“If you’re referring to Kyle Montgomery, he is not my new choice. He’s just…”

Penny waited expectantly, her eyes sparkling with expectation. “Just handsome enough to make even my old bones sit up and take notice?”

“You’re not old.”

Penny chuckled. “Old enough to know a perfect match when I see one. A grown man doesn’t track down a landlady at a church committee meeting to gain access to his young lady’s apartment where he proceeds to fill it with every flower known to humankind if he’s not totally smitten.”

Totally determined, totally insane and totally off-limits. “I don’t even know the man,” Emma insisted. “I met him just this morning.”

A fact that seemed to delight Penny even more. “Well, you certainly made an impression on him,” she said. “I’ll leave you to rest now, but I’ll come back this evening with some supper for you.”

“You don’t have to do that, Penny. I can manage.”

Penny stopped at the door and shook her head. “I know you can manage, sweetie. But sometimes you don’t have to do it all on your own, so let me help in the ways that I can.” She plucked a small white envelope out of the daisy arrangement and handed it to Emma. “Your admirer left this for you.” She winked and went out the door, shutting only the outer screen. Emma heard her footsteps on the stairway, then all was quiet again, except for the thumping of her pulse in her ears.

She nibbled the inside of her lip, turning the small envelope over in her fingers. He had nothing to say that she wanted to hear. Or, in this case, read.

“Oh, Emma, honestly. It’s just a card.” She tore open the envelope and pulled out the flat card.

Chandler is blessed to have such a lovely mother.

Emma’s eyes blurred. She looked down at her son to find him looking up at her. “We’re both blessed, aren’t we, pumpkin? I just figured that a man like Kyle Montgomery wouldn’t be able to see that.”

She lifted Chandler to her shoulder and readjusted her clothes. Kissing his cheek, she brought her legs up onto the couch and lay back, cradling him securely.

Then she closed her eyes and they both slept.

By the next morning Emma decided she owed her mother an apology. Hattie Valentine had had six daughters, managing to feed and clothe them all, for the most part single-handedly.

Emma, however, seemed to be completely out of her element with just one baby. Chandler wanted to eat every other hour, which meant she got very little sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night she gave up on the notion of having the baby sleep in his bassinet and just kept him in bed with her. She stacked diapers and wipes on the floor beside them and slept when he slept. Fed him when hungry, changed him when wet.

This was not at all the way it was supposed to go, according to her Now You Are a Mother! book which spouted tripe about four-hour schedules and other such nonsense.

By midmorning, her small home looked like a tornado had torn through it, leaving flowers and minute baby T-shirts and receiving blankets behind.

Penny came by, took in the chaos without a blink of surprise and shooed Emma into the bathroom where, she assured her, she’d feel better after a nice long shower.

“As soon as I’m under the water, he’ll be hungry,” Emma had protested tiredly. “I’ll shower…oh, I don’t know, when he’s two years old.”

Penny had laughed and scooped Chandler off Emma’s lap. “I think I hear a verse of the baby blues somewhere in there.” She’d waved toward the bathroom. “Go on now. You need a few minutes for yourself.”

Emma wasn’t so sure, but she’d gone. She looked at herself in the mirror, grimaced and turned on the shower. A half hour later she emerged to find her apartment tidied up, Chandler sleeping and Penny nowhere in sight.

“Sure,” she whispered lovingly over Chandler in the bassinet. “Now you sleep.”

A creak on the stairs outside told her someone was coming up. Probably Penny. Emma adjusted the strap of her red sundress and smoothed back her wet hair. “You were right,” she said as she went to the wood-framed screen door and pushed it open. “I do feel better.”

“My sisters always say that flowers make a woman feel better,” Kyle Montgomery said smoothly as he reached the top step and smiled at her. He looked dismayingly appealing in pleated khakis, a whiter-than-white collarless shirt and navy jacket. Laugh lines fanned out from his eyes. “Your landlady said you were up and about. You look very nice in red. Fresh as a wild poppy.”

Emma flushed. Her hair hung straight and wet to her shoulders, her feet were bare, and the poppy-red dress stretched too tightly across her chest. She crossed her arms and moistened her lips. “Thank you for the flowers and card. It was very nice.”

A smile flirted with his lips as he looked at her. “May I come in?”

Emma swallowed. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll probably end up being rude to you, and being surrounded by beautiful flowers from you when that happens seems like it’d be in poor taste.”

“Rude? Ah, Emma, I think you’ve just been honest. I’m glad you like the flowers, though. I have one sister who insists roses are the only flower worth receiving, but you didn’t seem like the rose type to me.”

“I’m allergic to them,” Emma said shortly. The last man to give her roses had thoroughly betrayed her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever disassociate roses from that awful time.

Kyle’s eyebrow peaked. “How fortunate I chose otherwise, then.” He reached past her through the doorway to the daisies sitting just inside and snapped off a bloom. He lifted his hand, frowning slightly when Emma gave a startled jump.

She clenched her teeth, flushing again when he tucked the short stem of the daisy behind her ear. She swallowed and stepped away from the door, silently allowing him entry.

He walked to the center of the living area, seeming to dominate the space. “How’s Chandler?”

Emma shut the screen quietly. “Fine. Sleeping at the moment.”

He nodded, glanced at the blank wall opposite the couch. “Why did you get rid of the piano?”

Emma frowned. “How do you know I had a piano?”

He walked over to the spot where her upright had stood for three years. He brushed a leather boot over the permanent indentations the heavy instrument had made in her taupe-colored carpet. “I noticed the marks on the rug earlier. Why, Emma?”

She shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve already come to your own conclusion.”

“You needed the money.”

“I had other payments that were more important,” she corrected.

“How long have you played?”

“The piano?” Not long enough. “Since I was thirteen.” She’d been caught sneaking into the church back in Dooley, Tennessee. But instead of hauling her back to her mother with a few strong words, Reverend Harold Chandler had decided Emma could use the piano twice a week in the afternoons after school. They couldn’t afford lessons, but Emma had used the music books at the church, and by the time she’d graduated from high school, she’d taught herself enough to earn a modest music scholarship.

She owed a lot to Reverend Chandler.

“I envy you,” he said.

She lifted her eyebrows. “Whatever for?”

He shrugged. “I took piano lessons when I was sixteen. Never did get the hang of it. I could play the notes, I guess. Just not…the music.”

Oh, she really didn’t want to hear anything like that from this man. It bespoke a sensitivity in him she didn’t want to acknowledge. It was easier, safer, casting him as the rich man intent on doing a business deal no matter what.

After all, it wasn’t as if her one foray into the man-woman arena had been a terrific success. Her judgment had been faulty, her sensibility nonexistent.

Emma nibbled the inside of her lip and sat down on the couch. “Isn’t it a workday, Kyle? Shouldn’t you be out running your business rather than discussing the finer aspects of being a musician?”