“Oh my…” She kept repeating herself, but that was because the shocks kept coming. “Baby,” she murmured the words so quietly that he might not have heard them. Clasping his face in both hands, she guided their lips together. “You were a father to the newborns.”
“I wanted to get angry,” he said. “I wanted to track down the bastard and kill him… probably would’ve got myself killed too.”
“You couldn’t,” she said. “Faye was what? Twelve. Still just a kid.”
“Less than a year had gone by since Ritchie lost his dad. It was surreal. All the things I’d been saying to him… He wanted everyone to think that he was glad his old man was gone because the guy was an asshole.” She stroked his face, caressing him, trying to offer the teenage him some comfort he maybe hadn’t got all those years ago. “But in private, usually when he was drunk, we saw it… We knew it hit him hard.”
“And then there you were, going through the same loss… a loss times two,” she said, aware of where they were. “And this place, the Venture… you love it so much.”
“I couldn’t even throw myself into it back then. I had to work. I had to work in the days and help with the girls at night. Charley was just seven, an absolute nightmare, always happy, running around, thought Dad would walk back in any second… Zoey was two. So young you wouldn’t think she’d get it, but… she knew… Better than Charley, she got it.”
Poppy couldn’t imagine what the family had been through. She’d always known her life was charmed. Her mother’s parents had died before she was born. Sad though it was, there was no great loss for her because she hadn’t known them to love them. Her father’s father was a tragedy, losing his life at thirty-five, but that was long before Poppy was born too.
Turner had gone through it. Losing his father and grandfather at the same time. Those men were his role models, his friends, and his mentors. He must have lost a part of himself when he lost those men.
“And the twins won’t remember him at all.”
“Zoey doesn’t remember, even Charley’s memories are vague.”
“So you have to keep them alive for your sisters,” she said. “And you took on the burden of being father and grandfather to make them proud. You filled their shoes.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” he said. “Shit, I could’ve gone off the rails any time I wanted. Mom always said I was due… She thinks the girls will drive me crazy every day.”
Poppy smiled and leaned in to rest her head on his cheek. “You adore them.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell them that,” he said, raising a hand to the back of her head as he turned his lips against her temple. “Will you stop assuming obstacles? I throw up enough for us, I don’t need you doing it too.”
“You being a father was never an obstacle,” she said, freeing her hands from his to coil her arms around him, the bannister still between them. “I was surprised at first, but I thought about it, and I understood why you would want to separate what was precious to you from something that could be a frivolous nothing. It makes sense to me.” She shrugged. “Don’t ask me why. I suppose I thought you’d planned to tell me when you were ready. But I thought if you’d been told I was there and then I didn’t say anything… I just wanted to be honest and tell you that I knew.”
“You accepted that I came with baggage,” he said like it meant something, though she didn’t know what. “You didn’t even care, you just accepted it.”
Smiling, she turned her face toward his chest. “Actually, when I thought about it, it was kind of hot to imagine you taking care of a little person… Daddy bear protecting his little cubs… Falling asleep with the baby.”
The whisper of his laugh warmed her hair. “Okay, settle down,” he muttered in jest. “Geez, women and their ovaries… Can I get the twins into college before we think about knocking you up?”
His hand was loose, so her head fell back into it as she pondered the timeline. “What does that give us? Three years? Something like that?” She sucked in a breath. “Yeah, that should be enough time for me to trick you into proposing and get you drunk down the aisle.”