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calculating, dissecting. And the lust in her belly had gone from tangled knot to rock-hard ball.
    She could do something here. Make her mark over the excellent foundation another woman had built. She could help improve, expand, refine.
    Fulfilled? she thought. Challenged? Hell, she’d be so busy, she’d be fulfilled and challenged every minute of every day.
    It was perfect.
    There were the white scoop-shaped greenhouses, work-tables, display tables, awnings, screens, sprinklers. Stella saw it brimming with plants, thronged with customers. Smelling of growth and possibilities.
    Then Roz opened the door to the propagation house, and Stella let out a sound, just a quiet one she couldn’t hold back. And it was pleasure.
    The smell of earth and growing things, the damp heat. The air was close, and she knew her hair would frizz out insanely, but she stepped inside.
    Seedlings sprouted in their containers, delicate new growth spearing out of the enriched soil. Baskets already planted were hung on hooks where they’d be urged into early bloom. Where the house teed off there were the stock plants, the parents of these fledglings. Aprons hung on pegs, tools were scattered on tables or nested in buckets.
    Silently she walked down the aisles, noting that the containers were marked clearly. She could identify some of the plants without reading the tags. Cosmos and columbine, petunias and penstemon. This far south, in a few short weeks they’d be ready to be laid in beds, arranged in patio pots, tucked into sunny spaces or shady nooks.
    Would she? Would she be ready to plant herself here, to root here? To bloom here? Would her sons?
    Gardening was a risk, she thought. Life was just a bigger one. The smart calculated those risks, minimized them, and worked toward the goal.
    “I’d like to see the grafting area, the stockrooms, the offices.”
    “All right. Better get you out of here. Your suit’s going to wilt.”
    Stella looked down at herself, spied the green boots. Laughed. “So much for looking professional.”
    The laugh had Roz angling her head in approval. “You’re a pretty woman, and you’ve got good taste in clothes. That kind of image doesn’t hurt. You took the time to put yourself together well for this meeting, which I neglected to do. I appreciate that.”
    “You hold the cards, Ms. Harper. You can put yourself together any way you like.”
    “You’re right about that.” She walked back to the door, gestured, and they stepped outside into a light, chilly drizzle. “Let’s go into the office. No point hauling you around in the wet. What are your other reasons for moving back here?”
    “I couldn’t find any reason to stay in Michigan. We moved there after Kevin and I were married—his work. I think, I suppose, I’ve stayed there since he died out of a kind of loyalty to him, or just because I was used to it. I’m not sure. I liked my work, but I never felt—it never felt like my place. More like I was just getting from one day to the next.”
    “Family?”
    “No. No, not in Michigan. Just me and the boys. Kevin’s parents are gone, were before we married. My mother lives in New York. I’m not interested in living in the city or raising my children there. Besides that, my mother and I have ... tangled issues. The way mothers and daughters often do.”
    “Thank God I had sons.”
    “Oh, yeah.” She laughed again, comfortably now. “My parents divorced when I was very young. I suppose you know that.”
    “Some of it. As I said, I like your father, and Jolene.”
    “So do I. So rather than stick a pin in a map, I decided to come here. I was born here. I don’t really remember, but I thought, hoped, there might be a connection. That it might be the place.”
    They walked back through the retail center and into a tiny, cluttered office that made Stella’s organized soul wince. “I don’t use this much,” Roz began. “I’ve got stuff scattered between here and the house. When I’m over here,