Wild Poppy
Wildflowers, #4
by Vivian
Winslow
Publication
date: December 6th 2016
Genres:
New Adult, Romance
BLURB
The daughter of a renown media
mogul, Poppy Koslowski has her life turned upside down overnight when her
father is indicted for a massive fraud that leads to the loss of her family’s
fortune. In the wake of the scandal, Poppy moves to Paris at the behest of her
aunt, the Countess Domel, who, unbeknownst to Poppy, intends to find a wealthy
husband for her niece in order to ensure her future. Poppy, however, has her
own dreams of finishing school and realizing her goal of becoming an
award-winning journalist. When she meets Henri Olin, the passionate and
seductive illegitimate son of one of France’s most powerful politicians, his
political and social ideology introduces Poppy to a world very different from
her own. Yet, Poppy ultimately learns that everything comes at a price, even
love. After suffering a devastating loss, Poppy finds herself alone and
virtually penniless, and is forced to make her way back to America to piece
together the remnants of her life in New York City. There, she rediscovers her
passion once again, only to be confronted with yet another life choice, one
that will forever shape her destiny.
Buy Link: Amazon
Previous books in the series:
EXCERPT:
“What?” He asks, unable to keep
from laughing. He knew she’d have a beautiful laugh. He just knew by the way
she smiled when she delivered his drink. If only he’d been bold enough to touch
her hand when she did. But she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who wants
to be touched, at least not without her permission.
“Nothing,” Poppy replies,
shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She begins to scrape at the
loose gravel in the wall, not caring when she chips a nail.
He lowers his head so he can be
eye level with her. Poppy figures he’s at least five inches taller than she is,
in heels. “Come on, I can’t be that ridiculous can I?”
Poppy shrugs. “How would I know,
we only just met. But I think it’s cute the way your brow goes like this.” She
imitates his bemusement, wrinkling her face to make lines between her brows and
points to it.
“I don’t look like that.”
Before Poppy can reply, a noise
makes her turn toward West 10th again. Just inside the black iron gate that frames
the alley, she spots a young woman who looks to be about her age. The woman
tosses back her long dark hair as she talks to a guy whose arm is wound tightly
around her waist. Poppy recognizes the intimacy, the way every inch of their
bodies touch as they speak. She studies their unspoken language, wondering if
that’s how she looked with Henri that first night.
A peal of laughter escapes the
woman as the guy lifts her hips around his and presses her against the wall,
squeezing the flesh beneath her skirt and kissing her neck.
The brown-eyed stranger follows
her gaze. “I didn’t think I’d be getting two shows tonight,” he whispers.
The low sound of his voice
ignites something in Poppy’s chest that travels down to her cunt. Desire, like
everything post Henri and Paul, had seemed like a far-off notion, until tonight
that is. Something about this stranger is awakening the kinds of feelings she
believed she’d buried. Denial, Poppy realizes, isn’t the same as burying a
truth. The former makes you want to pretend something never happened while the
latter at least makes you acknowledge it before you shove it so deep
underground it can’t touch you. The reality is that Poppy hasn’t been able to
do either well. Some days Paris and Paul seem like a faint memory, so distant
that it’s as if it all happened in a previous lifetime, while others it’s as if
the truth is beating on her so hard that it hurts to breathe. Clearly she has
to find a better coping mechanism.
The stranger’s warm breath on the
side of her face draws Poppy out of her thoughts again. How easily distracted
she is tonight, one thought jumping to the next. She attempts to make them melt
together until she can’t distinguish them. It helps to lose herself in the
moment, in the now which doesn’t allow any space for the past to reside. She
gazes at the enamored couple, although enamored seems like a bit of a stretch.
She didn’t love Henri that first night. Not that it took very long to make her
feel something akin to love. Sometimes, though, she wonders if she wasn’t just
picking up on his emotions and making them her own. He’s the one who pursued
her, right? He’s the one who insisted they keep the baby, to get married in
order to be a family. Where were her decisions in any of it? She had made them,
of course. Her feelings had told her to agree, to make it alright. For whom
though? For him? To make Henri happy? To give him some sense of peace and
closure regarding his own painful childhood? How much control of her own life
had she sublimated in order to make him whole? How much had she really loved
him versus how much had she thought she loved him? Can she even remember
anymore?
Once again, Poppy swallows back
each question like a bitter pill. The answers are a luxury she can’t afford at
the moment. There’s no one to give them to her anyway. Poppy tilts her head
against the wall and focuses on the couple. She figures there’s no need to give
the couple any privacy. If they wanted that, they could’ve chosen a different
place. But they didn’t. Instead they opted for an alley, and not a particularly
dark one either. They want to be seen, to be on display. It fascinates her to
be the voyeur this time. When she was the woman up against the wall, she had
never considered what it would be like to watch. God how she loved feeling so
uninhibited. God how she misses the freedom that comes with not caring that her
actions could ever have consequences. She loved the power she derived from that
freedom, how it impressed upon her a feeling of invincibility. She can see on
the young woman’s face that she’s experiencing the same thing. It’s the distant
gaze that gives her away as the man pushes his cock inside of her. She’s there,
but she’s also deep inside herself, taking the energy from the moment and
storing it inside of her for a later time. It’s life force she’s seeking, and
it’s life force she’s giving. If only she’d known what she would have to give
in exchange for what she took, Poppy thinks to herself.
Author Info
Vivian
Winslow was born and raised in Southern California. Before becoming a writer,
she made a career out of moving around the world every couple of years thanks
to her husband’s job and her incurable wanderlust. She currently lives in New
York City with her husband and two elementary school age children, and is grateful
to finally have a place to call home for more than two years.
New
York is the perfect city to indulge her love of fashion, the arts and
especially food. If she’s not at home writing or running around the city with
her kids, you’ll most likely find her eating at the newest restaurant in her
beloved Lower East Side or having a cocktail at her favorite bar in Alphabet
City. That said, she’s still a California girl at heart and would gladly trade
in her heels for a pair of flip-flops to catch a sunset on the beach.
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