Chapter 19
AJ helped Poppy out of her coat and then hung it on the coat rack beside the door.
Hearing her callback to the first night they met was putting a lot of ideas in his head and he was having a hard time, literally, not cupping her face backing her against the wall, and showing her just how much he’d missed her.
“Wow, this place is really cute.” He watched as she headed straight to the built-in bookshelves on either side of the divider between the family room and dining room. “The woodwork is phenomenal.”
That was exactly what had caused him to book the Airbnb from the photos he’d seen online.
“My house, the house I bought, is a craftsman. I’m going to be renovating, trying to bring it back to life.”
“You bought a house?” This was the first he’d heard of it, but then again, why would he have heard anything?
She ran her fingers over the shelves like they were priceless jewels. “Yeah. I figured it was time to grow up. And I’ve always wanted to live in Hope Falls. The housing market is crazy, the prices just keep going up every year. And the nanny position comes with room and board, so…”
“I can help you.”
She spun around. “What?”
“I can help you renovate.”
“Oh, that reminds me, did you play handyman the night you stayed?”
He nodded.
“Why? Why did you fix all that stuff?”
“They all needed to be fixed.”
She stared at him and let out a little huff of laughter. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple. People complicate things.”
“They sure as shit do.” She turned around and ran her fingers over the ornate wood detailing on the corbels.
As much as AJ was enjoying this conversation, he was having a difficult time not walking over and stripping her out of her dress.
The material molded to her like a second skin, accenting her curves in all the right places.
At dinner it took a Herculean amount of self-control not to lean over and whisper in her ear how sexy she looked as he dragged his knuckles softly across her collarbone before letting his fingertips dip down between her supple mounds and…
“I appreciate you offering to help, but this is going to be a major project, major renovations.”
Fuck. He was doing it again. This woman drove him to distraction. She drove him fucking crazy.
“Okay.” He was in town until the first of the year, and he had no plan on taking on any private contracts while he was still technically on active duty because he would have to get them approved by his commanding officer, and it honestly wasn’t worth the headache.
“You can do home renovations?” she questioned.
“I worked construction in college. Papou taught me a lot growing up, and then my therapist freshman year thought it would be good exposure therapy to be in a loud, dirty, chaotic environment I couldn’t normally function in.”
Poppy’s eyes widened and filled with concern. “That sounds… horrible…for you. I’m so sorry.”
Some people said they were sorry, AJ could tell Poppy was.
“It wasn’t bad, actually. It helped. I would have never made it through basic or half of my deployments if I hadn’t done that.
I learned coping skills I still use today.
I was able to tolerate being on-site with noise cancelling headphones, and the work itself was satisfying.
I enjoyed creating something from nothing.
And it turned out I had an aptitude for it.
A lot of construction is math. After a year, I had the opportunity to apprentice under a master woodworker, which I did, so I was able to learn an even more specialized craft.
Our junior year, Niko got his real estate license, and we started flipping houses.
It was his plan B if baseball didn’t work out.
He thought we were going to be the next Property Brothers. ”
“Wow.” Poppy shook her head.
He could see that she was really impressed. It was funny to him the things that impressed people.
“Um, well, as much as I would love your help, I don’t even get my keys till Monday at the earliest, so…”
“Okay.”
Her brows furrowed. “You’re staying until Monday.”
“I’m staying through the holidays, maybe longer.”
Her jaw dropped. “Really?”
He nodded.
“What about your job?”
“I decided to change everything.” It was his turn to callback to a conversation from the night they’d met, this time it was when they were talking on her couch.
She smiled. “Yeah, so did I.”
“You bought a house, I’m selling mine,” he told her.
Her eyes widened in shock. “You’re selling your house?”
“The first open house is this weekend.”
Her smile widened even further. “But why hasn’t Frankie or Yaya said anything? Did you tell anyone?”
“No.” As much as he was enjoying this, and he was, he loved it being easy between them again, with no awkwardness, He had to ask, “Why didn’t you respond to my messages?”
“Oh, um…” Poppy licked her lips.
He felt himself already growing hard at just the sight of her tongue.
Tonight, seated beside her, had felt like foreplay, the brushes of their arms and legs.
The crackle of electric energy exchanging between them.
He hadn’t been with anyone since he’d been with her.
He’d barely even jacked off. The times he had, she was who he’d been thinking of, so it had felt like it was still her.
She inhaled. “When the woman was in your house and she’d expected you to invite her to the wedding… I didn’t want to be involved in whatever you had going on.”
That was why she hadn’t spoken to him? Because of Emory? These past two months he’d been miserable because of Emory.
He took a step towards her. “I told you she wasn’t my girlfriend.”
Her chin dipped as she nodded, and he heard her swallow audibly. “I know, but she obviously felt like there was something there, so much so she expected you to invite her to a wedding in another state. And that was another reason—you live across the country.”
“Lived,” he corrected.
She lifted her head. “What?”
“I lived across the country.”
“Right. Lived.”
“So, the woman who I haven’t spoken to in months now, who wasn’t my girlfriend and broke into my house, and geography, which is no longer an issue, anything else?”
She bit her lip, then took a deep breath. “And I liked you. A lot.”
Despite having a difficult time reading people, he didn’t have that issue with Poppy. Usually. But at this moment he was unsure why her liking him was a bad thing.
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No.” She shook her head and blinked, and he saw that her eyes were shimmering with tears.
His confusion snowballed as his brain worked overtime trying to compute all the different variables that could possibly be upsetting her, but he was unable to come up with any.
“I liked you so much, and we hadn’t even known each other twenty-four hours.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “Honestly, I liked you before I met you. I almost wasn’t going to go to the wedding, but then I saw your picture, and I knew I had to go. I asked Liam about you the day before—”
“What did he say?” He didn’t care about too many people’s opinions, but Liam's he did.
“Um…” Poppy’s eyes looked up and to the left, it was a sign she was trying to recall. “He said you were single, no kids, just got back from deployment, worked in intelligence, didn’t do CrossFit, which would have been a deal breaker—”
“That’s a two-way street.” He smiled. This woman could not get more perfect.
“It’s like a cult, right?” she exclaimed before continuing, “He said you were funny and really smart. He told me the scores you got on your SATs and ACTs, and I know they were really good, but I don’t remember, sorry.”
His smile widened. “It’s fine.”
Fuck, she was adorable.
“He said you were asked to join Mensa when you were seventeen and that he didn’t think you were a big drinker, and if you were a serial killer, you were smart enough to get away with it. Oh, and you were a good guy, the best guy he knows.”
“He said that?” It made AJ happy to hear. Liam was someone AJ truly respected, always had. He looked up to so few people, because they tended to disappoint him, but Liam never had.
Poppy nodded.
“I knew who you were before the wedding, too,” AJ confessed.
“You did? How?”
“Frankie called and asked me if I knew anyone with the last name Davies. We didn’t know Liam had changed his name from Sterling. When I was looking into it, I saw your picture.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What picture?”
“It was you on the steps of the hospital with about twenty—”
“No!” she shrieked and covered her face with her hands.
“You saw the staff photo from three years ago. I didn’t know we were taking photos that day.
I just got back from Cabo with Carmen, my work bestie, and I was so bloated from all the tequila and had freckles, so I just kept trying to make everyone laugh so their eyes would be closed and they couldn’t use it, but they ended up liking it because everyone looked so natural. It totally backfired.”
“When I saw that picture…” AJ reached out and pulled her hands down from her face so she wasn’t hiding herself. “I felt you through it.”
She stared up at him, and he thought she was going to argue with him or tell him that it was weird, but she didn’t.
She looked… relieved, and she tentatively put her hand on his chest. “That’s what I felt when I saw the picture of you.
It was you and Niko with Frankie, but all I saw was you.
I couldn’t explain it, but yeah, that’s it, I felt you through it.
” Her lips curled and her eyes twinkled. “No wonder Mensa asked you to join.”
He covered her hand with his, holding it in place.
“Can I ask you something?” She bit the inside of her cheek.
“Anything.”
“Are you sure you don’t want kids, because I can’t…”
“No, I don’t. I have never wanted kids.”