Hard to Handle

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.”

Sadie turned her chin from his hand and muttered a soft “Thanks.” Aiden wasn’t sure if she was completely convinced, but he didn’t mind hanging around to convince her if she’d let him.

“Wine?” she offered.

Hell yes. “Sure,” he said, going for casual.

She pulled a second glass from the cabinet and filled it and handed it to him. Aiden took a sip from his glass as she emptied hers. She frowned at the cork sediment in the bottom like she was reading tea leaves.

“Trey said I wanted the wedding more than I wanted him,” she said. “That I basically neglected him into my sister’s arms.”

Aiden was going to interrupt, but she inhaled to continue and he took it as a hint this was a monologue.

“I mean, I was busy planning the wedding. Our wedding.” She refilled her glass, splashing wine over the rim and onto the counter. Aiden took the bottle from her and finished the pour before topping off his own. The more for him, the less for her, he figured. And she’d had just about enough.

Sadie lifted her glass and studied the pale yellow liquid. “A wedding has a lot of moving parts. You men don’t know this because all you do is show up. In a tuxedo you rent.”

Aiden was married in jeans. In a courthouse. It had been about as romantic as a trip to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. He thought better of correcting her and kept his lips firmly pressed together.

“I wanted to do it right, you know?” she continued. “I wanted to show Trey I would be a good wife. The best wife. And maybe I did get wound around the details, but is that bad, really? Isn’t focus a good thing? Shouldn’t he have been grateful he only had to sign the checks?”

She took another mouthful of wine, pointing a finger at Aiden as she swallowed. “Which, by the way, he