“But we haven’t talked. We haven’t told each other what we want. We haven’t discussed what comes next. Our future.”
“Because it’s been a crazy few days. Baby, we don’t have to decide everything up front. Sometimes decisions will be made as we go along.”
“Okay,” she said, wondering why her mind was choosing that moment to freak out. “Okay.”
The adrenaline surging through her veins wasn’t subsiding. Amped to the point of agitated, Poppy flipped over to climb out of the bed.
“Where are you going?” Turner asked.
She strode over to the closet to go inside and retrieve pillows. “I don’t know the first thing about what you want,” Poppy said when she came out of the closet, hugging the pillows to her body. “You say all the time that I can have what I want, but I don’t know what you want.”
Going to the bed, she rested a knee on the edge, still holding the pillows.
Turner sat up to lunge over and snagged the corner of one of her pillows. “You,” he said, pulling her further onto the bed. “I don’t care about anything else.”
“But you do,” she said, letting go of the pillows to back away from the bed again. “You care about your mom and your sisters. You care about your friends. About the Venture. You care about a lot of things and I don’t want to be the reason you think you have to hide that. Why can’t you be honest with me about your feelings for something other than me? Do you think I’ll be angry if you have wishes of your own?”
“No,” he said, propping his weight on his elbows. “And you’re right, I do care about those things, but I trust you. You know I care about those things, I don’t have to hammer the point home. And you care about those things too. You care about my mom and my sisters and the guys… And after your reaction to the offer we got on the Venture—”
“Don’t,” she said, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about any offer, much less where it came from.”
“See,” he said, wearing a smile as he settled onto his back again. “Now get back in bed with me.”
Before doing that, she went to snag a blanket from the closet and spread it over the bed. Turner held it up for her as she slid back in beside him. Rather than lie down, she sat up to look at him.
“What you’re saying is you trust me to take all of those things into account,” she said. “But our future shouldn’t be just my decision.”
“Baby, if I can get it, you can have it.”
Skootching closer, she laid a hand on his abs. “What if what I want is to make you happy?”
He laced their fingers together. “You already do.”
“Okay, and you make me happy,” she said, watching their digits twine. “So we should just stay here forever. Nothing ever changes.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Growling in frustration, she yanked her hand away and sighed at the stars. “He’s driving me insane.”
Taking her by surprise, his arms came around her and he swooped her down onto her back, capturing her mouth with his. Okay, so the kiss was good to distract her, but still they hadn’t resolved anything.
“He wants you to be happy,” Turner murmured against her lips. “Will you ever tell me to abandon my family?” She shook her head, which wasn’t easy while it was buried in the deep pillow. “Will you ever ask me to hurt them?”
“No, of course, I would never—”
“Do you think I want you to be unhappy?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t deny you anything I have, but I have limits. I can’t give you a fancy house and acres of land. If that’s what you want, we’ll live here. It won’t be our own place and might complicate our sex life… We’ll figure it out, if it’s what you want…”
“I want to live in the Venture.”
His brow dropped. “In the Venture?” She nodded, thinking it was odd that others in his family knew that before he did. “What about Grammie?”
“If she wants to live with us, she can,” Poppy teased. “She’ll be able to afford rent, whatever it is.”
“I thought you’d want to be here with her.”
“I love Grammie, but I want to build a life with you. That life isn’t here, it’s in the Venture… Unless there’s a reason you don’t want me there.”
He kissed her. “The Venture’s as much yours as mine.”
“Then we go back to our life. We get Holden out of the way and go back to the way things were.”
“The way things were,” he murmured. “Your floors aren’t finished.”
“Geez, still?” she mocked. “What’s Ritchie doing over there?”
“Everything he can,” he said, exhaling and rolling away. “It’s been less than a week. Naught’s helping him out…”
“But you feel guilty,” she said, lying on her side next to him, resting her hand in the center of his chest. “This is the stuff we need to be talking about.”
“You have enough to worry about.”
“And I wouldn’t admit I loved you when you showed up here because I thought you had enough on your plate without adding me to it. Remember you said how I shouldn’t throw up obstacles because you’re so good at it? Both of us have to stop it. We have to stop assuming we know what’s best for each other and talk to each other instead.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’ve gotta realize I’m a guy who looks at what’s right there in front of him. I deal with one thing at a time. I don’t make plans for later or tomorrow, ‘cept maybe meeting the guys in Naughtie’s and there’s always a maybe over that. If something else comes up, beer gets bumped down the list. My big picture is limited to whatever’s next on the list, something needs fixed, the girls need something. My goals are minute to minute, not year to year.”
“You have the Venture.”
“Venture gets squeezed in whenever there’s a minute to breathe. I’ve never worked on a unit the way I worked on yours.”
Just like she suspected, her moving in when she did caused problems for him. “Hmm,” Poppy exhaled and lay down again.
He wasn’t revealing any big secret, she knew he was a busy guy with a lot on his plate. It just hadn’t really occurred to her that maybe he wasn’t revealing his desires for the future because he’d never actually got around to considering what that picture might look like.
No one in his life anticipated her. Least of all Turner. He hadn’t been looking for a girlfriend or a life, which was why he’d pushed her away for so long. His business, his family and friends, they were the only things on his horizon; meeting their demands was his way of life.
“You left here to try out a new life,” he said, rising onto his side. “It’s still new to you, life away from here. We can go back to it, but we don’t have to rush into anything. I told you that you’d have the life you want, doesn’t mean you have to make every decision in a hurry. I love you. I want to be a part of your life. I didn’t mean for you to feel pressured.”
Giving him the latitude to make decisions about their future didn’t mean Poppy was washing her hands of the responsibility. But she’d been the one to say they should get rid of Holden and go back to their life the way it had been. Ideas of marriage and babies had preoccupied her. Turner had the right idea. Rather than thinking about the future in grand, large terms, she had to look at what was in front of them. Right in front of them.
Turner wasn’t in a hurry to get to any finish line, he wanted to enjoy the view as they went along. Still, when Poppy thought about returning to the Venture, it wasn’t going back to her apartment and sleeping alone that featured in the picture.
“There is one thing,” she said, brushing the back of her fingers across his chest. “But it’s complicated.”
“Lay it on me,” he said. “We’ll uncomplicate it.”
“Charley’s only just sort of giving me the chance to be her friend again, I don’t want to abandon her in the apartment to live alone.”
“So don’t. I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be in
the building, and we don’t have to sneak around anymore.”
“You don’t want to live with me?”
He licked his lips like he was trying to hide a smile, but she noticed it anyway. “Are you thinking about getting your job back?”
“I don’t know. I want to earn. I want to contribute,” she said, moving onto her side so they faced each other. “It would be easier, financially, if we only had one residence to sustain.”
He tucked her hair away from her eyes. “That’s not a reason to live together.”
“So you don’t want to live with me?” she asked, wishing he’d meet her eye, though he seemed more interested in what his fingers were doing in her hair. “If you don’t want to live with me, you have to say it out loud otherwise I’ll make assumptions.”
“What kind of assumptions? That I’ve pictured you in my bed more times than I can count, your things in my closet, this body in my shower every day…” His palm glided from her hair, all the way down her figure to her hip. “Don’t take my lack of answers as indifference, I’m keeping myself in check over here.”
“I don’t want you to keep yourself in check, I want to know what you want.”
His attention finally landed on hers. “Then I want to get married. I don’t want you in one place and me in another, I want us somewhere, anywhere, together.” He paused. “But life doesn’t have to be lived in fast forward. As long as we get to those places eventually, I don’t mind if we take our time. Like I said, you’re still figuring this kind of life out. I’ve been doing it a long time.”
“I told you outside your mom’s house that I wanted to progress, that I want my life to be different.”
“Living away from here is different,” he said. “Navigating this isn’t easy, babe. If I put my foot down and start to make demands, I’ll freak you out and you’ll run away… again.”
That word was like a knife in the ribs. “Hey, I didn’t run away from the Venture or you because I wanted to. I left because I thought it would save you from the circus.” Turner sealed his lips, but she could feel his urge to speak. “Say it. Whatever you’re holding back, say it.”
“Even if Abernathy gets the message and backs off after this meet thing… The circus won’t go away overnight.”
“No,” she said. “You’re probably right.”
“It’s something we’ll have to deal with or be ready for any time… What if the next guy Violet wants to marry is some Hollywood superstar or Primrose hooks up with a rock star… There’s always a chance that your connection to your family will make you interesting for the media.”
Despite the blanket and the heat of the man just a few inches away, Poppy felt a chill. “And you’ll have to think about if that’s something you’re willing to accept. I can’t do anything to stop it.”
If she could, she’d have done it and stayed at the Venture. Her family weren’t in the papers every week, not even every year, but Turner was right that there was always a chance of something coming up.
His expression only loosened as he tucked an arm around her to pull her closer. “I meant we’ll have to learn how to handle it no matter what. It might be a thing, you can’t run away if it happens again. You come to me and we talk it out, we figure it out. Maybe it will mean coming back here to wait it out, but we make that decision together.”
“Together,” she murmured, enjoying the texture of his skin. “We should talk about money.”
Because although it wasn’t her natural instinct to go there, it would have to be addressed.
“What about it?”
Tipping her head back, Poppy stayed close, but managed to meet his gaze. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but it is what it is. I have my trust, which I’m not suggesting we live off, but it is there. I’m happy to get a job and I wouldn’t ask you to stop working.”
The tension quaking his muscles wasn’t subtle. “But?”
“But you have some freedom now. If you want to concentrate on the Venture, you can. If you want to buy another building and start all over, that’s an option. Everything is an option.”
“I guess I didn’t imagine it changing our life much,” he said. “You have access to that and you’re free to use it, but I’d go crazy if I was just sitting at home all day.”
She laughed knowing that he was exactly right. “I want you to work; we’d both go crazy with nothing to do all day. I was thinking more along the lines of, you don’t have to worry about sending your sisters to college, we can afford that now. Freeing up some time would give you the opportunity to teach them how to drive. You could go into business with Ritch, maybe fix up a place together. Bring Noah in when he’s big enough, teach him like your father taught you. And if Emmie still wants a building when she’s older, buy her one.”
“Okay, but we’re not gonna spoil them. Just because the money’s there, doesn’t mean we should let them rely on it. They have to know the virtue of a decent day’s work.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she said, wriggling until she was pressed up against him. “What about Faye?”
“What about her?”
“We could get her somewhere near your mom, something that needs a bit of work so you could coach Noah. I’d say you could coach Emmie too, but she’s less interested in the hammer and nails part.”
He breathed out a laugh. “You got that right.”
Emmie had really only asserted that she wanted a building because Noah said he wanted one. At their age, their sibling rivalry was in full bloom.
“We can work for our day to day expenses, for our own personal bills, but the trust will take the pressure off what you have to do to keep everyone afloat. I don’t know the details, but if things are financed, mortgages, loans, whatever, we can pay those off, get rid of the interest, and give everyone a chance to breathe out.”
“The guys won’t take charity.”
“It won’t be charity,” she said. “You were offered a chance to invest in Naughtie’s back when Naught was trying to get it off the ground. Invest now, you get to be a part of it, and he gets to lessen his burden.”
Again, Poppy didn’t know the details, but they had the opportunity to better the lives of everyone they cared about. It was exactly the kind of thing Grammie would encourage her to do.
“You’d do all that, give up your birth right to—”
“Help my family? Yes. You are my family, Turner. You, your mom, your sisters, Emmie, Noah, Ashlee and the guys… even Ritchie.”
He laughed and kissed her head. “Ours might complain.”
“Our what?” she asked, confused.
“Our kids, when they’re old enough to realize their potential inheritance was shared out with everyone before they were born.”
Poppy frowned. “I didn’t think you wanted kids. You said they’d be a strain.”
“I also said we’d knock you up after the twins were in college, but if we’re not worried about paying their tuition, we can do it whenever you want.”
Until the light heat flowed through her insides, filling her with buoyant joy, Poppy hadn’t really acknowledged to herself just how important it was to her to have a family of her own.
“We can have kids?” she asked, her excitement blooming and growing.
“Yes,” he said, laughing when she forced him onto his back to climb on top of him. “You didn’t really think I’d say no, did you?”
Clasping his face in both hands, she kissed his mouth. “I didn’t even want to ask.” Kissing his cheeks and forehead, Poppy wanted to cover all of him in her love. “I didn’t even know it was this important to me.”
Maybe she had because her joy didn’t dull her deeper emotional reaction, though Poppy didn’t know it until tears began to fill her eyes. Sitting up, she took a deep breath, but there was no way to be subtle about swiping them away.
“Baby,” Turner said, his voice soft. “When I said anything in my power, I meant it. Shit, sex is about the easiest thing you could ask for.”
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��About?”
“Loving you is the easiest thing,” he said, reaching up to brush her tears away. “If kids is what will make you happy, we’ll get started any time you want.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Making babies?” he asked with a brow raise. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you through it real slow…” Her lips curved. “Or real fast, whichever way you want it.”
Bowing to kiss him, Poppy embraced how blessed she was. “I want it with you.”
“You were stressed about the kid thing, huh?” he asked, gathering her hair into his fists at the back of her neck. “Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“You said it would be a strain. That time when you thought I was pregnant.”
“You asked me if I was pro-choice, what was I…” the words trailed off as his expression suggested he was figuring something out. “That was about Zoey. The same sex marriage thing.”
“She asked me to soften up the ground. I gave up because I knew you wouldn’t love her any less for being who she was.”
“You told her that.”
“More than once,” Poppy said. “Her and Casey.”
“Casey, the… Her friend Casey?” Wincing at her own misstep, Poppy squirmed. “They’re together?”
“They were,” Poppy said, figuring there was no point lying now the cat was out the bag. “Casey told her family and they didn’t react well. They don’t know that she was with Zoey, but they’re not reacting well to the news of her sexuality.”
“You coached them through it,” he said, wearing a sort of wonder. “You’ve known a while. A long while.”
“Since the day you found out about Charley and David,” Poppy said. “Zoey was upset in her room, we talked.”
“That was before…” The strength of his brow wasn’t encouraging. While he examined her, she remained tense, so tense she stopped breathing until he exhaled and relaxed. “Better get the Maddox name after yours as fast as we can, you’re damn sure a part of the family.”
Something like pride and gratitude filled those words, which only bolstered her happiness. He wanted what she wanted. Yes, he was right that there was no rush, but just knowing they were on the same page… Poppy had never been happier.
Found (Lost & Found Book 2) Page 17
