by Abby Gaines
I’ve lost him.
Sadie’s chest felt hollow, as if someone had cut out her heart and forgotten to replace it. The buzz of conversation receded against the rushing in her ears.
She realized Trey had crossed the space between them and was now right beside her.
“You okay?” he murmured.
Without looking at him, she nodded, the barest movement of her chin that allowed her neck and shoulders to remain rigid. If she sagged even an inch, she might collapse.
He touched her arm, warning her it was her turn to hug Daniel (gingerly) and Meg (enthusiastically).
“Wonderful news,” she lied. “I’m so excited.”
“Me, too!” Meg gave Trey a smacking kiss on the cheek. “You finally got what you wanted, bro. I’m about to grow up once and for all.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Trey said.
“You won’t have long to wait.” Daniel shook Trey’s hand. “We plan to marry in September.”
“Three months to plan a wedding!” Nancy said in delighted horror.
Too soon! Too late! Ninety-some days of hell to endure.
“We’ve already made some decisions, Mom,” Meg assured her. “Like, where we’ll get married.”
“We met with Reverend Charles at Cordova Colonial Presbyterian at lunchtime today,” Daniel said.
“And we’ve chosen our maid of honor,” Meg added slyly.
No no no no no.
You’d think Sadie would have realized by now that chanting in her head wasn’t an effective tactic.
All eyes turned toward her.
“Fantastic!” she said with Oscar-winning enthusiasm.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SADIE DROVE HOME from work on Friday night with her hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel of her new Lexus compact. Like Daniel’s car, it was a hybrid, though she considered hers an edgier choice.
She didn’t want to think about Daniel.
Normally she’d retreat into thoughts of work, but work wasn’t going well, either. She’d told her family she was excited by the wheat-protein project, but truth was, it had ceased to excite her months ago. What kept her awake at night was another scientific possibility. Wheat related, but far more experimental. Outlandish.
Sadie wasn’t an outlandish person.
She’d mentioned her theory to her boss, asked for permission to investigate further. He’d turned her down flat—he was accountable to commercial partners who wouldn’t invest in a project so far off the radar.
She could quit, find another lab that might let her conduct her research. But she loved SeedTech—it was like family.
She needed to talk through her options with someone who had her best interests at heart. Her parents would insist they qualified, but they wouldn’t see any upside to professional risk. Meg claimed any discussion of Sadie’s work gave her a headache. Daniel…well, he wasn’t an appropriate confidant right now.
Sadie thumped the steering wheel. She shouldn’t have argued with her boss today. She’d made him look stupid in front of his superior, the kind of thing people didn’t forgive, guaranteeing that she’d struggle to get clearance for her new project even if her boss loved it. It was a crappy end to the worst week of her life.
“Get over it,” she told herself out loud.
As if telling herself so would fix a broken heart. Her mom’s cod-liver oil would have more chance.
“Enough,” she scolded herself. She hated wallowers—if you had a problem, you should fix it.
She either had to accept she’d lost Daniel, or she had to do something about it. To show him and Meg they were making a big mistake.
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll show them. I’ll start tonight.
She swung into her driveway, careful as always to avoid a sidelong glimpse of her garden…and stamped on the brake.
Her crappy week had just got crappier.
A black truck filled her usual parking space. Trey’s truck.
Sadie pressed the heel of her hand to the horn and blasted.
The door of the truck opened with deliberate slowness, and Trey climbed out. His worn jeans fit snugly and his light cotton plaid shirt, open at the neck, set off his tanned skin.
She buzzed her window down, stuck out her head. “You’re blocking my driveway.”
“Your deductive skills are amazing,” he said. “That free Ivy League education was worth every penny.”
“Why are you blocking my driveway?”
“Meg invited me to dinner. I hear Daniel’s cooking.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sadie said stiffly. “They’ve been staying at Daniel’s since we got back from Cordova.” She grabbed her purse and laptop bag and got out of the car. “You came all the way into town just to see your sister?”
“It’s not a long way,” he pointed out. “But it so happens I had a meeting at the airport with an old friend who was passing through—a possible job opportunity.”
“In garden design?” she asked, interested despite herself.
“No, not in garden design,” he said, annoyed. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you designed that amazing landscape for Mrs. Jones, why else?” She locked the car using the beeper. “So did you get the job?”
“How was your day in genius land?” he asked.
“I’d tell you, but you wouldn’t understand.” Hmm, he didn’t want to answer her question about the job. He must have missed out… She wondered what it was. If he was disappointed. Maybe he’d realize leaving his business and family was a dumb—
“Something else I don’t understand.” Trey’s face and voice were hard. “What happened here?” The sweep of his hand encompassed her garden.
“What do you mean?” Sadie asked defensively.
He gazed around. “Words fail me.”
“I’m hoping,” she muttered.
“Your parents claim you have a ‘wonderful, English-style cottage garden.’”
Which was the kind of neat, prissy, buttoned-down garden Trey would expect her to have. Not this bunch of bedraggled rhododendron bushes, a wizened rose or two, some dried-to-a-crisp box hedging and assorted shrubs too awful to mention.
“What did you use?” he asked. “Napalm?”
“No, but thanks for the idea.” Her look said he would be the victim of any napalm she got her hands on.
“I take it your parents haven’t seen this place?” The house itself looked nice enough—a Craftsman-style bungalow, with a deep porch framed by traditional heavy tapered brick pillars. But if her parents had seen the yard, they wouldn’t be bragging about her gardening prowess.
“They visited a year ago, when I moved in.” She kicked the tire of his truck. “Trey, please don’t tell them what a disaster this place is.”
“They could stop by anytime,” he reminded her. “Maybe you should warn them.”
She pffed. “My family think I live at the other end of the earth. No one’s ever ‘popped in.’ I told Mom and Dad I’d invite them back when the garden’s done.”
Trey shook his head, mystified by her logic. “If you ask, they’ll probably help you.”
“No!” She paled. “This is a big deal to me. Don’t tell them, please.”
Trey thought fleetingly of all the years he’d been able to ignore Sadie.
He’d phoned his sister today partly to check up on Meg…but mostly because he couldn’t stop thinking about Sadie’s stoic, devastated face as she’d pretended to embrace her role as maid of honor.
Meg’s dinner invitation had been the perfect opportunity to determine the lay of the land. He hadn’t expected the land to be scorched earth.
“Why?” he asked. “Why is this so important?”
She set her laptop bag and purse at her feet. Heavily, as if their weight was too much. “Everyone in my family is mad about gardens.”
“They’re some of my best customers,” he agreed. Her siblings all had accounts at Kincaid’s, as did her parents.
&
nbsp; “I love gardens, too,” she said, “at least as much as they do. But I can’t grow anything. I should be able to, and believe me, I’ve tried. But—” her hand swept toward the desolation of her front yard “—this is my dirty little secret.”
She sounded so serious, he was tempted to laugh. “Sadie, you’re not doing drugs or selling yourself on the streets. Making a mess of a garden isn’t the worst thing you could do.”
She plucked a leaf her rhododendron bush couldn’t afford to lose. As she rolled it between her fingers, Trey recalled making “cigarettes” out of rolled-up leaves when they were kids. He’d have been about six, which made Meg and Sadie, his fellow “smokers,” four. They’d sat around his mom’s birdbath, puffing away in imitation of his dad, who’d kept up his roll-your-own habit until he died.
“When I was in college,” Sadie said, “I did a couple of genetics classes. We carried out DNA tests on our hair, compared the results with a classmate’s and came up with a statistical likelihood of being related to each other.”
“Like a one in two billion chance,” he suggested. The kind of numbers bandied around by defense lawyers in criminal trials on TV.
“Yeah.” She opened her fingers, watched the leaf flutter to the ground. “Only, I didn’t do my comparison with another student. I came home for a weekend and bagged a few hairs from Mom’s hairbrush.”
“Going after extra credit?” Trey asked.
She looked directly at him. “I thought I was adopted.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in. Even then, they didn’t make sense. “What?”
“I’m so different from the rest of my family,” she said. “Every year that goes by, we seem to have less in common. I figured there had to be a scientific reason.”
“There is,” he said. “You have an extraordinary IQ, which led you to a different education, different kind of career…”
“That’s sociological, not scientific.”
He studied her face. “You have your mom’s chin—” slightly pointy “—and your dad’s eyes.” Though he’d never thought of Gerry Beecham’s eyes as delphinium-blue. “I assume the DNA test proved you were one hundred percent Beecham.”
“Unless there was some literally freakishly coincidental commonality in our genetic profiles…”
“There wasn’t,” he said firmly.
“No.” She sighed. “My folks say the same thing about the chin and the eyes. I always thought they were making it up. Just to be nice, to make me feel less of an outsider.”
“You don’t think I’m making it up?”
She slid him a glance. “You’re not that nice.”
Trey found himself smiling. “So, cupcake, if my inferior brain is following your logic correctly, you don’t want your family to know you’re a loser in the garden—” she scowled, and his smile widened “—because it’ll rob you of the last link you imagine you have with them.”
She nodded.
“You’ll still have the chin,” he comforted her.
“Gee, thanks.”
He chucked her under said chin. “Come on, Sadie, be logical. You don’t have to be the same as your family to feel a part of them.” He didn’t like the thought of her feeling so separate that she doubted her own genes.
“There has to be some commonality,” she argued. “I’m determined to make this garden work on my own.”
Trey clamped his mouth shut so he wouldn’t be tempted to dispense advice. He wasn’t the guy to advise about family relations, and it wasn’t his problem if Sadie was the world’s worst gardener. He was getting out of the garden business.
“I’m hungry.” He bent to pick up her bags. “Let’s go inside—I figure the house can’t be as bad as the garden.”
MEG HEARD SADIE’S key in the front door, then her brother’s voice.
She slid off the kitchen counter, where she’d perched to watch Daniel chopping green peppers. “Trey’s here. And Sadie.”
“Great.” Daniel didn’t look up from his task. He had no idea how important her brother’s visit was to her. Meg didn’t like that she hadn’t discussed it with him, but a guy like Daniel, dedicated to doing the right thing, wouldn’t understand.
She hurried out to the living room—the front door opened directly into the high-ceilinged space.
“Hey, guys,” Meg said.
She waited until Trey had set Sadie’s bags down, then went to hug him. After a moment of surprise, he returned the embrace. She could practically read his thoughts. Didn’t we just do this last weekend?
Yes, but she wanted to remind him of the family ties that bound them. Inextricably.
“I’ll go get changed,” Sadie said.
Good—Meg needed time alone with Trey. But first… “I’ll get the wine,” she said. Her plan was to relax him with alcohol.
When she returned from the kitchen, a bottle of wine in one hand, four glasses threaded through the fingers of the other, he was still on his feet, examining the room. Cream-colored walls, polished oak floors with a charcoal rug in the trendy new shag, a large fireplace at the far end. The space was cheerful, with its red sofas. Homey. Meg would miss it.
It was a small price to pay for a new home with Daniel. Joy bubbled up inside her at the prospect. “Did you have a good day?” she asked Trey as she handed him the bottle and the corkscrew.
He sliced through the foil cap in one clean movement and pulled it off. “It was fine.” He began to twist the corkscrew into the cork. “I never realized Sadie has zero gardening talent. The garden was a shock.”
Meg grimaced. “I know. She hates to talk about it. You won’t mention it to her parents, will you?”
Deftly he pulled the cork from the bottle. “When did I ever snitch on either of you?”
“True,” she agreed, pleased he’d come up with a positive memory.
“Has Sadie seriously tried to grow anything out there?” He handed her the wine.
“Everything,” Meg said. “She even tried cactuses, which she hates, a couple of months back. The store promised they were indestructible—she was hopping mad when they wouldn’t refund her money.” She poured the wine and handed him a glass.
Trey frowned into his drink. “Customers who neglect their plants then try to blame their demise on the retailer are my least favorite people.”
“Sadie doesn’t neglect them,” Meg assured him.
At that moment Sadie returned, wearing skinny jeans and a crossover T-shirt. Meg noticed how Trey’s gaze lingered on her. She’d caught her brother staring at Sadie several times last weekend. Was it possible…? No, she couldn’t think of two people less suited to each other than Trey and Sadie.
“I’ll see if Daniel needs help in the kitchen,” Sadie said.
“Great, thanks.” Meg wanted privacy for her talk with Trey.
Her brother watched Sadie go. “Why don’t we join them?”
Meg staged a yawn. “I worked a full 777 from Buenos Aires today. My feet are killing me.” She sank onto the couch and propped her feet on the coffee table.
“Kitchen,” Trey said, and walked away. Leaving Meg with no choice but to follow.
To her irritation, Trey insisted on hanging around while Sadie and Daniel finished preparing the meal. Sadie wasn’t any more of a cook than Meg, but she willingly undertook what Daniel called the sous-chef tasks.
Twenty minutes later dinner was served—baked ham, coleslaw and buttered new potatoes.
“This coleslaw has just the right amount of crunch,” Meg said appreciatively. “You two make a great culinary team.”
Sadie’s cheeks turned pink as she darted a glance at Trey.
Sadie liked Trey! Meg had to struggle not to laugh.
“How are the wedding plans going?” Trey barked.
Meg raised her eyebrows, but resisted teasing him. She needed his goodwill. “Easy peasy,” she said. “It’s mostly done.”
“Not mostly, sweetheart.” Daniel spooned cranberry relish onto his plate. “Your mom has
a list a mile long.”
Meg gave him an indulgent look—they all knew Nancy would do the work, not her. “There are a few things still left to organize,” she admitted. “We have a dress fitting next week, remember, Sadie?” To Trey, she explained, “I didn’t have enough time to get a custom-made dress, but I found the perfect one and it only needs a little altering. And they have a really nice selection of bridesmaids’ dresses. Reasonably priced,” she added, since the family business was doubtless paying for the wedding.
“I’ll be there,” Sadie said brightly. “Just don’t put me in pastel pink.”
“I’m thinking turquoise for you,” Meg said. “What do you all think of that?”
Sadie nodded.
“I have no idea,” Daniel said. “But you’ll look beautiful whatever you wear, Sadiebug.”
Meg loved his chivalry.
“How many bridesmaids are there?” Trey said tightly.
“Just Sadie and Lexie,” she said.
“My mom wants to come along to the fitting,” Daniel said. “She thought it’s a good chance to get to know you better.”
“Wonderful,” Meg lied. Which she excused on the basis that Daniel was telling a white lie, too. His mother, Angela, had made it clear Meg wasn’t the kind of girl she wanted for Daniel. Meg had no doubt her attending the fitting was Daniel’s idea.
“Trey, we wanted to ask you to give Meg away at the wedding,” Daniel said.
“I’d be delighted,” Trey said. “I don’t suppose they’ll let me physically wash my hands of you during the service?” he joked to Meg.
Ha, ha. “I’ll ask the minister,” she said sweetly. “We have an appointment for premarital counseling tomorrow.”
“Right after our appointment at the jeweler—we’re choosing an engagement ring.” Daniel reached across the table for Meg’s hand. He caressed her bare ring finger. As always, his touch made her tingle from head to toe.
“So soon?” Sadie blurted.
Meg stared at her.
“I mean, don’t you want to think about the ring for a while?” Sadie asked.
“If we wait much longer we won’t have one before the wedding,” Meg said. “We’ve looked at a lot online. I think we have a good idea what we want.”