Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Wes
Three days later, the morning air is still cool when Poppy and I head into the backyard, but the cloudless sky overhead promises that won’t last long. By noon, Deep Cove will be cooking. For now, though, there’s a breeze coming off the water and just enough shade to make working outside bearable.
Ford dropped Poppy off here early this morning before he and Landyn headed to a meeting, knowing I have the day off. I’m always happy to spend time with my niece, but she’s probably not quite as happy because she’s now outside with me tidying up the yard.
I take a break from trimming the big Japanese Maple to watch Poppy throwing a branch on the growing pile in the middle of the yard. Once it lands, she flops dramatically onto a pool lounger.
“Uncle Wes, I can’t do this anymore,” she moans, throwing an arm over her head.
I snort. “You’re carrying sticks.”
“It’s manual labor.”
“Pretty sure manual labor requires actual labor.”
Poppy glares at me. “My arms are exhausted.”
I give her a look of mock sympathy. “It’s tragic, Poppy girl.”
“It is.” She slides even farther down the chair. “I think my arms are going to fall off.”
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“Probably,” she nods. A grin tugs at the corners of her mouth before she catches it and quickly rearranges her face into one of suffering. The kid spends way too much time around Jesse.
“Is Aunt Lottie still sleeping?” she asks, trying a new distraction tactic.
“I think so. She was working pretty late last night.”
My thoughts drift to Lottie and the honeymoon I need to finish planning. I’ve spent the last five days since the party at her parents’ place trying not to overthink all the ways we could spend a weekend alone together.
“Uncle Wes.”
I blink. Poppy is staring at me.
“What, peanut?”
“You got that look. The one where you’re not listening to me.”
I meet her eyes. “Sorry, Poppy. I just got distracted for a second.”
She narrows her eyes. “You’re thinking about Aunt Lottie.”
I nearly drop the clippers.
“Uncle Wes? Can we take a break?” She looks down at the purple watch my brother bought her for her birthday. “We’ve been working for twenty-three minutes.”
I shake my head and toss another branch onto the pile, wondering why I don’t just hire a gardener to do this work.
But the truth is, I don’t mind it. Most days, I’d rather be doing this than sitting in another boardroom at Cove.
The simple stuff has always been easier.
Gardens don’t complicate your life. People do.
“Tell you what, Poppy-girl. Help me finish this pile and then we’ll take a break and play hide and seek.”
Her entire face lights up. Before I can say anything else, she’s already vaulted out of the chair. For the next ten minutes, we work side by side—well, work is probably a generous description. Poppy spends more time narrating the job, but eventually we get it done.
“You’re counting first!” she yells the second the last branch is in the bin. She’s sprinting across the yard before I even get the lid closed.
“10…9…” I close my eyes and start the countdown, laughing at the sound of Poppy’s squeals.
I find her pretty easily the first time thanks to her pink runners poking out from underneath the hedge.
When it’s my turn to hide, I lie flat on the ground behind the sectional, but it only takes her a couple of minutes to spot me.
On the next round, by the time I open my eyes, the yard has gone suspiciously quiet. Even the birds seem to have settled.
“Ready or not,” I call out. “Here I come.”
I check all of her favorite hiding spots—the side of the house, behind the shed, even in the pool. The scent of sun-warmed mulch and crushed clover follows me from one place to the next. She’s nowhere to be found.
I stand in the middle of the yard, eyes scanning the big, open space, straining to listen for clues as the wind stirs the trees, their leaves whispering against one another.
Finally, I see a flash of movement just beyond the tree line at the back of the yard.
My stomach tightens. That part of the property is off limits, acres of dense, dark forest with a steep slope down to the creek that runs through it.
The kind of place a kid could disappear into faster than you’d think.
“Poppy!” I yell, walking across the grass, listening for a response. “Poppy, come back into the yard. Game’s over.”
After another moment, there’s a rustling in the trees as she emerges from between two giant fir trees with a frown on her face.
“Uncle Wes—”
“Poppy, come here.”
She trudges toward me, grass stains on both of her knees. Behind her, the forest looms. When she reaches me, I crouch in front of her.
“What’s our rule?”
Her eyes drop. “Don’t go into the forest without a grown-up.”
“Why?”
A frustrated sigh escapes her. “Because I could get lost.”
“Or hurt.”
The breeze shifts, carrying the scent of pine, sap, and damp moss from the trees. She tilts her head, giving me a look that is entirely too much like her father. “Were you scared you were gonna lose me?”
“I was.”
Poppy’s expression softens, her brows furrowing as she processes how I feel. My niece has the biggest heart, and I hope that it will always stay that way.
“Okay. I’m sorry,” she tells me, slipping her hand into mine.
The sincerity in her voice makes my chest ache. I reach over and pull a leaf from her hair. “It’s okay, peanut. I know that rule is probably annoying, but Poppy, you are my favorite person. I need you to be safe, because you’re so important to me.”
The words come easily, because they’re true.
Without warning, she squeezes her arms around me as tight as she can.
It seems impossible that she has only been in our lives for a little over a year.
I can’t imagine our family without her in it.
I’ve loved her from the moment Ford told us he has a daughter.
“Can we go inside and see if Auntie Lottie is up now?” she asks into my shoulder. “No offense, but yard work is so boring.”
“Good to know.”
I glance toward the house and that’s when I see her standing just inside the open back door.
Lottie is wearing a fitted yellow tank top that hugs her frame and faded jeans that sit low on her hips.
Her brown hair is pulled up off her face in a messy knot and she’s looking at Poppy and me with a smile on her face that tells me she’s been standing there for a while.
Poppy follows my gaze and immediately brightens. “Aunt Lottie!”
She squirms out of my arms and tears across the lawn, her triumphant cheer echoing through the backyard, scattering a pair of sparrows from the fence. Lottie laughs as Poppy collides into her, nearly knocking her backward.
“Good morning to you too, Poppy-girl.”
Lottie bends to hug her and when she straightens, her gaze catches mine over Poppy’s shoulder. Neither of us looks away. I cross the yard before I can think better of it, our eyes never straying, as Poppy keeps chattering about hide-and-seek and tree branches and how unfair manual labor is.
The words drift around us.
“That was pretty sweet,” Lottie says when I reach them. She brushes a hand through Poppy’s curls. I look down at my niece, who’s tucked into Lottie’s side.
“Which part?” I ask.
“The part where you nearly had a heart attack when she wandered into the trees.”
I rub a hand across my jaw, not bothering to deny it because she’s right. Poppy looks up at me with big eyes as her fingers play absentmindedly with the hem of Lottie’s tank top.
“You know,” she continues softly, “for someone who works so hard to convince the world he doesn’t care, you’re actually terrible at it.”
I huff out a small laugh. “Is that right?”
“Really, really bad.” She shakes her head, her eyes staying on mine a beat longer than necessary.
We stand together in the morning sun for another minute, Poppy telling a story that both of us only half listen to. The breeze stirs a loose strand of hair across Lottie’s cheek, and without thinking, I tuck it behind her ear without breaking eye contact.
Wham, there’s that feeling low in my chest again.
Poppy tugs at Lottie’s hand, and the moment slips away. Still, when Lottie looks back at me, there’s the faintest hint of color in her cheeks.
“Come on, P,” Lottie says, squeezing her fingers. “Let’s go make your uncle some breakfast. I’m pretty sure he’s exhausted after all that hard work.”
I snort.
Poppy points dramatically at me. “Do you know how exhausting it is working for him? Every branch needs to go in a perfect pile. He has branch rules.”
“Nothing wrong with branch rules,” I grumble.
“Uncle Wes, you should just relax. No more work. Deal?”
“No deal, peanut.”
She rolls her eyes at Lottie. “Uncle Wes can be bossy.”
Lottie presses her lips together, fighting a smile. I know we’ve talked about boundaries, about keeping things uncomplicated, but right now, the only thing I want to do is to complicate things. Seeing her in those jeans with her sun-kissed skin isn’t helping the situation happening in my pants.
“I get it, P,” Lottie says. “Being bossed around is never fun.”
My eyebrows rise. “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t complain, Peach.”
Lottie’s eyes go wide as color blooms across her cheeks, but I can see she’s trying to hold back a smile. She clears her throat. “Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes, Pilot.”
Poppy leads the way into the house, and I watch as Lottie follows her. “I’ll be in soon,” I say roughly as I try to mentally list every Canadian Prime Minister in order to get my hard-on to deflate. “Just need to put the bin in the garage.”
She half-turns and gives me one last look over her shoulder before shutting the glass door behind her, leaving me outside alone with a head full of wildly inappropriate thoughts and my last remaining shreds of self-control.