Hard to Handle (3 page)

Aiden flipped the cover open and started to read.

“What are you doing?”

He looked up. “Reading your proposal.”

Her nostrils flared. “Do not ruin this for me, Aiden Downey. I’ve worked too hard to land this contract.”

Aiden kept his expression neutral. “Something in here you’re afraid I’ll find? Price gouging? Remanufactured parts instead of new? Zero buyback policy?”

“What?” Sadie barked. “No, of course not.”

Aiden released the folder and leaned back in Axle’s chair, hands laced over his stomach. Sadie’s chest heaved. Such a temper on that girl. “Well, how am I supposed to know what it says if I don’t read it?”

Sadie pressed her lips together. She could have defended herself with a
You know me
, or
You can trust me
. She could have made an emotional plea of
How can you say something like that after all we’ve been through?
But she did neither. She’d never expect someone to give her something she hadn’t earned. And she’d sooner die than have Aiden feel sorry for her.

Settling into the guest chair, she crossed her legs and brushed something from her skirt. “Take your time,” she said, refusing to look at him. “I’ll wait.”

Aiden skimmed the cover letter, then flipped to the price list, and finally, to the contract. In reality, he’d stopped reading with comprehension a few pages ago. But he drew out their time together, not ready to be apart from her just yet, and because Sadie was gorgeous when her hackles were up.

The few dates he and Sadie had been on last summer, Aiden had been lucky enough to see her iron curtain drop. Seeing the woman behind it left him speechless, as if he was witnessing something rare and precious. Sadie may have an exterior made of Naugahyde, but inside, she was pudding.

He closed the folder and found Sadie watching him, waggling one dangerous-looking stiletto back and forth. “Well?”

He almost blurted,
Let’s talk it about it over drinks
, but bit his tongue. Then again…why not? They knew each other, had things in common. His cousin and her best friend were husband and wife. Not to mention Sadie looked like a woman who could use a drink. Plus, it’d be fun to mess with her. Just a little. Just one more time.

Aiden closed the cover on the proposal. “I’ll sign it.” Sadie’s shoulders dropped an inch. He told himself to stop there, not to say another word. But in the end he couldn’t help but add, “Under one condition.”

Sadie tensed.

Aiden smiled. “Go out on a date with me.”

Of all the—!

If Aiden thought he could—!

“Argh!” Sadie stomped into the hall, peeking into each room along the way, looking for Axle, her heels clacking in distressed rhythm.

“Sadie,” Aiden said again. He was right behind her. She ignored him. What was he thinking? That he’d take all of her hard work, years of effort, wad them up, and toss them in her face? Aiden may not take the job his daddy got him seriously, but Sadie was different. She took pride in going after her goals, in getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was Axle Zoller’s parts contract.

Angling toward the showroom, she spotted Axle standing over a vintage Harley-Davidson, talking to a customer. Sadie walked faster.

“Sadie!” Aiden whispered this time, as loudly as he could without drawing attention. A few people turned in their direction and Sadie shot them a nothing-to-see-here smile. Just as she was about to tap Axle’s shoulder, a hand clapped onto her arm and whirled her around.

Aiden held his palms up in an
I surrender
pose. “I was kidding, Sadie.” He was still whispering. “I swear.”

“Kidding?” Sadie gave him a derisive smile. “I see. You think my career is a joke.”

“I don’t think that.” Aiden’s eyes went from her to Axle. “So, what, you’re going to tell on me?”

She glanced over at Axle, then back at Aiden. “I think he should know that you’re trying to coerce—”

“Everything okay?” Axle rumbled, his tone a warning.

Aiden crossed his arms. Smiled smugly. Yeah. She was going to tell on him. She turned to smile at Axle. Salt and pepper eyebrows were drawn over gray eyes, the corners of his moustache accentuating an unseen frown.

His face was so foreboding, Sadie actually backed up a step. She bumped into Aiden, who grasped her waist, stopping her short of stepping on his feet. Ignoring the heat seeping through the cotton of her shirt, Sadie muttered, “Knucklehead.”

“Hey—”

“The bike, not you,” she grumbled to Aiden, moving away from him.

Axle’s expression eased. “Yes, ma’am. 1940 EL 1000 Knucklehead, to be precise.”

Sadie smiled up at him. “I know my hogs.” She also knew a good diversion tactic when she saw one. Get a man talking about what he loved, and he’d forget he was ever upset. And while she was at it…

“By the way…” Sadie placed a hand on Aiden’s arm then nearly forgot what she was going to say. His skin was warm, muscle thicker than she remembered. She removed her hand. “Um. Everything’s a go. Aiden is one shrewd deal maker.” Aiden clenched his jaw and she gave him a sweet smile. “Midwest is officially your new parts supplier.”

“Great,” Axle said, not sounding as if he meant it. He sent a glance at the customer to his right. “Is that all?”

“Yes.” Sadie could take a hint. “I’m just…very excited.”

“Yippee,” Axle said flatly.

Sadie’s good mood faded the moment she set foot inside her cubicle at work. Perry Bradford hovered over her in-box, rifling through her papers. “Excuse me.”

“Excuse you?” Perry turned, his tie swinging with the motion. “All right. You’re excused.” He continued digging.

Sadie pushed past him, dumping her bag onto the desk. She’d used the last of her fury on Aiden and couldn’t call up enough to unleash on her moron coworker. “Can I help you?”

Perry abandoned his search, leaning on her desk and crossing his arms over his chest. “How should I answer that?”

Sadie sucked in a cleansing breath. Perry was a consummate flirt, but harmless, and under pain of death she may even admit he was kind of cute. He was also a hustler and a ruthless salesman. Perry had been number one in sales at MMS every year. Every. Single. Year.

Sadie couldn’t believe it when she’d come close to beating him last quarter. She’d kicked her productivity into high gear since then. Now,
no thanks to Aiden
, she’d secured the account that bumped her to the lead.

“I signed Hawgs.” A smug smile stretched across Perry’s face. “You know Hawgs, right? Little garage south of Arbor Lane? Specializes in—”

“I know it,” she cut him off. “You know I know it; I tried to sign them myself.”

He winked at her, his cocksureness a bad mix with her own. Perry’s features were almost boyish, a quality that would keep him charming for years to come.

“I was looking for your proposal for the file. You know, the one they turned down.” He gave her an exaggerated pout.

“I guess I’ll have to dry my tears on this,” she said, producing Axle’s contract Aiden had signed under duress.

Perry frowned at the paper before snatching it from her hands. He muttered a curse. “You got them.”

“I did.”

“All five stores?”

“All five stores,” she repeated.

Perry pushed away from her desk and blinked as if absorbing the news. A second later, he nodded slowly, figuring it out. Unless he pulled some serious strings, or if Sadie didn’t work another day for the next month, the promotion and accolades typically befalling Perry would be hers.

“We’ll see, Sadie.” He turned his back on her, repeating as he stalked away, “We’ll see.”

Rather than gloat, she kept her comments to herself. What, really, was there to say? She’d worked hard and arrived at her goal with time to spare. She was getting what she wanted. What she deserved.

So why didn’t she feel like celebrating?

M
ike Downey flipped a burger on the grill, waving hello with the spatula as Aiden rounded the backyard. “Hey, son, how was work?”

“Good.”

“Axle’s a good guy.”

“How ’bout you?”

“Good,” Mike said noncommittally. “Well, ‘good’ might be overstating it. Marty pitched a fit today.”

Aiden’s biceps tensed. Marty Kincaid was a loudmouthed prick giving everyone headaches when he worked there briefly last year. Not that he’d expected the guy to change.

“You hungry?” Mike asked, flipping another burger.

“Yeah,” Aiden called over his shoulder as he stepped into the garage and dug a beer bottle out of the fridge. He twisted the cap and stood next to his father at the grill.

If Aiden thought too hard about the fact he was thirty-one and living at home, he might very well burst into tears. Last year Aiden had lost his business, then a chunk of money to his lecherous ex-wife and her pit bull lawyer, and then came the news about his mother.

The family had taken the news—that the doctor had given her three months left to live—hard. Kathy Downey had made her mind up after five years of battling cancer: she wasn’t going to get chemo. She’d found The Holistic Care Center in Oregon. The live-in healing resort had everything: acupuncture, meditation, herbal supplements, even a “thought doctor” who Aiden suspected was a quack. Aiden didn’t hesitate to move out there in his father’s stead, while Mike stayed in Ohio and worked all the overtime he could to afford the facility. When the money ran out, Aiden put his house and his prized collection of motorcycles up for sale.

Dad didn’t know until it was too late. Aiden knew his old man would sooner join a burlesque show in Vegas than ask his children for money, which is why Aiden had kept it from him.

Yet none of it had mattered.

Not the “healing mountains” of Oregon, the spring water, or the prayer—more than Aiden had ever prayed in his life. They’d lost her anyway. When Landon, his millionaire ad exec brother, found out Aiden had used his own money, he tried to send him a check. Aiden wouldn’t accept it. Even Shane’s insistence to contribute was met with stern refusal.

If Aiden had learned anything during those weeks at the care center with his mother, it was that they were each on their own path. At some point, there was only the option of going it alone. Mom’s path was to fight and fail. And Aiden’s was to give up everything to fund her ability to do just that.

Aiden rubbed his right side, where the tattoo he’d gotten to remember her sat etched into his skin, and shut his eyes against bad memories.

“Hey.” Mike shoved his shoulder and Aiden opened his eyes. “Don’t do that.” He turned back to the grill. “Life turns out this way sometimes. It’s not your fault your momma was sick.”

Was sick.

Mike never said
died
, or
passed on
, or
is in a better place
. Not that Aiden expected him to be morose and pensive like Landon, or loud and angry like Evan. Losing Mom had reduced Aiden into a sobbing puddle of tears. He’d failed her, and no matter how many times he reminded himself that things happen for a reason, there was a certain percentage of the blame he wasn’t willing to unshoulder.

But the way his father handled his mother’s passing…it didn’t seem natural. Aiden had never once seen the man cry—not when Mom took her last breath, not at the funeral, not after. Mike’s solution was to move on. When someone asked how he was, he’d offer a bit of fortune cookie wisdom or share a platitude about God’s timing. And while it could very well be true, it wasn’t easy to hear.

Aiden was grateful to have Shane. Sure he was family, but he was also Aiden’s best friend, and Aiden looked up to him as much as he did his father. What Shane had gone through—his father blaming him for his mother’s death—was something Aiden knew his own father would never do. But it didn’t make it any easier to look him in the eye whenever Mike lamented the weeks he’d lost not being at his wife’s side.

“I’m going to go to the cemetery tomorrow,” Aiden said.

Mike grunted, sliding the burgers onto four waiting buns.

Aiden accepted his plate and dragged up the courage to ask, “Would you like to go with me?”

Predictably, Mike shook his head. “No, no. Nothing but bones in a cemetery.”

He bet Dad hadn’t been to the cemetery since the funeral. Even then, he’d refused to take the chair in front of the casket, instead hovering at the rear of the crowd that had gathered. Mike had been the first to head for his car after the pastor finished speaking. Aiden stayed longer than he should have, watching as they lowered her body into the cold earth.

“Thinking of a ride later. Interested?”

Taking their bikes out was one way they’d bonded since Mom was gone. Aiden didn’t feel like riding tonight, but wouldn’t refuse his father’s request. Even if Dad’s idea of bonding was sharing an hour on the road without speaking.

“Yeah. I’m in.”

Mike smiled, the scar running the length of one cheek puckering slightly. “Good boy.”

At the entrance of Axle’s, Sadie tugged the hem of her shirt and pulled her shoulders back. She could do this. She had to do this.

The contract Aiden signed two days ago may have been a smidge overzealous. She blamed three years of pining for Axle’s stores for her campaign-esque promises. She’d given them MMS’s lowest rates, slashing her commission in half in the process, and promised to personally oversee the transition at this, their largest, busiest store, from their former parts supplier to Midwest. And while she was throwing in the cart with the horses, why not toss in the driver and cobblestone road, too? That was her only explanation for offering to buy back any of MMS’s competitor’s parts that didn’t sell over the next month. Of course, she’d assumed she’d be dealing with Axle and that she could charm a few of those extras into oblivion.

Sadie yawned. She’d spent half the night reading and rereading the contract for loopholes. No such luck. That Ericka in Legal was thorough. When Sadie woke this morning, however, she’d had a different attitude. Even if she could weasel her way out of the contract, or if she could convince Aiden to sign a new one, there was no way she would. The moment he found out he had something she wanted, he’d lord it over her, watching gleefully as she disassembled displays and hustled to sell out of her competitor’s parts. She wouldn’t have guessed Aiden was that kind of person until he attempted to trade a date for his signature on the contract. The thought made her frown.

She caught her reflection frowning back at her and plastered a smile on her face better suited to a beauty pageant contestant. Sadie Howard didn’t roll over. Sadie Howard didn’t lose. And even if she did lose, she thought as she knocked on the glass door, she wasn’t about to
look
like a loser.

She took in her surroundings while she waited to be let in. Axle’s sat on a highly manicured portion of downtown Osborn, cheery rows of potted flowers sitting on the brick-lined sidewalks, black light poles with waving city flags interspersed in between.

She liked this town. She liked her job, oddly enough. It had surprised everyone when she’d snuggled in at a motorcycle parts supplier after attaining her marketing degree. Probably because her father had lost his life on a bike, and Sadie refused to ride. But Sadie was good at sales and, aside from Perry being a thorn in her side, really did enjoy her coworkers. Being around people who loved motorcycles made her feel closer to her dad. She didn’t remember much about him, but his love for the open road was no secret. If only he’d have loved helmets as much.

She heard the lock disengage on the door and turned to find Aiden peering at her. He gave her a crooked smile, encouraging his dimple to appear. His shorn hair caught her by surprise again, so much shorter than she was used to seeing, though the front still fell in disarray over his forehead.

So he’s cute. So what?

Aiden pushed the door open and leaned with one arm drawn across the handle, forcing Sadie to brush by him when she entered. “Miss Howard.”

“Mr. Downey,” she clipped. She strode into the store in a pair of patent leather pumps perfectly suited to the red scarf around her neck and matching short-sleeved blouse. The four-inch heels, she hoped, were doing wonders for her backside, which she’d squeezed into a pair of tight vinyl pants.

Out of her peripheral vision, she watched Aiden’s eyes graze her outfit. It was immature, but she couldn’t help but feel smug.

Yes, sir, get a look at what you’ve been missing.

“Get lost on the way to a sock hop?”

Or not.

Sadie spun and pierced Aiden with a glare, her high ponytail nearly slapping her in the face with the movement. “I have work to do.”

Aiden shrugged. “Whatever you say, Sandra Dee.”

Ignoring the temptation to stick her tongue out at him, Sadie gathered her bag and walked to the other side of the store, where she’d be stocking Midwest’s complete line of motorcycle parts.

Sadie pulled out a pen and her notebook and sketched a rudimentary map of the store’s layout. The space was long and narrow, one entire end lined with windows facing the parking lot. In the window sat a remarkable vintage bike she knew belonged to Axle. When Axle had told her the bike was his creation, she’d marveled that he’d built it with his own huge mitts. The man was far more dexterous than she would have guessed.

Unfortunately, the bike wasn’t meeting its potential as top model. A shelf sat next to it, stocked with an uninspiring array of bumper stickers, T-shirts, and coffee mugs in random, busy colors while a mannequin in a “Biking is my Life” shirt stood guard. He’d lost an arm—which didn’t bode well for bike sales—and a creative profanity had been scrawled on his remaining limb.

She added the display to her list, jotting down to bring in some Midwest Motorcycle Supplies signage and retire the mannequin. This particular Axle’s shop was unique from its sister shops dotted around Ohio. Many customers who came here not only loved motorcycles but took pride in doing their own repairs and upgrades.

Rows of MMS parts lined in the window around Axle’s custom-built cherry Harley would have the locals drooling like one of Pavlov’s canines before they ever entered the store.

She trekked over to the parts aisles, wincing as she took in the staggered, mismatched rows. Some parts were unboxed, others marked with Post-its (really?) instead of price tags, while several others weren’t marked at all.

Since she’d promised to sell the old inventory or buy it back out of her pocket—not her brightest move—she’d have to get these parts sellable and gradually replace them with the Midwest brand. If she was stuck with them, she may be able to put them up for sale on eBay, but it wasn’t like she wanted to lug all of this stuff home with her.

Scratching another note onto her pad, she sneaked a peek at Aiden at the front door. He signed for a box, making a joke to the delivery guy she couldn’t hear, his smile wide and bright, his posture relaxed.

That’s what had towed her in all those months ago—forget his rare-colored eyes, sexy body, and easy smile. She’d been taken with the whole package. The whole
Aiden
. She hadn’t been able to resist.

Allowing the door to swing shut, he knelt and lifted the box. Sadie couldn’t keep from appreciating the way the muscles in his arms shifted and straightened as he adjusted to the weight. And, evil vixen her brain was, a memory presented itself. One of being held in his arms while he caressed her lips with his, while he kneaded her thighs just below her miniskirt with one slightly roughened hand.

“Need something?”

Sadie started, realizing she was leaning against the endcap, head tilted, staring directly at Aiden. Straightening, she turned her attention to her notebook and pretended to write on it. “Just, uh, planning.”

“Is that so?” He dropped the box and sauntered in her direction.

“Yes.” Her voice was thin, her heartbeat rapidly increasing as Aiden approached with the agility of a lithe jungle cat.

His attention flickered to her lips. “What are you planning?”

She swallowed, unable to think of what to say while he was standing over her looking at her like…like…she didn’t even know. “Um…”

“Well, if you need anything else…” Aiden pulled a stray strand of her hair away from her lipstick and smoothed it behind her ear, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand as he did. “Be sure to let me know.”

His lips quirked and she studied the short, pale patch of hair beneath his lower lip, unable to remember why she wasn’t allowed to kiss this bronzed Adonis.

But when he pulled his hand away, the words from their final phone call echoed in her ears. When he told her his mother was dying, and he was moving with her to the facility in Oregon. His family hadn’t known he was divorced, so it wasn’t like he could have introduced Sadie to them. And it wasn’t like she could have gone with him.

She wondered if she would have. Maybe.

No matter. Sadie hadn’t fit into his life then. She didn’t fit now. Aiden, no matter how attractive, no matter what her body insisted she do to him, had chosen to end things with her last year. And just because he regretted it now didn’t mean Sadie had waited around for his epiphany.

She learned her lesson. Once from Trey. Once from Aiden. And twice was enough.