The potato and the peeler both fell onto the cutting board and Delilah looked up in fury, wiping her hands on her apron. “Is this funny to you, Harper? Some sort of joke? You’re having a child with a man who you barely know, a man your father and I have never met.”

“Yes, but the part where you and Dad have never met him will be rectified in…” Harper made a dramatic show of looking at her watch. “Oh, about three hours.”

“Is this still you trying to be funny? Because I’m not seeing the humor here.”

Harper wondered if her mother saw the humor anywhere. “I know, Mom. But I don’t know what else you want me to do. You’re going to meet him tonight. We are coming straight here. Not even stopping at my apartment beforehand.”

“So he’s staying with you?” Her lips pursed even tighter, something that Harper didn’t even think was possible.

“Yes. He will be staying with me while he’s in town.”

“I’m not happy about that.”

“I know, Mom, but my time with him is already limited and I’m not going to waste any of it driving back and forth from wherever he would be staying.”

“Is he going to be sleeping on the couch?”

“Probably not.” God, was she really having this conversation with her mother? Besides the fact that it was more than somewhat painful/awkward, she really had no idea what was going to happen with Liam in the sexy times department.

Though if she were entirely honest with herself, she was hoping they wouldn’t be doing all that much sleeping in her bed. Her wanting him definitely had not changed…and good Lord the last few weeks on the phone felt like the longest foreplay of her life.

“See. You have no regard for your actions.” Delilah shook her head as she picked up the potato and peeler again.

Tppt-tppt-tppt-tppt-tppt-tppt.

“It isn’t like the full consequences of my actions haven’t already been realized.” Harper waved her hand down in front of her belly as her mother looked up, dropping the now peeled potato into the pot.

“Oh, so you’ve already sinned so you might as well sin some more?” She grabbed another potato.

“I didn’t say that.” Harper rolled her eyes and was thankful that her mother’s gaze was directed down again. “Do you think Brad and I weren’t having sex, too?”

For the second time another clatter of potato and peeler hit the cutting board. “Are you deliberately trying to upset me?” Delilah asked. “I know that anything and everything with Brad is good and truly out the window at this point. There is no need to rub it in my face.”

“You think that’s what I’m trying to do? Because it’s not. You’ve put Brad on this pedestal that you refuse to take him down from even though he left me. He. Left. Me. You do know this, right? He called off the wedding. Not me. He didn’t love me, Mom. So why can’t you let it go? Let him go?” Harper’s voice had progressively gotten louder as she’d gone on. By the end of it, she was surprised by the max volume she’d reached.

And so was Delilah, whose eyes had gone wide with anger and righteous indignation. But a second later that look was gone as her mother’s entire face fell. Delilah averted her eyes for a second while she took a deep breath, trying to collect herself.

And the next words that came out of Delilah’s mouth were the very last that Harper ever expected to hear.

“Because when he left I lost part of you,” she whispered.

“What?”

Delilah’s eyes came up and she focused on her daughter. “Brad was the first relationship you shared with us. The first man you introduced to your father and me. The first time you let us in to that aspect of your life. And I saw quite clearly how happy you were with him, and how much it devastated you when everything fell apart.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“Mom?”

“I just wanted it to go back to how it was. Where you shared that part of yourself with us. Because when he was around, that perpetual wall between us was lower. I could look over it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t let go of Brad, it was that I couldn’t let go of you. When he left you shut me out completely. That wall was higher and thicker than ever. So him coming back was the only solution I could think of.”

Harper was pretty sure she was going to need someone to come along and pick her jaw up from off the floor. “I had no idea,” she said when she managed to find her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t know how to.” Delilah started to blink rapidly and turned away again.

Well, this had been…unexpected. Harper had never known her mother felt that way.

She reached across the counter and grabbed her mother’s hand, whose gaze came up again immediately. Delilah’s eyes were brimming with tears. Harper was long used to tears of anger coming from her mother, but not tears of this caliber.

It was slightly unnerving, and causing her own eyes to mist up.

“Mom, you and I need to work on our communication skills with each other.”

“Yes. We do.” She nodded as she reached up with her free hand and ran her fingers under each eye.

“You should know that I shut everyone out after Brad left. It wasn’t just you.” Harper let go of her mom’s hand and rounded the island.

Delilah didn’t hesitate, pulling her daughter in for a hug. They stood there for a good couple of minutes, both of them sniffling.

“I want you to be a part of my life, without walls,” Harper whispered before she pulled back and looked into her mother’s face. “But you’ve got to let Brad go. And you’ve got to give Liam a chance. I know that the circumstances aren’t the best, but he’s a good guy…a great guy in fact. One who didn’t walk away from me, even when I walked away from him.”

“He’s still going to have to earn my approval,” Delilah said resolutely.

“I think he’s up for the challenge.”

Or at least she sure as hell hoped so.

*  *  *

The show the night before ended just before eleven o’clock, and afterward Liam went out for a drink with Isaac and Hunter. He needed something to rebound from the foul mood Kiki had put him in…and from the news he’d gotten from his manager.

It wasn’t “Forever” that Kiki had been cast in, but she was going to be in a video with him.

Liam had collaborated with Isaac and Hunter for a couple of songs on their last album, and the next one getting released was “Beyond the Limits.” Their label had this genius idea to connect the song to the beyond the law aspect of Mason-Dixon, which meant that a number of the female cast members were going to be in it. Liam, Isaac, and Hunter would be playing the love interests.

Liam’s partner? Kiki.

He’d lost it.

But there was nothing to do to change it. Their record label and the show had already struck up a deal. The contracts had been signed, sealed, and delivered. And Liam wasn’t exactly in a position in his career to be making demands of the caliber it would take to change it.

The tie-in with the show was an obvious one, and it was going to give Liam a hell of a lot of exposure. As his album was coming out in a matter of months, exposure like this wasn’t something he could really argue with.

So he was just going to have to suck it up and deal. He didn’t have to be happy about it, though. And really he needed to push all of the nonsense to the back of his brain for now. It wasn’t what he should be focused on when his plane landed at the airport in Tallahassee.

No, what he needed to be focused on was the fact that he was going to see Harper. And that he was meeting her parents for the first time. For the moment that was all that was important. A really good first impression was a must, and him being in a bad mood wasn’t going to help that in the slightest.

Add to that the fact that he had a serious case of nerves that he was going to see her—What? He couldn’t help it. The woman messed with his emotions—and he was more than a little sluggish.