Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

I gasped at the exquisite realness of it. The audacity of it.

“Poppy,” he said, and I blinked, trying to pull out of his grasp. I was . . . raw where he touched me. I felt too much.

“I never told you my name,” I said.

“You never had to.”

“That night. Did you know who I was the whole time?” I whispered, asking a question that had sat in the back of my brain like a thorn. Unasked, but there. Steady and hurtful.

“Was I only nice to you because you were marrying the senator,” he said. “Is that what you’re asking?”

I said nothing, breathing hard through my nose, looking at the starched white collar of his shirt where it met the black silk of his lapel.

“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know who you were until the senator came to the door.”

His blue eyes caught me. Held me. And I couldn’t pull against him. I could barely even breathe. It wasn’t fear that held me. No. Not at all. It was something worse. Something I didn’t have the slightest clue how to manage.

I felt the touch of his gaze on my face. My lips, and they parted so I could pull in a breath. My chest lifted, and he glanced down and away. His jaw tight, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know what this was.

A game. A trick.

Real? A lie?

He let go of my arm, his hand clenched in a fist at his side. And I reached for the coffee, drinking it down in three big sips. It burned my mouth, but the pain cleared my head.

This was some new game, and I didn’t know the rules.

I pulled my skirt back and stepped around him, a wide berth so no part of me brushed up against any part of him.

“Poppy,” he breathed, and my name in his voice, that low timber, that dark accent, it held me like no grip on my elbow ever could. He didn’t finish the statement, and I looked over at him.

His cold mouth was not folded in some charming smile. His eyebrow wasn’t lifted in a sardonic curl. Everything about him was sharp.

“What?” I asked. For a moment, a razor-thin one, there was something he was going to say. I could feel it.

“No more drinking,” he said, and just like that, he was gone.

Again.

By the time the lights dimmed and Caroline got up on the small stage to present me with the senator’s award, I’d had two more champagne glasses. And, frankly, I was feeling all right. I should have been drunk at all these events. Justin came up beside me, and I wasn’t sure how he managed to still look like someone’s assistant in a thousand-dollar tux.

“Are you ready?” he whispered, pressing the neatly typed notes I’d approved a week ago into my hand.

“Sure,” I said. How hard could this be? I’d done it a million times and, frankly, no one cared. I was doing it, and I didn’t care.

“There are some changes,” Justin said, and that jerked me into caring.

“What?”

“Caroline approved them.” He pointed down at the cards. I only had a second to look before Caroline on the stage was calling my name and smiling at me in the spotlight.

“I’m sure it’s great,” I said and lifted my skirt to climb the steps up to Caroline’s side. There was a round of polite applause, and I was just drunk enough to wonder were they applauding my dead husband or me? Certainly not me. What had I ever done to earn applause?

“Thank you, Caroline,” I said and took the small plaque she held out to me. I cradled it in my arms while lifting the notes so I could read them. The spotlight was blinding and hot, and I could feel a couple hundred eyes on me in a way that made my skin crawl.

Did they know? I wondered. That every single thing in my life was a lie?

“Poppy?” Caroline whispered, and I realized I was just standing there like a statue.

After clearing my throat, I read the notes – prattling on about the senator’s commitment to struggling families. School lunch programs and affordable day care.

“But that was the senator’s public life.” This was new. All new. “In private, he was just as caring. Just as compassionate. Just as kind.” These lies rattled me, and I felt an old coping mechanism slipping over me. The deep retreat into my body, where no one could touch me. Where no one could even know me. “All Jim wanted was to serve this great state and to have a family.” My voice broke, and I looked at Caroline who only smiled at me, the way she usually did. Like she hadn’t just driven over me with a Mack truck. “Unfortunately, in the brief time we were married, my pregnancies ended in miscarriage. And since he died before we could achieve one of those goals . . .” I kept reading, the words meaning nothing. They were new and not at all what I’d approved. And they split my private life right open. Part of me wanted to stop. But the lights and the eyes and the way I’d been trained for the last two years to never, ever make a fuss . . .