Zoey nodded. “You think we should lie to them? To reassure them we’re just friends?”
“I don’t think you should lie,” Poppy said. “Though you did say you’d broken up. Did you get back together on the phone?”
The teen sighed. “I don’t know. She said she still loves me, but… I don’t know. I haven’t told my family.”
“We can deal with that.”
“Here?” Zoey asked, looking around. “With your family and everything that’s going on? Charley’s still pissed off.”
“She’s pissed off at me. And your situation is no less important than anything else that’s going on. If anything, it’s more important. Your thing could impact your forever.” Poppy shook her head. “No, we can’t just give up.”
“I don’t know what to do, how we can convince her parents it’s a good idea.”
“I can talk to them,” Poppy said, hitting on an idea that pushed her shoulders back. “I’ll have Tiller talk to them.”
“Tiller?”
“There’s nothing Tiller can’t do,” she said, giving Zoey a hug. “Trust me.”
A standing Preston appearing next to them broke their hug. “You got a minute, Poppy?”
A minute? She was a woman in high demand. After checking Zoey was okay, Poppy left the table and followed Preston out of the room, tucking her phone into her robe pocket. To take her away from the family suggested he wanted to discuss something serious.
“What is it?” she asked, fearing what Holden might have done.
“How does tomorrow night sound?”
“For what?” she asked, suspecting the answer may be related to her previous fear.
“Dinner with Abernathy.”
“Just me?”
“No,” he said, smiling as he shook his head. “I don’t think Turner would ever speak to me again.”
“I have to talk to him about it,” she said, wandering closer to the stairs. “We started to talk about it this morning but didn’t get anywhere. We don’t want the kids there, but he’d probably appreciate Faye’s support. How do you think Faye would feel about Stephanie sitting with the kids upstairs?”
He shrugged. “We can talk about it. The truth is, your father’s lawyers wanted to push it to next week. But the longer this goes on, the more there’s a chance he can do damage.”
It was so frustrating. “I don’t understand why he doesn’t get the message.”
“If Abernathy loves you, he thinks he’s showing his sincerity,” Preston said. “He’ll know that being with your sister first puts you in a difficult position. I’d guess he wants to persist to show you that he’ll support you through it, that he wants to be with you no matter what.” It really sounded like he’d thought about it. He conceded a laugh. “Turner and I might have talked about it last night… He wouldn’t have let anything get in his way.”
“He’s not that kind of man. They’re not even remotely the same. I was with Turner, I pushed to be with him, before he had to come here and fight for us. I wanted to be with him, we had experience with each other. Holden and I have no history, there’s never been any shared anything between us.”
“Maybe he doesn’t see it that way,” Preston said. “There’s a chance he’s just flat nuts or this is a power play we’re not seeing yet. We won’t know until we get him here and talk to him.”
Which put Grammie on her list of people to talk to as well. She wouldn’t be happy to welcome Holden into her home or to her dining table. For her to agree to behave, she’d have to understand the logic behind the invitation.
“I have to talk to Turner before I agree to anything,” Poppy said. “He may not want any of his sisters there or his mom.”
“There’s a chance that Abernathy will offer to host or that the meal should take place in neutral territory.”
“We can’t go out in public,” she said, shaking her head. “No way. The chance of the press catching a whiff of it… No. I don’t want to be a spectacle like that.”
“Abernathy’s likely to have demands of his own. He may not want your sister there.”
“He can’t make demands like that, it’s her house. If Violet wants to be there then she gets to be there. You and I know that Holden and I have no future, but I think, if anything, we should expect him to make an apology to Violet for his abominable behavior.”
“It pisses Turner off too.”
“Of course it does, he has sisters.”
“I can find out what time his lunch is, we could go