you said you'd bring them back when I called to tell you about the baby, but I didn't expect you to put them to bed."
"They were tuckered. We had ourselves a manly shower, then they crawled into bed and were out in under five seconds."
"Well. I owe you big."
"Pay up."
He crossed to her, slid his arms around her and kissed her until her already spinning head lifted off her shoulders.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Yeah. But in the best possible way."
He danced his fingers over her hair, and kept his other arm around her. "How's the new kid on the block and her mama?"
"They're great. Hayley's a wonder. Steady as a rock through seven hours of labor. And the baby might be a couple weeks early, but she came through like a champ. Only a few ounces shy of Gavin's birth weight, though it took me twice as long to convince him to come out."
"Make you want to have another?"
She went a few shades more pale. "Oh. Well."
"Now I've scared you." Amused, he slung an arm around her shoulder. "Let's go see what's on the menu with that champagne."
* * *
He hadn't scared her, exactly. But he had made her vaguely uneasy. She was just getting used to having a relationship, and the man was making subtle hints about babies.
Of course, it could have been just a natural, offhand remark under the circumstances. Or a kind of joke.
Whatever the intent, it got her thinking. Did she want more children? She'd crossed that possibility off her list when Kevin died and had ruthlessly shut down her biological clock. Certainly she was capable, physically, of having another child. But it took more than physical capability, or should, to bring a child into the world.
She had two healthy, active children. And was solely and wholly responsible for them - emotionally, financially, morally. To consider having another meant considering a permanent relationship with a man. Marriage, a future, sharing not only what she had but building more, and in a different direction.
She'd come to Tennessee to visit her own roots, and to plant her family in the soil of her own origins. To be near her father, and to allow her children the pleasure of being close to grandparents who wanted to know them.
Her mother had never been particularly interested, hadn't enjoyed seeing herself as a grandmother. It spoiled the youthful image, Stella thought.
If a man like Logan had blipped onto her mother's radar, he'd have been snapped right up.
And if that's why Stella was hesitating, it was a sad state of affairs. Undoubtedly part of it, though, she decided. Otherwise she wouldn't be thinking it.
She hadn't disliked any of her stepfathers. But she hadn't bonded with them either, or they with her. How old had she been the first time her mother had remarried? Gavin's age, she remembered. Yes, right around eight.
She'd been plucked out of her school and plunked down in a new one, a new house, new neighborhood, and dazed by it all while her mother had been in the adrenaline rush of having a new husband.
That one had lasted, what? Three years, four? Somewhere between, she decided, with another year or so of upheaval while her mother dealt with the battle and debris of divorce, another new place, a new job, a new start.
And another new school for Stella.
After that, her mother had stuck with boyfriends for a long stretch. But that itself had been another kind of upheaval, having to survive her mother's mad dashes into love, her eventual bitter exit from it.
And they were always bitter, Stella remembered.
At least she'd been in college, living on her own, when her mother had married yet again. And maybe that was part of the reason that marriage had lasted nearly a decade. There hadn't been a child to crowd things. Yet eventually there'd been another acrimonious divorce, with the split nearly coinciding with her own widowhood.
It had been a horrible year, in every possible way, which her mother had ended with yet one more brief, tumultuous marriage.
Strange that even as an adult, Stella found she couldn't quite forgive being so consistently put into second or even third place behind her mother's needs.
She wasn't doing that with her own children, she assured herself. She wasn't being selfish and careless in her relationship with Logan, or shuffling her kids to the back of her heart because she was falling in love with him.
Still, the fact was it was all moving awfully fast. It would make more sense to slow things down a bit until she had a better picture.
Besides, she was going to be too busy to think about marriage. And she shouldn't forget he hadn't asked her to marry him and have his children, for God's sake. She was blowing an offhand comment way out of proportion.
Time to get back on track. She rose from her desk and started for the door. It opened before she reached it.
"I was just going to find you," she said to Roz. "I'm on my way to pick up the new family and take them home."
"I wish I could go with you. I nearly postponed this meeting so I could." She glanced at her watch as if considering it again.
"By the time you get back from your meeting with Dr. Carnegie, they'll be all settled in and ready for some quality time with Aunt Roz."
"I have to admit I want my hands on that baby. So, now, what've you been fretting about?"
"Fretting?" Stella opened a desk drawer to retrieve her purse. "Why do you think I've been fretting about anything?"
"Your watch is turned around, which means you've been twisting at it. Which means you've been fretting. Something going on around here I don't know about?"
"No." Annoyed with herself, Stella turned her watch around. "No, it's nothing to do with work. I was thinking about Logan, and I was thinking about my mother."
"What does Logan have to do with your mother?" As she asked, Roz picked up Stella's thermos. After opening it and taking a sniff, she poured a few swallows of iced coffee in the lid.
"Nothing. I don't know. Do you want a mug for that?"
"No, this is fine. Just want a taste."
"I think - I sense - I'm wondering ... and I already sound like an ass." Stella took a lipstick from the cosmetic bag in her purse, and walking to the mirror she'd hung on the wall, she began to freshen her makeup. "Roz, things are getting serious between me and Logan."
"As I've got eyes, I've seen that for myself. Do you want me to say and, or do you want me to mind my own business?"
"And. I don't know if I'm ready for serious. I don't know that he is, either. It's surprising enough it turned out we like each other, much less ..." She turned back. "I've never felt like this about anyone. Not this churned up and edgy, and, well, fretful."
She replaced the lipstick and zipped the bag shut. "With Kevin, everything was so clear. We were young and in love, and there wasn't a single barrier to get over, not really. It wasn't that we never fought or had problems, but it was all relatively simple for us."
"And the longer you live, the more complicated life gets."
"Yes. I'm afraid of being in love again, and of crossing that line from this is mine to this is ours. That sounds incredibly selfish when I say it out loud."
"Maybe, but I'd say it's pretty normal."
"Maybe. Roz, my mother was - is - a mess. I know, in my head, that a lot of the decisions I've made have been because I knew they were the exact opposite of what she'd have done. That's pathetic."
"I don't know that it is, not if those decisions were right for you."
"They were. They have been. But I don't want to step away from something that might be wonderful just because I know my mother would leap forward without a second thought."
"Honey, I can look at you and remember what it was like, and the both of us can look at Hayley and wonder how she has the courage and fortitude to raise that baby on her own."
Stella let out a little laugh. "God, isn't that the truth?"
"And since it's turned out the three of us have connected as friends, we can give each other all kinds of support and advice and shoulders to cry on. But the fact is, each one of us has to get through what we get through. Me, I expect you'll figure this out soon enough. Figuring out how to make things come out right's what you do."
She set the thermos lid on the desk, gave Stella two light pats on the cheek. "Well, I'm going to scoot home and clean up a bit."
"Thanks, Roz. Really. If Hayley's doing all right once I get them home, I'll leave David in charge. I know we're shorthanded around here today."
"No, you stay home with her and Lily. Harper can handle things here. It's not every day you bring a new baby home."
* * *
And that was something Roz considered as she hunted for parking near Mitchell Carnegie's downtown apartment. It had been a good many years since there had been an infant in Harper House. Just how would the Harper Bride deal with that?
How would they all deal with it?
How would she herself handle the idea of her firstborn falling for that sweet single mother and her tiny girl? She doubted that Harper knew he was sliding in that direction, and surely Hayley was clueless. But a mother knew such things; a mother could read them on her son's face.
Something else to think about some other time, she decided, and cursed ripely at the lack of parking.
She had to hoof it nearly three blocks and cursed again because she'd felt obliged to wear heels. Now her feet were going to hurt, and she'd have to waste more time changing into comfortable clothes once this meeting was done.
She was going to be late, which she deplored, and she was going to arrive hot and sweaty.
She would have loved to have passed the meeting on to Stella. But it wasn't the sort of thing she could ask a manager to do. It dealt with her home, her family. She'd taken this particular aspect of it for granted for far too long.
She paused at the comer to wait for the light.
"Roz!"
The voice on the single syllable had her hackles rising. Her face was cold as hell frozen over as she turned and stared at - stared through - the slim, handsome man striding quickly toward her in glossy Ferragamos.
"I thought that was you. Nobody else could look so lovely and cool on a hot afternoon."
He reached out, this man she'd once been foolish enough to marry, and gripped her hand in both of his. "Don't you look gorgeous!"
"You're going to want to let go of my hand, Bryce, or you're going to find yourself facedown and eating sidewalk. The only one who'll be embarrassed by that eventuality is yourself."
His face, with its smooth tan and clear features, hardened. "I'd hoped, after all this time, we could be friends."
"We're not friends, and never will be." Quite deliberately, she took a tissue out of her purse and wiped the hand he'd touched. "I don't count lying, cheating sons of bitches among my friends."
"A man just can't make a mistake or find forgiveness with a woman like you."
"That's exactly right. I believe that's the first time you've been exactly right in your whole miserable life."
She started across the street, more resigned than surprised when he fell into step beside her. He wore a pale gray suit, Italian in cut. Canali, if she wasn't mistaken. At least that had been his designer of the moment when she'd been footing the bills.