Her Best Friend's Wedding. Abby Gaines
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and she considers it my home, even if I don’t.” He hooked his thumbs in his jeans and stared her down. “What are you doing?” he asked again.
Devoid of a rational answer, Sadie played for time. “You still didn’t tell me where you came from.”
“I was on the porch. I heard someone cussing out the plants.”
The flower she’d had so much trouble detaching. She bent and snatched it up. “I was in my room and I smelled this amazing scent, so I came down to pick a gardenia.”
He glanced at her parents’ house. “You did well smelling those with your bedroom window closed.”
“How do you know my window’s closed?”
He rolled his eyes. “Then after you got your flower…” he prompted.
“Then, Miss Marple, I heard an unfamiliar voice, so I thought I’d see who your mom had visiting.”
“Uh-huh.” His gaze flicked over her pj top, which unfortunately had shrunk in the wash. It was too tight across the front and the gap between top and pants bared an inch or so of midriff. “Hmm,” he said.
As if she hadn’t heard enough of hmm. Which she now understood didn’t mean wow.
“I’m going home,” she said crossly. “Good night.”
The gleam in his eyes reminded her of the few times he’d paid her enough attention to bait her back in their teens. Mostly they’d ignored each other—the jock and the science geek had nothing in common.
She took a step away, then turned. “So who is visiting your mom?”
“None of your business. Though you’d be very interested,” he taunted.
It really was the minister, here to talk about weddings.
“Sadie? You okay? You’ve gone white.”
“Huh?” She blinked.
Trey cursed. He grabbed her hand and led her around the front of the house, where he pushed her down onto the porch swing. “I always thought it was a good thing your parents sent you to genius school—it stopped you turning out like Meg’s scatterbrained friends,” he said. “But you grew up a hell of a weird woman.”
Just what Sadie needed—another reminder she didn’t fit in. And she didn’t believe that backhanded compliment, since he’d dated several of Meg’s “scatterbrained” friends.
“Just tell me who’s visiting your mom.” Her voice wobbled. I’m losing my grip. She grasped the edge of the swing seat as if it was an extension of her sanity.
“I would have thought you’d recognize that LeSabre.”
She held her breath, waiting for the ax to fall.
His knee nudged the swing, setting it rocking. “The minister’s car, remember?”
“The minister is visiting your mom?” It came out high-pitched.
“Not him, his wife.” He left the railing to sit next to her, disrupting the swing’s motion.
Sadie planted her feet on the porch, stilling the swing. “The minister’s wife is visiting with your mom.”
“That’s what I said.” He rubbed his chin. “For a girl who got the highest SATs I know of and won a full scholarship to Princeton from the Outstanding Tennesseans Foundation, you’re kinda slow.”
“I just took a blow to the head.” She scowled and rubbed the sore spot where she’d collided with the window.
He grinned, and it made him look like the quarterback again.
“So why is the minister’s wife here?” she asked.
“Mom’s paying her to do the flowers for the lunch on Sunday. There’s a list of jobs a mile long for the likes of you and me, so Mom thought she’d need the help.”
Nancy had been an active member of the community her whole life, and her sixtieth birthday was a two-day event—the Saturday-night barbecue for “family,” which included the Beechams, and a lunch for her wide circle of friends, as well as family, on Sunday.
Two events where Sadie would have to watch Meg and Daniel canoodling, and fool everyone into believing she didn’t care. “It’s great we can all celebrate Nancy’s birthday with her,” she said, reminding herself of the one positive in all of this.
Trey sobered. He scuffed the porch with his shoe. “Yeah.”
Five years ago his mother had suffered a stroke. Fairly severe, but she’d recovered faster than the doctors expected, with only a barely discernible limp and a slight slowness of speech to show for it.
Sadie cleared her throat. “What do you think of Daniel?”
“Nice guy, far as I could tell.”
“He’s not Meg’s usual type, though, is he?” She twisted to face Trey. He was sitting closer than she realized, and she ended up looking right at his lips. Which made her think about Daniel and that kiss…
He grimaced. “Sadie, I think I know the real reason you were skulking around tonight.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth, but not fast enough to prevent a mortified cry escaping.
“I have to tell you—” he drew back and the swing creaked “—there’s no point.”
She closed her eyes. Please, make him stop.
“I know you got dumped recently….”
Her eyes flew open. Her mom had told the whole world about her supposed breakup?
“But—” Trey spread his hands in a gesture of regret “—I’m not interested.”
It took a second for his words to pierce her humiliation. “You think I was spying on you? That I like you?”
She couldn’t decide if she was relieved he hadn’t guessed the truth or outraged at his inflated opinion of his own charms.
He shrugged. “I find it hard to believe this trespassing incident is about your curiosity over who visits my mom. I figure you’re looking for a distraction from your broken heart.”
“Did my mother really say I got dumped?” she demanded.
He winced. “Uh, I heard it from Mom. Maybe she just said it was a breakup. The point is, Sadie, even if you weren’t my sister’s best friend, practically family, I’d never date—”
“—a geek like me,” she finished. It wasn’t just her own family who insisted on making her feel like an outsider. She stood up. “You’ve been in Cordova too long, Trey. Out in the big wide world, people don’t get hung up on labels that—”
“Whoa.” His eyes glinted as he looked up at her. “I was going to say I’d never date someone on the rebound.”
“Oh. Right.” Time to put an end to this discussion before she laid out all her insecurities for his scrutiny. Sadie took a step backward, and her ankle bumped the iron swing stand, hard.
“Ouch!” She reached down to rub her ankle, exposing more of her midriff to Trey. Which he would probably interpret as an attempt at seduction. “You don’t have to worry about my interest in you,” she said. “Like the male worker ant, it doesn’t exist.”
“What?” He stood, and as she was barefoot, he had more inches on her than she remembered.
“All worker ants are female,” she explained.
“Is this your convoluted way of saying you weren’t spying on me?”
“Exactly,” she said, relieved.
His brow relaxed and he chuckled. “You might need to simplify things if you want to be understood