Jessica Lemmon - Hard to Handle

“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?

Mike 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.