She looked up at him and flashed him her sweetest smile. “We’ll see who cries for mercy,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
“You are just insanely cheerful today. It’s not natural,” Poppy said. She and Viola were taking a break at the Daily Grind coffee shop down the street from Sweet Surrender, while Jeffrey minded the store for them.
The endless blue sky stretched into eternity, and puffy white clouds hung suspended overhead, like a flock of lazy sheep. Viola idly doodled obscene stick figures with chalk on the chalkboard table top, and Poppy, scowling, used her napkin to erase the dirty parts before anyone saw.
“Smoking hot sex will do that for you. After I babysat last night, Jeffrey picked me up at my aunt’s house and took me back to his place, and I made fun of his Yuppie furniture, and then he made fun of my piercings, and then he threw me down on his stupid leather sectional couch and fucked me senseless.”
“Viola!” Poppy gasped, glancing around to make sure there was nobody close enough to overhear.
Her phone chirped, but she ignored it. She could see the bakery from where she was sitting, and since it didn’t seem to be under attack, she doubted it was anything urgent.
“Oh, Poppy, you’re a peddler of pornographic puff pastry. You don’t get to be a prude any more. And by the way, why aren’t you insanely cheerful too? Isn’t Rafe slipping you the beef salami, on the regular?”
“Hmmmph.” Poppy picked at her croissant. “It can’t last, you know.”
“What? That’s why you’re not glowing like someone who’s gotten the best nookie of her life? Because you’ve already decided it won’t work out?”
“I’m leaving in what, six or seven weeks? I have a job. I have a scholarship. I can’t give those up. It’s five hours away. Me living halfway across the state, and Rafe here in a city full of stick-thin beauty queens, throwing themselves at him with open legs?” She could hear the bitterness in her voice as she said it. She didn’t care.
“What does he say about it?” Viola asked, stirring her coffee.
Poppy’s phone rang again, but she ignored it.
“He says we should try to make it work. He says people do long distance relationships all the time, and I could come find a job here after I graduate, and he has lots of connections so he’d help me. But of course he’d say that; he’s a nice guy and he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. Then as soon as I leave he’ll forget I ever existed.”
“My God, I love you, Poppy, but you are a moron. I’ve seen the way he lights up when you come in the room. He looks at you like the sun rises and sets with you. And this is coming from me, and I’m the most cynical bitch on the planet.”
“Don’t, Viola.” Poppy was near tears as she shook her head and tore her croissant to pieces. “I can’t afford to hope, I really can’t.”
“What?” Viola snapped suddenly, but she wasn’t talking to Poppy, she was talking to a man sitting near them, who had been glancing at his newspaper and then glancing at them.
“What are you looking at?” Viola demanded.
“Aren’t you the lady who owns that bakery porn shop?” the man asked, openly staring Poppy. He held up the newspaper. “The one somebody tried to blow up?”
“What did you say?” Poppy leaped up, ran over, and grabbed the newspaper from his hand.
Apparently, somebody from the Port Rollins Telegraph had been at the chamber of commerce the meeting the night before, because there was a picture of Poppy talking to Henry Chenowith, and quotes from Henry about how the neighborhood had rallied behind the bakery that was being attacked. And quotes from a spokesperson at the police department. And her name was in the paper; they’d mistakenly identified her as the owner.
Poppy put the newspaper down and walked away, all the color draining from her face.
She fished around in her purse until she found her cell phone.
She knew who’d been trying to reach her all morning.
# # #
“Poppy, open the door! I know you’re in there!” Viola shouted
Poppy sat slumped at her desk, her head buried in her arms.
Fired. Expelled. Scholarship gone. Kicked out of her on-campus apartment, with her belongings already moved into a storage facility.
Halfway through law school, and her future had vanished like the early morning mist. Her job here would end as soon as Penelope was back on her feet, and then she would be broke and homeless.
The pounding on the office door grew more insistent. “Poppy! I am not kidding, open the damn door! I have something really important to tell you!” Viola yelled.
Then the doorknob started rattling as someone fiddled with the lock, and the door opened, but it was Rafe, not Viola, who walked in the office and shut the door behind him.
He looked far more cheerful than he should, considering that Poppy’s life was crashing down around her ears.
“Good afternoon, gorgeous. They caught him!” He beamed from ear to ear as he delivered the news.
“What?” She straightened up at her desk. “Seriously? Where, how? Tell me!”
“He was living in abandoned building on 39th street by the docks. They set up a stakeout and pounced on him when he returned to the building. They found the place he’d been staying, some more dud grenades, spraypaint, a flamethrower…”
At Poppy’s look of alarm, he added, “You really don’t want to know what all he had in there, actually.”
“No, I don’t,” she agreed hastily. “He didn’t hurt anyone when they arrested him, did they?”
“No, he tried to run, and they tasered him. From what Officer Renault told me, he was screaming about how his brother would rain fiery vengeance down from the heavens on us. But he doesn’t have a brother, so I think we’re safe there. But this takes the cake – they found the car that he used to run over your sister.”
“Oh my God. So they can charge him with attempted murder, and he won’t be getting out any time soon. How did he even have a car?”
“It was a stolen car, and he’d just left it parked in front of the warehouse where he was squatting. Apparently he moved it around the neighborhood regularly so it didn’t get parking tickets, which is why it wasn’t recovered earlier. There’s damage to the front of the vehicle where he hit Penelope. And shreds of what are believed to be her sweater. And strands of her hair. And-”
Poppy shuddered. “Stop right there. That’s all the details I need. But oh, thank God, that is a huge weight off my mind.” She sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair.
One problem solved.
“I heard that your school found out about you working at the bakery. So, you’re expelled and fired, Viola said?”
“Oh, so very expelled. They’re a religious school. I went there because they offered me a full scholarship and a job and on-campus housing, but as it so happens, they also have a morals clause, so my job, housing, and scholarship are now gone with the wind.”
“And there’s no hope of appeal?”
Her lips quirked in a rueful grin. “Trust me, there is no legal grounds for appeal. I would know; I’m almost a lawyer. Well, I almost was a lawyer.”
“There’s a law school in Port Rollins, you know, and it’s a state school. It doesn’t have a religious affiliation.” His caramel gaze met hers and held it. “You could stay here; now there’s nothing stopping you. Nothing at all.”
The familiar fear bloomed poisonously inside her, the self-doubt, the certainty that she would never really be loved. Staying here meant opening up her heart, it meant a real relationship with a man who stirred feelings in her that she’d never even dreamed were possible, and the possibility of real heartbreak.
Because she cared too much about Rafe. He could destroy her without even meaning to.
“But where would I live? What would I do for work? This job ends in a month and a half. And – no, just no. This isn’t going to work. Rafe, we can’t go on like this. I need to leave now. I need-“
She tri
ed to rush past him, but he blocked her way and then turned her body to the wall and pressed himself up against her, and the solid muscular wall of his body pinned her in place.
“You need me. And I need you.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers.
“You need this,” he murmured into her mouth. A wave of warmth washed over her and his mouth pressed against hers and his tongue forced her lips apart. For a second she struggled and then she responded, lips parting to accept his warm, probing tongue. His tongue swept through her mouth and he kissed her as if he were drowning and she was his only oxygen.
The rest of the world vanished and she was lost in a white hot haze of desire, and she felt his pelvis pressing against her.
“Now. I want you now. And I won’t let you go, ever,” Rafe said. “If you went back to Portland I’d come for you.”
He grabbed the elastic waist of her skirt and pushed it down and it puddled around her ankles.
For a brief moment she stiffened, panicked, thinking about Viola and the customers outside in the bakery, and the unlocked office door, and…
And then Rafe slid his fingers inside the leg of her baby blue lacy boy shorts and caressed the tiny rosebud of her clitoris with his thumb, and she gasped in pleasure.
Hands shaking, she grabbed his jeans and fumbled frantically at the snap, then the zipper, then yanked his pants down in one swift movement. His cock jutted upward from a thick thatch of curly brown hair, pointing straight up at the ceiling, and he pressed it against her golden curls.
“Tell me you want me too,” Rafe murmured. “Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she swallowed hard to clear the lump in her throat. When she spoke her voice was low and trembling. “You know I want you. I need you. I think about you every minute that you’re not here, and when you walk into the room, it’s as if the sun broke through the clouds. I’m falling in love with you.”
“Then why do you keep holding me at arm’s length?”
“Because…because I just can’t believe that a man like you would love me back,” she whispered.
“A man like me? Poppy, I’m far from perfect. And I do love you. And I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you.” The words were like an earthquake; she felt the world shifting under her feet.
He loved her? Rafe loved her? And he was saying it out loud?
He pressed against her urgently with the thick length of his erection, and his thrust was quick and hard, forcing his way into her so suddenly that she gasped with shock and pleasure.
“Say you love me too. Say you won’t leave,” he commanded, grasping her face with his hands and forcing her to look at him.
“I love you too. I won’t leave.” Her words came out in panting gasps.
He grasped her hips in his hands and began moving in and out, very slowly, and she whimpered and moved against him.
“No,” he breathed. “I’m going to make you really want it, like I want you. I ache when I’m not with you, Poppy. I’ve just met you…”
Thrust…pause…
“And already I can’t sleep without you in my arms…”
Thrust…pause…
“Please,” she begged, struggling in his grip, but he pinned her to the wall with his hands on her arms and kept up his slow maddening pace.
“I want to come…make me come…”she pleaded.
“That’s it, Poppy…I love it when you beg…I want to know how much you want me…Sweet baby…delicious Poppy…”
He increased the rhythm of his thrusts until he was pounding into her, and his breathing grew deep and harsh.
She felt the familiar, delicious heat bunching up inside her very core, deep in her pelvis, gathering tightly until finally it exploded into an avalanche of lava flowing through her and filling her with delirious heat and light. She shivered, low moans of animal pleasure rolling from her lips.
Rafe moaned aloud. “Oh, God. You’re so tight. I love how hard you come, I love how hard you squeeze me. Yessss….”his voice was a hiss of pleasure as his hips bucked and his body shuddered in delight.
Chapter Eighteen
“So, tell me, when are you going to relax and actually let yourself just enjoy life?”
A week had passed since David Barbossa had been arrested.
Viola, Rafe, Jeffrey and Poppy were sitting at an outside café table at The Beanbag Coffee shop, and Tomas, the baker, was watching the store for them.
“I am relaxed. This is me relaxing.” Poppy frowned at Viola.
Viola looked at her suspiciously. “I will grant you that I’ve never seen you fully relaxed, but I don’t think this is what you being relaxed should look like. The psycho has been arrested. There haven’t been any more attacks. You don’t have to go back to Portland, so there’s no reason that you and Rafe can’t go on screwing each other’s brains out forever. So what’s the problem?”
“First of all, language! Someday I will figure out how to make you behave yourself.”
“Doubt that,” Viola grinned insolently and sucked on a chocolate straw in a very unladylike fashion. Jeffrey smiled and slid his hand up her inner thigh.
Poppy turned to Rafe in exasperation. “Can’t you make them behave in public?”
“I’ve got as much influence over my brother as you have over Viola. Stop trying to avoid Viola’s question. She’s right, you’re wound tighter than a violin string these days. What’s bothering you?”
Poppy shook her head. “I honestly don’t know why I’m so tense right now. I mean, part of it is that I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of my life, where I’m going to work, if I can afford college…”
“You had a 4.0 average. You can get another scholarship,” Viola pointed out.
“It’s not just that. I have this weird, nagging feeling…this sort of dark cloud of worry off in the horizon. I feel like trouble’s waiting around the corner.”
Viola sighed and set down her coffee. “Maybe you’re just so used to carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders that you don’t know what happiness is supposed to feel like.”
“Maybe.” Poppy tried to sound chipper and happy, but failed. Viola gave her the skeptical eyebrow raise – she could never fool Viola – and sipped her coffee.
Rafe grabbed her hand, enfolding it in his, and despite the nagging worry that twisted inside her, she smiled. When Rafe held her, even when he just held her hand, the world was a warmer, safer place.
“Relax. Really. Everything will be…” his voice trailed off as his eyes lit on something behind Poppy. She turned around to see…Penelope. On crutches, with her yuppie boyfriend trailing along behind her. Alistair, she recalled Penelope calling him. She wore a floating flowery dress that hugged her slim figure, with a sandal on one foot and a cast running halfway up the leg of her other foot, and Alistair was carrying her flower-printed purse for her.
Apparently Penelope had indeed lied about how long she’d be laid up in the hospital.
And the gloating smile on her face promised disaster.
Viola leaped to her feet, fists clenched. Jeffrey jumped up too, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Down, girl. She’s not worth it.”
“So, Penelope, you’re looking much less crippled then I’d like. How about I do something about that?” Viola glowered, shaking Jeffrey’s hand off her shoulder.
Penelope ignored her, turning to Rafe. “So, they arrested the guy who was targeting my bakery, and cleared me as a suspect. I just got a copy of the final report from the insurance company. And I was ever so fascinated to see the name of the investigator on the report. When were you going to tell her?”
Poppy felt a sickening sensation in her stomach, as if she were in an elevator in free-fall.
“Tell me what?” she asked Rafe, who had gone very still.
He turned to face her, with devastation spreading across her face. “I was going to tell you.”
“Oh, sure you were,” Penelop
e taunted. “Right before you dumped her on her big, fat ass.”
“You are treading very dangerous ground here,” Viola snapped, sparks of rage flying from her eyes.
Rafe’s face darkened like a thundercloud. “I’d watch how you speak to your sister. And I am not dumping her. Now or ever.”
But he didn’t deny what Penelope said.
Poppy swung to face him, and she knew that all the color had drained from her face.
“Is it true?” she asked him, in a small, quiet voice. Hot tears burned her eyes, but she blinked hard, refusing to let them spill.
“Yes. It’s true,” he said, voice heavy with regret. “Because of Penelope’s past fraud convictions, the insurance company decided to investigate this very thoroughly. They hired my uncle’s company to investigate all the claims she was filing. They’ve been losing a lot of money to insurance fraud, and they are looking to aggressively prosecute and make a very public example of the businesses that file fraudulent claims. And I am so very, very sorry I didn’t tell you in the beginning, but it has nothing to do with us.”
“Oh, I think it does,” Poppy murmered. She thought she might faint.
“Past fraud convictions?” Viola glared at Penelope. “Did you know Penelope had been convicted of fraud?”
“No,” Poppy said faintly. “But then, she lies to me quite a lot.”
“But not this time.” Penelope’s eyes gleamed with malice. “I was right, you know. You are just like our mother – stupid enough to believe that a decent man would ever love you.”
A wave of sorrow washed over Poppy, because she knew Penelope was right.
Rafe’s sudden interest in her, his insistence on going to the hospital with her to interrogate Penelope, the way he involved himself in the investigation and hung around the shop all the time, all those questions he’d asked her, when she thought it was her that he was interested in…it all made sense now. He’d been using her to gain access to Sweet Surrender and Penelope. He’d never cared about her at all
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