Free The Awakening of Poppy Edwards by Marguerite Kaye Page B

calls coffee. We were sitting side-on to the bar, so our knees were touching. When I reached for my glass, even though I didn’t want to drink, he caught my hand in his.
    I should have pulled away but I didn’t. His skin was warm. His fingers were rough. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear, in the way his eyes seemed to blaze at me, how much he wanted me. I felt an answering heat. I can’t remember the last time I’d felt like that. Not in a long time. Never so strongly. I was crazy to even consider it. The man was a total stranger. We’d barely exchanged half a dozen words. But I was already past considering. And the fact that he was a total stranger was kind of the point. I didn’t need complications. I certainly didn’t want them. But what I wanted, really wanted, was this man.
    Is that shocking? I don’t know why it should be. I’m twenty-seven years old, not seventeen, and no matter what the studio would have the world believe, no matter how well it suited us for the world to believe,
that
was never going to happen between Randolph and me. Years ago I had to stand by and watch the mess love made of Daisy. It didn’t so much destroy her as empty her out. She was there, and not there. The war. It wasn’t just the men in the trenches who died. When her husband was killed, he took Daisy with him. I couldn’t get her back. I tried, but there was nothing left to of her to retrieve. She lost Anthony and she lost her voice. I lost her and our act. That’s why I’m here—I couldn’t stay. Neither of us could bear it. Together we’d just have kept reminding each other of what had happened. With an ocean between us, we can pretend it didn’t, which is what we do. Pretend I chose to come here. To go along with her story that it was the chance she’d been waiting for to go out on her own. I thought maybe after a year she’d join me or ask me back.
    Five years, it’s been. Which is fine, because life is good here, it really is. I’ve worked blooming hard to make sure of that, to change myself from one of the Edwards Sisters to Poppy Edwards, star of the silver screen, and sometimes Very Simply Vera. I’m here and I’ve every reason to be happy and it’s all down to me, and me alone, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. So you can see, can’t you, why I don’t, won’t, will never do the hearts-and-flowers stuff.
    The problem though, was that while I’m more than immune to romance, I do like the—now I’m going to be shocking again, but there it is—I like the sex, and what’s more, I don’t see why being anti one means I should be deprived of the other. So maybe it had never quite lived up to my expectations, but that just meant I should persevere, right? I mean, that’s what you do, isn’t it? If at first you don’t succeed, and all that. And I had a feeling that with this man it would be good.
    So I drained my glass quickly and slithered to my feet. ‘Ready?’ I asked him.
    He looked taken aback for about a second, and for about a second I felt as if I’d got the upper hand. I realised I’d have to keep it like that, too. This was not a man who would take kindly to being messed about.
    ‘Where to?’ he asked, throwing a note down on the bar, catching up quickly enough.
    I couldn’t take him home, obviously. ‘You tell me.’ I gave him one of my seductive smiles. They worked well on-screen. They worked very well on Lewis. ‘I’m at the Ambassador,’ he said, ushering me up the steps of Bunty’s.
    That gave me pause. Like every so-called Hollywood star, I’d been there. The Cocoanut Grove was
the
place to be seen, and the venue of choice for pretty much any studio event. But we weren’t going to the nightclub. And it was late enough for anyone staying in the hotel to be in their rooms. If I was careful, and if I left early…
    I whistled a passing cab, laughing at the look on his face as I did so. My sister taught me how to do that. Not that I had much cause to use it