Her Best Friend’s Wedding

by Abby Gaines

  “What closet?” her father asked, confused.

  “Uh, it’s a metaphorical closet, Dad. It— Never mind.” She drew a breath. “It all comes down to this—I’m a hopeless gardener, and I would really love your help.”

  “Well, then, you’ve got it, dear,” her mother said, as if Sadie was a simpleton.

  MEG AND DANIEL FLEW home on Thursday evening and the first thing they did was open a bottle of champagne with Sadie.

  Sadie had heard of radiant brides, and Meg was one of those, but a radiant groom was something new. Daniel was lighthearted, blissfully happy.

  Sadie couldn’t believe it when Meg told her how he’d camped at the airport waiting for her. Her friend seemed calmer—or maybe that was just because there wasn’t such a big contrast between her and Daniel anymore.

  Having been honest with her parents about her failings, Sadie had thought long and hard about coming clean to Meg about her past feelings for Daniel, and that when she’d thought she was acting in Meg’s best interest, her judgment might have been clouded.

  Though she would have felt better for the confession, in the end she decided not to burden her best friends with it. They shouldn’t have to worry about her emotional state, and they certainly shouldn’t feel a need to be careful of her in the future. Sadie knew she was a hundred percent over Daniel, but she suspected Meg might consider that impossible.

  Meg raised her glass for the fifth toast so far. “Here’s to Mom and me patching things up. I think she’s forgiven me for running away. And in about ten years she’ll forgive us for not inviting her to the wedding.”

  She’d explained earlier that they’d decided not to get in contact with anyone until after the wedding—they were certain of what they wanted and, as Meg put it, “We’d had enough of people trying to talk us out of it.”

  “Quite right,” Sadie mumbled.

  “And here’s to Lexie.” Meg proposed toast number six. “Lexie and Kyle.” She caught Sadie’s eye and they both burst out laughing. Kyle was relentlessly pursuing Lexie, much to Mary-Beth’s horror, and so far Lexie was holding fast to her no-more-notches policy.

  “Lastly…” Meg said.

  “You said lastly three toasts ago,” her devoted husband pointed out.

  “Lastly again,” Meg said, “to you, Sadie. You’re the sister I never and always had.”

  “You’re drunk, darling,” Daniel said indulgently.

  But Sadie knew what she meant. She blinked away tears as she raised her glass.

  “I’M SORRY, BOB.” Trey put down the landscape magazine he was flicking through. This conversation deserved his full concentration. “I’ve thought it through, in and out and upside down. I’ve realized this isn’t the job for me.”

  By the time Bob Cotton hung up a few minutes later, he’d accepted Trey’s decision. Which Trey wasn’t a hundred percent sure of himself. Assistant coach for the Berkeley football team. He wouldn’t get a better start in coaching than this.

  But after wanting for so long to get out of the garden center and back onto the football field, at the last moment he’d proved incapable of grabbing the opportunity with both hands and running for the touchdown.

  He’d realized he would miss so much about his current life. Not the sense of responsibility for his family and the business, that’s for sure. But the plants…the dirt.

  He had no idea what he was going to do now.

  Football fields have dirt. Regret pricked him. Then he reminded himself that football fields were pristine grass that got rollered and watered after every game. Nothing unpredictable or messy or…sumptuous about it.

  Sumptuous. What the hell was that?

  If he wanted dirt and plants, he could get a garden of his own.

  One like Sadie’s. Only without the know-it-all, know-nothing, fickle woman attached.

  He missed her. He hadn’t seen her since the jerk in the Dodge had deposited her outside her home on Sunday night. Trey had waited until the guy cleared off, then he’d left. He’d noticed the rude gesture Sadie made, but declined to respond. For a nerdy scientist she sure was unladylike.

  But now…he missed talking to her. He wanted to hear her make jealous jibes about Sexy Lexie. Wanted to know if she’d worked out how she was going to do that new project.

  Meg and Daniel had returned from their honeymoon cooing like the proverbial lovebirds, and that had made him miss Sadie, too.

  Restless, he headed to the packing room, where his mom was putting in her one day a week, packing mail orders. The room had an internal window that allowed him to survey the store. Trey could hear the muffled announcement of today’s specials over the PA system.

  “Did you hear Meg is giving a talk to a medical convention about that hospital phobia of hers?” Nancy asked.

  “I heard.” His sister wasn’t so grown-up that she wouldn’t turn her entire life into a drama production with herself as the star. He found himself smiling at the thought.

  “You seem mellow,” his mom observed. “You looking forward to Sunday?”

  Three more days, and Trey was officially leaving town. He planned to take a vacation first, mainly in New York.

  “Can’t wait,” he said.

  Nancy’s smile was bittersweet. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Eugene will do a great job,” Trey assured her. “If anything comes up he can’t handle, I’m only a phone call away.”

  His mother made an exasperated sound. She clamped her lips together as she shook her head.

  “What?” Trey asked.

  “Sometimes you’re a first-class jerk,” she said.

  “Mom!” He got enough of that from Sadie. He missed that, too, which was truly pathetic.

  “Why can’t you just be gracious and accept a compliment?” she asked. “You can’t really think I’m talking about the business when I say I’ll miss you.”

  “Uh…” That was exactly what he’d thought. “Of course not. But you’ve got Mary-Beth right next door. And Fred Thomas down the road has had his eye on you for years—you might consider dating.”

  His mother bent over the carton of plant food she was splitting. Something about the way her shoulders moved…

  “Mom? Did I upset you?”

  When she lifted her head, her cheeks were red but thankfully dry. “I’m trying to tell you I’ll miss you, Trey. You. My son.” Her voice rose.

  “Okay,” he said quickly. “I get it. You’ll miss me. I’ll miss you, too.” When had his mom turned neurotic?

  Instead of looking pleased, she scowled. “Sometimes I wonder if you even see me, or if all you see is a millstone around your neck.”

  “You’re not a millstone,” he said, shocked.

  “You’ve made it fairly obvious you think it’s my fault you haven’t had the life you wanted,” she said. “That insistence you had on filling in for your brother and your father.”

  “My insistence? Mom, you asked me to come home from college and help out!”

  “For a couple of years,” she said. “I asked you to put your studies, your football, on hold, not to be a damned martyr.”

  He’d given up his aspirations and now she was throwing it back at him?

  “All I ever heard from you was how much you missed Dad and Logan,” he shot back.

  “Of course I missed them!”

  “How things would be so much better if they were here, how different I was from either of them.”

  She stilled. “You were different, you are different. I never said it would be better if they were here.”

  “Only every five minutes,” he said. “Try, ‘If your dad was here we’d have won that contract.’ Or, ‘Logan would have had those trellises fixed in a jiffy.’”

  “Oh, Trey.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I was just honoring their memory. Trying to make them a part of our present, not only our past. I never meant to make you feel you weren’t good enough.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I know I did a good
job with the business. It’s just not where I want to be now.”

  “You did a great job!” she said fiercely. “And I told you so, often. So don’t be unfair.”

  “Let’s just leave it, Mom.”

  “I will not leave it,” she snapped. “I’ve had years of telling you how different you are, how unique, and now you’re saying that was an insult?”

  “More…a comparison,” he said carefully.

  “How does ‘you have a genius for numbers’ become an insult?”

  “You said that right after you mentioned Logan’s incredible capacity for hard work outdoors. Like you were offering me a crumb.”

  She looked stricken. And now that he’d said it, Trey felt like a scumbag. He sounded like a five-year-old, needing constant reassurance from his mommy. But if you looked at that exchange she’d just mentioned, there was no indication she’d been throwing him a bone.

  As Sadie would say, he was being pathetic. His mom’s compliment had likely been heartfelt. About him, not about how he compared with his brother.

  Maybe Trey had been a first-class jerk.

  “Mom, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No, I’m sorry.” Forgiving as she’d always been, she rushed at him and wrapped him in a hug. “It never occurred to me you were comparing yourself with your brother…or that you thought I might be.”

  “Maybe I was a little paranoid,” he said sheepishly.

  “I love you, Trey. Because you’re you, because you’re different from your father and your brother, not despite the fact.” She kissed his forehead, three times.

  “I think I get where you’re coming from.” It was weird—nothing had changed about what she’d said in the past, but now he saw it in a different light.

  Her laugh was shaky. “At last he gets it, right before he leaves town.”

  “Have I been a total pain in the butt?” he asked.

  His mom returned to her worktable and picked up the next order form. “No more than your sister, but for different reasons. It’s going to be quite nice not having either of you need me.”

  “I didn’t—” He was going to say he hadn’t needed her all those years, but in that moment he realized it wasn’t true. He’d lost his dad and Logan, just the way she and Meg had. He’d never let himself acknowledge the hole their deaths had left in his life, but he’d needed the family connection—and, yes, the business—to fill the hole. To make him feel as complete as he could with half the family gone.

  His mom scanned the order she held in her hand. “All I want now is for you to find a nice girl and settle down.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he said drily, even as his brain chanted Sadie, Sadie.

  “Oh, look.” Nancy waved the order at him. “Sadie’s buying some plants for her new garden.”

  Trey rolled his eyes. “Subtle, Mom.”

  She grinned, unrepentant. “Oh, my, will you look at this?” She read down the list. “How’s that girl going to keep a garden like this alive? It’ll be carnage.” Meg must have let slip to their mom that Sadie’s thumbs were more black than green.

  “Actually…” Meg had told him the answer to this question and he’d been storing it up until he had time to think about what it meant. “Her parents are going to do it. They reckon it’ll take about two months to get it all planted—they’ll pretty much be living at Sadie’s now Meg has moved out. After that, they’ll come into town once a week or so to do some maintenance.”

  He was so proud of Sadie for having admitted she couldn’t do it, for having asked her parents for help.

  “The perfect solution,” Nancy said.

  “I was thinking…” He stopped. “I’d been thinking I could help her out, but she won’t need me now.”

  “Not for her garden, anyway,” Nancy said. She paused in her taping up of a boxed order. “I thought you’d had enough of being needed.”

  “I— You’re right.” What was he thinking? Sadie had told him she didn’t want him to do her garden. She’d told him she loved him. Which meant all she needed from him was love.

  Which he’d chosen not to give because he didn’t want to be second best. Because she’d been in love with Daniel.

  But she’d said she loved him—Trey. What if it was true? What if, regardless of what she’d felt for Daniel, her love for him was real and true?

  He’d thrown it back at her. Called it shabby and second-rate when in his heart he’d wanted to cherish that love. He’d resisted because, what, he didn’t think she could look at him without seeing Daniel? Without making a comparison where he would always fall short?

  Right now, that seemed like breathtaking stupidity.

  He could readily believe that a client would, without regret, reject their existing garden designer in favor of Kincaid’s, because Kincaid’s was better.

  But he couldn’t accept that Sadie would consider him a better man than Daniel? Or at least, better for her.

  There was a difference between being second and being second choice.

  He never wanted to be second choice…but he could be second.

  Because he loved Sadie.

  Kapow.

  “Trey? Did you hear me? I said I’ll get these plants out to Sadie on the noon truck,” his mom said hopefully.

  He shook his head, his mind still blown by the realization that he loved Sadie no matter what. He had to have her.

  “I’ll take them myself,” he said.

  His mom turned away with a smile that was way too satisfied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SADIE WAITED ON her porch for the delivery from Kincaid Nurseries. She’d said 1:00 p.m. sharp, having taken a half day off work, and now they were late. Mom and Dad were arriving tomorrow morning—they’d need some thing to plant.

  A white truck painted with the Kincaid logo rounded the corner in her peripheral vision. About time.

  She stood, brushed the front of her shorts, tucked her hair behind her ears. The truck pulled into her yard. She recognized the driver by the set of his shoulders, long before she could discern his face.

  Her eyes pricked. “What are you doing here?” she called through the open window.

  Trey turned off the engine. “Delivery for you.” He climbed out of the truck and stood before her, rugged and masculine in his jeans and light plaid shirt. “Special delivery,” he amended.

  “Special, how?” she asked suspiciously.

  He tossed her a careless grin that took her breath away. “I’ll get to that. First I need to say I’ve been an ass.”

  She blinked. “Really?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “You’ve always been an ass. It’s the admission I’m surprised at.”

  He laughed. Then he sobered and took her hands in his.

  “Sadie, I’m sorry I hurt you when you told me how you felt back in Hot Springs. I was so hung up on not wanting to be your second choice.”

  Sadie tensed. This sounded like the start of something amazing.

  Which didn’t mean she should let Trey off the hook.

  “Idiot.” She smacked his shoulder. “You knew from the start Daniel wasn’t right for me. So how could you be second choice?”

  “I’m an idiot,” he agreed humbly, but with a glint in his eye that promised the imminent resumption of his former arrogance. “It might seem obvious to an exalted brain like yours, but I finally figured out that second doesn’t mean second best.” He told her about the conversation he’d had with his mom, where they’d ironed out a lot of their grievances.

  “That’s fantastic.” Somehow she’d ended up in his arms, sitting on the porch steps.

  “It is fantastic,” he agreed, “because it frees me up to say this to you.” He put a couple of feet of space between them, so he could turn and face her.

  “I love you, Sadie. I love the way you make me laugh and how you kiss. I love that you think you’re right all the time and you have the most outrageous schemes. I love that you kill gardens.”
r />   “You can’t love that,” she protested, right before she planted a chain of kisses along his jawline.

  “I adore it,” he said firmly. “I love your confidence and your insecurity.” His voice turned a little ragged. “I love that you’re a hot geek.”

  “I love listening to this,” she said. “Keep talking.”

  He chuckled. “Which brings me to the special delivery part.”

  She pulled away reluctantly, to listen.

  “Sadie Beecham, your Kincaid garden special comes with the husband option thrown in completely free.” She gaped.

  “I want to marry you,” he clarified.

  Joy bubbled through her, but she narrowed her eyes. “Is that another euphemism for sex?”

  He had the grace to look ashamed of his earlier behavior. “Pretty much,” he admitted. “And for some other stuff, too.”

  “Such as?”

  “Be mine always, the mother of my kids, holder of my heart.”

  “Did you just say holder of my heart?”

  “It seemed a good idea when I thought of it.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said. “But the rest of it was wonderful.”

  He caressed her bottom. “The thing is, I figure marriage to you is going to be some crazy adventure, and I’m up for it. Soon as you like. The sooner the better. But there’s also the matter of my wild oats—I’m reluctant to abandon their sowing.”

  “Understandable,” Sadie said.

  “So I figured you could sow them with me?”

  Her heart flipped. “Doesn’t having a woman tag along defeat the purpose of the whole wild-oats thing?”

  “Not if the woman is the hottest, funniest, cutest gal I know.”

  “Good logic,” she said.

  He kissed her deeply.

  “You’re aware I have a job that means everything to me, right?” she said when he let her go.

  “I’m hoping it doesn’t mean everything,” he said.

  “It means a lot. I can’t give it up.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to—now who’s the idiot?” He ducked her swat. “Daniel mentioned that you scientists get sabbaticals.”