“What?”
“Caroline approved them.” He pointed down at the cards. I only had a second to look before Caroline on the stage was calling my name and smiling at me in the spotlight.
“I’m sure it’s great,” I said and lifted my skirt to climb the steps up to Caroline’s side. There was a round of polite applause, and I was just drunk enough to wonder were they applauding my dead husband or me? Certainly not me. What had I ever done to earn applause?
“Thank you, Caroline,” I said and took the small plaque she held out to me. I cradled it in my arms while lifting the notes so I could read them. The spotlight was blinding and hot, and I could feel a couple hundred eyes on me in a way that made my skin crawl.
Did they know? I wondered. That every single thing in my life was a lie?
“Poppy?” Caroline whispered, and I realized I was just standing there like a statue.
After clearing my throat, I read the notes – prattling on about the senator’s commitment to struggling families. School lunch programs and affordable day care.
“But that was the senator’s public life.” This was new. All new. “In private, he was just as caring. Just as compassionate. Just as kind.” These lies rattled me, and I felt an old coping mechanism slipping over me. The deep retreat into my body, where no one could touch me. Where no one could even know me. “All Jim wanted was to serve this great state and to have a family.” My voice broke, and I looked at Caroline who only smiled at me, the way she usually did. Like she hadn’t just driven over me with a Mack truck. “Unfortunately, in the brief time we were married, my pregnancies ended in miscarriage. And since he died before we could achieve one of those goals . . .” I kept reading, the words meaning nothing. They were new and not at all what I’d approved. And they split my private life right open. Part of me wanted to stop. But the lights and the eyes and the way I’d been trained for the last two years to never, ever make a fuss . . .
The words just kept coming.
We were creating a new foundation, Caroline and I. Better Families, Better New York. Millions of dollars to help struggling families in New York State.
I read off the card, and the crowd applauded, and Caroline was there taking the microphone away from me.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, baffled and shocked.
“Giving you purpose,” she said and led me off the stage.
“All that stuff about Jim and me?” I asked when we were in the shadowed area beside the podium, and I could see Justin keeping people away from us. “That was private, Caroline.”
“It’s not private if everyone knows,” she said, and I gasped, my hand against my stomach like she’d stabbed me.
“Poppy, this is the real world. And you’ve got to live in it. Come to my house tomorrow and we’ll talk about everything.”
And then . . . she was gone. And I was left bitter and fuming, holding a plaque with my abusive husband’s name on it. Having told the whole room about my private heartbreak. And secret relief. A waiter walked by with an empty tray, and I put the plaque on it.
“Ma’am?” she asked.
“Throw it away. I don’t care.”
Another server came by with the champagne I needed, and I took two of them with me as I headed for the door. My purse, I thought, but didn’t care. I wouldn’t be touching up my makeup. And what did I need cash for? Nothing. I floated above cash. Above keys. It was just me and millions of dollars that I somehow kept selling my soul for. How many times could I do this to myself? For money I didn’t care about? How many times could I just be a pawn in another person’s game?
When was I going to grow a pair and figure out what I wanted?
“Poppy?”
It was Ronan, and there was a spark in me. A dangerous dark spark that even as it blazed I did my best to put out. That spark would only lead to humiliation. Embarrassment. Pain.
The first glass of champagne went down easily, and I just dropped the glass soundlessly on the carpet. The other glass I only drank half of it before doing the same. Wild, I felt wild. Just a breath away from being out of control, and I could sense him behind me. A heat. A force at my back.
Ignoring him was delicious.
I was electrified by his following me.
“Poppy,” he said, and then once we were out of the ballroom he grabbed me by my elbow and pulled me down a darker hallway. I fought him, yanking my arm free, only to have him grab it harder in a grip that would leave a red mark on my skin.
I was an expert in such grips.
But still I kept fighting. If this guy was going to hit me, let him. Let him try and hurt me. There was nothing left of me to hurt.
“Poppy, goddamnit, stop,” he said, and so fast he had a key out. He swiped it through a door, and we were in another room. A dark office with an empty desk. No windows.
All right. Now I was a little scared.
“What are you doing?” I asked, putting my hand over my elbow where he’d grabbed me.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, watching me touch my skin. God. I not only felt outrageously alone with this man. I felt stupidly naked. This dress was nothing. Where was a suit of armor when you needed it?
I reached behind my back, pressing the doorknob lever, but he was there quick, putting his hand against the door right beside my head, keeping it shut. His breath stirred the small hairs escaping my too-tight bun.
The champagne only gave me so much courage, and I looked, not in his icy blue eyes but at his square chin with its five o’clock shadow. There was a scar there, just beneath his jaw line. It ran a straight line near his ear to nearly the point of his chin. Another jump from a window, I wondered. Or worse. Because Ronan seemed incredibly capable of worse.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I said, my voice only a little shaky. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a second to catch your breath,” he said.
“Well, I was leaving, so why don’t I just do that?”
He reached over and turned on a small lamp, the golden pool of light illuminated his face. And I’d talked to this man for what? A half hour, total in my life. A half hour over two and a half years. I owed him nothing. I pushed down the lever and pulled open the door.
“You’re making a fool of yourself out there,” he said, and I gasped in outrage, turning to face him.
“Fuck you.”
“It’s the truth. And you know it. You can’t show them how much they’re under your skin.”
“What the hell do you know about anything?”
“I know I’m under your skin.”
Said skin blazed hot and undoubtedly red. Right. This was the expected embarrassment. The humiliation right on cue. The ice cold look on his face melted and what was left was something so much worse. Something horrible.
Pity.
“Don’t,” I spat at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like the rest of them look at me. Like all I am is something to be pitied and whispered about. Something to be used and shuffled around.”
“I’m not—”
I shoved him. My hands against his rock-solid chest, and I shoved him. Hard enough he stepped backwards, and everything ignited in me. Everything. I looked at my hands, surprised they weren’t flames.