so long. Even after Isaiah and Rosalind’s split, Poppy was able to care for them both. Though she never, ever spoke to Rosalind in Isaiah’s presence, or even mentioned her.
Rosalind didn’t have the same embargo on mentions of Isaiah. But in fairness, Rosalind was the one who had cheated on him, cost him a major business deal and nearly ruined his start-up company and—by extension—nearly ruined his relationship with his business partner, who was also his brother.
So.
Poppy had loved him while he’d dated another woman. Loved him while he nursed a broken heart because of said other woman. Loved him when he disavowed love completely. And now she would have to love him while she interviewed potential candidates to be his wife.
She was wretched.
He had said the word sex in front of her like it wouldn’t do anything to her body. Had talked about children like it wouldn’t make her...yearn.
Men were idiots. But this one might well be their king.
“Put the unrevised ad in the paper.”
She shook her head. “I’m not doing that.”
“I could fire you.” He leaned in closer and her breath caught. “For insubordination.”
Her heart tumbled around erratically, and she wished she could blame it on anger. Annoyance. But she knew that wasn’t it.
She forced herself to rally. “If you haven’t fired me yet, you’re never going to. And anyway,” she said, narrowing her tone so that the words would hit him with a point, “I’m the one who has to interview your prospective brides. Which makes this my endeavor in many ways. I’m the one who’s going to have to weed through your choices. So I would like the ad to go out that I think has the best chance of giving me less crap to sort through.”
He looked up at her, and much to her surprise seemed to be considering what she said. “That is true. You will be doing the interviews.”
She felt like she’d been stabbed. She was going to be interviewing Isaiah’s potential wife. The man she had been in love with since she was a teenage idiot, and was still in love with now that she was an idiot in her late twenties.
There were a whole host of reasons she’d never, ever let on about her feelings for him, Rosalind and his feelings on love aside.
She loved her job. She loved Isaiah’s family, who she’d gotten to know well over the past decade, and who were the closest thing she had to a family of her own.
Plus, loving him was just...easy to dismiss. She wasn’t the type of girl who could have something like that. Not Poppy Sinclair whose mother had disappeared when she was two years old and left her with a father who forgot to feed her.
Her life was changing though, slowly.
She was living well beyond what she had ever imagined would be possible for her. Gray Bear Construction was thriving; the merger between Jonathan Bear and the Graysons’ company a couple of years ago was more successful than they’d imagined it could be.
And every employee on every level had reaped the benefits.
She was also living in the small town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, which was a bit strange for a girl from Seattle, but she did like it. It had a different pace. But that meant there was less opportunity for a social life. There were fewer people to interact with. By default she, and the other folks in town, ended up spending a lot of their free time with the people they worked with every day. There was nothing wrong with that. She loved Faith, and she had begun getting close to Joshua’s wife recently. But it was just... Mostly there wasn’t enough of a break from Isaiah on any given day.
But then, she also didn’t enforce one. Didn’t take one. She supposed she couldn’t really blame the small-town location when the likely culprit of the entire situation was her.
“Place whatever ad you need to,” he said, his tone abrupt. “When you meet the right woman, you’ll know.”
“I’ll know,” she echoed lamely.
“Yes. Nobody knows me better than you do, Poppy. I have faith that you’ll pick the right wife for me.”
With those awful words still ringing in the room, Isaiah left her there, sitting at her desk, feeling numb and ill used.
The fact of the matter was, she probably could pick him a perfect wife. Someone who would facilitate his life, and give him space when he needed it. Someone who was beautiful and fabulous in bed.
Yes, she knew exactly what Isaiah Grayson would think made a woman the perfect wife for him.
The sad thing was, Poppy didn’t possess very many of those qualities herself.
And what she so desperately wanted was for Isaiah’s perfect wife to be her.
But dreams were for other women. They always had been. Which meant some other woman was going to end up with Poppy’s dream.
While she played matchmaker to the whole affair.
“I put an ad in the paper.”
“For?” Isaiah’s brother Joshua looked up from his computer and stared at him like he was waiting to hear the answers to the mystery of the universe.
Joshua, Isaiah and their younger sister, Faith, were sitting in the waiting area of their office, enjoying their early-morning coffee. Or maybe enjoying was overstating it. The three of them were trying to find a state of consciousness.
“A wife.”
Faith spat her coffee back into her cup. “What?”
“I placed an ad in the paper to help me find a wife,” he repeated.
Honestly, he couldn’t understand why she was having such a large reaction to the news. After all, that was how Joshua had found his wife, Danielle.
“You can’t be serious,” Joshua said.
“I expected you of all people to be supportive.”
“Why me?”
“Because that’s how you met Danielle. Or you have you forgotten?”
“I have not forgotten how I met my wife. However, I didn’t put an ad out there seriously thinking I was going to find someone to marry. I was trying to prove to dad that his ad was a stupid idea.”
“But it turned out it wasn’t a stupid idea,” Isaiah said. “I want to get married. I figured this was a hassle-free way of finding a wife.”
Faith stared at him, dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious.”
The door to the office opened, and Poppy walked in wearing a cheerful, polka-dotted dress, her dark
