“Nope, he’s got it right here,” Sadie lifted Aiden’s hand holding his soiled shirt and pressed it over his bare chest. He could still see the heat in her eyes. Heat he’d put there.
Aiden glanced at Axle. He couldn’t have given me five more seconds? Sadie licked her bottom lip. The lip Aiden had nearly had between his teeth a moment ago. Okay, ten more seconds.
Sadie stepped away from him. “We had a minor accident. I had to patch him up,” she told Axle, her voice forcibly casual. Aiden considered dropping a kiss onto her lips just to see what she’d do, but Axle’s surly presence was sort of ruining the mood.
Aiden walked for the door and Axle backed out of the doorway to let him by. “Thanks for the first aid,” he said to Sadie.
“Thanks for saving me,” she said, her lips twitching into a smile. “I had it.”
Instead of arguing, he decided not to let an opportunity as ripe as this one pass them by. “I never gave you an answer,” he said.
Her eyebrows pinched over her nose in the cutest look of confusion.
“I’d love to go to lunch with you.” He grinned at her as he backed away from the bathroom. “I’m going to change.”
Chapter 5
Sadie pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth to keep from responding.
She wasn’t about to argue in front of Axle. Aiden had used her own trick against her, roping her into lunch. Sadie was torn between being upset and impressed. She probably deserved it after the way she’d forced Aiden into signing the contract.
Axle either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. Sadie didn’t know how. The small bathroom where he’d discovered his manager and parts supplier standing way too close to each other, one of them missing their shirt, snapped with sexual energy.
Sadie paced through the warehouse to the overturned box and scattered parts. Axle lowered to his haunches to help her clean up, but Sadie waved him off. “I got it, really.”
With a scowl that said he’d rather help her than not, he stood. “Sure?”
“I’m sure.” She smiled. Axle may not look the gentlemanly type, but he was. “I need to arrange them in a certain order,” she lied. What she needed was a moment alone. Some time to calm the jittery shake radiating through her limbs.
With one last glare at the mess at her feet, Axle stalked off.
Sadie turned the box over and started piling parts into it. When she’d instructed Aiden to take his shirt off, she knew what to expect. Golden flesh, fair hair covering his pecs and leading down to firm abs, a scar bisecting his otherwise perfect back.
The scar was less angry now. The red had faded to pink, the edges white. Until she traced it with her fingers, Sadie had been sure that like the scar on his back, she was healing, too. That she’d grown numb where Aiden was concerned.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
From the moment he embraced her to keep a fifty-pound box from emptying onto her head, to the way he looked into her eyes and demanded she kiss him, Sadie had been nowhere near numb.
And spotting that point of black-blue ink peeking out from his side, realizing what it represented…the pain of losing Aiden washed over her as fresh as if it’d happened a minute ago instead of a year ago.
The tattoo. Thorns and vines crisscrossed down his side, from the top of his ribs, and disappeared into the waistline of his pants. Thorns signifying pain. Struggle. Loss. Then the bright spot of color, the red of his mother’s roses, a symbol of her beautiful if not brief life. And Aiden’s gorgeous body a worthy canvas for the artwork.
She couldn’t keep from touching him. As if she could ease the pain the thorny expanse represented with her palm. Her hand on his skin invited the heat of his gaze on her lips and the look in his eyes brought reality crashing down around her.
He still cared about her.
She didn’t know how that made her feel. Hopeful, maybe? And fearful. Definitely some of both.
Being in his arms again, feeling his thumb brush her lip, reminded Sadie that once upon a time, she’d had it good. For a few isolated days last summer, she’d had more understanding, undeniable attraction, and connection than she would have dared pray for.
Enough.
Sadie dropped the last oil filter into the box and stood, dusting her hands on the back of her pants. Last year didn’t matter. Now mattered. And right now, Aiden was her coworker—albeit her very attractive, tattooed coworker—who had goaded her into lunch.
If Sadie was smart, and she was, she’d redirect her thoughts before sitting with him for an hour. The last thing she needed was for Aiden to see the ripples of attraction she felt when she was near him.