Hard to Handle (Love in the Balance 2)

Trey led her by the elbow into the coat closet. She let him. “Your sister just announced she’s having a baby.”

“Yes, I heard.”

Trey let out a humorless laugh. “Don’t you think the sisterly thing to do would be to offer to throw her a baby shower? Or, I don’t know, say you can’t wait to be an aunt? At the very least, offer your congratulations?”

“I’ll send a greeting card,” she snapped. “She should have told me. I should have known before today.” And that was the key, wasn’t it? The emotion causing her gut to swirl and her eyes to burn had nothing to do with the fact that Celeste was ahead of Sadie in life and had everything to do with hurt. Celeste hadn’t come to her. Her only sister.

“This isn’t being done to you, Sadie. Celeste and I are bringing a child into the world. This moment is about us.”

Sadie ground her teeth but she couldn’t keep from saying, “Oh, that part I got, Trey. It’s always been about you and Celeste.” When she learned of their affair, Trey had framed it that way, too. Celeste and I didn’t mean to fall in love. But we are. We deserve happiness.

Meanwhile, Sadie deserved what? To be left at the altar? To dismantle the wedding she’d planned brick by brick while Trey enjoyed his new fling? Only it wasn’t a fling. It’d turned into an engagement. A wedding. And now a baby.

Sadie turned to leave but Trey blocked the doorway with one outstretched arm. “Wrong again, Sadie,” he said. “Things have always been about you.”

“Well, this has been nice,” she said, her voice dripping with derision. She pushed his arm away and he backed up, staying in front of her as she walked.

He lifted his hands. “Wait. I’m not berating you. Let me finish, please.”

Sadie didn’t want to let him finish, but she also didn’t want him chasing her out of this coat closet and making a scene. If her mother and Celeste saw them arguing, they would pounce on Sadie in tandem. Resigned, Sadie crossed her arms and shot out one hip, letting Trey know he had a very, very limited window to dispense whatever speech he had in queue.

“When I asked you to marry me, I meant it,” he said. “I know to you, it seemed very spur of the moment because it was a random afternoon in a mall, but I assure you, I’d had it planned for at least a year.”

She blinked behind her sunglasses, digesting the new scrap of info.

“We got along well, were great friends, things were good between us. So I thought, why not now, you know? What are we waiting for? After dating for almost two years, I figured we’d end up married anyway.”

Well. Not exactly a profession of undying love, but then, what did she expect?

“But after the engagement, Sadie…well, I don’t want to use the term bridezilla, but—”

The word sent her defenses sky-high. Even as she uttered a harsh “I was not,” part of her wondered if Trey had a small, barely discernible, itty-bitty smidge of a point.

“Our engagement turned into your project du jour, and you know it. The three-ring binder you had under your arm twenty-four seven was more your fiancé than I was.”

Ah, the binder. She loved that binder. Tabbed markers separated everything from color swatches, flower ideas, dress designs, cakes, and the vows she’d written for both of them. She’d cataloged and detailed the menu choices and had chosen meals specifically based on the food intolerances of her guests. Sadie had made it her mission to have a complaint-free wedding. A perfect wedding.

“You were so wrapped up in the planning,” Trey said, snapping her out of her memories of the planning, “I’m not sure you would have noticed if it was me waiting for you at the end of the aisle or someone else.”

Sadie frowned. “I had to be wrapped up in the planning, Trey. You wouldn’t lift a finger to help out.”

“Not true.” His calm, collected demeanor was grating her nerves. “Remember the appointment for the photographer? The appointments for several photographers? I went, and you steamrolled over me, choosing the package you thought was best, choosing the price point you thought was best.”

“But you told me to spend whatever I needed,” she said, clinging weakly to her position.

“And I meant it.” He touched her arm. “It wasn’t about money, Sadie. It was about the time we weren’t spending together. Once you painted a bull’s-eye on becoming my wife, you were so laser-focused, there wasn’t any room left for me in your life. Cripes, we saw so little of each other, it was like we’d broken up. Remember the weekly dinners at your mother’s house? When you bothered to show, it was an hour late, and you made calls on your cell phone half the time you were there.”