by Abby Gaines
“Then I met Meg,” Daniel said. “We didn’t have anything obvious in common—she’s not what my parents expected—but you know. Kapow.”
“Right.” Trey had no idea what kapow meant when it came to women. In football, sure. In a stunning garden. But when it came to women, he’d never been hit by whatever was lighting up Daniel’s face now.
Sadie should be worried.
“It’s a relief to find Meg has such a great family,” Daniel said. “Though I have to say I was intimidated about meeting you.” He spoke with the ease of a guy who wasn’t truly intimidated. “Meg talks about you as if you’re Superman.”
He must have caught Meg on a good day, or at least one when they hadn’t talked in a while.
Daniel grinned. “I knew you couldn’t be all that, but I wasn’t sure I’d measure up to your standards.”
Trey was reminded of the conversation at the barbecue about Sadie’s “standards.” Presumably Daniel met them all.
“Just don’t hurt my sister,” Trey said. “That’s the standard.”
“I won’t.” Daniel’s eyes turned serious. “If Meg will have me, I intend to stick around.”
“Uh, great.” Annoyed that his first thought was concern for Sadie, Trey took a screwdriver out of the pen-holder on his desk and flipped it between his fingers. “But there’s something I should warn you about.”
Daniel clasped his hands behind his head. “You mean, Meg doesn’t have a great track record with relationships?”
“Did Sadie tell you that?” Trey demanded.
Daniel gave him a quizzical look. “Meg did. She warned me not to fall for her. Of course, by then it was too late.”
Trey tapped the palm of his hand with the screwdriver. “I’ve never heard of Meg warning guys off before. Usually the first they know of it is when she hands their skewered hearts back to them.” Daniel flinched.
“I’m thinking it’s a good sign,” Trey assured him.
Through the office window he caught sight of Meg and Sadie. He waved at his sister.
Meg came in, but Sadie loitered outside. Good.
“Mom wanted me to talk to you before you head back to town,” he said.
Trey would have been happy to let Meg discover his news in her own time—he would’ve been interested to know how long it took her to notice that the business that had kept a roof over her head and put her through college had changed.
Meg plopped down in the seat next to Daniel’s. “Shoot.”
“I hired a guy to manage the stores in the New Year. A chief operating officer. I’ve been training him, and now he’s up to speed.”
Meg was nodding, uninterested.
“So I’m leaving,” Trey said. “Whoa…what?”
“I’m leaving Kincaid Nurseries.” Just saying it made him feel lighter.
Meg jumped to her feet. “Sadie, get in here,” she called.
“We don’t need her,” Trey said.
“It’ll save me repeating it in five minutes’ time.” A classic example of Meg-style reasoning. Heaven forbid she should have to exert herself to pass on some news.
As Sadie entered the office, Trey observed her truly excellent legs in her denim shorts. Not relevant.
When she lined up next to Meg, he noticed the two women were the same height, but differently proportioned. Sadie’s legs were longer. Definitely not relevant.
“Trey’s leaving,” Meg announced.
“Goodbye,” Sadie said coolly.
Trey bit down on a smile.
“I’m serious.” Meg thumped back into her chair. “He’s leaving the business.”
“I’m leaving Memphis, too,” Trey said.
Meg’s eyes widened. “You can’t leave town! What will Mom say?”
“Mom’s known about this for months,” he said. “I have another week’s worth of handover to do with Eugene, the new guy. Then I’m out of here.”
“But you love this place,” Meg said.
“I’m sure it suited you to think so.”
His sister slid him the sneaky one-fingered salute she’d perfected, the one their mother never spotted but Trey always did. Neither Daniel nor Sadie saw it; they both looked indignant on Meg’s behalf, so he hurried on. “But the truth is, I ended up running the business because there was no one else to clean up the mess when Dad and Logan died. I was the last choice, not the best choice.”
“Where will you go?” Meg asked.
He lifted one shoulder. “I have leads on a couple of opportunities.”
“What about your house?”
“I’ll rent it out.” It was only ever a place to stay, not somewhere he was attached to.
Meg was breathing hard. “What if Mom gets sick again?”
“You’ll be half an hour away.” That concern had weighed on him, too, but in the end he’d concluded his mom’s next stroke might be years off. It might never happen. He couldn’t hang around “just in case.”
“Of course, I’ll come back if I’m needed, but you can handle any minor medical issues.”
“You can’t leave me to deal with stuff like that.” Her voice rose. “How can you be so irresponsible!”
Daniel put a hand on her knee. “Sweetheart…”
“As if you would know a responsibility if it bit you on the butt,” Trey retorted.
Sadie stood. “Daniel, do you want to help me choose some plants while these guys talk?”
Trey couldn’t believe her nerve, taking advantage of him and Meg being caught up in an argument to get Daniel to herself.
Daniel glanced anxiously at Meg. “Maybe in a minute.”
“Please?” Sadie coaxed.
The way she was smiling at him lit up her whole face.
“I’ll choose some plants for you later,” Trey said. “Stay right here.”
She mouthed something at him that he didn’t get, but sat down again.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Meg asked.
Trey groaned. Oddly, Sadie did, too, almost under her breath.
“You can’t have just decided this out of the blue,” Meg continued. Her eyes widened. “Is it about a woman? Did someone break your heart and now you’re leaving to—?”
“There’s no one left to break my heart,” Trey interrupted. “All the fun girls left town. Only the un-fun ones are left.” He directed a look at Sadie.
“Lexie’s still around,” Meg objected. “I see her all the time. Trey, maybe you should give her another try.”
Trey had dated Sexy Lexie, as the guys used to call her, soon after he dropped out of college. “This isn’t about me dating. It’s about your need to grow—”
“Wasn’t Lexie voted in high school most likely to die of overtanning?” Sadie asked quickly.
Not only was her question rude to Lexie, it was extraneous to his argument with his sister. But just like that, the tension evaporated and Trey found himself fighting a laugh.
Meg eyed her friend in surprise, but took the question seriously. “Lexie was Most Likely to Get Offered—and Accept—a Playboy Contract.”
Trey wasn’t surprised she remembered. His sister had loved every minute of high school, and had been a member of the prom court every year. But she’d had friends across the spectrum, and her popularity had never gone to her head. Those years were the last time Trey had truly liked her.
Her gaze softened, the hurt accusation leaving her eyes. “Trey, do you remember what you were voted most likely to do?”
“No,” he lied.
“To play in the Super Bowl,” she said sympathetically.
He shrugged. “Getting a football scholarship to Duke was a long way off that ambition. Who’s to say I’d ever have got there?”
“I think you would.” Great, now she’d turned supportive. She didn’t realize her loyalty only made him more keenly aware of what he’d missed out on.
“You were voted most likely to marry a doctor,” he said, to move things along.
Meg had declared in her junior year that she wanted
to be a nurse so she could date hot doctors. She’d given up on the nurse ambition after Dad and Logan died, saying the job was ghoulish, but the doctor thing had stuck.
As Trey expected, that got Daniel’s interest. “Were you, now?” he murmured.
Meg chortled. “Maybe.”
Sadie scowled at Trey. Did he have to push Daniel at Meg like a Victorian father with twelve daughters to marry off? The way he was acting, you’d think Sadie was planning to seduce Daniel among the philodendrons.
All she’d wanted was to remove him from an argument destined to show Meg in the worst possible light.
“What were you voted most likely to do, Sadiebug?” Daniel asked.
“Actually—” she found herself smiling at the thought of how much Trey would hate this “—I was voted most likely to marry a doctor, too.”
Trey’s head jerked around. “You were not.”
“Uh-huh.” She smiled serenely.
Meg jumped in. “Sadie was really voted most likely to win a Nobel Prize, but the idiot doing the layout accidentally pasted the wrong caption beneath her photo. The typo wasn’t noticed until after the yearbooks were printed.” She winked at Sadie. “But maybe you should aim for a doctor rather than Nobel glory, anyway.” She slid her hand down Daniel’s thigh to his knee. “Doctors make the best kissers.”
Sadie couldn’t help it—she glanced guiltily at Daniel. And caught him doing the same to her.
Meg, gazing into her boyfriend’s eyes, saw that look. She whipped her hand away. “Daniel?” Her voice was high. “Did you—did you kiss Sadie?”
CHAPTER SIX
TREY STRAIGHTENED. How had he done that? Without appearing to move, he became taller, fiercer.
Daniel was sweating bullets.
Sadie rubbed her palms against her shorts. “Uh, Meg, you know how I was on the rebound from Wesley, before you even met Daniel.” Her voice caught, and she hoped it sounded like heartbreak over Wesley Burns, veterinarian to the animal stars.
Meg looked suspicious. Trey, of course, knew there was no Wesley. He was staring at Sadie as if she’d just laid one on Daniel, right there in front of his sister.
“Sadie and I did kiss,” Daniel said. “Just once. But it was…” He gave Sadie a wry smile.
Amazing. “Terrible,” Sadie said. The best kiss of my life. “Awful.”
“I wouldn’t say awful.” Daniel clutched his chest, mock-wounded. “But there was no spark.”
The worst thing was, Sadie could see he meant it. About that kiss!
“Zilch,” she chirped. “Nada.” A warning look from Trey said she risked protesting too much.
Meg managed a cautious smile. “And this was before you and I met?” she confirmed with Daniel.
“Of course.” He touched her cheek. “Once I met you…”
“Meg, why don’t you and Daniel grab a coffee from the in-store café,” Trey said. “Tell Pammy I said it’s on the house. I’ll help Sadie decide on some new plants.”
The relief on Daniel’s face added to Sadie’s mortification. She held her breath until they’d left the office.
A rush of pain came with the exhalation. Her ribs throbbed as she stared after Daniel and Meg. It should be her holding his hand, sharing his coffee, having his babies…
“Sadie?” Trey touched her shoulder from behind, oddly gentle. “Thanks for that.”
She blinked hard. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know.” A pause. “You okay?”
“There were sparks, dammit.” She hadn’t intended to say that. Her shoulders shook.
“I’m sure there were.” Trey’s pitying tone was enough to dry her eyes.
She turned around, squinted at him. “You don’t believe me.”
“I don’t see any chemistry between you and the doctor,” he admitted.
“It was the best kiss,” she said. “Major combustion.”
“Sure it was,” he soothed.
She swiped at a stray tear on her cheek. “I know what I’m talking about,” she said scathingly. “I have kissed other men.”
“Maybe you’ve been kissing the wrong ones.”
Compared to Daniel, her previous relationships had been the wrong ones. And now the right man didn’t want her. Sadie swayed. Trey took a step closer and cupped her elbows in his hands.
“What am I going to do with you?” he murmured.
Something about his tone, a huskiness…
“Not what you’re thinking,” Sadie said sharply.
It was totally illogical to assume Trey Kincaid wanted to kiss her. But his gray eyes were intense, focused on her lips, as they’d been yesterday morning.
To have a man look at her as if her mouth intrigued him, when Daniel had just made it painfully clear he was indifferent… She stiffened her backbone. “You like fun women, remember?”
“True,” he said lightly. “But you’re showing definite promise.”
Her smile was unwilling. He wasn’t Daniel—she didn’t want him.
“I’m the geek next door,” Sadie reminded him. “A know-it-all. And weird, to boot.” None of the insults he’d lobbed her way this weekend had hurt the way Daniel’s no spark comment had.
He furrowed his brow. “I should run screaming from the room.” But his thumbs caressed the points of her elbows with short, firm strokes.
“Great idea.” It came out in a harried breath. Sadie nodded toward the door and said more crisply, “Don’t let me hold you up.”
“This is my office.” His hands moved to her shoulders in a slow glide that produced goose bumps all the way up her arms.
“Your air-conditioning is too low,” she said. “The ideal indoor ambient temperature without exposure to direct sunlight or drafts is sixty-eight degrees.”
His mouth, much closer to hers than it should be, quirked. “I’ll take it under advisement.” Humor had softened the planes of his cheeks.
“I need to leave,” Sadie said quickly.
And didn’t move.
Trey’s lips met hers.
Firmer than Daniel’s was her first thought. Her lips moved and she kissed him back, just to verify her initial judgment. He nipped her bottom lip, startling her into parting her lips, and began an exploration of her mouth. Thought sizzled to nothing, like water on a hot stone, as his urgency drove hers, building a heat that cauterized her wounds.
This shouldn’t be happening.
Sadie wrenched her mouth away. “Trey, stop!”
He obeyed instantly, leaping back from her as if she’d just announced she’d been exposed to anthrax. He bumped against a framed landscape diagram on the wall, tilting it on a crazy angle.
“Hell,” he said.
Not the reaction she most liked to hear after a kiss. Hell had to be even worse than hmm. What was wrong with her, that men deemed kissing her either a nonevent or a mistake?
But he was right. This time it was a mistake. Her mistake.
“I’m sorry.” She dropped her gaze so she couldn’t see his dark hair, mussed in a way it hadn’t been a minute ago. She didn’t remember doing that.
“You’re sorry?” He straightened the picture frame. “I kissed you.”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t have…” She closed her eyes. “I used you.”
Stark silence.
“To compare the spark factor?” Anger was threaded beneath the words.
“No!” She couldn’t even remember why. The whole episode was a blur of heat. “To—maybe to forget my troubles.” And now she felt as if she’d cheated on Daniel. Which was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Trey shoved his hands into his pockets. “Troubles you’ve brought on yourself. Let it go, Sadie.”
“Daniel gets me,” she said. “He understands my work, he loves that I love it, just like he loves his job.”
“Meg loves her job, too.”
She ignored him. “He cares about giving back, he’s close to his family. When I’m with him I’m totally at ease. We fit. I can’t let go of something I
think is meant to be.”
To her surprise, she’d silenced him. He ran a hand over his hair to smooth it.
“So, once again, I’m sorry.” Sadie touched her lips, oversensitized by his kiss. “For using you like that.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Forget it, Sadie. I already have.”
BY MONDAY EVENING Sadie figured it was safe to say she’d survived. Trey hadn’t enlightened Meg or Daniel about the late, unlamented Wes Burns, and her family had made no further reference to him. If they were worried about her single state, at least they knew it was by choice—she was the one who’d ended things with Wes.
Good grief, Wes isn’t real! She picked up her pace as she carried her bag downstairs in preparation for the return to the city.
“You want some help with that bag, honey?” Her father emerged from the kitchen.
“It’s fine, Dad.” I am woman. I am strong. She huffed a little as she heaved the bag to the front door, which her dad opened.
Outside, the scene was a mirror of their arrival. Both families on the sidewalk, hugs all around. Daniel’s arm around Meg, Trey standing to one side, thankfully not looking at Sadie. Because he might have forgotten about that kiss, but she was still plagued with guilt.
“It’s been wonderful meeting you.” Nancy squeezed Daniel’s hands. “You seem like one of the family already.”
Sadie cringed at Nancy’s lack of subtlety, even as her mind rejected the prospect of Daniel ever being a part of Meg’s family.
Too bad her mind had no say over the matter.
Because Daniel threaded his fingers through Meg’s, beamed down at her and said, “Shall we tell them, sweetheart?”
No no no no no. The next seconds moved in slow motion, the universe disobeying all commands shouted in Sadie’s head to cease and desist.
“Let’s!” Meg said excitedly.
Her mother’s countenance lit in anticipation, and slow smiles of delight broke on Sadie’s parents’ faces.
“That walk Meg and I took to the lagoon last night, under that full moon…” Daniel was clearly enjoying his elaborate scene setting; Sadie wanted to slap him.
“Daniel proposed and I said yes!” Meg squealed.
Daniel’s protestations that they’d wanted to buy the ring before sharing the news were lost in a sea of congratulations.