jumped out of the passenger side. She hadn’t seen Charlotte since… before. Breathing in, Poppy steeled herself against the gush of memories. He’d been right. That was her conclusion, what the last two days had taught her. Turner had been right all along.
It appeared that Charlotte was going to cross the parking lot to come inside. Before she got more than a couple of steps, the driver’s door opened and Turner appeared.
Poppy’s chin rose from the heel of her hand. Turner. He must’ve called out to Charlotte because she turned, paused, and then went to meet him at the front of the truck. The two of them stood talking… No, they weren’t talking. Charlotte stepped away and threw an arm out to the side. Turner reached out for her, but she pulled away. Something was going on. They were arguing.
Charlotte had her back to the building and Turner was looking down at her, so Poppy couldn’t see his face. She was too high up to make out many details and the tempered glass windows kept the sound out. Not that she’d like to think they were shouting loud enough to be heard from the other side of the lot anyway.
Turner was still talking when Charlotte thrust what looked to be her phone up close to his face. In another surprising move, he finished what he was saying, swept the cellphone aside, and grabbed the back of Charlotte’s head to pull her to him so he could kiss her head.
Charlotte.
Watching the beauty cross the parking lot and Turner monitor her every step, Poppy wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her before. She had no idea how they knew each other. No idea what their relationship was. Maybe he’d been breaking up with her. Or maybe he’d confessed what they’d almost done two nights ago.
They hadn’t had sex, but what they’d done was cheating if he was with another woman. She and Charlotte weren’t friends exactly. Still, that didn’t absolve her from hurting the woman. It didn’t feel right to pry into the woman’s private affairs or to offer an apology when she didn’t know what Turner had told her. That was meddling. Being the other woman was one thing, putting herself in front of the wronged woman was another.
Drama at work was always widely enjoyed and recounted, which contributed to Poppy’s choice to keep so much to herself. Asking questions about others could lead to them asking about her. Not giving information was better than lying; that was what she’d decided pretty quickly after leaving the wedding. She’d decided it in the car with the groundskeeper as she made her getaway.
Watching Turner get back into the truck and drive away, Poppy lost herself in her own head for a few seconds. A chair leg scraped on the floor, snapping her out of the trance.
Work.
It was time to work.
Everything else would have to wait.
THIRTEEN
One AM. Getting out of work on time was probably easiest on that shift. In the other rotations, they were more likely to get caught on a call and they weren’t allowed to hang up simply because they reached the end of their shift. That being said, they almost always got difficult callers. Sometimes they were drunk, sometimes horny. Just about anything could happen on third shift.
Heading off the main floor, Poppy retrieved her phone from her purse and was pleased to see she had a voicemail. Only one person, other than work, had her number: her grandmother.
Before she could press the button to listen to it, someone came running up at her side.
“Poppy!” Charlotte said. “Hey.”
“Hi,” she said, clearing the screen of her phone. That could be it; Poppy had to prepare herself. It could be the moment Charlotte called her out for being a harlot with her man. “Uh… good vacation?”
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “Hey, are you okay? You were sort of distracted today.”
They stepped onto the elevator together. “I was?”
“Yeah, we were talking to you at break and you were in another world or something.”
Poppy had no memory of that. All day, she’d been on sort of autopilot and couldn’t even really remember any of her calls or conversations.
“Sorry, I… spaced, I guess.”
“No problem,” Charlotte said. Her voice was too upbeat to be threatening. Ritchie had said Charlotte would kick her ass if it came to it. But if what came to what? Poppy wished she’d asked more questions. “Listen, we’re off on Friday and not in until nine on Saturday. We’re like never off the weekend.”