Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty #3)(78)

“My name is actually Poppy Germaine. I’m—”

“Caleb’s sister,” he said, filling in the blanks before she could. “Bill Germaine’s daughter.”

His mind was racing. He’d always known the man had a daughter who was a part of the label, but Shaken Dirty had never worked with her. Caleb had said his sister stayed behind the scenes, working in marketing—he froze as the rest of the puzzle pieces came together. Poppy had said half a dozen times that she worked in marketing, but he’d never put two and two together before.

If he was being honest, he’d admit that he was a little annoyed at the fact that she’d never told him who she was. It wasn’t like she could claim it hadn’t come up—Bill Germaine had been the subject of numerous discussions in the week she’d been here. And she’d never once mentioned that he was her father.

Still, it didn’t seem like that revelation would be enough to have her freaking out as badly as she was. “I wish you’d told me,” he said, “just because I feel like an ass with all the shit that’s gone down regarding him this week. If we’d known you were his daughter—” He winced a little as he thought back on all the names her father had been called in the last few days.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said bitterly. “Believe me, the fact that my father is a bastard isn’t news to me. He did just fire me, after all.”

“Fire you? For what?” He froze as it registered. “For bringing Drew down here to play with us.”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Poppy. That really sucks. I can’t believe he fired his own daughter.”

“Oh, believe me, I can. Nepotism is not something my father could ever be accused of.”

He pulled her into his arms, dropped kisses on her head as he thought over his next words. “But, hey, I don’t know if you’re interested, but you’ve been doing really amazing things with our social media stuff. I could talk to the guys and we could hire you on full time. That way you could still have a job, and still be—”

He broke off before he could say, with me. Which was exactly where he wanted her to be, but maybe it was too soon to actually say that. She had just been fired, after all. By her own father. The state of their relationship was probably not the most important thing on her mind right now.

Sure enough, she smiled at him, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s really sweet,” she told him softly. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“Yeah.” She took another deep breath. “Maybe I’m an idiot for telling you this, but I figure you have the right to know. And I’d rather you hear it from me instead of my dad if he’s trying to piss you off and get you to quit again.”

“Okay.” The bad feeling was back, tightening his stomach and making him feel like he really, really wasn’t going to like whatever she was about to say.

“I wasn’t really here as social media director for you guys. That was kind of my cover—and I took it to heart, because God knows you have a lot of room for improvement, but …”

“But?” he prompted impatiently.

She sighed heavily. “But I was here to kind of watch out for you. To make sure you had whatever you needed and didn’t…”

It hit him then, came to him with a clarity that nearly blew the top of his head off. “You were here to babysit me. To make sure I stayed clean.”

She winced at his tone. “Yes. I’m sorry I lied, sorry I didn’t tell you right from the beginning why the label sent me. But I was afraid it would freak you out, send you spiraling out of control, and that was the last thing I wanted.”

“You thought knowing I had a babysitter would make me use again?” he demanded.

“No. I just thought maybe you didn’t need someone looking over your shoulder, making you feel worse about—”

“The whole time?” he interrupted, shaking his head to try to clear it from the feeling of betrayal that was sweeping through him. “You were afraid to tell me the whole time because you thought I’d go back to heroin?”

“I’m sorry—”

“You’re sorry?” he demanded. “After you told me over and over again that I had this, that you knew I wasn’t going to slip…was that just an act?” He shook his head, started to pace. “What am I thinking? Of course it was an act. It was all lies, right? You were just doing your job. You never actually had any faith in me.”

“That’s not true! I did have faith. I do.”

He stopped,turned to face her. “So what was yesterday morning all about? Just you poking at the wound to see how soon I would snap?”

“No, of course not! I wanted to—”

“You wanted to spy on me for the record label. By poking and prodding at me, trying to get me to break so you could make sure you were there to watch me in case I fell apart. Is that why you did it? You were trying to get to the bottom of things so the label didn’t have to worry about losing its precious tour insurance deposit?”

“No! Yesterday was about helping you!”

“I never asked for your help, Poppy. If you recall, I never wanted it.” He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair.