Jessica Lemmon - Hard to Handle

“It worked out for the best,” he said, patting her arm. “I know you still resent me for ending it, but you should know it’s because of you I found Celeste, the woman I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.”

Ouch. Sadie was tempted to look down at her gut for a protruding knife. She sure as hell felt one there.

“Admit it.” Trey slid his hands into his pockets. “You didn’t want to marry me. The wedding was another task to check off your list, a chance for you to impress everyone you knew.”

The knife twisted. She wasn’t going to stick around long enough to have it removed and jabbed into her again. Sadie elbowed past him and encountered Celeste in the foyer.

“Darling?” Celeste said as Trey joined them. “Everything okay?”

“Peachy,” Sadie answered for him.

Celeste frowned, a darling little line denting her forehead, and cradled her flat abdomen.

“Someday, Sadie,” Trey said, pulling Celeste against his side and wrapping a protective arm around her, “we hope you will be a part of your niece or nephew’s life. Even if you can’t truly be happy for us.”

Sadie turned her back on them and stomped outside before her brunch made an encore appearance.

Turns out one of Axle’s friends-slash-customers was remodeling a 1957 Panhead and, in the process of dismantling it, realized he wasn’t able to remantle it. Axle had called Aiden in to close and gone out to offer his advice and expertise.

Aiden made a mental note to up his A game. When he was running Axle’s someday—think positive—he wanted to keep the personal touches Axle added. Well, as personal as Axle got.

The remaining work hours had flown, and thoughts of Sadie had only managed to increase with the hours that passed. He was standing at the counter, where he’d kissed her rather thoroughly last night. So, yeah. Thoughts.

At five he locked up, looking forward to a lengthy ride. Somewhere outside of the city, where the trees lined the roads and the traffic was sparse. He thought about asking Dad to go, then thought maybe he’d just go by himself. Dad. Axle. Aiden was surrounded by men who didn’t talk. He wondered how they’d become friends in the first place. Maybe they just pointed and grunted at each other.

Aiden swiped his keys out of the drawer where he’d tossed them, and his hand bumped into an object in its recesses. He pulled the square something out of the drawer, a pink cell phone with a sparkly pink case. He smiled. The ultrafeminine phone could only belong to one woman. A woman who had the shoes to match.

Aiden slid it into his pocket, deciding to stop by her apartment and drop it off. He’d like to see her today. Hell, he’d like to see her every day. Maybe he could talk her into a joining him for a bike ride. Doubtful. He eyed a pink helmet on a shelf on the back wall. Same kind he’d bought and returned last year when she refused to climb onto Sheila.

Maybe this time she wouldn’t refuse.

After he locked up the store and stowed his new purchase in a saddlebag, he rode the short distance to Sadie’s apartment. As he knocked on her door, he recalled the moment he’d stood on this porch a year ago and kissed Sadie for the first time. She’d been feeling raw and vulnerable after all they’d shared; he could see it in her eyes. Aiden felt more purged than exposed, and like he was ready to dive into the next stage of his life. Starting with the kiss he’d planted on Sadie Howard’s lips.

Thoughts so mired in the past, Aiden was caught off guard by the elderly woman scowling at him from the other side of the door. She clutched her blue bathrobe and scowled some more. “Can I help you?”

“Uhh…” He rocked back on his heels and studied the number on the side of the town house. Yep. This was it. “Does…Sadie Howard live here?”

“Here, actually.” Sadie hung off of the doorknob of the town house next door, leaning out over the stoop and smiling at her neighbor. “He’s mine, Mrs. Norman.”

Aiden couldn’t keep the grin from his face. He’s mine. He liked that.

Sadie’s smile dropped when Mrs. Norman retreated back to her apartment. “What are you doing here?”

He shot a thumb over his shoulder. “I was so sure you lived at 1912.”

“I did.” Her eyebrows scrunched over a giant pair of sunglasses. “I moved into 1910 last year when they upgraded the kitchen.”

He walked the three steps to her side of the stoop and stood in front of her, taking her in. Wow. Sadie was poured into a belted black dress hugging her curves and leading down to a damn sexy pair of high-heeled, open-toed shoes. He jerked his attention from her hot pink toenails to her face, pausing briefly at the swell of her breasts beneath the clingy material.

“You look amazing.” He sounded awestruck. He was.

She rolled a shoulder. A small gesture, paired with the soft purse of her lips. “Thanks.”

He met her eyes, or would have if he could’ve seen them through the dark lenses covering half her face. Her vulnerability was apparent in her body language. So was her impatience. “So, what do you want?”

“’Scuse me, Ms. Onassis. Should I have made an appointment?” Her nose wrinkled. Guess she wasn’t in much of a joking mood. Before she shut the door in his face, Aiden extracted her phone from his jeans. “You left this at Axle’s.”

“Oh,” she said, nothing in her tone revealing that she’d noticed it was missing. She took it from him. “I must have dropped it when—I must have dropped it.”

Aiden would have smiled at the memory of when she must have dropped it, but something was…off. From the slight slur in her words like she’d been drinking, to the sunglasses she was wearing, to the outfit better suited for public consumption than for sitting at home by herself.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, prepared to invite himself to go with her.

She ran her fingers through her untamed hair. “No.”

Okay.

He couldn’t leave her like this—all dressed up and nowhere to go. “Mind if I grab a glass of water before I head out?” Before she could tell him no, he made a face. “Think I swallowed a bug on the way over.”

Sadie’s lips tilted into the semblance of a smile and she slid the sunglasses into her mane of blonde hair. Her eyes were clear. So…she hadn’t been crying. That was good. Maybe he’d misread her after all.

She dropped her hand from the knob and he followed her in. This town house was an exact replica of its neighbor, only reversed. The staircase ran up the adjoining wall, leading to the bathroom. The door was open, a Harley-Davidson shower curtain hanging from the rod. His Sadie, Aiden thought with a shake of his head. An anomaly through and through.

In the kitchen, Sadie handed over a water. “Bottle okay?”

“Perfect,” he said, accepting it and cracking off the cap. “This”—he looked around the room as he took a drink—“is a kitchen worth moving for.”

“You remember what my old kitchen looked like?” she asked as she reclaimed her half-empty wineglass from the counter.

“No,” Aiden said. “But I wasn’t exactly checking out your cabinetry the last time I was here.”

She pulled the sunglasses out of her hair then folded and unfolded them before setting them aside. She took a drink of her white wine, filling her cheeks with the liquid before swallowing it down.

No, he was right the first time. Something was up. “Are you okay?”

She met his eyes, her gaze clear, but not as sharp as he was used to. “Do you think I’m…” She shrugged as if searching for the right word. “Too driven?” she asked after a significant pause.

Aiden lifted his brow. A loaded question if he’d ever heard one. Wasn’t like he could say yes, no matter what she put behind the word too. Too beautiful, too short, too anything. It was a bear trap waiting to spring.

“Too driven?” he repeated, stalling.

“Too controlling?”

Oh boy.

Aiden crossed to the counter and looked down at his hostess. There was a heaviness in her dark eyes, as if she’d lugged a significant load home from wherever she’d gone earlier. He slid a wave away from her eyes. “What’s this about, Sadie?” he asked, loving the way her lips parted and her breath hitched when he touched her.

She turned away from him and stared into her wine. “Nothing.”

“Talk to me.”

She took a breath, her shoulders slumping even lower than before. “I guess I wanted a second opinion.”

“On…?”

She looked up at him, her hurt a present, living thing. “Whether or not I am a self-centered, shallow bitch.”

Anger tore through Aiden’s chest at the word. He clenched his teeth together and struggled to speak through them. “Who told you that?” If it was that dickhead Perry, Aiden was going to effing kill him. Or at least cripple him.

“Easy, tiger.” She grazed his chest with her fingers and smiled. Faintly, but it was there. “No one said it.” She shook her head. “No one had to.”

It killed him to see her like this—to see her so filled with doubt. She was amazing. How did she not see that? “Look at me, Sadie.”

She did, but only after a long, slow blink.

He held her cinnamon-colored gaze. She needed to hear him. Really hear him. “You’re not selfish. You’re not self-centered. And if I hear you use the b word about yourself again, I’m going to wash your mouth out with Chardonnay.”

Another smile. Progress.

He rasped her cheek with the back of his knuckles because he couldn’t stand being this close and not touching her. “You’re focused. You’re determined,” Aiden told her as he stroked her skin. “You know what you want. You stand up for what you want.” He tipped her chin. “You are an incredible woman, Sadie. Don’t ever doubt that.”