Hard to Handle (Love in the Balance 2)

“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 says was not the issue. No, no. The issue was that I ignored him. And when I stopped showing up to my family’s house for Sunday dinner, he and Celeste started making out on the patio. Right under Mother’s nose! He actually thanked me for ignoring him so that he could find his beloved Celeste,” she said with a sneer.

It was hard not to laugh. He liked her Trey impression, the way she made him sound like a moron, which, obviously, he was. “I take it you had the displeasure of running into Trey recently?” Aiden asked.

“This morning,” she said, looking for a chair. Aiden lifted off the one he sat on, slid it to her, and retrieved another for himself.

“So Trey…what? Called and unloaded a guilt trip onto your shoulders?”

Sadie snorted. “I wish. Today is my sister’s birthday, and since Celeste always gets what she wants, we had a big, last-minute to-do at the country club.”

Aiden couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for Sadie to be around her fiancé and her sister and play nice. It wasn’t fun to be left for someone else—he knew—and if it had been his brother who Harmony had left him for, Aiden thought he’d probably have fled the country by now.

“I left, but not before Trey followed me out to tell me I was being a bad sister.” The pain in her eyes suggested she agreed. “I keep replaying what he said…” She paused, unshed tears shimmering in her eyes. She was strong, a real suffer-in-silence type. But her control was flagging. She swallowed hard, blinking at the ceiling. When she met Aiden’s eyes, hers were clear. “I think he was right.”

He put a hand on her arm in a show of support. He had so much to say, so many arguments to offer, he didn’t know where to start. He’d never met Celeste but couldn’t imagine Sadie’s younger sister being more remarkable than the woman before him. Sadie was vibrant and challenging and sexy as hell. And if Trey couldn’t see that then his head must have taken up permanent residence in his ass.