Jessica Lemmon - Hard to Handle

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.