Chapter 5 #2
He stood to the side, hands deep in the pockets of his suit pants, a safe distance from the churning social machinery.
He found himself admiring the rhythm of her movements, the way she used her arms to direct traffic, and her posture, more drill sergeant than daughter of the bride.
Frankie was the youngest, but for as long as he could remember, she’d carried the weight of the twins and their mom’s emotional and physical well-being on her shoulders.
Their mom was…fragile. That was putting it kindly.
After their father was killed in the line of duty fighting a fire when a roof collapsed on him, their mom spent years battling serious depression.
The twins, AJ and Niko, responded in perfectly opposite, perfectly predictable ways.
Niko with a combustible rage, breaking windows and rules and once, memorably, the nose of a boy who’d taunted their sister for her red hair at school.
AJ with silence so loud it was deafening.
Frankie, the smallest and youngest, filled the void with force-of-nature optimism.
She became a master of tactical emotional triage, a first responder to every familial disaster, a fixer of wounds both visible and not.
Frankie did everything in her tiny self to fix their mom, to fix Niko and his anger, and to fix AJ in his silence as he retreated into himself.
She was still doing it now, her eyes scanning the room, making sure everything and everyone was okay.
He was going to venture over and check on her when the door opened and three of his aunts walked in.
The volume instantly increased fourfold, making it impossible for him to tolerate the space any longer.
AJ stepped outside on the balcony to get some fresh air and scanned the crowd of gathering guests on the deck below for cocktail hour.
It was a mixed group, half were Costases.
His dad’s side of the family treated his mom as if she were still one of them.
Relatives had flown from across the United States as well as Canada to be there for her big day.
The other half of the guest list included colleagues of Dr. Sterling.
AJ had met most of them during his youth.
Whenever the Sterlings hosted a fundraiser, party, or any sort of social gathering that their boys, Tristan and Liam, attended, the twins and Frankie were always welcomed.
They treated all five kids as if they were being raised together, which they were.
Although that would make Tristan and Frankie siblings or cousins, and since she was engaged to Tristan, he doubted she’d appreciate that.
He heard footsteps behind him and felt a slap on his shoulder that was instantly recognizable.
“Hey, do you know what’s going on with Frankie?” his brother asked, handing AJ a beer he’d collected from downstairs.
“No.” AJ winced slightly. His brother never understood his sensory sensitivities. Considering they were in their early thirties, he wasn’t holding his breath that he would come around any time soon.
“She and Tristan are broken up. Apparently he cheated on her with Emmanuelle, yes, that Emmanuelle.”
AJ wouldn’t consider himself a pop culture expert by any means, but even he knew who the supermodel Emmanuel was.
“Is she okay?” AJ wished he would have gotten that moment alone with her now.
“Apparently she’s hooking up with Zee.”
AJ knew it was dangerous territory to say things were impossible, especially when dealing with such volatile variables as human beings, but he was going to go out on a limb and say that was absolutely not happening.
He’d spent time, significant time, with his sister and her best friend, Zion Ash, and there was no romantic undercurrent to their friendship.
“What about you? You still seeing that Avery?”
“Emory, and no.”
Niko always stayed with AJ when he played the Washington Nationals, and he’d met Emory the last time he’d been in town.
“What happened? I liked her.”
“She gave me an ultimatum that I bring her to this wedding, or it was over.”
“Ultimatums are never any good.” Niko took a swig then shook his head and sighed. “Sorry, man.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything.”
“Niko! Niko! Niko!” Their grandma Yaya came out onto the balcony. “You come and take picture of self with boy and then you go get umbrella from car.”
Yaya was standing with a teenage boy that AJ had seen working around the resort and overheard the owner, Amanda, call Noah.
“The wedding was moved inside, Yaya,” Niko reminded her.
“You go get umbrella,” Yaya insisted.
“Yes, ma’am.” The right side of Niko’s mouth curled in a lopsided grin, revealing his deep dimple. “Duty calls.”
Niko walked back into the room for the photo op, and AJ turned his attention back down to the mingling guests. His eyes scanned the crowd, and his pulse picked up speed searching for the woman who had taken up residence in his brain for the past week with dark brown hair and light eyes.
AJ had no clue why he’d thought Poppy might be a guest today.
She was the half-sister of the groom’s estranged son.
Not even his son, the man he’d raised as his son.
But all week, something was telling him she would, so, when he arrived, he confirmed his suspicion.
The first thing he’d done when he and Niko parked at the venue was excuse himself to go to the reception hall, before he’d even seen his mom, and he looked at the seating chart. She was at table fourteen.
Now, as he stood on the balcony, he searched faces in a grid pattern when his eyes snagged on a brunette head of hair.
The woman had her back to him. Her thick, glossy, chestnut locks fell to the middle of her back.
She wore a tan trench coat, and the hem flared in the wind, revealing a hint of a deep burgundy dress that stopped at her mid-calf.
His heart rate sped, and his palms grew damp, which did not make sense. He did not have empirical data proving that the woman he was looking at was Poppy. So there was no reason for his physical response.
A woman wearing a white button-down shirt, bow tie, and black slacks approached his brunette in a trench coat.
She spoke to her as she handed her a drink.
He watched as the brunette took a sip and then froze.
AJ was trying to see what had caused the woman to go still.
He followed her eyesight but couldn’t see anything other than Niko running to the parking lot, but he would have been probably ten yards away from her, so he doubted it could be him.
Whatever it was, she quickly recovered and set her champagne flute down.
She began to pull her arms out of her coat.
As she did, AJ’s throat went dry and his mouth watered simultaneously, which he would have thought was impossible.
It was the oddest phenomenon, one he’d never experienced.
As the jacket slipped from her shoulders, the world around him went completely silent.
The dress she wore was form fitting and emphasized her hourglass figure.
Her hips flared, and the material hugged the ample curve of her ass.
The shade reminded him of a rich-bodied red wine.
She handed her coat to the woman who’d approached her and then picked up her drink. As she turned towards the heater a few feet to her left, AJ watched a small shiver race through her body.
His impulse was to rush down the stairs and wrap her in his jacket, the one he and Niko had picked up from Gunnarson Haberdashery on their way into town.
He resisted the out-of-character impulse, and when his eyes traveled back up her body, past the creamy skin of her chest, past the delicate lines of her neck, they reached her full lips and continued upward to her stunning light blue-green eyes.
She was facing him now. It was her. It was Poppy Davies. He’d somehow known that she was the woman in the tan coat. How had he known it was her?
He was mesmerized, unable to take his eyes off of her as a man approached. A tall, objectively good-looking man with sandy blonde hair. She smiled up at him, and thanks to his ability to read lips, he could see that she was introducing herself to him.
An unpleasant feeling crept through him.
It was tight and uncomfortable, almost as if his skin was too small for his body.
He didn’t like it. He’d never felt that particular emotion before.
He thought the impulse to cover her with his jacket was strong but the urge to go down the stairs and interrupt their conversation, was even stronger.
More than that, he wanted to pull her away from him and sock him in the face.
It was an extremely disproportionate impulse to what he was witnessing, and he didn’t know how to process it.
“AJ!” Niko called out.
Reluctantly he turned and saw his brother waving him inside.
He was torn. A large part of him wanted to march downstairs and, at the very least, insert himself in the conversation.
To introduce himself and tell her that she was the most beautiful, breathtaking, stunning woman he’d ever seen and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of her for over a week. Ten days to be exact.
But, since he didn’t want to have a protection order filed against him, he decided against acting on his impulse.
Instead, he turned and headed back inside the room where his mom, sister, Yaya, and three aunts were gathered before the ceremony.
As he rejoined the fold to take photos, which was the reason he’d been summoned, he wondered if his brother hadn’t called him back, would he have acted on his impulse?
Not to sock sandy hair in the jaw or declare his recent obsession, but to go and introduce himself, to tell Poppy just how beautiful he thought she was.
It would be a first for him. He never approached women, they approached him. But then again, everything about Poppy Davies was inspiring firsts for AJ.