Hard to Handle (4 page)

A
iden literally counted his steps to the counter, wondering the entire way if Sadie was still watching him. He told himself to keep his distance today, but then he caught her checking him out and couldn’t resist seeing how close he could get before she swatted at him like an irritated cat.

Closer than he thought.

And he could swear she’d stared at his mouth as he stared at hers. Under the pretense of moving a hair stuck to her glossed lips, he’d brushed his hand along her cheek, but he’d wanted to do more. So much more. Lean in and kiss her like he had last year, if for no other reason than to remind himself what it felt like to be wanted.

Aiden dug a box cutter out of the drawer next to the cash register, risking a look at the rear of the store. Sadie knelt on the floor, studying several sheets of paper lined up in a row.
Those pants.
Was she trying to give him a heart attack? The shiny black material barely qualified as material at all, hugging her curves like they’d been spray-painted on.

Blowing out a breath, Aiden sliced through the tape. A large bag filled with colorful key chains was on top, directions and several numbered pieces for the five-foot-tall display beneath. Tossing aside directions—they’d do more harm than good anyway—Aiden began assembling the display.

At first his mind was consumed by the task of getting all four sides to sit on the swiveling bottom portion. But once the skeleton was built, it was only a matter of snapping a hundred tiny pegs into the holes, and soon his thoughts wandered to the blonde at the back of the store.

Sadie was gorgeous in red. When he caught sight of her outside this morning, she stole his breath. Her smooth blonde ponytail and tall heels were the stuff of men’s fantasies. And yet, the sexiest thing she wore was the delicate red scarf tied around her neck. There was something about the skin hidden beneath the shock of sheer fabric that tempted him to undo the knot and slide it aside, rasping her neck with his mouth.

Hiding behind the display, he adjusted his too-tight jeans, pushing the thought out of his head. Turned on by a neckerchief. Quite a feat considering she should have a permit to wear those pants.

One thing was for sure, Aiden was going to have to rein in his roving hormones if they’d be working together for the next month. And, according to the proposal and contract he’d signed, it’d be at least that long. Sadie would be organizing shelving, reducing prices of other parts stocked in the warehouse, and buying any she didn’t sell out of her pocket. He wasn’t the least bit surprised she’d taken on the initiative, personally. Sadie was no stranger to taking charge.

Like that night at his house when she’d tugged the tie out of his hair and breathed into his ear. That was all it’d taken for him to dive into her mouth and lay her flat beneath him.

Ah, hell. He readjusted himself again, this time hiding behind the cash register before Sadie caught him fantasizing like an eighth-grade boy who couldn’t control his hormones.

Sadie stood on her tiptoes to measure a shelf overhead, the movement inching her shirt up and revealing a slice of pale, flat stomach. Maybe he could talk Axle into making her wear a uniform. Picturing her in a black Axle’s polo and jeans didn’t quell the lust bubbling in his stomach.

He crammed another peg into the display. Somehow, he’d have to find a way to get things done with the petite object of his infatuation hanging around.

Which begged the question, why was he infatuated? Sadie should be the last woman on earth stirring him up. On a good day, Sadie all but hated him. And he couldn’t blame her. He knew how it felt when Harmony had chosen another man over him. He’d done a version of the same thing to Sadie. Granted, he didn’t go back to Harmony, but he’d invited her back into his life. And despite his noble reasoning—to protect his mother from what she didn’t know—it was the wrong call.

Though they’d only shared a few dates, he’d shared something real and precious with Sadie. He may have met her in a club, may have followed her home that night, but that was where the forgone conclusion ended. Nothing after the moment he’d entered her tiny apartment kitchen had been expected.

Sadie had stood behind her refrigerator door, blocking her body from his, and offered him a drink. He took one look into her dark, troubled eyes and saw his own pain reflected there.

“Who’d he leave you for?” he asked.

She blinked, not expecting the question. “What?”

“The guy who caused you to make a one-date-only rule for the rest of us. Who’d he leave you for?”

That pointed question set the tone for the rest of the night. They spent the evening sitting on the floor of her apartment, backs against the sofa and adjacent chair, and shared every ugly thing from their pasts like they were one-upping each other.

He’d seen her again after that, had brought her to his place and slept next to her without sleeping
with
her. To this day, Sadie marked the deepest, most emotional relationship of his life.

Leaving her behind was one of the hardest—and dumbest—things he’d ever done.

After Aiden went to Oregon, he thought of Sadie several times. How she would have handled his mother’s illness with grace. How she would’ve stuck by him, been a strong support while he bobbed in a sea of uncertainty.

Again he lamented keeping the truth from his mother. If only he’d told her sooner that Harmony had left him—that he’d been divorced and unemployed for months, that he’d met the woman of his dreams.

Aiden was been trying to put his mother first, protect her from the stress of knowing how badly he’d screwed up his life. Worrying would cause stress. Stress would make her battle more difficult. And Aiden had been trying to give her the best chance possible to beat the disease determined to rob her of her life.

In the end it hadn’t mattered. Harmony vanished into the ether. Mom lost the battle. And Aiden burned the bridge he and Sadie used to stand upon and view their future.

He’d begun to see his self-sacrifices weren’t actually helping the people he cared about, but were, without a doubt, crippling him. There was a lesson in there. About doing what was best for him for a change. Maybe the right thing for him was the right path all along. Who the hell knew?

He crammed a peg into the hole. It snapped in half. “Shit.” He looked up and noticed Sadie standing on the other side of the counter. “Sorry.”

She waved him off. “Don’t waste your manners on me.”

He stood, tossing the broken plastic into the trash can. “I’ve been trying not to swear,” he said, not sure why he was admitting part of his journey toward self-improvement.

“I’ve been dieting,” Sadie said, picking up on the angle of his thoughts. She got him. She always had.

Aiden took in her lush curves, unable to see a single area in need of improvement. Every dip and bend was just as it should be. He started to say something to that effect but decided against it. “Why are you dieting?”

Sadie frowned back at him. “Because.”

“How well do you know Axle?” Aiden asked, shifting to the other subject loitering in his brain.

Sadie shrugged, folding her arms on the countertop between them. “I don’t know. Why?”

Because the deal he and Axle had discussed—the one that included a hefty down payment and the sale of all five stores to Aiden—wasn’t going to come to pass exactly the way Aiden had planned. Axle told him originally he was planning to retire in three years. Yesterday, he’d casually mentioned he was going to be out of there “by Christmas” and suggested Aiden get his ducks in a row.

Problem was, not only did Aiden
not
have his ducks in a row, he was short about fifty thousand “ducks,” since the timeline had been significantly shortened. Aiden had to be creative, come up with a plan to pitch to his oversized boss that would both pacify Axle and allow Aiden to get what he wanted under his terms.

A hundred fresh ideas kept him up late last night and woke him early this morning. But before Aiden approached Axle with any of them, it’d be nice to know if Axle would be open to negotiation. The man was as movable as Mount Rushmore. But Sadie knew him. Maybe she could offer some insight.

“I need to talk to him about something,” Aiden said. “But you can’t tell him I told you.”

Sadie’s eyes widened, interest swimming in their cinnamon-colored depths. “It’s, like, a secret?”

Aiden shrugged. “He didn’t
say
it was a secret. But he only told a few people.”

“And you trust me with this information.”

“Can’t I?” Aiden knew the answer. Or hoped he did. Whenever he thought about how Harmony had taken his trust and repeatedly fed it into the garbage disposal, he wondered if he was being naïve. But he knew Sadie. He
trusted
Sadie. Still. Even after all that had gone down between them.

Sadie fiddled with a pen on the counter, avoiding his eye. Aiden waited. Her feelings may not be on her face, but he could read them in the stiffness in her shoulders and her lack of a snappy comeback. “You know you can,” she said quietly.

Because she’d never betray me.

The thought was like a sock to the gut. He knew she’d never use his secrets against him, never throw them in his face. Even after he’d stated unequivocally things were over between them, Sadie hadn’t gone out of her way to harm him. She’d simply…gotten out of the way. Allowed herself to be brushed aside.

He’d been such a jerk. “I’m sorry about…everything,” he said, flattening his hands on the counter. Inept, but he didn’t know what else to say. He expected her to rebuff him like she had at the wedding.

She placed cool fingertips on his hand. “I’m sorry your mom died. I’m sorry I didn’t come to the funeral.”

Raw sincerity flooded her eyes.
There she is.
Sadie without her shell. She was vulnerable, exposed, and the most beautiful thing Aiden had ever seen. He turned his hand over and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. His heart squeezed right along with them.

Nothing had prepared him for the tightness in his chest at seeing her like this, or how just holding her hand in his comforted some deep, dark place inside him.

“Morning, kids.” The front door swung open and Axle barged in like, well, a barge.

Sadie pulled her hand out of Aiden’s, breaking the spell.

“Donuts,” Axle announced in his foghorn voice.

“Good morning, Axle.” She offered a sweet smile, her newly painted façade firmly back in place.

Axle dropped a white box in the center of the counter and flipped open the lid. “And coffee,” he said, setting the cardboard drink carrier next to it.

“I’m dieting,” Sadie said, eyeing the pastries.

“You’re drooling,” Aiden teased.

She glared at him.

Axle handed her a napkin. “You don’t need to diet.”

Sadie pulled her steely glare from Aiden and beamed up at their boss. “Thank you, Axle.” Then she dug out a glazed donut, grabbed her coffee and notebook, and returned to her task.

“You handled that better than me,” Aiden said after she’d gone.

Axle chewed, powdered sugar dotting his thick moustache like a blanket of fresh snow. He shook his head at Aiden in a show of disappointment. “Duh.”

It’d been two days since Aiden asked for her advice.

Since then, Sadie had been itching for more details on the mysterious Axle situation, but she didn’t want to seem overeager. Every time she thought Aiden was going to talk about it, he didn’t. She was beginning to wonder if he decided he didn’t trust her after all, which hurt…and kind of ticked her off.

Sadie was not only trustworthy with private information, she was good at giving advice. According to Crickitt, anyway. Crickitt told Sadie the reason she always sought her out was because Sadie had an honest, no-nonsense answer. Maybe Aiden didn’t want her no-nonsense honesty. Maybe, as Trey had often reminded her, Aiden appreciated a woman with a more flattering disposition.

Someone like her sister.

Sadie huffed to herself as she inspected another motorcycle part from a rival company. She considered its condition and resale value before marking it with a brightly colored 50-percent-off sticker.

Well, if Trey liked his women prissy, he’d chosen the right girl. Sadie’s half sister, Celeste, was a daddy’s girl—
Celeste’s
daddy, anyway. Wendell DeWalt was Sadie’s stepfather. Celeste and Sadie may have shared a mother, but they were as different as diamonds and cubic zirconium. And Celeste knew her jewels.

Trey’s infatuation with her higher-class, polite sister may have been why Sadie sharpened her edge to a razor-thin point in the first place. Becoming more like her sister would only prove Trey right, that Sadie needed some softening.

After he left her, she started serial dating—er, serial
first
dating, anyway. Each and every first date proved the man sitting across from her as flawed as Trey, and likely to let her down as hard. Until Aiden. He’d changed everything. At first, she thought for the better.

Boy was she wrong.

She marked another few pieces of inventory for clearance and put them back on the shelf. In search of more bargain-basement products, she headed for the warehouse, stopping short when she spotted Aiden. And a woman.

Sadie froze, her eyes skating down the other woman’s thin but muscular frame, and back up to the short dark hair barely brushing the tattoo on the back of her neck. She was in good shape, probably a runner like Aiden. Sadie pretended to straighten the shelf next to her as she watched them.

The woman held up a black and pink T-shirt and posed for him. Aiden nodded his approval. Was he attracted to her? Was this the type of woman he wanted? And why did seeing them talk to each other make Sadie’s skin crawl?

They chatted all the way to the cash register, where Aiden rang up her purchase and handed over the receipt. The woman didn’t leave immediately, lingering at the counter,
flirting
. Sadie knew flirting when she saw it, and the way the woman tilted her head and rolled her shoulders back to push her chest out was definitely flirting. She had a small chest. At least Sadie had her in the boob department.