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"I think we’re all adults and kno planes work Austin isn’t Antarctica, and just because you’ll be in a new zip code physically doesn’t uys are faht be between you and us"
I saw her nod a little and her eyes got glassy and hot
"I’ that had her squealing in surprise and her long legs kicking up behind her I kissed her soundly on the temple and told her ht, honey"
I put her back down and she lightly sh
"Yeah, but I’ to keep hione? He’s a troublebrother keeps himself in line and there is an army of us here to remind him what he has to lose if he slips up Worry about you Worry about yourmarried It’ll be fine, Ayd, and if it’s not there isn’t anything you can do about it anyway"
She made a noise in her throat and lifted her eyebrow at me "So what’s the story with you and Saleinally let anyone in on"
Over the top of her head I saw that Jet had cli toward us I winked at him and was treated to another nasty look
"It ain’t a fairy tale, if that’s what you’re hoping for"
"She’s fun and kind of eccentric I like her"
"Sale and co life that had made me feel at peace, and when she took that ahen she had abandoned me to my own devices, that hen I really had latched on to Poppy with a ferocity that bordered on obsession I wasn’t going topersonality again It left too big of a void when it was gone
"So why are you acting like she kicked your puppy? It isn’t like you, and frankly I’uys are lucky to have her"
Jet had finally reached us and put his arm around Ayden’s o without a fight
"You suck" His tone was surly as he looked at et off your ass and dance with your wife She comes and listens to that ear murder you call music, the least you can do is twirl her around a dance floor once in a while"
He grunted and begrudgingly let Ayden pull him into a slow dance as I stepped away from the darkly beautiful couple I headed to the bar for another beer and thought about what Ayden had said
The truth of the matter was that the shop and even Rule and Nash were indeed lucky to have Salem herebut me--well, I kind of always had the idea that if it wasn’t for bad luck, then I would have no luck in my life at all I lost my mom I lost Salem I lost h to drink legally Bad luck was soured all the good fortune I had sincelost and loveless
CHAPTER 4
Salem
HEY, WILL YOU PLEASE call e I’ve left you in teeks, Poppy I’et a little bit worried"
I scowled at the phone and shoved it back in my purse as I ju on the sidewalk Denver got hot in the summer, not desert hot or Texas hot, but it was still nice and warm, so I was surprised that when the sky opened up like it seemed prone to docold and the size of quarters The weather in this state had a serious identity crisis but I guess that was okay because if you hated as happening weatherwise it would change fivecute black shorts with big silver sailor buttons and a flouncy off-the-shoulder shirt thisas I walked to the coffee shop at the end of the block to grab so to warm me up before I headed back to the shop from my lunch break I didn’t even want to think about what the rain had done to my hair and the heavy eye makeup I usually wore, so instead I focused on how irritated I was at my baby sister
Poppy and I had always been very different Where I was resigned to the fact that Loveless andto thrive in and find happiness, she was still there and still the apple of my stern father’s eye I had prayed that after she went away to college and saw more to the world, she would branch out, live a little, and realize there was hter Much to raduation and had fallen quickly into all her old patterns even when I pleaded with her to coe to ahad quickly followed and so had Poppy’s distancing herself from h my parents and her husband didn’t love that Poppy still stayed in touch with me, it was her one act of defiance and we talked whenever she could get aith it I had questions--a lot of theet the as a concrete wall There was -out than the sis than I did and it meant we couldn’t even be friends any broke loose all those years ago So major must have occurred for Rowdy to be so adahtest info on my sister She was supposedly his first love and Poppy nor there was to tell, so all the subterfuge between the two of them had me extra curious