Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Thom
After morning sex, and breakfast at the Night Owl Diner, Thom, with a sulking Fel on his leash, followed Poppy across the road to the square. He looked up, taking in the blue sky and the weak sun, thinking that it felt like winter was in the next room, waiting to make a dramatic entrance.
He glanced at Poppy; she was enthusiastically waving to Wren and Dane who were approaching the Gratitude Tree from the other direction.
“You see, everyone, even the skeptics, come to check out the tree,” Poppy told him, ridiculously excited.
He might not believe, but he really hoped Poppy never lost her enthusiasm for the otherworldly, for the inexplicable.
It enhanced her creativity and made her who she was. And he was crazy about who she was.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see that the Chairman of the Sheffield Security board was calling.
Why? If he weren’t a shareholder and someone who held a fair chunk of said shares, Thom would’ve ignored the call.
Telling Poppy to go on ahead of him, and handing her Fel’s leash, he swiped to answer.
“Mark.”
Mark Mulroney, one of his father’s closest confidants, cleared his throat. “I didn’t know if you would pick up, Thom,” he said, sounding embarrassed. Good, he should. He’d known him since he was a kid and hadn’t stood up for him when the board members threatened to oust him, the prick.
“I nearly didn’t,” he tersely replied. “What do you want, Mark?”
There was a silence, and then Mark cleared his throat again. Annoying. “I have been asked to sound you out about returning as CEO.”
He had to be fucking kidding. “After how the board shafted me? Are you insane?”
“Look, Thom, I know you are angry, and you have a right to be. We made a serious mistake.” Yeah, a mistake that cost them over ten million dollars.
“But we heard that you landed the Yorkband account, that’s one we needed.
If you go out on your own, it’s practically a death knell for Sheffield Security. ”
“Why should I care?” Thom asked, ignoring the clanging pain in his chest.
“Because your dad set up this company, because it was his baby, his dream. And you loved it before—”
“Before my brother, your useless shit of a CEO, screwed me over. And before the board lined up behind him, then fucked me over.”
Another sigh. “I knew you’d react like this. I told them that.”
“And what about Benji?” Thom asked, comprehensively pissed. “What would happen to him if I came back?”
He was just asking for fun, because he had no intention of ever returning to the company. Why would he want to work for a company when he could work for himself?
“Well, I know you’d want him gone, but we have no cause to do that. We’d demote him, but if we try to fire him, we’ll face another court case for unfair dismissal.”
Thom thought they could easily dismiss Benji for lack of performance, but it seemed like no one had the balls to go up against his stepmom, who held the majority of Sheffield Strategy shares.
“Not interested, Mark.”
“Can we just have a meeting, thrash it out?”
“What’s the point? I’m done. You and the board made your choice; this is its consequence. Don’t call me again, I have nothing to say to any of you.”
Disconnecting, he stared down at his phone and shook his head. What a way to start the morning. But a part of him reveled in the fact that Benji was such a crap CEO. They shouldn’t have fired him, the assholes.
Shrugging off his frustration, he looked around for Poppy and saw that she was standing between Wren and Dane, with Fel’s butt on her foot.
His dog—actually, he was now more Poppy’s dog than his—looked up at her in adoration, while Poppy pointed to the Gratitude Tree and shoved her phone in her friend’s faces.
He hurried across to them, his head cocked.
Huh. That branch wasn’t where Poppy had hung her tag.
After greeting Dane and Wren, he placed his hand on Poppy’s neck and looked up at the tree. “Your tags have been moved,” he said.
Poppy danced on the spot. “Exactly! See, I told you that the ghosts would mess with the tree.”
Thom’s fingers stroked Poppy’s neck as he met Wren’s eyes over her head.
She lifted her hands. “I told Poppy that there is no way that the ghosts have moved anything, that someone sneaked in to do it, that it’s a publicity ploy, that there’s a reasonable explanation.
But she’s determined to believe that the ghosts did it,” Wren stated.
Poppy scowled at him, then at Wren. “I am standing right here, you know. The teenagers set up cameras,” she said, pouting, “and they didn’t catch anyone.”
“Because there is no way that someone can sneak up and switch off the cameras when they fall asleep,” Thom said, because someone had to point out the obvious. Both Poppy and Felony rolled their eyes.
“Or when they are making out,” Wren added.
“Ugh, you two are so annoyingly closed-minded,” Poppy snapped. She looked at Dane. “Don’t you have anything to say, Hot Doc? Are you also going to tell me that I’m delusional?”
“Hold on, I never said that—” Thom interjected, hearing a hint of anger in her voice.
Poppy pointed to the tree. “Tags moved. Other people are reporting drawings on theirs. Nobody caught them. Nobody has caught anyone doing it since it was first reported, and we are talking forty, fifty, maybe even sixty years,” she said, her voice cold.
Oh, shit. They were going to have their first argument about ghosts and their supposed antics.
Fuck.
Thom kept his eyes on Poppy’s furious face, vaguely aware of Wren and Dane melting away. Thinking that if they were going to argue, it might as well be over something important, he lifted his arm and tapped her tag, the one where she’d stated that she was grateful she’d run from her wedding.
“Benji,” he stated.
She opened her hands and sent him a wary glance. “What about him?”
Asking about Benji was a roundabout way of finding out whether she considered him, Thom, comfort in human form.
A sideways way of asking whether he was her security blanket or her way to self-soothe.
Had she actively chosen him? Was she with him because she was into him, or because he was familiar and trusting him was easy, because she didn’t want to be on her own?
Unlike before, this barrage of questions didn’t land gently. They hit hard and low, and he felt rattled.
“You’ve never talked about his cheating. In fact, you’ve hardly mentioned him at all. Why not?”
Poppy lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Forgive me,” she replied, super-sarcastically. “I thought I was being polite not talking about my ex-lover to my current lover, especially considering that they are brothers.”
He’d once considered Benji a brother, but not now. Instead of backing away, he decided to double down. He was stubborn about doing everything well. “And I wouldn’t be asking if you had, at the very least, spoken to Wren about him.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Have you?” he countered. When she looked away, he had his answer.
“You are someone who works through problems by talking them out, Poppy. The fact that you haven’t means that you are still holding on to—” Shit.
Could he put his fear, that she still had feelings for Benji, out there in the open?
“You’re holding it in, and I want to know why. ”
“Benji cheated on me. It’s over. It doesn’t matter.”
Oh, it mattered. It mattered a lot. After Benji’s and Ingrid’s betrayal, he vowed he’d never again be the one who loved harder and felt more, the easy choice and the safe option. But he was in very real danger of walking back into a similar minefield with Poppy.
Thom cursed and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
This was turning out to be a pretty shit morning.
First, Mark had irritated him; now, Poppy was being mulish and uncommunicative.
And he couldn’t help thinking that she was taking a leaf out of Benji’s book by pretending nothing had happened and expecting Thom to just swallow her explanation, to ignore the problem.
She had to be hurt by Benji’s cheating, and nothing would convince him otherwise.
But if she couldn’t face what had hurt her, if she couldn’t look it in the eye and deal with it, then would she expect him to simply absorb and ignore it, too?
He’d done that all his life with Benji; he would not do it again. Not even for Poppy.
“Thom, I’m fine. I’m over him, I’m over what he did. I just want to move on,” Poppy said, placing her hand on his arm.
He looked down at her small hand and noticed crimson-colored paint under the fingernail of her index finger.
There was a spot of yellow on another finger.
He wanted to shout, to rant, to expel all his frustration and irritation, but that never got him anywhere.
Not with Benji, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to help him with Poppy either.
So he stepped back, forcing her hand to drop.
“I’m going to go back to the house, I have work to do,” he said, wincing at his cool tone.
But right now, he was pissed and confused, scared—something he couldn’t easily admit—and he didn’t know how to pretend to be okay.
“I saw Dane and Wren go into the Night Owl, go join them for coffee,” he suggested.
“Are you going to keep Fel, or do you want me to take him back to the inn?”
Felony pushed his body into Poppy’s thigh and turned his back on Thom. Guess that answered his question.
“Thom…” Poppy pleaded. “Let’s talk this out, I don’t want to fight with you.”
“The thing is, you’re not talking, Poppy, and that’s the heart of this problem. I’ll see you at home.”
And actually, a fight would be an improvement from her hedging. If he knew what she was thinking and feeling he could understand it, deal with it, but if she refused to let him—or anyone in—then he was fighting demons he knew were there but couldn’t see.