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“Nothing.” She hooked her seat belt and gestured forward, in the general direction of the road. “Got plans you’re worried about missing?” she asked lightly.
“No,” I ground out.
“Hmmm.”
Was my eye twitching? “Poppy, if you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“Oh no. That’s not my role within this family.” She patted my arm. “I’m not the get in your face sister.”
Hooking my wrist on the top of the steering wheel, I turned toward her. “Get in my face about what?”
The annoying thing about all of my siblings was that they weren’t bothered in the slightest when my voice did that snappish, growling thing that I’d never been able to hide when I felt snappish and growling inside my brain.
With an unaffected smile on her face, Poppy sat back in the seat and sighed like she was at the fucking beach, soaking up the sun. “Ian, my role in this family is to be the pleasant, listening ear. The support squad. The encourager. Consequently, this is why I’m also everyone’s favorite.” At my disbelieving snort, she merely grinned and kept going. “Even if you try to pull scary Ian with me, you can’t force me to be the bad guy in this. Because the second someone says something you aren’t ready to hear, you’ll shut down. So I’m not going to be the one who’ll smack you in the face with whatever you’re running from.”
I’m not running from anything.
Why couldn’t I say the words? They remained stuck in the base of my throat, completely unwilling to come gasping to the surface. Something held them down—self-preservation, or the inability to lie out loud, I wasn’t sure. Poppy didn’t know about the kiss, but she knew something. And fuck was I not going to ask. It was all I could do to just stare at her.
“For the not getting in my face sister, you do a pretty good impression of one,” I said tersely.
“It’s a gift.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “You taking me home, or what?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. I am.”
Once Poppy was delivered back to the house, my phone buzzed with a call from Greer.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a dead car too,” I said by way of answering.
“Nope. But I just got a call from our lake house client. Would you be willing to go out there and talk to her and her husband? They’ve got a few questions about where we’re putting electrical in the kitchen. I think they want to change some things around now that everything is marked up. Beckett has an away game this weekend, and I have tickets to take Olive to a play in Portland.”
“Yeah, sure.” I rubbed the back of my neck. The lake house was a solid hour away, but someone needed to do it.
She made a pleased noise. “How accommodating you are. I’m so used to Cameron giving me shit about everything I ask him to do. This is downright pleasant.”
I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t really feel like sitting home today anyway, so I don’t mind.”
There was a telling, loaded silence, and I grimaced.
Why the fuck did I go and say that? If there was a sister who’d get in my face, then she was on the other end of this fucking phone call.
“Trouble in paradise?” she asked lightly.
“No trouble. No paradise. Just … don’t mind being busy is all.”
“Because Poppy might have mentioned something about a hot coach and a dinner date…”
“Dinner meeting,” I snapped. My eye twitched a little. “He’s got a big head and the IQ of a rock.”
“Ahh. I can see the appeal, then. Tell Harlow good luck when you see her.” She paused. “It’s so hard to find smart, intelligent men, and he must be both if you’re reacting this way.”
“Fuck off, Greer,” I said through gritted teeth.
She laughed in sheer delight. “Oh, what I’d give to be a fly on the wall at the Wilder-Keaton household tonight.”
“Poppy was right,” I muttered under my breath.
Of course, she heard me. Hearing like a fucking bloodhound. “About what?”
