Poppy
All I wanted was to throw a little bag of dog poop at my ex's door to release my divorce demons. Is that too much to ask? Just my luck Deputy Hillbilly Upchuck Duke catches me in the act. That creep's been on me like germs on a buffet since we were kids. I have a bar to run, a beer garden to build, and moron cousins and patrons to wrangle. I don't have time to be stalked by this idiot. If he thinks showing back up in Grand Valley with a star on his inbred chest, sans mullet, will make me forget the hell he put me through, he's dumber than he was when he left Illinois.
Chuck
Poppy Prince hates my guts. Always has. It's cute she thinks those nicknames bother me, almost as cute as how clueless she still is about her sex appeal. It takes a special kind of man to put up with her crap. I'm going to show her once and for all that no one's as special as me.
Poppy
All I wanted was to throw a little bag of dog poop at my ex's door to release my divorce demons. Is that too much to ask? Just my luck Deputy Hillbilly Upchuck Duke catches me in the act. That creep's been on me like germs on a buffet since we were kids. I have a bar to run, a beer garden to build, and moron cousins and patrons to wrangle. I don't have time to be stalked by this idiot. If he thinks showing back up in Grand Valley with a star on his inbred chest, sans mullet, will make me forget the hell he put me through, he's dumber than he was when he left Illinois.
Chuck
Poppy Prince hates my guts. Always has. It's cute she thinks those nicknames bother me, almost as cute as how clueless she still is about her sex appeal. It takes a special kind of man to put up with her crap. I'm going to show her once and for all that no one's as special as me.
Chuck
I won’t mince words. Poppy Prince hates my guts. Always has. Probably always will. Has that ever stopped my dick from leading me like a compass needle in her direction whenever she’s in a five-mile radius? Never. When I moved back to Grand Valley two years ago, I finally accepted there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.
I know the Silver Bullet is probably the last place I should be tonight, but I never learned anything the easy way. She knows I’m here. I can feel it—that crackle in the air that happens whenever we’re in the same room. It’s piercing through the scent of liquor and pinging off the paneled walls of her bar. It’s saying, Charlie Duke run for your life dumb ass.
Somehow, I know she feels it too. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t turn around to acknowledge me when I sat at the bar, even though I know she heard her cousin Tommy say hello to me. That’s not how she rolls.
I’m a county deputy. I could go to a bar in any of the other five towns in Burnam County, Illinois and get free drinks. Instead, I willingly come here where I receive minimal service. It’s okay. I’m used to it. I’d expect nothing less from my girl.
I use the word my loosely because it’s a complicated relationship, or maybe because I like to torture myself as much as she does. I think I come here because I’m still waiting for her to accept my compass needle problem too, waiting for her to give up the fight and admit there’s always been an attraction between us. Tonight, however, I’m here for more than the pipe dream of her surrender. Maybe it’s maturity or something deeper than the obsession that tortured me through my teen years, but what I saw this morning gnawed at my marrow all day.
I’ve only seen this carnivorous woman cry once. It was at her father’s funeral a few months ago. Today, in court, where I filled in for the bailiff, she looked so defeated and vulnerable it rattled a vital cog inside me loose. I thought for a moment I was going to have to see her tears again, but she held her ground. Good old Poppy.
She’s legally Poppy Prince again. I don’t know why she ever married that dipshit Eric Holt anyway. Guy like that can’t handle her—not the way she deserves to be handled. Handled, worshipped—toe-may-toe, tah-mah-toe.
Her long, black pony tail brushes over her shoulder as she reaches into the beer cooler. My pulse hitches like a rabbit on the chopping block, watching her grab my brand—Miller Genuine Draft. I must be a simple man if all it takes to turn me on is the knowledge that one of her brain cells is dedicated to remembering what I drink. Some would say that’s what bartenders do—remember what their customers drink. I like to think it signifies something deeper where I’m concerned.
No matter that she calls my brand swill. I assume she does so for the opportunity to use a pig inference when she deigns to speak to me. I know her games. I’ve been playing them since we were kids. The woman hand-crafted my armor with her dragon-green eyes and sassy tongue since before she had those glorious breasts she’s got squeezed into that tight white tank top.
My mouth is watering, taking in all that olive skin down to the sliver peeking out above her snug-fitting jeans. She’d probably kick my head in with those black biker boots she wears, if she caught me ogling. I’ve got the law on my side though, so I take my chances every chance I get.
I want to lick that barbed wire tattoo on her bicep and prove to her that she can’t prick me with her rough edges—that I’m man enough to do the job Eric Holt couldn’t. I want to hold her and kiss her tears because I’m one of the few people who knows she’s human—that she has to cry like the rest of us. I know the name around her barbed wire tattoo is one of her brothers, Porter, who died in a motorcycle accident after I moved away when I was eighteen.
Grand Valley is a small town. Even though we’ve never had a conversation that involved anything serious, she can’t escape me knowing some of her darkest secrets, her pain. I think the fact I know her vulnerabilities is part of the reason she hates me. The first time I saw her again, when I moved back home to take care of my mother, I decided I was going to make her tell me why someday.
That was two years ago. Mom didn’t last very long. Damned girl down-played the cancer, so I wouldn’t worry and come home sooner. I should have anyway. I only got a year with her before it took her. I hate that Poppy knows how that feels. It got her dad too five months ago. You’d think that would have finally built a kinship between us, a way to bury the hatchet.
Nope. Not my girl.
In Grand Valley there are Townies and River Rats—people who live in town and the lesser life forms that grew up at the bottom of the valley in tired little houses along the Illinois River. Most people around here grow out of using those slurs once they mature and realize we’re all equally worthless in this world. Not Poppy though. While I will always look at her and see the woman of my dreams, she will always look at me and see a no-good, hillbilly River Rat—a joke.
Am I still holding my breath anyway as she’s approaching? Fucking-A right I am. Because maybe today is the day she’ll finally get tired of hating me.
She sets my beer down in front of me, but doesn’t touch the money I laid out. She always waits to take it in case the opportunity she won’t have to come back and give me change presents itself. The ceiling fan is circulating the cool May evening air from the open windows, but it’s useless at dissipating the heat, radiating between us across the bar.
“Upchuck.” She nods without looking at me, prying off the top of my bottle.
It’s cute she still thinks that nickname she came up with bothers me. I stare at her ruse of concentration, willing her to look at me.
“Poppycock,” I drawl, because I know she hates it when I call her that.
She whips around, the end of her pony tail nearly taking my eye out, and tosses the bottle cap in a metal bucket on the floor. A new sign propped on the bar back catches my attention. I know her place as well as I know her. She ignores me every second I’m in here, so I’ve had plenty of time to take in the scenery. It’s a square of cardboard with jagged edges like it was created on a temper-induced whim. The black handwriting reads, Free divorce shots for everyone.
Cute. Quintessential Poppy to celebrate what anyone else would see as a defeat.
“Don’t I get a divorce?” I ask, unable to look away from the illegal view of her cleavage as she rinses some glasses in the sink under the bar.
“You weren’t invited.”
I point around the neck of my beer to the sign. The woman should be tested for her peripheral vision capabilities because without sparing me a glance, she stomps over to the sign and pulls up a Sharpie. The marker tip scribbles across the cardboard with a squeak. Slapping the cap back on, she swishes away and leans on the end of the bar by Tommy, her sister, and Garrett Butler.
“Not right,” Tommy mutters over his beer, shaking his head.
The guy stuttered something awful when we were kids, but he got it under control enough to make a point when needed. I can’t disagree with his assessment on this one.
I read it twice because that’s what I do—let her hurt me double what anyone else ever has. The sign now reads, Free divorce shots for everyone, except hillbillies named Chuck.
I glance down the bar in time to see her do a shot. There’s a glaze over her angry green eyes. I can tell she’s been at it for a while because she pulls out a cigarette and lights it. She only smokes when she’s getting drunk, another factoid from the Poppy encyclopedia I’ve been cataloguing in my brain since childhood.
“Still smoking?” I call because I know she knows I mean it’s illegal to smoke indoors in Illinois, and hello—half our parents died of cancer.
I love my job, but I never realized one of the benefits would be to laud the law over the head of this spitfire. That perk alone makes me wonder if I should pay Burnam County Sheriff’s Office for the privilege of working there instead of the other way around.
Her hips are bouncing to the beat of Elle King’s “America’s Sweetheart”. She turns around and cranks the volume on the speakers until everyone flinches.
“Can’t hear you!” she bellows without sparing me a glance. Downing another shot, she screams, “Fucking dee-vorced! Woo! Yeah! This is my jam.” She turns to Tommy and Garrett. “You guys need to learn this one.”
“No!” they bark in unison.
Both of them play guitar in Poppy’s unofficial house band. Yet apparently they have their limits. The two guys served together overseas. Tommy moved back around the same time I did and took over Prince Automotive when Poppy’s dad got sick. Garrett showed up a couple months later to help him run the garage.
While Tommy just clears six feet and is built like a tatted, brick shithouse with thick sandy hair, Garrett’s got half a foot on him and resembles a lean country rock star. I get the impression Poppy adopted Garrett because he seems to have adopted Tommy. Anybody that adopts Tommy is okay in my book. I’d worry about Garrett moving in on my non-existent turf, but I’ve been in here enough to know he never has to work for it where women are concerned. Poppy would be too much work. It takes a special kind of man to put up with her shit, and he’s just not as special as me.
Poppy’s climbing up on top of the stool she keeps for herself behind the bar. The legs wobble beneath her. I grip my beer, fighting the urge to run over and catch her. She stomps her thick-soled boot onto the bar top, nearly knocking over Garrett’s beer as she climbs onto the wood surface. I get a view of her firm ass, as she bends down and motions for her little sister, Patti, to join her.
Two siblings never looked or acted so polar opposite. Poppy’s a few inches shorter than my six-feet—long-legged and tone-muscled with naturally tan skin. Patti’s at least six inches shorter than her sister, more femininely curved, conservatively-clothed, and has a thousand constellations of freckles on her fair complexion. If I had to describe the two girls in three letters, Patti would be the PTA. Poppy would be the NRA. The curly, red bun on top of Patti’s head shakes in protest as she waves her hands at Poppy’s request.
“I’ll stay here and catch you,” she says, gesturing to the stool she’s sitting on with what’s probably equal parts embarrassment and concern in her placating smile.
“Fuck this town!” Poppy croons to the chorus and winks to the mayor who’s sitting at the end of the bar.
“Not the words,” Patti warns, her hand by her mouth as an amplifier.
Mayor Corrigan, a.k.a. Three Fingers, chuckles. He lowers two of the three digits that survived a metal beam that fell on his hand back in his iron worker days and waves the remaining one at Poppy with an amused grin behind his grey beard.
The bar shakes, rattling every glass and bottle on it with each stomp of Poppy’s shit-kickers as she belts out the lyrics and pumps her fist in the air. She’s wiggling her hips like she’s working a tiny hula hoop around them, shimmying to the beat half-freestyle, half-Irish jig.
Someone farther back in the bar shouts, “Yeah! Party Popper!”
Everyone’s laughing or smirking at the entertainment. Everyone but me. They started calling her that when we were younger, because she was great at getting people fired up. Wherever Poppy was, it felt like a party.
I know better. This isn’t a party. This is grade-A faking it. I get to see the rage in people when I arrest them and then watch them fall apart after we book them or when they leave court. I called her “Poppycock” one night at a bonfire, because she pulled a ballsy prank. Chick’s probably got a bigger dick than me, but right now, I don’t see any of the nicknames. I see that sun-soaked girl I fell in love with when I was twelve years old, after she kicked an older boy in the nuts for making fun of Tommy’s stutter.
She got shit on by life twice this year. She can fool her patrons, but there’s no way this is a happy dance. My age-old instinct to tease her has suddenly died inside me.
She kicks Garrett’s beer over accidentally and lets out a belly laugh as he and Tommy hop off their stools. Tommy lets out a curse, stutter-free. Seems he’s perfected the important phrases. Garrett flees in my direction, wiping a wet spot on his jeans.
He chuckles and slaps me on the shoulder. “Watch out, Chuck. You might be next.”
Tommy lumbers over and glances from me up to Poppy. He lets out a long sigh, running a hand down his jaw and shakes his head.
“It wasn’t pretty in court today,” I tell him after Garrett walks off.
I don’t run my mouth about what I see at work, but Tommy’s her family. The three of us are the same age at twenty-seven. Went to school together. Tommy’s more like another brother to her than a cousin. If I can’t help her, at least I can give him fair warning she might need traffic cones around her for a while. He mock punches my shoulder and gives me a tight-lipped nod.
“Fun. Fun,” he mutters.
Guy knows more than he lets on. The two words make the hairs on my arms stand up. He can say so much with so little. If Tommy thinks there’s trouble ahead for her, then I know I’m right. I don’t want to be right.
I watch her after he moves on because that’s what I do. I watch her, every shade of her. Is she going to run into the arms of the next loser for comfort? Is she going to drive too fast in that Mustang of hers after closing up the bar some night? Maybe she’ll stay single and turn into an alcoholic. Maybe she’ll get over the divorce and losing her dad, meet a nice guy, and settle down. I don’t know.
All I do know is that I’m hurting right along with her, hurting for her. I’d tell her that I’d share the pain with her, but she’d laugh in my face and call me names. Things could have been different between us, if I’d just figured out where it went wrong.
Sometimes I used to think the problem was that she didn’t know she was a girl, while I was too achingly aware of the fact. I tried small talk, teasing her, daring her, even compliments. Okay, and most of the time I was just an outright immature shit. Regardless, nothing ever got through her force field. I could have gotten naked, waving road flares and still wouldn’t have been even a blip on her radar.
I’m not offended she never took the time to get to know the real me. When I moved away, she became a fond memory like a mythical creature I had envisioned. The second I saw her after I moved back though, I wanted her like an eternal flame wants to burn.
It was like adult-me gave teenage-me a mental high-five and said, Damn, you did know what you were talking about. She radiates life and for all her surliness toward me, there’s still a pure innocence about her. Deeper still, something primal whispers for me to take care of her and love her, as though it’s not even my conscious choice but rather something predestined. And now I get to watch her self-destruct and not be able to put her pieces back together.
I need another drink. Too bad I’m in the wrong fucking bar.
Poppy is recently divorced, lonely, distrustful, and angry – mostly at Chuck. Chuck and Poppy cannot seem to run out of memories from their childhood in which they both pranked and bullied each other, both trying to conceal deeper feelings of attraction buried so deep that they both found it difficult to dig them up and face them.
Being the new deputy, Chuck cannot seem to stop running into Poppy doing some legally – questionable stuff, and what better way to get rid of someone sort of stalking you and never quite arresting you than starting to fall for him?
The point of view alternates between both characters, expanding on certain scenes and emotions rather than being repetitive. The chemistry between Poppy and Chuck is electric and easy to see and root for from the very beginning, even before they do. Both lead characters are unique in their own way, fun to read about and see things through their eyes, relatable and very likable.
Poppy’s is a strong, determined, anything but girly, can fight her own battles type of woman. Chuck uses humor as a defense mechanism, overthinks details, nonjudgmental, and easy going. Despite the interesting development of characters within the story, I really enjoyed the fact that Poppy and Chuck did not change from being the people we got to know them to be, and we really do get to know them with the author’s skillful writing.
The plot does not shy away from addressing intense emotions like loneliness, bitterness, wanting revenge, admitting to being wrong, not letting other people’s opinions or peer pressure affect personal characters, letting go of a difficult past, and opening up to a promising future with a clean heart.
The story is exciting, fun, witty, addictive, and so easy to bring to life in readers’ heads. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romantic comedies.