Hard to Handle

Chapter 4

Aiden 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.

When the woman got to the door, Sadie felt her shoulders relax some. Good. Keep walking, honey. Until she returned to the counter and Aiden held out a pen. She took it, jotting something down on the back of her receipt and handing it to him.

Sadie’s jaw went tight. And a little tighter when Aiden smiled, exposing the dimple low on one cheek. Dammit, that was Sadie’s dimple.

Before she could rationalize her way out of it, Sadie was marching full steam ahead toward the counter—to do what, she had no idea. Scold Aiden for talking to a woman?

The woman left, and as the door swung shut, Aiden called after her, “Thanks, Sonya.”

The sound of his voice stopped Sadie short. When the red spots cleared from her vision, she noticed Aiden watching her expectantly. Her eyes darted to the sheet of paper on the counter—yep, there was a phone number on there—to the pen in his hand. She snatched it from him and forced a tight smile. “Can I borrow this?”

Without waiting for an answer, Sadie pointed her frustrated, jealous, and clearly insane self in the direction of the warehouse and didn’t look back.

* * *

Aiden narrowed his eyes at Sadie’s retreating back before allowing a ghost of a smile to sneak onto his face. If he wasn’t mistaken, Sadie did not like that Mrs. Sonya Rollins had slipped Aiden her husband’s phone number a moment ago. How else was he supposed to alert the couple when their special-ordered leather saddlebags came in?

Sadie had practically been foaming at the mouth as she crossed the room. Aiden half expected her to snatch the receipt and tear it into a million pieces. This was the woman who’d fed her wedding invitations through a shredder, after all. If she could obliterate expensive card stock without a second thought, the thin sheet of thermal paper in his hand didn’t stand a chance.

And what did she need his pen for, anyway? His eyes went to the full cup of ink pens on the corner of the counter. She hadn’t grabbed one of those.

Yeah. Something was up.

For the last few days, Aiden had watched her work. She came in when the store opened, or just before, and stayed for two or three hours to arrange, and help sell, the parts she’d dug out of the warehouse. Aiden helped, referring customers to the clearance display and explaining they were making room for new inventory.

In the case of parts the clearance rack didn’t hold, Sadie had equipped Aiden with a Midwest brand price sheet with their most popular items on it. Yesterday when she’d overheard Aiden say a certain Midwest part would need to be shipped, Sadie had run out to her car and dug the part out of her trunk.

She was driven, no doubt about it.

Aiden smiled at empty doorway leading to the warehouse where she’d disappeared in a blur of blonde, pen-wielding beauty. Sadie was about to become number one in sales thanks to the Axle’s contract. In pursuit of the goal, she wasn’t about to let any detail fall by the way.

His admiration for her work ethic stirred something familiar within him. His own drive. His own goals. Aiden had finally, finally taken a step toward getting what he wanted when he’d accepted the job at Axle’s. Not that he wouldn’t do what he’d done for his mother a hundred times over, but this was his chance. A new chapter of his life. A brand new day.

Or it would be, as soon as he nutted up and talked to Axle. He needed to quit putting it off, lay out his pitch, and see what his gruff employer thought of it.

Aiden had a break coming up, and no plans other than finding a sandwich shop where he could fill his empty void of a stomach. He could invite Sadie to come with him, get what he knew would be her blatantly honest opinion of the business deal he was considering.

A plan. Simply having one made him feel as if he was halfway to victory. Aiden abandoned the sales floor and walked to Axle’s office. He poked his head through the open door to find Axle sitting at his computer, pecking away at a snail’s pace with the tips of his sausage-like fingers. “I’m going to take a break soon. Cover me?”

Axle turned, the chair beneath him creaking in disagreement. Over a pair of his wife’s flowered pink reading glasses—Axle lost a pair of reading glasses a week, at least—he gave Aiden a solemn stare. “Okay,” he said, his tone revealing nothing.

Aiden headed down the hallway away from Axle’s office, shaking his head as he wondered at his burly boss. Any inside information on how to scale the granite wall that was Axle Zoller would be appreciated. The man was about as readable as a braille instruction manual for complicated electronics.

In the warehouse, Sadie was standing on a stepladder straining for a box just out of reach of her slight height.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

“Oh!” He’d startled her, and Sadie grasped the shelf for support to keep from falling. Over her head, the large box swayed and began to tip.

Aiden rushed for her, and before he’d worked out how to do it, pulled Sadie off the stepladder and folded her into him, protecting her with his body.

And then time stopped.

Her scent wrapped around him, tickling his nostrils and reminding him of holding her as he kissed the sense right out of her. Her silken blonde hair wound softly around his fingertips where his palm cupped the back of her head. The press of her breasts against his chest, the way his arm locked around her lower back, made him want to pull her close and never let her go.

Then, in a cascade of clanks and clatters, the box overhead toppled and delivered an array of parts to the warehouse’s concrete floor. And one heavy piece in particular right into Aiden’s shoulder.

He let out a sound between a growl and a grunt as the sharp edge hit his shoulder, but he didn’t let Sadie go until he was sure it was done raining metal. Only then did he allow her to pull away. She did, slowly, turning those brown eyes up at him as one hand fisted the side of his shirt.

Those petal soft lips parted and all Aiden could think was tasting her…until her eyebrows slammed down and she barked, “What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell am I doing?” Aiden asked as she backed away from him. “What the hell are you doing?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I’m working.”

“Looks more like you’re trying to get yourself killed.” He didn’t mean to raise his voice, but she was yelling at him. She should be thanking him.

Aiden palmed his right shoulder and winced. Now that the adrenaline had ebbed, his shoulder was beginning to throb.

Sadie’s reached out a hand. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “Probably just a scratch.” The pain wasn’t intense. After the bike wreck, intense took on a whole new meaning. Nothing before or since had hurt worse than his back after he’d played chicken with a tree…and lost.

He pulled his hand away to find red liquid on the tips of his fingers.

“Aiden!” Sadie clasped his wrist. “You’re bleeding!”

Pshaw. Merely a flesh wound. “I’m fine.”

Sadie’s frown deepened and she latched onto his wrist, dragging him with her as she sidestepped various mufflers, oil filters, and dash panels scattered across the floor. “Where is a first aid kit?” Her grip was tight for a little thing. She was squeezing his forearm so hard he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to give him first aid.

“I’m fine.” He stopped walking and she sent him a glare over her shoulder. “Bathroom,” he said, giving in and gesturing to the right.

Sadie led him in and opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, rooting around until she found bandages. “Sit,” she commanded, pushing him onto the toilet seat. She wet a pile of paper towels and turned back to him, plucking the edge of his shirt. “Off.”

“You’re bossy, do you know that?”

“Take your shirt off, Aiden.”

What he wouldn’t give for her to be purring that into his ear instead of barking it at him like a drill sergeant. No, actually, that worked, too. He hid his smile as he tugged the neck of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

Sadie dabbed at the cut, her ministrations gentle. “I had it,” she said, her voice soft. “You just scared me.”

“You did not,” Aiden said, winding his shirt in his hands. She swiped again and he sucked air through his teeth, frowning over his shoulder at her.

She gave him a tight smile. “Sorry.”

Aiden turned back around. “Next time you need something back here, ask for my help.”

She switched from a wet paper towel to dry. “You were busy,” she bit out.

Aiden kept his head down so she couldn’t see the curve of his lips. So he hadn’t imagined her reaction. Her overreaction. How interesting.

He heard the tear of paper, saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, and waited for her to lay the bandage over his cut and give it a pound with one fist. Instead, she laid it on his shoulder and used gentle pressure to secure it at the edges.

He turned his head slightly, weighing his next words. “Sonya’s married. That was her husband’s phone number she gave me so I could call him about a special order.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Sadie…” But her fingers moving away from the bandage to draw a long, slow line down his back made him forget what he was going to say. She was following the trail of his scar, he guessed. Most of it was numb from the nerve damage, but then, she knew that already.

She’d touched him like this before, the morning he’d woken next to her. The morning he left to pick up breakfast to keep himself from begging her to make love to him. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted someone as badly as he wanted Sadie.

He still wanted her.

Her fingertips veered to his side, probably tracing one of the thorny branches of the tattoo wrapping around to his back.

“When did you get this?” she asked quietly.

“A couple of months ago.”

Her fingers continued down his ribs. “Can I see it?” She sounded pained to ask.

“Sure.”

He stood and lifted his arm, giving her a view of the ink running the length of his flank. After Mom died, the subject of his first tat was a no-brainer. A red rose bursting from a tangle of thorny vines. The thorns signified hardship, the red rose his mother.

Sadie traced the flower, and Aiden swallowed hard. He missed her touch. His fist closed around the shirt in his hand as he gritted his teeth.

She stroked his skin, having no idea she was turning him inside out. “Your mom’s roses.”

God, how this woman got him. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing around a lump in his throat. “A heart with the word MOM in it seemed a little cliché.”

He heard her blow air from her nose, an attempt at a laugh that didn’t quite make it.

She laid her palm flat over the rose and the warmth expanded from his belly to chest where it wrapped around his heart. He lowered his arm, trapping her hand against him. The expression on her face, a mixture of sorrow and longing, nearly dropped him like a sack of grain.

He closed the distance between them, bringing up a hand to cup her chin as he thumbed her bottom lip. He had so many things to say. Like how sorry he was, how he’d do anything to take back the day he’d lost her for good. How he wanted her with an intensity time and space hadn’t been able to lessen.

And God knew how he’d tried to stop.

“You should put on a clean shirt,” she whispered, not speaking the words he read so easily in her eyes.

“You should kiss me,” he murmured.

Her eyes sank closed as her hand gripped him tighter. Aiden kept hold of her face, lowering his head to her glossed lips. The sweet scent of strawberry rolled off her mouth, and he wondered if her waiting tongue tasted as sweet…

“Everything okay back here?” a voice bellowed through the warehouse.

Sadie’s eyes snapped open.

Aiden stood over her, debating whether or not to kiss her even though Axle’s head would appear in the doorway in a second.

She pulled away from him before he could and busied herself by cleaning up the paper towels and washing her hands.

Axle poked his head in, his face an Easter Island statue. He took in Sadie’s flushed cheeks and Aiden’s state of undress and his eyes widened a fraction. “Lose your shirt?”

“Nope, he’s got it right here,” Sadie lifted Aiden’s hand holding his soiled shirt and pressed it over his bare chest. He could still see the heat in her eyes. Heat he’d put there.

Aiden glanced at Axle. He couldn’t have given me five more seconds? Sadie licked her bottom lip. The lip Aiden had nearly had between his teeth a moment ago. Okay, ten more seconds.

Sadie stepped away from him. “We had a minor accident. I had to patch him up,” she told Axle, her voice forcibly casual. Aiden considered dropping a kiss onto her lips just to see what she’d do, but Axle’s surly presence was sort of ruining the mood.

Aiden walked for the door and Axle backed out of the doorway to let him by. “Thanks for the first aid,” he said to Sadie.

“Thanks for saving me,” she said, her lips twitching into a smile. “I had it.”

Instead of arguing, he decided not to let an opportunity as ripe as this one pass them by. “I never gave you an answer,” he said.

Her eyebrows pinched over her nose in the cutest look of confusion.

“I’d love to go to lunch with you.” He grinned at her as he backed away from the bathroom. “I’m going to change.”