Smashwords version Sweet Surrender (14 page)

“Tell me what?” she asked Rafe, who had gone
very still.

He turned to face her, with devastation
spreading across her face. “I was going to tell you.”

“Oh, sure you were,” Penelope taunted. “Right
before you dumped her on her big, fat ass.”

“You are treading very dangerous ground
here,” Viola snapped, sparks of rage flying from her eyes.

Rafe’s face darkened like a thundercloud.
“I’d watch how you speak to your sister. And I am not dumping her. Now or
ever.”

But he didn’t deny what Penelope said.

Poppy swung to face him, and she knew that
all the color had drained from her face.

“Is it true?” she asked him, in a small,
quiet voice. Hot tears burned her eyes, but she blinked hard, refusing to let
them spill.

“Yes. It’s true,” he said, voice heavy with
regret. “Because of Penelope’s past fraud convictions, the insurance company
decided to investigate this very thoroughly. They hired my uncle’s company to
investigate all the claims she was filing. They’ve been losing a lot of money
to insurance fraud, and they are looking to aggressively prosecute and make a
very public example of the businesses that file fraudulent claims.  And I am so
very, very sorry I didn’t tell you in the beginning, but it has nothing to do
with us.”

“Oh, I think it does,” Poppy murmered.  She
thought she might faint.

“Past fraud convictions?” Viola glared at
Penelope. “Did you know Penelope had been convicted of fraud?”

“No,” Poppy said faintly. “But then, she lies
to me quite a lot.”

“But not this time.” Penelope’s eyes gleamed
with malice. “I was right, you know. You are just like our mother – stupid
enough to believe that a decent man would ever love you.”

A wave of sorrow washed over Poppy, because
she knew Penelope was right.

Rafe’s sudden interest in her, his insistence
on going to the hospital with her to interrogate Penelope, the way he involved
himself in the investigation and hung around the shop all the time, all those
questions he’d asked her, when she thought it was her that he was interested
in…it all made sense now. He’d been using her to gain access to Sweet Surrender
and Penelope. He’d never cared about her at all

She turned to him, clutching the metal
railing that fenced in the outdoor table area. Her knees were turning to
jello.  “When you came in to Sweet Surrender that first morning, with Jeffrey’s
ex-fiancee…”

“I really did need to help Serafina plan her
ex-bachelorette party. I knew she’d hate the place, so I picked it to annoy
her, and do some recon at the same time. But the minute I laid eyes on you-“

“Don’t, Rafe. Just don’t.” She was backing
away from him now, holding up a shaking hand to block his words, his pleading
look.

She turned to Penelope, and her voice was
dull and lifeless when she spoke. “You know, Penelope, I’m not the only one
who’s just like our mother. You’ve spent your whole adult life punishing me for
the sins of our mother – just like she spent your whole life punishing you for
your dear old dad.  She’s the woman you hate the most in the world, and you
grew up just like her.”

The look of triumph vanished from Penelope’s
face, replaced by shock and fury.

It should have made Poppy feel better, but
she just felt numb.

Rafe reached out to put a hand on her
shoulder, and she knocked it off. She heard a roaring in her ears, and turned
to rush away.

Behind her she heard Viola yelling at Jeffrey
“You know this all along! He’s your brother, and you let him lie to her! You
knew!”

And then she heard Viola shouting “Bitch!”
and the unmistakable sound of Viola’s fist meeting Penelope’s nose, with a
horrifying crunch moments before Penelope hit the sidewalk.

$127.33.

Poppy sat on the edge of her bed and counted
the pile of money on the nightstand for the fifth time. It was all she had left
after she’d used the money from her bakery manager’s paycheck to bail out Viola
on assault charges, and paid for two week’s stay at a motel in a reasonably
decent area of Port Rollins.

She’d been there for a week, and the dull
ache that throbbed where her heart used to beat had not lessened.

She looked down at the pile of money, and
considered counting it again, and then looked away in disgust.

Am I just like my mother, wallowing in misery
because I made a fool of myself over a man? She wondered.

She took a deep breath and stood up, not sure
what she’d do next. She only knew one thing.  She’d been lying around here for
a week, drowning her sorrows in Breyer’s ice cream, bad cable TV movies, and
late night masturbation sessions that made her ache for the feeling of Rafe’s
strong arms around her and the thickness of his cock sliding inside her. And
she was tired of it.

She was tired of looking at the two ugly
brown and orange abstract paintings bolted to the motel room walls, tired of
sleeping under a stiff, shiny orange polyester comforter, tired of living out
of a suitcase, tired of feeling horrible.

Screw worrying about whether she was like her
mother, or like Penelope, or like anyone else. She was Poppy Donavan. She was
twenty-eight years old and she had her whole life ahead of her. She had a best
friend whose phone calls she’d been dodging for a week because she was too
depressed to face the world, and she was sick of lying around drowning in a
puddle of her own misery.

She could find a job somewhere. Waitressing.
Legal secretary. Something.

And sure, she’d never find a man who made her
feel like Rafe did, but had she ever really believed she’d find true love? He’d
been a glorious and all too brief interlude, and that part of her life was
over, and it was time for her to move on.

Through the window, the vast blue of the sky
beckoned, and gentle breezes ruffled the leaves of the trees. It was time to
rejoin the world.

She stuffed the last of her cash in her
purse, grabbed her keys, and opened the front door, ready for whatever the day
would bring her.

What it brought her was Viola, in black
leggings and black tank top and metal tipped combat boots, standing on her
doorstep with a scowl stamped on her face, fist raised to knock on the motel
room door.

“Viola!” Poppy stepped aside as her best
friend stomped into the room.

“Seriously, I ought to punch you in the
face.  What the hell did you think you were doing, disappearing like that?”

“I was going to call you this week, but
you’re right. I’m sorry. That was selfish of me. I was just so….” Penelope sat
on the motel room bed.

“So thoughtless?”

“I know. I know. It was just, I worked so
hard for so long to make everything right. I studied and studied and made sure
I had the best grades, and I was going to be a lawyer and save Penelope from
herself, and have a great job at a law firm and be financially secure for the
first time ever, and…everything just fell over like a house of cards. My job,
my apartment, my scholarship.  And Rafe broke my heart and made me feel like
the biggest loser in the universe.”

“Tell me about it,” Viola scowled, sitting
down on the bed next to her. She took a deep breath and let it out in a long,
heavy sigh. “You’re not the only member of the broken heart club around here. 
I need to ask your advice.”

“You’re going to listen to my advice on
something? This can’t be happening.  I think they’re having a snowball fight in
hell right now.”

“Oh, shut up. Jeffrey bought Sweet Surrender
and convinced Penelope to drop the charges against me.”

“Say what, now?” Poppy stared at her in
astonishment.

“I guess Penelope was already sick of the
bakery and wanted to go travel the world with some photographer she met, and do
a travel blog.  Jeffrey offered her a good price for the bakery on the
condition that she refuse to press charges against me.”

“Why would he…” Poppy’s head was whirling.

“He wants me to manage the bakery and be
part-owner, with a percentage of the profits. He says I’m really good at it.”
Viola folded her arms and scowled at the floor.

“You are really good at it. You’re amazing. I
bet you tripled the business from the minute you walked in that door. It’s like
you were born to sell edible smut.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Viola managed an unhappy
smile. “Should I forgive him? He’s bombarding me with bouquets of black roses
and begging me to come back and…I don’t know…he let Rafe lie to you.  If I give
him another chance, am I betraying you?”

“No. No, you definitely are not betraying me.
You know that old cliché, actions speak louder than words? Well, he bought a
frickin’ bakery for you! You should give him another chance, and you should
manage that bakery.  You’ve been drifting around from job to job your whole
life, trying to figure out what you wanted to do, and you are awesome at this.”

Viola smiled. Amazingly, Poppy felt the ache
in her heart ease just a little. Viola’s happiness meant the world to her.

“There’s one more thing,” Viola added,
standing up. “Two more things. One, I hate doing the books and all that
paperwork crap, and you rock at it, and you’re unemployed, so you’re hired.
Shut up, don’t argue. And yes, you have to work the floor sometimes. You will
hand penis pops over to whoever wants to buy them, and like it.”

Poppy choked on a laugh. “Ahhh…thank you?”

“You can come back and stay in Penelope’s old
apartment above the bakery if you want.  Rent free. Jeffrey bought the whole
building.  I’m still staying at my aunt’s for now.  And the other thing…”

Poppy felt her heart skip a beat. “Yes?”

“Rafe has been begging me to tell where you
are and tell you he’s sorry and he loves you and he wants to tell you himself if
only I’d tell him where you are and he blah blah blah wahh wahh wahh. He looks
miserable. He’s got circles under his eyes. I punched him a few times.”

“Good,” Poppy said, scowling. “I hope you put
some Irish into it.  And I don’t want to talk to him.”

“I know he should have told you from the
beginning, and if I were you, I’d be pissed off too. But I actually think he
really fell for you. I mean, he didn’t have to stick around any more than
Jeffrey did. If all he cared about was getting an insurance report, as soon as
he knew Penelope wasn’t committing fraud, he’d have ridden off into the sunset.
He just renewed the lease on his apartment and he comes over to my aunt’s house
every day with presents for you, which I throw on the ground and stomp on, and
he begs me to tell where you are.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Are they nice presents?” Poppy asked in a
very small voice.

“Probably.  They looked nice before I stomped
them. They were in fancy packages.”

Poppy couldn’t help it; she started to laugh.
Viola started to laugh. Then they were sitting there howling, and Poppy’s eyes
filled with hot tears, and she was laughing and crying and Viola was hugging
her.

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I was so afraid
he’d break my heart, and he did.”

Viola shook her head, wiping tears from her
cheeks with the back of her hand.  “But Poppy, you anticipate heartbreak so
much that you just about make sure it happens.  I know he shouldn’t have let
things get as far as he did, but when he came to my aunt’s house, he told me
that he was just so attracted to you that he couldn’t help having sex with you
while he was still in the middle of the investigation.  I actually believed
him.”

Viola paused. “I mean, I still punched him in
the face, but I believed him.”

“Viola!” Poppy gasped. “You didn’t! In the
face?”

“Oh, don’t get your non-edible knickers in a
twist. He barely even has a black eye.”

Poppy groaned.  It was a miracle that Viola
had never landed in prison.  She really did need to get that law degree quickly
for when Viola needed a good defense attorney.

“After you guys got together, I overheard him
one day on the phone, telling someone that he was going to tell you, that you
deserved to know. He made me swear not to tell, and he promised you that
whatever it was he had to tell you had nothing to do with his feelings for
you.”

“Oh.”

Poppy didn’t know what to think. 

Except that she’d just told Viola that
actions spoke louder than words, and Rafe had been there for her from the day
he’d met her, and he could easily have just wrapped up the investigation and
forgotten all about her, but he hadn’t. There was nothing that he needed from
her now, but he was so desperate to see her that he was putting up with Viola’s
abuse on a daily basis, just to try to find out where Poppy was hiding out.

“Okay, I…I just need to process all this.”

She thought about it, then opened up her
suitcase and pulled out a notebook and ripped out a piece of paper. She
scribbled on the paper and folded it up, and secured it with scotch tape.

“Give that to Rafe,” she told Viola. “And do
not read it.”