Page 73 of Four on the Floor: A Menage Romance

“That was a proper sendoff,” Gavin agrees, his eyes closed like he’s half asleep.

“That doesn’t mean I’m ready to move, though,” Cash says. “Maybe in a couple of days.”

“Well, Poppy will be here in the morning,” I murmur, my lips still against Dalton’s skin. “So unless we want to have a very interesting conversation, we should probably get up before that.”

We don’t, though. We all just lie there, me snuggled between my guys. After a while I drift off to sleep, the most comfortable I’ve ever been.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Larkin

“These are the last, right?”Cash asks as he walks past me, an enormous suitcase in each hand.

“I swear I can carry one,” I tell him, even though I know it’s useless. “I’m not going to snap in half.”

He grins at me.

“Not a chance, Lark,” he says. “I’ll be right—”

The heavy wooden front door swings open, just barely missing him.

“Oh!” exclaims Poppy, stepping into The Centennial in a cacophony of bright scarves, sunglasses, bright plaid boots, and a red winter coat. “Well, glad to see you’re all right. Heard this was a rough winter!”

Cash puts the suitcases down.

“The weather was pretty harsh, but the winter wasn’t so bad,” he says.

I don’t think Poppy quite sees the sparkle in his eye.

* * *

Gavin’s made lunch,since he’s the best cook, and we all sit around and eat sandwiches while Poppy peppers us with questions about the hotel’s welfare.

“Is the pool properly chlorinated?” she asks, cutting her sandwich into smaller pieces with a knife and fork. “You followed those instructions I left, didn’t you? Only half a tablet on alternating weeks when no one is using it, and of course the hot tub takes its own special kind…”

“Taken care of,” Dalton says calmly, opening his sandwich and spreading mustard on one piece of bread. “I kept a log of what we did and when, if you’re in need of it.”

Poppy just nods, then moves on.

“The inventory of the pantry is done?” she asks. “I know our cook, Kevin, is ready to start his preparations for Easter Sunday brunch and it will be ever so much easier if…”

She asks about the cans in the pantry, about the chairs in the breakfast room, about oven temperatures and conditioning the leather couches and taking the ash out of the woodstove. She quizzes us about the laundry room, the linen closets, whether we’ve been bleaching the bathtubs or just washing them out with soap.

At one point she starts asking us whether the bulbs and seeds in the greenhouse are all right, and the five of us just look at her blankly.

“There’s a greenhouse?” Gavin finally asks.

But finally, after we’re done with lunch, she’s out of questions. This whole time, the only thing that William has asked was a single question about the generator, answered by an equally-otherwise-quiet Slate.

When lunch is over, Poppy pulls me aside, into the same alcove where she gave me hot chocolate the first day I was here. For a second she looks around, as though some cocoa might appear, but sadly I’m not nearly as good a hostess as she is.

“Larkin,” she says, laying a hand on my arm. “Those photos you sent of your work were beautiful. I want to buy one for the hotel.”

I just laugh, and Poppy raises her eyebrows, still smiling.

“Don’t tell me they’re all sold already,” she says, scolding me. “You can’t have shown them anywhere! I was so sure I’d get my hands on one before you left—”

“Come on,” I say, pulling her through the lobby and down the hall.

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