by Geri Krotow
He shook his head. “Kill the modesty, Poppy. You got me all pretty on the outside”—he motioned with his chin to his suit—“but more important, you played the role of inquisitor to a T. You were correct—the folks they sent were mostly civilian politicians. Only one had worked with the military when they served in the U.S. Navy years ago. No question was too simple or too complicated. And I was prepared.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, the warmth of his mouth too brief before he let go and leaned on his forearms. “I’ve got a good chance of landing this account, and you’re a big reason why.”
“I’m glad I could help.” It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she’d decided to set up shop in NOLA. But she couldn’t. It’d only place unreasonable expectations on what they shared.
Brandon detailed the interview and she replayed all the work they’d done together the last two weeks. It took effort to shove aside the visions of the incredible sex, something she’d have to address later, on her own, when Brandon wasn’t around to see her unguarded expressions. They had worked well together in and out of bed, and she had to admit the satisfaction that thrummed through her was the result of both of their recent successes. The same sense of purpose she’d had when she worked with Sonja down here in the bayou all those years ago, after Katrina had decimated the area.
“Here you go.” Their server placed large white china plates heaping with pancakes on the small table. “Will you be needing anything else?”
Brandon looked at the syrup on the table and shook his head. “Nope, I’m good. Poppy?”
“I’m good, too.”
* * * *
Brandon liked how Poppy dug into her flapjacks the same way she’d jumped into helping him prepare for the San Sofia negotiations. Her manners were impeccable, no doubt the result of her many social obligations in New York. But polite protocol couldn’t hide the way she devoured her brunch as if she never had to watch her calories. It reminded him of how she gave herself completely to sex, savoring each touch, each sensation. He adjusted his seat.
“Glad to see you’re enjoying your meal.”
She grinned through a mouthful of banana nut flapjacks, a drop of maple syrup on her chin. “Delicious.”
He leaned forward and swiped the syrup away with his forefinger, then licked it off. Poppy’s eyes grew wide and he laughed.
“You’re too easy a flirt, Poppy.”
She swallowed and took a long drink of her water.
“You’re relentless.”
He laughed. “What made you get into fashion?”
She studied him for a moment before sliding her gaze to the bright pink flower in the table’s vase.
“I never picked fashion as a career. I studied psychology in undergrad and expected to go into social work.”
“Social work. That’s a vocation, not a career.”
“Yeah, well, I wanted to give back to the world for being able to get out of—I mean, go to college in the city and start a new life.”
He leaned back, taking a break from his stack of flour and sugar. “You know about my family—all you need to know happened the wedding weekend. What about yours?” He watched her closely. She never brought her family up to him. He heard her talking on the phone and assumed it was to family but didn’t want to pry. And if she was speaking to a love interest, he didn’t want to know. Although Poppy didn’t strike him as the type to keep two or more guys on the line, not right after such a major breakup. And if he had his druthers he’d keep her occupied for the foreseeable future. As long as he got the ship contract. Without it he had nothing to offer her.
“Brandon, did you hear what I just said?”
“Sorry, I drifted.”
“I asked if you’re really certain you want to hear all of this. It’s pretty standard, actually.”
“Try me.”
She blew the curled lock of hair off her forehead and he watched her lower lip puff out. “My mother raised my younger sister and I. Our biological father was out of the picture by the time we were walking—my sister’s eighteen months younger than me. Mom, well, she has the worst taste in men.”
“In what way?”
“In the stay out of their way or they’d kick the shit out of you way.” She grimaced. “I know it sounds awful to someone from a normal home, but getting knocked around was part of our lives for so long, through three different boyfriends, the last one a stepfather, that we didn’t know how bad it was.”
“I don’t believe that. We always know when it’s bad like that.”
Her eyes flashed on his. “You’ve been in an abusive family?”
“Not physically. Emotionally and mentally? You saw my parents at the restaurant. Do they look like the epitome of warm and caring to you?”
“No. It’s sad that with two sons like you and Henry, and I’m sure your sister, too, that your folks never opened their minds.”
Her observation drove a wooden stake through the part of his heart that was off-limits to all. He’d shut if off from his parents after Hurricane Katrina. He’d opted to never discuss it with his siblings; it wasn’t their fault that their parents had made such a mess of things. And he didn’t blame Henry or his sister for still engaging with Hudson and Gloria. It was their choice, their conscience.
“Brandon, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He took in the concern in her eyes, the uncanny way she could tell whether he was daydreaming or thinking about something deep like his lack of relationship with his family. How had this happened, in only four weeks?
“I’m fine.” He shifted in his seat and pushed away his plate. His appetite had disappeared with the cold reality of his life. “Keep talking.”
“So, my mother’s last husband had a violent temper. Nothing new to us, we knew as kids to clear out of the house if one of her husbands or boyfriends came in drunk and pissed off. But by the time I was thirteen and Ginger was eleven, we knew too much. And we’d become the parents to our mom.” She fiddled with the tiny silver sugar spoon that stuck out of the covered dispenser. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Ginger woke me up one night when the fighting was getting particularly intense between Mom and our stepdad. It wasn’t loud and that was the problem. I knew that when it got quiet whatever was happening was probably really bad. As in deadly. I made Ginger lock herself in our bedroom, and told her to call the police on my cell phone. She didn’t have one yet. We had to wait until we were teens, Mom’s rule.” She reached for a vining flower and caressed the soft white petals.
“I crept downstairs and found the bastard straddling my mother, his hands around her throat. She was pushing at him, still breathing, but I knew he had her right at the point of her letting go. I still don’t know how I did it. I grabbed this old milk-glass lamp with a frilly shade—do you know the kind I’m talking about, the white glass that looks fragile but it’s really heavy?”
“My grandmother had some.” He and Henry had knocked one over with an indoor plastic golf set, much to his mother’s horror. Their grandmother had laughed and swept up the shards as if it were a dime-store purchase.
“Yes, this lamp, it was from my mother’s mother. I took it and started hitting him over the back and head. It surprised him enough to let go of Mom, and she was able to crawl away once she caught her breath.” Her shoulders shuddered and her eyes had a distant focus. His arms trembled from the want to hold her, comfort her. Instinctively he knew that if he touched her, did anything to shake her out of the nightmare of a memory, she’d shut down. So he waited.
“He was so angry. I could tell he didn’t see me, that he wanted to get rid of whatever, whoever had stopped him from hurting my mother. I’m damned lucky he was drunk and tripped over the leg of our end table. He was chasing me into the kitchen—I was trying to get out of the house. We only had a front door, which we kept closed m
ost of the time, and the side door off of the kitchen. I knew that if I got out of the house he’d come after me and then Mom and Ginger would be safe.”
She grew silent and his compassion for her ordeal internally wrestled with uninhibited abject rage at her stepfather.
“Did you make it out? Before he could hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Only to the kitchen door. He had me cornered, but then the police showed up and it eventually worked out.”
Brandon suspected there was a lot more to the story in the “eventually worked out” part, but didn’t press. Poppy looked as agitated as she had when he’d gone to get her from Henry and Sonja’s during the storm. And he didn’t want to ever see her plummet back into the panic attack she’d had that first night.
He should have realized then that this woman wasn’t a passing distraction for him. She wasn’t a fuck buddy or business colleague, either. She was…Poppy.
She ran her slim fingers over the white tablecloth. “It sounds pretty awful compared to your upbringing, I’m sure.”
“It was awful and I’m so sorry you went through that, Poppy.”
Slowly she lifted her gaze from the flower, to the plants surrounding the table, and finally, rested it on him. “Thank you.”
Damned if he didn’t feel an invisible line between them, as strong as any ship’s line, wrapping around his heart.
* * * *
Poppy considered herself an expert at judging people, at least from an energy perspective. She could always tell if someone had anger issues, or was putting on a show to the world while suffering on the inside. Brandon wasn’t so easy to read, and she knew that was part of what made him so damned hot to her. The challenge of figuring him out.
Right now she really wished he was more transparent. She’d never felt more exposed, not even when he’d taken her clothes off the first time and laid her out on his bed, his eyes devouring every nook and cranny of her body.
He leaned back and the movement pulled his dress shirt taut across his chest. His tie had an aqua-blue diamond pattern and the color brought out the turquoise flecks in his eyes.
“Nothing to thank me for, Yankee girl. It’s my privilege to hear your story.”
“More like my history.” She was not defined by that time in her life. She couldn’t be.
“History has a way of hanging around. If we’re lucky it’s the best threads that weave into our mainsail.”
“Say what?” She knew he was talking about sailing but boating wasn’t her bailiwick.
“The mainsail, the largest sail on a boat. I’m using it as a metaphor for life.”
“I didn’t know ‘poet’ was on your résumé alongside ‘naval architect.’”
That blinding flash of his teeth accompanied by his deep dimples brought out the masculine cleft in his chin. “I minored in English Lit, focus on early American poetry.”
“That sounds…intriguing.” From Brandon, it did.
“It was a good counterpoint to the engineering classes I needed for the naval architecture certification, that’s for sure.”
“You don’t have to act like it’s all okay, that you don’t think less of me because of how I grew up.” She remembered Will’s incredulous expression, followed by flat-out denial when she’d mentioned her childhood. Will hadn’t even wanted to make the trip to Western New York with her to meet her mother and sister. He’d finally relented and they’d stayed in Niagara Falls for a single night before he declared they should go to Toronto. Will found Buffalo boring.
“Your background only makes me admire you more, Poppy. You’ve accomplished in less than three decades what many never do in a lifetime.”
“You should know. You’ve done the same in many ways.”
“Yeah, we’re a couple of overachievers. Each for different reasons, though. So you were saying you originally wanted to be a social worker?”
“Yes.” She fiddled with her utensils. “But then in college I got a summer internship in the Personal Stylist department of a major department store. I was hooked. Being able to pick out clothes I’d never afford for others to wear, and to help them feel better about themselves was pure fun. I used those skills that one summer here, when I came home with Sonja for spring break. It was right after Katrina. There was so much homelessness, so much devastation.”
“The people who could afford a stylist weren’t suffering.” Brandon’s face was still, as if he had his own flashbacks to deal with.
“I know. I didn’t work as a stylist in the traditional sense. I volunteered at a church with Sonja. We handed out clothing to families who’d lost it all. They came in to get whatever their gift certificates and prepaid store credit cards couldn’t cover.”
“I remember the gift certificates. So many businesses donated them for years after the storm.”
“Right. But you can’t get back everything, not without an income. So many were out of work for months, or had to move. The women and their kids would come in, looking for something fun in the piles of donated clothes that poured in from all over the country, the world. I’d help them piece together outfits. They could use their gift certificates to affordable department stores to get basics like tank tops and T-shirts, and then find a donated designer scarf or bag to accessorize.”
“I’m impressed.”
She shrugged, but her cheeks warmed from his praise. “It was so easy for me. It was then that I decided to look into becoming a personal stylist more seriously.” And now she wanted to do more by doing what looked like less. Support women through disastrous circumstances into the change they needed. Her New York career seemed like a previous life, a faded memory.
Realization jerked through her. What was going on here? In New Orleans, in Brandon’s home, in her heart?
Was she learning to let go of when she’d been wronged and move ahead?
“Is it because you’ve been working on something different in the shop you told me about?”
Now would be the perfect time to tell Brandon that she was making her work here permanent. That she was staying.
“A new project always helps with attitude, doesn’t it?”
* * * *
Brandon picked out a bunch of daisies for the kitchen island. Only because he wanted to make a nice dinner for both himself and Poppy tonight, not because the flowers reminded him of the daisies painted on Poppy’s toes the evening he’d met her.
He wound his cart through the aisles, taking extra time on the cuts of steak, wondering if Poppy even ate meat. He hadn’t paid that much attention, thank God. Relief granted him a brief respite from his concern that he was becoming too invested in what Yankee girl thought of him. What he thought of her. He was thinking of her too often, too much. He had a business to save, after all. But just when he thought he had her figured out, she brought up something that totally sideswiped him. And not because she knew she was knocking him to his knees, stirring up shit he’d thought he’d forgotten. Like when she’d been talking about working here after Katrina hit, and mentioned the gift certificates. That was a tough time for his city. Brandon had wanted to cry when he saw other New Orleanians still struggling to find a job or pay for groceries for their kids. And his parents had packed up and left, started over far away. To him, they’d ignored what had happened.
“Hey, Gus. How you doin’, sugar?” He was caught in the ice cream aisle, looking for the flavor he’d stepped on during the start of the storm. When he’d had Poppy up against the car.
Fuck.
“Hi, Brandy.” He greeted the cashier whose presence was a legacy at this Piggly Wiggly. Brandy LaCroix’s family had known the Boudreauxs ever since they’d all gone to the same parish church. “Just getting some things for dinner.”
“Looks like you’re having a date.”
A date.
“No, nothing like that at all. You know me, Brand
y. If I wanted to impress a girl I’d take her out, not burn steaks on my grill.”
“Save the self-deprecation for someone who believes your bullshit, Gus Boudreaux. I still remember the time your mama brought you and your brother in here, trying to get groceries while she was sick as a dog, pregnant with your sister, Jena. You were raising hell in the carriage, throwing out everything she put in it.”
Brandon shifted from foot to foot, looking around to see if he was blocking anyone who needed to get around them.
Brandy put her hand on his forearm. “How are your mama and daddy? I haven’t seen them in years. As you damned well know.”
“They’re well.” He didn’t mention he’d last seen them at Henry’s failed wedding rehearsal dinner, and that was the first time in a year that he’d laid eyes on them.
“Please tell them I said hello. I’ll let you get back to it—come see me when you check out if you please.” Brandy sashayed down the aisle toward the back where he dimly remembered there was an employee break room. He’d dated a girl in college who’d worked here part time.
Brandon looked at the ice cream selection again. He’d made meals for girlfriends before, this was nothing new.
But Poppy wasn’t his girlfriend. God, she’d cringe if she ever heard herself referred to as that, especially after her spectacular betrayal by her loser ex. He recoiled again from the term fuck buddies, as they weren’t buddies and…
Jesus. Joseph. And Mary. They weren’t fucking. He’d made love to Poppy Kaminsky. They were lovers.
He was in love with the Yankee girl.
Chapter 16
Poppy left the boutique by six, when Bianca closed on Tuesday nights. Bianca said they stayed open until eight on Thursdays and Fridays when more women were apt to want to shop, with the weekend in front of them. As she drove home to Brandon’s she reflected on how she wasn’t even choosing her work hours any longer. And it was okay.
The front door of the house smelled like polished wood from the Southern sun hitting it all afternoon. She placed her palm on the smooth oak, impressed by the heat that wafted off. When she entered the foyer the woodsy scent was immediately replaced by a delicious aroma from the kitchen.