Three

DO YOU KNOW ME AT ALL?

TYBEE ISLAND, A LITTLE OVER THREE-SQUARE miles of South Georgia heaven, was thankfully only eighteen miles from Savannah. A twenty-minute drive most days, if traffic is light. But not today. We should have looked at the calendar to make sure the Island wasn’t overrun with tourists, which happened daily of course, but it was worse when there was something to celebrate. And there was always something to celebrate. Like Starbucks bringing back their chocolate mint flavor in the winter. Today was the Beach Bum Parade. Where Highway 80 turned into Butler Street, the main drag on Tybee Island, floats of all shapes and sizes armed themselves with water guns, also in all shapes and sizes, blasting parade goers with water. Of course, the parade goers were armed with water guns as well, making it a wet evening for everyone. And a traffic nightmare on the island. Because of this, we were stuck in traffic a mile from Bernice and Eunice’s cottage.

“I haven’t been to the parade in a few years,” Sienna said, looking out the passenger side window like a kid. Minus the sticky fingers, of course.

Up ahead, a float was getting ready to join the line. It was a boat which had been decorated with the words ‘Bees Gone Wild’ painted brightly across the side and the insignia of SCAD, short for Savannah College of Art and Design. It was the college I’d attended on a full-ride scholarship. Seeing the bee insignia brought back simpler times. A time when I was surrounded by like-minded individuals who just wanted to work in a creative field for the rest of their lives. And play Xbox Live on their off-hours.

I’d majored in graphic design while at SCAD and put my diploma to use creating book covers. It was a natural progression to go from book nerd to creating book covers, I figured, and I’d loved it. Like Cali, I got to mold the perception of a book through my designs, sometimes even my artwork.

Watching the SCAD students, as they filled their water guns in preparation for the parade, made me melancholy for my years at SCAD when my only worries were making an A. One where fathers were still ghosts in the shadows, and men like Nate didn’t factor into my life. I wanted to be that young girl again with stars in her eyes, drool on her face from falling asleep with a book plastered to her face, (wait, that still happened) and the world at her feet.

“Park,” I cried out suddenly. “I want to join the parade.”

Cali startled then pulled onto a side street. It took a few minutes to find a parking spot, then all three of us were out of the car. I didn’t wait to see if they would follow. Instead, I ran until I had the SCAD float in my sights and called out, “Bees!” A kid around the age of nineteen turned his head and grinned. Even though SCAD was an arts college, we still had a mascot. The bumble bee. He was big. He was bold. His stinger looked like a large male appendage coming out of his hind end. He. Was. Awesome!

“Sleep comes after death!” I hollered, repeating the motto of SCAD students everywhere, so he’d know I was one of them. Cali and Sienna were standing next to me by then, and the kid, being male and all, scanned the three of us as his grin grew wider. When he put out his hand for us to climb aboard, I didn’t hesitate. One by one the girls and I ran to the float. We were pulled onto the slow-moving boat, then handed a water gun. Large metal barrels sat inside, full of water, ready for reloading once a water gun had run out. I dunked my gun into the barrel and began filling it.

“I’m Jake,” the kid said then pointed behind him at the rest of the students. “That’s Kirstyn, Dani, Chris, and Doug,” Jake finished. The girls and I waved to the SCAD students then took up position. It was time to kick some pedestrian behinds.

I was nailed in the eye by a five-year-old within seconds. Clearing my eyes so I could see, I stared back at the little monster. “Bring it, little goblin,” I mouthed, then took aim. He nailed me again in the eye, and I ducked down. “The kid’s got great aim,” I laughed.

Cali and Sienna covered me while I dried my eyes and then it was on. By the time I’d finished with the kid, he was happy and drenched.

An hour later, I was at the front of the boat, hanging over the side, trying to protect the flank coming up behind me. The girls and I were becoming legendary gun masters in the wake of the fight. No Beach Bum Parade had ever seen the likes of us.

We were that good.

Once we’d reached the end of the parade route, all three of us were on the hull. We were planting the SCAD flag like the soldiers of Iwo Jima, raising our guns like warriors for a camera crew who was filming the parade.

Best parade EVER!

Hoorah, baby!

I looked back at our new friends and took in their waterlogged clothes. They’d been great combatants and needed to fill their stomachs with a brewski or two. “Drinks on me if you’re old enough.” They flashed me huge smiles, then promptly pulled out fake IDs no conman could reproduce. Never give highly creative teenagers unlimited access to technology and a laminator!

God, it was good to be a Bee!

_______________

With an impatience born from being his own man, Nate gritted his teeth while he watched Devin scan the parking lot of a Holiday Inn. Halfway between Savannah and Charleston, his patience had worn thin an hour ago, and Strawn and Devin were right along with him.

Nate had only made it ten feet out the back door of Jacobs’ Ladder before both men had followed him outside, determined to aid him in his search for their wayward women. He wasn’t the only one who wanted to find his Wallflower and chain her to a bed. Possibly gag her, as well. He had no doubt Poppy would spew some bullshit about not being his woman, and he was in no mood for her games. She could run for now, but he would find her if it took all night. He couldn’t piece back together what her father had broken if he didn’t have her in his sights.

Both he and Strawn sat forward when Devin knelt beside a Harley and reached under the fender, pulling out a GPS tracker.

“Son of a bitch,” Strawn muttered under his breath.

“Seems they’re on to Devin,” Nate sighed, frustration mounting by the second. “Tell me again what Sienna said.”

“Been over it three times already.”

Nate turned his head slowly and leveled Strawn with an icy stare. “Go over it a fourth time.”

Strawn rubbed his face with both hands, his jaw a straight line of steel. “She said they were takin’ a few days alone to process everything. Said Poppy needed time to come to terms with her father and her aunt. Said she’d lost control and flipped out; ranted about everything from her dead mother to freakin’ out about you. That she let slip somethin’ about fendin’ off creepy guys growin’ up, and would I run her aunt through our system and see what I could find out.”

Nate’s chest tightened. Fending off men was no doubt the dragons that scared her in the dark. His hand curled into a fist at the thought, and he ground his teeth for control.

“She didn’t give you any clue where they were headed?”

Strawn pressed his lips together and glared back at Nate. “She hung up on me before I could ask.”

Yep. Strawn was ready to cuff Sienna to his bed.

Devin ripped open the door of Strawn’s F-150 Super Crew and climbed in back. His disposition was restrained violence, his eyes wild. He swiped his phone ON and called Calla’s cell again. “I need you to call me right fuckin’ now.”

“You trace her phone?” Nate asked, knowing better than to ask.

Devin shot him a look that could melt ice.

“What about Poppy or Sienna?”

“All three phones are off the grid. They must have turned them off.”

“So what you’re sayin’ is they could be anywhere in the state, or they could be hidin’ right under our noses at Bernice and Eunice’s,” Nate stated.

“I called Bernice and asked her to call if they showed up,” Strawn threw out.

Nate shot Devin a questioning look, and he shook his head. “Bernice loves bustin’ balls. If Calla asked her to hide them, she’d do it and not feel an ounce of guilt.”

Strawn glanced at his watch. “It’s pushin’ ten. We can be back in an hour. That’s early enough for a raid unless you think we should wait ’til the mornin’.”

“Those three together are an accident waitin’ to happen,” Devin growled. “Are you willin’ to risk they’ll stay put at Bernice’s?”

“Nope,” Nate said, agreeing with Devin. He still hadn’t recovered from the last Calamity Janes adventure.

Strawn thought about it, shook his head, then started his truck, pulling out of the parking lot, heading south toward Savannah. “Remind me again why they’re worth the headache?”

Devin’s lips twitched.

Nate grunted and looked out the window.

And Strawn muttered, “Fuck,” then punched his accelerator.

_______________

I waved at another group of drunken parade goers as they passed by on the beach. The moon’s light fractured across the ocean, its beams fluid as they rose and fell with the waves. Its surface, the imperfections caused by meteors, was cast in shadow and light. She hung low in the sky like a sentry, comforting in the darkness like an old friend.

Relaxing on the porch of Bernice and Eunice’s cottage, I’d come to several conclusions while watching the waves rolling in and out with the tide. One, nobody could make me feel insignificant unless I let them, so my father could kiss my rounded behind. Two, where had green magic fairy potion been all my life, because it was the bomb.

Raising a glass of the green liquid to my lips, I sighed as it spread through my limbs and gave me the clarity to take on the world. That’s when I realized I was awesome. My father had totally missed out not seeing me grow up, not the other way around. In fact, if he couldn’t see what a freaking treasure I was, it was his loss, not mine.

I took another drink of the elixir of the gods and smiled wider as the burn took me under further. “I’m so awesome it’s like a Shakespearean tragedy or somethin’ that Knoxy missed out on changin’ my diapers, don’t you think?”

Two other sets of feet were propped on the railing next to mine. The girls and I were watching as families and couples trudged around the beach, enjoying the coastal breeze while we sipped, in my case gulped, the answer to humankind’s problems.

“You are pretty awesome,” Cali agreed, nursing her drink. For some reason, she felt it prudent to stay sober. Her loss and my gain. More green magic for me.

Heck.

Yes!

I flashed her my best smile.

“That moon is so full I could almost believe in shifters and vampires,” Sienna mumbled, more like slurred, holding up her glass so she could look at the moon through it.

I held mine up too and closed one eye, studying the beauty of the lady on the moon. Anything that spectacular had to be a woman, not an old man. Men weren’t spectacular, they were butt-heads.

Feeling smaller at that moment, surrounded by all the brilliant, silvery light, I quoted a wise Internet poet who seemed to have the answer to everything. “She always loved the things the rest of the world forgot. The snails and slugs and broken flowers. I think that’s why she loved me. I was just another broken thing that the world left behind.”

Sienna and Cali turned their heads and looked at me blankly. “Who wrote that?” Cali asked, her eyes softening gradually, a tiny bit sad.

“Atticus,” I explained.

“The Greek senator?”

I snorted. “No, the Instagram poet. He’s as awesome as me!”

“Are you broken, Poppy?” Sienna questioned, placing her hand on my arm.

I flashed her my best smile as well.

“Pfft. No. I’m super-duper awesome, weren’t you payin’ attention?”

Sienna rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, her own eyes gentling. Staring at her, I was once again reminded that she was my sister. Clearly, I was suffering from ADD, because for some reason I couldn’t hold that thought in my mind.

Watching her watch me, and being awesome and all, a super-duper idea suddenly came to me. “Sienna, I think instead of callin’ each other by our names, we should call each other Sister just like Bernice and Eunice do,” I burst out with excitement.

Sienna flashed me her own brilliant smile, reminding me of our father. I vowed right then not to point out that particular flaw in her appearance. She couldn’t help she looked like that douche canoe. “Are we goin’ to forgo men and buy a vintage clothin’ store?”

I considered that. She’d already tied herself to Bo Strawn, just like Eunice had with Odis Lee, so I guess that made me Bernice. Which wasn’t a hardship since Bernice was hot for a middle-aged woman.

“You can keep Bo, Sister,” I allowed. “I’ll just live my life vicariously through you and your children and have sugar daddies on the side who buy me lots of books. It’ll be great. I can teach your daughters about boys and take them to their first bar.”

“What about Nate?” Cali questioned.

Dang. I’d forgotten about him, too. Yep, time to see the doctor and get medication for my attention disorder.

“I’m not sure he’d like bein’ called sister,” I answered, holding my glass up again to look at the moon. “He seems kind of a stick in the mud.”

“Poppy.”

“Sister,” I reminded Sienna.

“Sister . . . you can’t avoid him forever.”

“Sure, I can. Or at least I can until he figures out he was just reactin’ to what happened today. He doesn’t really want me, he’s just overprotective of his friends. I’m like a kitten to him. The lost kind that needs a home. But I already have a home. With a scratch pad and everything.” I curled my hand into a claw and swiped at her hair for effect.

“Oh, he wants you,” Cali muttered, ignoring me.

I tried to ignore her right back, but the skipping of my heart told the tale. I wanted him to want me. But I needed him to forget. It was for the best. “Well, if that’s true, I’ll have to help him see the error of his ways.”

“How are you gonna do that?” Sienna questioned.

I turned to her surprised. “How am I gonna do that? Do you even know me at all?”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Lordy, you’re gonna act a fool, aren’t you?”

I grinned knowingly. She’d watched in the past when a guy tried to step across a line I wasn’t ready for.

“How’s she gonna act a fool?” I looked at Cali and giggled. She had no clue who she’d hooked herself to when she created the Wallflowers.

“She has a way of chasin’ men away,” Sienna muttered, nibbling at her bottom lip.

“Such as?”

Sienna leaned across me like a beached whale and answered. “When men have shown too much interest, she turns stalker. Leaves them notes on their cars spoutin’ about love at first sight and her dream of havin’ ten children. Then she accuses any woman who looks at them of cheatin’ with her man, until the guy runs in the opposite direction as fast as he can.”

Both women gaped at me, taking in the mad genius that I was. I had so much to teach them. Maybe I needed to write an instruction manual?

Even though I’d softened over the past couple of weeks, deluding myself into thinking I could have something special with someone like Nate, I knew the truth now. I was too screwed up. Had too much baggage for a normal guy. Too much baggage for an abby-normal guy.

I snorted at my own joke. Abby-normal? Where do I come up with these great lines?

Reaching down, I grabbed the bottle of Absinthe, better known as green magic fairy potion, and poured myself a smidge more while they continued to stare. Their understanding of how scarily brilliant I was, finally sinking in.

“We should have Midnight Mojitos like Bernice and Eunice do on the covered patio we’re gonna have. Only we can call it Midnight Magic or Midnight Potion or,” I grew louder with each ingenious idea, “Midnight with the Gods.”

Midnight with the Gods was my personal favorite, so I held my breath to see if Sienna agreed.

“You’re not gonna drink green magic except on the night we have Midnight with the Gods?”

She went for it!

Yes!

I scowled at her and tucked the bottle in my lap where she couldn’t steal it from me. “I swear, Sister, it’s like you don’t know me at all.”

She tried to snatch the bottle from my lap, laughing. “I take it Midnight with the Gods will be a daily occurrence?”

“Well, duh.”

“Am I invited?” Cali asked.

My head swiveled on my neck so fast it made me dizzy. Though, it could have been all the green potion I’d drank. “Invited?” I gasped, covering my chest in surprise, “It’s like you don’t know me at all, either.”

“We’d better stock up on the green stuff, then,” Sienna chuckled.

“Buy stock in it,” I ordered. “We could use the money for our shop.”

Movement caught my attention while I calculated the profit and loss from our investment. Midnight with the Gods would cut into our bottom line. Maybe we should switch up green magic fairy potion with margaritas every other night, so we had working capital?

A squeal of laughter drew my attention to the family that rented the cottage next door. I watched them for a moment. Three girls ranging in age from ‘she is so cute,’ ‘Lord help me when the hormones kick in,’ to ‘bar the windows the boys are coming’ were walking next to their, wait for it, mother and father. How colloquial. A full set of parents. And to top it all off, they were holding hands.

“Quick,” I whispered to Cali, “hand me your phone.”

She looked at me like I was stupid or something. “For what?”

“I wanna snap a picture of the aliens.”

“That’ll be hard since you threw my phone out the window.”

Gah, foiled again by my own actions. Note to self: buy a disposable camera in the a.m. so we can prove the existence of extraterrestrial life.

She turned her head and glanced at the loving, but alien family. “What makes them alien?”

It was my turn to look at her like she was stupid or something. “There’s two of them,” I explained.

“I see three kids.”

“Not the kids, the aliens.”

Sienna leaned over me like I was a beanbag this time and parked her body in my lap, asking, “Who’s an alien?”

Maybe they needed more green magic to see them?

“The two large ones.”

“The parents?”

She was quick, that one. She must have gotten her quickness from our father. I leaned down to whisper in her ear. “They’re aliens, not parents.”

“They are?” she questioned in awe, then looked harder. I could tell from her expression, she didn’t see what I saw. Poor thing, she really was Knoxy’s daughter.

Headlights flashed next to the cottage, but I disregarded them. I had a sci-fi cover coming up and I needed inspiration, so I continued to watch the aliens. Maybe they’d show their true selves in the daylight?

I ignored the sound of footsteps coming up to the porch, turning only when I felt a presence standing next to me. Looking up, I caught the concerned eyes of Bernice Armstrong analyzing me. Then I glimpsed her cell phone and snatched it from her hand, swiping it ON, hoping it wasn’t password protected.

“Yes! No password,” I said happily as I opened the camera app. “We are so much alike. I hate those things too.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Bernice asked, but I held up my finger. I had to capture the aliens before they got away. I pressed and held the shutter down on her Android phone until it rapid fired. “Take that, you alien scum. You’re not gettin’ away from me now.”

“Butterbean, what’s she doin’?”

“Alien huntin’, it looks like.”

The family turned back to see where the flashes were coming from, so I ducked my head behind Cali’s rocker. “If they come for me, don’t let them suck out my brains.”

I don’t think she took me seriously because she patted my head like I was a child, instead of say, drawing a sword, prepared to do battle.

“What are you doin’ here?” Cali asked, turning in her rocker, ignoring my need for asylum from the aliens. “It’s after midnight.”

“Normally, I’d be knee-deep in a mojito or ten by now, but as I was headin’ to the kitchen to start the first batch, three pissed-off men pounded on my door.”

Bernice Armstrong, one of the super-duper cool aunts who had raised Cali after her parents and brother died in a freak accident, was stunning. She was also batshite crazy on most days. Both Bernice and Eunice were older versions of Cali. Blonde, buxom, sultry lips, and legs that went on forever. They dressed like they were stuck in the 80’s—which wasn’t a good look on most people—but they rocked it like pros. And they loved Madonna, which cemented their coolness.

“Pissed-off men?” Sienna perked up from leaning across my thighs like a lapdog and looked over the back of the rocker concerned.

“Don’t worry,” Bernice waved off Sienna’s response, “I told them I didn’t know where you were, then waited an hour before sneakin’ down through the store and out the front door.”

Cali threw her a questioning look. “Why?”

Bernice scoffed. “I may not have been born yesterday, my dear sweet girl, but I still have eyes that work.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “They were casin’ the joint. Hidin’ in the shadows—”

“—Spyin’?” Cali laughed, interrupting.

“That too.”

The family had gone inside their rental, so I pulled myself up and looked at Bernice. “Did they follow you?” I peeked around the shadows, expecting them to step out of the gloom like a band of warriors. Dark warriors. Hot warriors. I sucked in a breath. I wanted to see Nate step out of the darkness like an avenging angel. He was that beautiful and intimidatingly sexy.

My lungs deflated as quickly as they filled when I remembered I couldn’t have him.

“Did they follow me?” Bernice drawled, her Southern pouring out of her like a mimosa, sweet but tart. “Darlin’, you wound me. Like I can’t sneak out of a buildin’ like I’m A Sinner.”

Cali snorted. “That’s the best you’ve got? Incredible.”

I looked at Sienna and grinned. Bernice and her sister, Eunice, raised Cali playing a game with song titles. They idolized Madonna and used her songs when arguing with the other.

“I’ll Remember that the next time you need my help hidin’ from your men.”

“We aren’t hidin’ from them as much as takin’ a break from life, so Poppy and Sienna can deal with their father’s betrayal. To keep Poppy from Free Fallin’. Bein’ Frozen by the hurt. She’s lookin’ for a Ray of Light, so she can heal.” Cali crossed her arms and smiled smugly. She’d totally rocked the game like Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Bernice looked at me, then back a Cali clearly impressed. “Deeper and Deeper the mystery becomes,” she mumbled, grabbing the last rocking chair on the porch and hauling it to our group. Then she saw the bottle of green magic fairy potion and snapped her fingers. “It’s not mojitos, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

“What did they say when you answered?” Sienna asked.

Bernice raised a finger then tipped the bottle back and took a drink. I watched closely as the green magic softened her eyes. When she looked down at the bottle in astonishment, I snatched it back. “You already have Midnight Mojitos, you’re not gettin’ your hands on our elixir of the gods.”

Her eyes lit up at my outburst, then she looked between Sienna and Cali. “Nate seemed to be the leader of the pack, this time around,” Bernice said, looking back at me. “I’m assumin’ since he was, he finally pulled his head out of his manly backside and is now in pursuit like any good Southern gentleman worth his weight.”

“His manly backside?”

Bernice’s lip twitched. “Sugar, do I look dead?

“Well, no.”

“Gay?”

I thought about it and shook my head.

“Exactly.”

“So, what did they say?” Sienna asked again.

“That Poppy here was runnin’ scared and you two had helped her escape from Nate. That he needed to find her, so he could, and I quote, ‘Set her straight before she built an even bigger wall around her heart.’”

I pffted then scoffed at his arrogance. “Just like a man to think this is all about him.”

Bernice leaned forward and looked me in the eyes. I started to squirm under her assessment, looking around for something else to talk about. “Sugar,” she began, sitting back in the rocker, “your wall’s so thick it would take a sledgehammer to break through it.”

“Is not.” Admittedly, it’s not my best comeback, but it got my point across.

“Is so.”

Dagnabit, Bernice knew how to play this game like a pro.

“My wall’s just fine,” I defended. “More than fine. It has pink flowers growin’ all over it and a beautiful garden on the other side. I’m happy behind my wall. More than happy. Who needs a gross boy scalin’ it? It might topple over.”

“A gross boy with a fine backside.” My eyes lost focus for a moment. She wasn’t wrong. Nate’s manly man buns were a work of art. “One who wants to scale that wall and protect you from any dragons hoverin’ overhead.”

My head shot up and I sobered instantly. “Who told you about my dragons?”

Her eyes shifted briefly to Cali.

I spun on my friend and glared. “You told her? How? You don’t have a cell.”

Cali at least had the decency to look sheepish. “I called her from the gas station and gave her a heads-up. I didn’t want her to worry when I didn’t come home and asked her to keep quiet about where we were.”

“You failed to mention that Nate was in hot pursuit, and Poppy was runnin’ in the opposite direction,” Bernice accused.

Cali rolled her eyes.

“How am I supposed to live vicariously through you if I don’t have all the details?”

“I’m not runnin’ from him,” I lied. “I’m here to clear my head of all things father, and tryin’ to process that my mother isn’t my mother and she’s dead.”

Just saying the words out loud turned my stomach sour. My mother was dead, and I didn’t even know her name. So I buried that along with all the other stuff freaking me out and took another deep drink of green potion.

Bernice sighed. “Fathers will let you down if they live long enough, they can’t help it, they’re men. All you need to know about gettin’ over what your father did is to live the best life possible in revenge. Show him that even though he took his best shot at destroyin’ your self-esteem, he missed by a mile.”

I scowled at her insinuation that my father had purposely set out to destroy me. “I don’t think he meant to hurt me,” I defended.

I caught a slight smile on her lips. “No?”

“He just chose revenge over me.”

She raised a brow. “He chose to find your mother’s killer over raisin’ you? Why?”

The green magic was making it hard to think. “’Cause he loved her?”

“I suppose if a man spent the last twenty-four years huntin’ a killer, he must have loved her fiercely, like a soul mate from one of your romance novels.”

That made me frown. Were they soul mates? The need to know more about the woman who gave birth to me rattled through my head. “Yeah, he must have.” I was suddenly very tired, and my head hurt.

Bernice regarded me for a moment like an amoeba cell under a microscope. I’d watched her do this to Cali when she was being stubborn and thought it was funny. Being on the receiving end was a little unsettling. It was like she could see inside your head and pick through all your secrets.

After a moment of reflection, and probable brain probing, she said without any segue, “I think for now the bigger issue is why in tarnation you’re runnin from a man like Nate Jacobs.”

I scanned the faces on the porch. Each one waited for my response. An answer I couldn’t put into words sufficiently. “We don’t mesh.”

“Come again?” Bernice muttered.

“We don’t mesh. We aren’t compatible.”

“You don’t mesh?”

“Nope.”

“You’re not compatible?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t think you mesh with six and a half feet of prime Southern male. One who takes care of his momma, runs his own business, is loyal to a fault and, I’ll point out, is gorgeous as sin. You’re not compatible with him?”

“Well . . . I should say he’s not compatible with me. I have issues with him, and I don’t think I can resolve them.”

“What issues?”

I had to think fast. Nate, as far as I could see, had no flaws except he was pursuing me like a hound after a fox. “He’s too tall.”

“Wear heels.”

Boy, she had a good comeback for everything.

“His hair is too long.” It wasn’t too long, it was lush and thick, and I wanted to run my hands through it. Maybe braid it like a Native American warrior and put feathers in it, but I didn’t think he’d let me.

She looked a Cali. “Is she high?”

Cali snorted and Sienna giggled.

“I’m not high, I’m realistic. A man like Nate needs a woman who isn’t like me.”

She leveled me with a look that would scare the pants off a saint. “You mean a woman who is bright, loyal,” she scanned me from head to toe, “has killer looks and a body most men fantasize about?” she imparted but kept going. “And let’s not forget you’re a Wallflower, which makes you doubly worth his time. I can totally see why he’d think you weren’t the woman for him.”

I shook my head and looked out at the ocean, refusing to say another word. They’d just try to convince me I was being irrational. That Nate wouldn’t care I was broken. But they didn’t know how badly, and I wasn’t about to enlighten them.

“There’s that wall,” Bernice whispered, then stood and leaned down to kiss my head before heading inside the cottage. “I’ll take the pullout since you’re all my guests. Drink up and get yourselves sorted, I’ll set the coffee maker to go off at nine.”

Sienna wound an arm around me and drew me into her side, offering support without words. Then Cali leaned over and wrapped her arms around my middle. We sat there staring at the water, three Wallflowers clinging to each other like a vine on a wall. It was poetic and comforting after the day I had.

“Don’t get any ideas,” I mumbled low enough for them to hear me. “I love you both, but I’m not Netflixin’ and chillin’ with you.”

There was a pregnant pause before Sienna giggled, “That’s good to know, since I’m not into incestuous relationships.”

Lordy, I’d forgotten she was my sister again, dagnabit. I jerked up and grabbed the green bottle to erase the faux pas from my memory banks. “I really gotta see a guy about pills. I have ADD. Probably the worst case in the history of the world. It’s so bad they’ll probably change the acronyms from A.D.D to P.O.P.P.Y ‘cause I’m just that awesomely challenged!”

_______________

Nate sat with Bo and Devin, watching the Wallflowers rocking gently on the porch. He’d wanted to storm the castle the minute they arrived, but Devin had stayed him with his hand, shoving binoculars at him so he could see the green bottle the girls were drinking from. “They’ll be hammered soon, so you’ll be wastin’ your breath. We can keep watch until mornin’, then you can do what you need to do.”

He’d grudgingly agreed, only because the girls looked to be handling her with care. Poppy seemed relaxed and happy for the moment, and that had settled his driving need to find her. He figured giving them a few hours on their own, so the Wallflowers could do what they did best—support each other unconditionally—would help Poppy heal quicker in the long run. And that’s all Nate cared about. Making sure Poppy got what she needed.

“We can take shifts watchin’ over them,” Devin grumbled, hitting rewind on the news clip that had given away their location, just before Bernice had slipped silently out of Frock You like a thief in the night.

“How many times you gonna watch that?” Bo sighed, putting the binoculars to his eyes.

“As many times as it takes, until it sinks in she didn’t fall to her death from that fuckin’ float.”

Nate looked down at Devin’s iPad and flinched when Cali’s head peered out from beneath tissue paper and streamers. “How the hell did she and Sienna get underneath the float while it was movin’?”

Bo sucked in a breath and looked down at the screen. His face paled slightly in the moonlight. “Swear to Christ she’s a pain in my fuckin’ ass.”

“A headache,” Devin mumbled.

“Out of control,” Bo agreed.

“Wallflowers,” Nate reminded them unfazed. His woman had been up top, thank Christ, instead of in danger down below. She’d been holding a SCAD flag, shouting a rebel yell about fucking bees when the cameras had caught them.

Both men looked at Nate with varying degrees of malice.

He grinned slowly, raising their ire.

“Just wait,” Bo replied smugly. “Your turn will come.”

Nate raised an incredulous brow. “My turn? She jumped in front of a fuckin’ bullet to save your woman.” He was still pissed they’d withheld that information during their stay at Bullwinkle Ranch. Knowing Poppy had jumped in front of a loaded gun, to protect Sienna, made his blood run cold.

Bo looked at Devin and grinned. “Fuckin’ solace.”

Devin looked at Nate and nodded. “About fuckin’ time.”