then, Poppy wasn’t doing something, she wasn’t even sure that she was breathing.
“Well, come on!” Grammie exclaimed. “Fifteen hours? We want to hear it!”
His smile grew as he switched his attention over her head. “Marigold Granger… It’s an honor to meet Poppy’s Grammie.”
“I didn’t think anyone knew who she was,” Primrose whispered in the background.
Turner’s smiling eyes landed on Poppy’s. “We’re not done. Baby, we didn’t get started. My shot with you can’t be… what we had. You deserve a guy with class, a guy with money, a guy who can give you anything you ask for…” He raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. “I can’t be that guy. You know what I am. Damnit, you know it better than I did… I told you that I couldn’t handle you being out in the world vulnerable, needing me, and not stepping up. You don’t love this Abernathy guy, I know what the media’s saying is crap.”
“In your statement—”
“Charley and Preston came up with that last part. What was I supposed to say? That I’d known all along who you were and what was going on and hadn’t told them?” Curving a hand around the back of his neck, he rubbed at what had to be his niggling guilt. “It doesn’t matter what they know.” His arm dropped to his side. “It’s supposed to hurt…” He smiled while grazing the back of his finger down her jaw. “You’re right. It is.”
“Turner—”
“I can provide for you better than I did at the Venture. You’ve gotta give me a chance to try. I didn’t know we were finite, that you’d just take off like you did. I’ll do better. Somehow…” For a moment, he glanced around at the grandeur of the dining room like maybe he was trying to work out how to build an estate to give her. “You’re in my head every minute… You walked away from me, Candy-Cane… And I let you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said, intercepting his hand when he tried to touch her face again. “I know what you are, how deep your decency goes. You have such an incredible amount of respect for women. Accepting how we ended has probably played on your conscience.” She smiled, linking her fingers in his. “But it’s okay. I’m okay… I made us what we were. I did that. Me. You have nothing to feel guilty about. I told you I’d never regret us and I don’t. Even now, I don’t.”
But Turner was shaking his head. “You don’t get it, Popkat.”
“I do,” she said, stepping closer. “You imagine how you would feel if one of your sisters was in a relationship like ours and you feel bad about it. But you don’t have to. I made my choice. I pushed you. Just like you said. I pushed. We were what I wanted us to be. You don’t have to rush in and apologize.”
“I’m not here to apologize,” he said. “I’m here because there’s something inside me I can’t ignore or resist.” A prickle of dread chilled her spine. “You said you never fit until you found me. And I didn’t know it, but there was a piece of me missing until you showed up. You fit with me because you belong with me… You are that missing piece. My missing piece… It’s important that I don’t lie to you, not anymore. I mean, I didn’t intentionally lie to you, I was lying to myself.”
“Turner, please. You don’t have to do this.”
He wasn’t dissuaded. “I feel everything with you. I want to be someone you can rely on, just like I said, but to hell with the distance.” Flattening her hand on his chest, he pressed her palm against him. “Being with you was the happiest time in my life.” Poppy swallowed; that’s what her grandmother said about her grandfather. Turner remembered. “All very dramatic… I don’t regret it.” He had made quite the entrance. As she breathed in, her heart swelled. “I’ve left everything behind and I won’t go back without you. You did it to me from a thousand miles away, Candy-Cane. You’re still doing it to me. I’m the one guy who will take you any damn way, every damn way and never walk away… I won’t walk away, Poppy Granger and I won’t let you walk away from me ever again.”
They considered each other for close to a minute. Although he was all she could see, her whole world, the weight of expectation in the rest