Chapter 4
POPPY
How was your day, sweetheart?” Grandpa tears a hunk of cornbread in half, then passes the other half to me.
“Long. Hot.” I take a piece, trying to make myself stop thinking about Marty. “This chili is amazing, though.”
“Benji sure can cook. I go to his food truck more than I’d like to admit,” he says, laughing and patting his stomach.
Grandpa’s house is frozen in time. We’re eating at the scarred oak table I ate at when I was ten and visiting during the summer, the cast-iron skillet still rests on the back burner where my grandmother always left it, and the faded curtains with the blue flowers my grandmother picked out still hang in the windows.
Grandpa’s added nothing since she died except a microwave and a coffeemaker that produces something closer to motor oil than caffeine.
“You mentioned a pattern in the invoices,” Grandpa says.
I put my fork down. Hopefully, numbers will drag my attention back from Marty.
“Every Green Valley order since March shows a gap between invoice and delivery. Three to six days, consistent. And the quantities are off. Some invoices are ten to twenty percent higher than what actually shows up on site.”
“How much are we talking?”
“Eight to twelve thousand so far this year. Marty’s been helping me sort through purchase orders and invoices and delivery receipts.”
His eyebrows lift, and he nods at me. “Marty’s good.”
“I noticed,” I say, trying to keep it casual, but my voice betrays me by coming out too soft. Grandpa looks up at me. “I want the documentation airtight before I give you a full report. We should have it all figured out within another week or so, then I can present everything to you.”
“Smart girl.” He stands to refill his coffee, and the chair groans when he sits back down. His forehead creases when he looks back at me, the lines around his mouth tightening as he wraps both hands around the mug.
“You’re still planning to come back.” He stares into the coffee. “For good.”
Not a question. The please is missing, but I can hear exactly where it was.
“I told you I would.”
The words come out surer than I feel. Because there’s a version of this where my degree leads to a firm in Portland or Seattle or somewhere in California, and I become my father and Grandpa loses another person he raised.
My throat aches. I will never say that to him.
But I’m also not sure about moving back to Forge Creek and Colorado permanently.
“Your father told me that too.”
My chest squeezes tight. Grandpa doesn’t say it often, but I know it was a deep wound when my dad didn’t join the family company.
Legacy means a lot to Grandpa, and I know he wants to keep Briggs Construction in the family.
His jaw works beneath his beard, and his wet eyes wreck me worse than if he yelled at me.
He lost his son to a city and a career that mattered more than Forge Creek.
I don’t think he’d survive losing me the same way.
But I can’t promise him my whole life at this table just because I love him enough to want to.
I reach across the table and put my hand on his wrist. His skin is warm and rough. “Grandpa. I’m not Dad.”
Grandpa covers my hand and squeezes. “Something else I’m needing to ask. What’s going on with you and Marty?”
“Nothing,” I say, too fast. “He’s just…we’re working together on the invoices. That’s it.”
He nods, but the look he gives me says he’s not convinced by my answer.
Technically, my answer is true. There isn’t anything going on.
That is, unless you count the flirting, and the fact that I’ve been wet since roughly the first time I saw him, and how it got worse when I discovered he’s not an alpha douchebag.
But going on implies action, and there has been no action.
Just a sharp, hot longing that never leaves me.
A voice in my mind tells me Marty might be the right kind of man for me. He’s not intimidated by my degree. He knows how to apologize and mean it. And every moment I’m with him is filled with an electric intensity I’ve never experienced before.
But I’ve already heard that Marty is here for the summer.
That’s it. He’s picking up framing work as he moves from job to job, and when this project wraps, Forge Creek becomes another line on his résumé and I become someone he helped to resolve invoicing fraud.
And I’m sitting here telling my grandfather I’m coming back when I haven’t decided that yet either.
I can’t want a man who’s leaving when I don’t know if I’m staying, and I’m not sure I’d want to be here if Marty wasn’t here, too.
Doesn’t matter if I haven’t decided if I’m staying.
There’s a buzz in my head that says if I start something with him, it won’t be casual.
But my heart isn’t logical. Every time Marty’s skin has touched mine is burned into my memory.
When we’re working together, his body is so close that the heat of him burns through my clothes and onto my skin.
Every single time, I want to turn my head and press my mouth against his and see if he feels even a fraction of how I do.
The not-doing-it has been eating me alive since I met him.
His mouth. That’s the new obsession. I want it on the hollow of my throat where my blood is hammering right now.
Lower. His lips dragging across my collarbone, down, his breath ragged against the curve of my breast while his hand pushes my shirt up and his mouth follows, and my spine arches off the bed because his palms are gripping the insides of my thighs, spreading me open, and…
“Honey, are you okay?” Grandpa asks.
My face flushes hotly and I nod. “Of course, Grandpa. I’m fine.”
I park my car and check my makeup in the mirror, then look up at the sound of two men shouting.
A man in a yellow vest and a stocky guy are squared up, finger-pointing, voices climbing. The stocky guy’s neck is red. Yellow Vest is leaning in. Even without hearing them clearly, it’s obvious they’re about one insult from throwing punches.
I’m getting out of my car when I see Marty crossing the yard toward them. He says something I can’t hear from here, but both men stop.
“I mean it. Knock this shit off now, and cool the fuck down. You know if Dale gets involved you’re both out of a job.” His voice carries now—level, loud, and there’s an underlying tone that is both authoritative and unexpectedly panty-melting hot. “I’m not going to repeat myself.”
Yellow Vest opens his mouth.
“I’m not done.” His chin drops, and Yellow Vest’s mouth closes. “You have a problem with the work, you bring it to the trailer. You have a problem with each other, you deal with it away from the work site. You don’t stand here and shout like a drunk looking for a fight on a Friday night.”
The stocky guy steps back. Yellow Vest drops his hand.
“We clear?”
Both men nod.
“Good. Now shake and get back to work.” He turns and walks toward the trailer cluster without looking back.
Both men stare at each other and then shake hands.
By the time I make it to the records trailer, Marty is sitting at the worktable with the files already pulled and the tabs facing out, a fresh stack of Green Valley receipts on my side next to a cup of black coffee, which is exactly how I like it.
I’m not sure I’ll ever stop being surprised at how he pays attention and is kind.
“Morning,” he says, like he wasn’t reaming out two guys a few minutes ago. Like my hands aren’t still shaking from watching him make two grown men back down with nothing but his voice.
“Morning.” I pull the chair out and sit and cross my legs under the table because if I don’t give my body something to do with all this tension, I’m going to crawl across the worktable and become a walking HR violation.
The fraud work blurs past. One supplier, one point of contact, months of padded invoices and shorted deliveries. The more we sort through everything, the more it’s obvious this is bigger than we initially thought.
His eyes catch mine and hold. I know he’s not happy about the invoice problem, even though the invoices aren’t something he saw before I came here. His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second and butterflies flood my stomach.
“The Foundry does karaoke on Thursdays,” I hear myself say. My face goes hot but I hold his gaze. “Maggie keeps telling me she’ll come.”
“You sing?” He tilts his head and the fluorescent light catches the line of his jaw and I have to look at my laptop screen.
“Sober? I’m terrible. After a few drinks, I feel like an American Idol finalist. But bad singing is the point of karaoke.”
Marty leans back in his chair and grins at me, and the heat in my core rises to volcanic levels. “Is that an invitation?”
My pulse is hammering but I don’t drop my eyes. “It is if you’d like it to be.”
“What time?” His voice has dropped half a register and the heat spreads up my neck and across my chest and I’m flushing everywhere.
“Seven. But I’m not sure if Maggie will come with me or meet me there. If she says she’s going to meet me, she’s always late.”
“So you might be there alone.” He says it like he already knows the answer.
My core clenches so hard that I lose my next breath. “I usually arrive places early. There’s a difference.”
“Uh-huh.” He holds my gaze and a slow smile spreads across his lips and I swear my core is going to explode if he keeps looking at me like this. “Yes. I’ll come.”