Abby Gaines - Her Best Friend's Wedding

Trey caught her hand. “I’m not done talking to you yet.”

“Too bad, because I’m done with you.” Her whole arm tingled. The overexertion was probably giving her a heart attack.

He tugged her backward, forcing her to step up onto the curb or trip over. “Come in here.” He indicated a white wooden gate set into a high fence.

Sadie shivered as perspiration cooled on her skin. “Quit ordering me around and quit dragging me.”

“Fine.” He folded his arms as if he might otherwise give in to his caveman instincts. “Please come into this garden with me, Sadie,” he said with excessive politeness.

“Why should I?”

“I don’t like arguing in the street. Mrs. Jones said I can show her garden to prospective clients anytime.”

“I’m not a client.”

“It’s a great garden,” Trey coaxed. “You’ll love it.”

He’d hit her soft spot. She might not be any good at growing plants, but she adored a beautiful garden.

And just maybe she was curious about why he thought Daniel and Meg would last.

Sadie stuck her chin in the air and preceded him through the gate. Then stopped.

“Oh, wow.” She gazed around the garden, scarcely hearing the clang of the gate closing behind her. A canopy of Japanese dappled willows. Crape myrtles. A redbud tree arcing over a pond filled with water lilies. It looked like a Monet painting, only better—impressionist art was too vague for her taste. “Trey, it’s gorgeous. Kincaid Nurseries designed this?”

“The concept was mine,” he said. “Our landscape architects refined it.”

“I didn’t know you were a designer.”

“I’m not,” he said. “How come you’re in love with Daniel? I thought your work overrode the urge to settle down like the rest of your siblings.”

Now that she’d stopped moving, every muscle in her body screamed. She sank onto the grass, ignoring the vestiges of dew. “You’re right that I’m not hanging out for the PTA meetings and the cupcake recipes,” she said. “But love isn’t something you plan. When you find someone special, you have to go for it.” She trailed her fingers through the pond water to find the waxy leaves of a water lily. “What if Daniel is the only man for me? My whole future could be at stake.”

“Sounds like your biological clock ticking,” he said, unimpressed. “You’re what, thirty?”

“Twenty-nine,” she said. “Same as Meg. And that stupid term was probably invented by some man afraid of commitment. Women are born with a fixed number of oocytes—egg cells to you—that decrease over forty years or so of fertility, starting around the age of twelve. Every woman’s biological clock is ticking, regardless of age.”

Trey wasn’t so easily distracted.

“Leave Meg and Daniel alone,” he said abruptly, sitting beside her.

She fingered the water lily. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“And stop mauling that lily.”

She bristled at the command, but stilled her fingers out of respect for the flower.

“It wouldn’t hurt to take a good look around before you decide Daniel is your fate, would it?” he asked. “There must be thousands of eligible males in Cordova alone, and you probably know half of them. Who did you date in high school?”

Sadie would have liked to reel off a list of teenage suitors, but the guys at her “genius school” were late starters, and back here in Cordova her flat chest and general shyness had meant most of Meg’s attempts to introduce her to local boys hadn’t worked out. “I dated Kevin McDonald at the end of senior year. The guy my parents bribed to take me to the Millennial Centennial dance after you turned me down.”

The turn of the millennium had also marked one hundred years of Cordova being called Cordova, after a succession of other names hadn’t stuck. The dance had crowned a week of Fourth of July celebrations and had been the biggest event in a generation.

Trey winced. “You’re not still steamed over that, are you? You only asked me to the dance because you were desperate.”

“You knew that?” she said, disconcerted.

He rolled his eyes. “You thought I’d believe my sister’s best friend, who clearly thought all football players were morons, had suddenly developed a crush on me?”

“I did think you were moron enough for that,” she admitted.

He laughed, his ego undented. “It wasn’t my fault your parents reacted by phoning all over town to find you a date. But back to the current desperate state of your love life—” He paused. “Hey, do you sense a recurring theme here?”

“Two repetitions are insufficient to form a pattern,” she said stiffly.

He grinned. “Here’s a thought. Kevin McDonald will be at Mom’s lunch today, and he’s divorced. A definite contender.”

“I can tell from that gleam in your eyes there’s something wrong with him.”

“Let’s just say that if you liked Kevin back then, there’s a whole lot more of him to like now.”

Trey could afford to scoff at someone else’s spreading bulk—he was still in great shape. Muscle corded his forearms, and his legs were lean and strong. Unlike her, he hadn’t broken a sweat on their run. Sadie peeled her tank away from her damp skin to admit some air. When she caught Trey watching, she dropped the fabric.

“Maybe Lexie Peterson has spread, too,” she suggested. Lexie had been one of Meg’s friends, a cheerleader, the perfect girlfriend for the quarterback. These days, she had her own party-planning business in Memphis.

“Lexie’s still hot, she emailed me photos recently.”

“Ew.”

“Swimsuit shots,” he said.

“I expect it’s her uniform for those pool parties she organizes,” Sadie said kindly. “Poor girl probably catches endless chills.”

He laughed. “I used to think you were boring, Sadie Beecham. Being thwarted in love suits you.”

Tears leaped to her eyes before she could banish them.

“Way to ruin a moment,” he said, disgusted. “Forget the doctor, cupcake.”

The cupcake jolted both of them. She stared.

“Figure of speech,” he explained.

“I knew that,” she said.

Trey stood. “Are we agreed you’ll stay away from Daniel?” He stuck out a hand; when she took it, he pulled her to her feet.

“Meg and Daniel are my friends, so I will continue to spend time with them,” Sadie said. “And I’ll be there for both of them when this thing ends.”

Trey growled.

Sadie brushed her hands against her shorts as she started back toward the road.

“I’ll be watching you at lunch today,” he said. “If you do anything to hurt Meg…”

“I wouldn’t!”

“Then why are you wearing sexy clothes?”

She glanced down at her tank, darkened by a damp patch between her breasts.

“At the barbecue last night,” he clarified. “You didn’t used to wear stuff like that.”

“You didn’t used to look. Those clothes weren’t new.”

“And when you arrived yesterday you gave me that flirty smile.”

“That fake smile,” she corrected. “I was putting on a cheerful face for my family.”

“You can trot out all the excuses you want,” he said. “I don’t believe you.” With his hand he applied pressure to the small of her back. “Come on, you’ve had a rest—time to run some more.”

She started to move. Her lungs protested immediately, her breath rasping.

Trey looked down at her in disgust. “I’d better get you home before you collapse.”

“If I do, Daniel can give me mouth-to-mouth,” she said, unable to stop herself from goading him.

“I’ll give you mouth-to-mouth,” he retorted.

His gaze alighted on her lips. Energy crackled in the air. Not the kind of energy her exhausted limbs needed.