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 hair swept back into a bun, a few curls around her face.
“Please tell me my brother is joking,” Faith said. “And that he didn’t actually put an ad in the paper to find a wife.”
Poppy looked from him back to Faith. “He doesn’t joke, you know that.”
“And you know that he put an ad in the paper for a wife?” Joshua asked.
“Of course I know,” Poppy responded. “Who do you think is doing the interviews?”
That earned him two slack-jawed looks.
“Who else is going to do it?” Isaiah asked.
“You’re not even doing the interview for your own wife?” Faith asked.
“I trust Poppy implicitly. If I didn’t, she wouldn’t be my assistant.”
“Of all the... You are insane.” Faith stormed out of the room. Joshua continued to sit and sip his coffee.
“No comment?” Isaiah asked.
“Oh, I have plenty. But I know you well enough to know that making them won’t change a damn thing. So I’m keeping my thoughts to myself. However,” he said, collecting his computer and his coffee, “I do have to go to work now.”
That left both Isaiah and Poppy standing in the room by themselves. She wasn’t looking at him; she was staring off down the hall, her expression unreadable. She had a delicate profile, dark, sweeping eyelashes and a fascinating curve to her lips. Her neck was long and elegant, and the way her dress shaped around her full breasts was definitely a pleasing sight.
He clenched his teeth. He didn’t make a habit of looking at Poppy that way. But she was pretty. He had always thought so.
Even back when he’d been with Rosalind he’d thought there was something...indefinable about Poppy. Special.
She made him feel... He didn’t know. A little more grounded. Or maybe it was just because she treated him differently than most people did.
Either way, she was irreplaceable to him. In the running of his business, Poppy was his barometer. The way he got the best read on a situation. She did his detail work flawlessly. Handled everything he didn’t like so he could focus on what he was good at.
She was absolutely, 100 percent, the most important asset to him at the company.
He would have to tell her that sometime. Maybe buy her another pearl necklace. Though, last time he’d done that she had gotten angry at him. But she wore it. She was wearing it today, in fact.
“They’re right,” she said finally.
“About?”
“The fact that you’re insane.”
“I think I’m sane enough.”
“Of course you do. Actually—” she let out a long, slow breath “—I don’t think you’re insane. But, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why?”
“This is really how you want to find a wife? In a way that’s this...impersonal?”
“What are my other options? I have to meet someone new, go through the process of dating... She’ll expect a courtship of some kind. We’ll have to figure out what we have in common, what we don’t have in common. This way, it’s all out in the open. That’s more straightforward.”
“Maybe you deserve better than that,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle.
“Maybe this is better for me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know about that.”
“When it comes to matters of business, there’s no one I trust more than you. But you’re going to have to trust that I know what will work best in my own life.”
“It’s not what I want for you.”
A strange current arced between them when she spoke those words, a spark in her brown eyes catching on something inside him.
“I appreciate your concern.”
“Yes,” she echoed. “My concern.”
“We have work to do. And you have wife applications to sort through.”
“Right,” she said.
“Preference will be given to blondes,” he said.
Poppy blinked and then reached up slowly, touching her own dark hair. “Of course.”
And then she turned and walked out of the room.
* * *
Isaiah hadn’t expected to receive quite so many responses to his ad. Perhaps, in the end, Poppy had been right about her particular tactic with the wording. It had certainly netted what felt to him to be a record number of responses.
Though he didn’t actually know how many women had responded to his brother’s personal ad.
He felt only slightly competitive about it, seeing as it would be almost impossible to