She’d never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Fine. You have a deal. For
now
. I’ll work on wearing you down later.”
“Funny, I was just about to say the same thing to you.”
A strange thrill ran up her spine. “Goodbye, Connor.”
“Bye Abby…and have a good bath.”
“You too.” She frowned. “Wait. That came out weird. I meant a good
one
; have a good one.” She paused again. Was it her or did that sound a little dirty? Pinching her nose bridge, she tried again, “A good one as in a good time. Like I’m planning to have in the tub.”
Jesus
. A double-shot of oxygen hissed past her teeth. Flustered, she attempted one more fix, “Not that I’m implying you’ll be doing what I’ll be doing—” Oh. Good. Lord.
He growled. “Twenty-four hours, Abby. We’ll be ‘friends’ for twenty-four more hours and then you better believe we’ll be having this conversation again.”
She dunked her head under water as soon as he hung up, dazed at the prospect of resisting a man like Connor Sullivan.
Soon,
she
was the one spouting copouts.
C
HAPTER
T
HREE
S
HE WAS A COWARD
. She’d spent the entire day working on her dissertation in the campus library instead of at home.
Just
in case Connor decided to call. Not that she was under the fanciful impression that a big time lawyer like him had the time to be lounging around calling her all day.
Still, she liked to err on the side of caution.
Pulling into her driveway at half past five, she wasn’t at all surprised to see a shiny black Lexus awaiting her arrival.
“Busy day?” The question was casual, though Connor’s expression was anything but.
She decided to try for facetious. “As I’m sure you’re aware, stalking is a legally actionable offense in all fifty states.”
“God, don’t use legalese on me, Abby. Hearing it in your sexy teacher voice is just making it that much harder for me to stay your ‘friend’ for the next…” he checked his watch, “fifty-six minutes.”
Oh it was no use, she smiled a little over that.
“Have you been hiding from me?” he asked abruptly, visibly upset. “I called you twice today. Both times, it went straight to voicemail.”
“I was doing research. My cell phone doesn’t get good reception in certain parts of the library.”
“Oh.”
Seeing him look noticeably eased by that information stuck her with a needle of guilt. What she said
was
all true, but not the whole truth. She’d spent the majority of her time on the special collections floor, and the rest reading on the third floor where she could also eat…and where, incidentally, her phone caught just fine. At least, when it was switched on.
“…And maybe I was avoiding you a tiny bit.”
“I knew it.” His eyebrows snapped together. “Are you afraid of me? Do I make you uncomfortable or something?”
“I think it’s more a case of my being
too
comfortable with you.” She blew out a weary breath, knowing that only made sense to her. “Look, I’m not afraid of you. In fact, why don’t you come in and hang out? I can whip up some food and we can watch a DVD or something.”
The look on his face was how she imagined an alien would look upon arriving on a new planet. It would have been funny if it weren’t a bit sad. She unlocked her door and went in, leaving him free to enter or leave. “You said we could be friends for another hour, right? So come on. I can tell you all about my day hiding out from my stalker.”
Finally, he broke out into a grin and followed her inside, making the temperature in the tiny foyer they were standing in even balmier when he removed his suit jacket. Lord, the man had a broad chest. Great arms, too.
“Sorry, I’ll get the AC going. You can grab a beer from the fridge if you want. I was thinking of making some steak fajitas and a salad,” she called out as she made her way to the bedroom to change. “That okay with you?”
“Sounds great.”
She came back out in an old tshirt and sweats, purposely choosing not to pretty up for Connor.
Oddly, he seemed to appreciate that fact, judging by the pleased smile he gave her when she returned. “Do you need help cooking? I want to earn my meal.”
“Sure. Can you fry up the flank steak for me? The meat is marinating in a ziploc in the fridge.” She was surprised at how normal she sounded, what with his presence seemingly sucking up all her usual oxygen supply in the small kitchen. Her whole house, really, if she was being honest with herself. Damn, when was that AC going to kick in?
“Hey, are you going to have enough food for me too?” asked Connor as he poked around in her fridge. “Because I can always just eat a ham and cheese or PB&J.”
The thought of this high powered lawyer with his head to toe dry clean only ensemble eating a brown bag sandwich served to calm her nerves a bit. “I always make extra for lunch the next day so it’ll be fine.” She started cutting up some avocados to make some fresh guacamole. “Cilantro, onions, and tomatoes okay in the guac? I make mine chunky.”
“Perfect. Brian makes it the same way.”
“He would. I’m the one who got him hooked on it.”
Connor tilted his head at that tidbit as he threw the meat on the skillet. “I still find it so hard to believe I don’t have any recollection of seeing you after that first day at the hospital.”
She tried for a breezy, unoffended shrug. “Guess I just have one of those forgettable faces.”
He gave her a quiet look. “No, you don’t.”
Good lord, so
that’s
what a ‘smoldering glance’ looked like? With Connor’s ice blue eyes, the effect was lethal to her lady parts. “Well, it’s not as if the times we saw each other in passing were momentous events,” she recovered, just barely stopping herself from telling him how unforgettable she’d always found him. “Plus, family gatherings where friends get to know the siblings weren’t really your parents’ sort of thing.”
“No,” he snorted, “unless you count the occasional $500 a plate dinners. Which I don’t.”
“Honestly, I think we only actually ‘saw’ each other the couple of times there was some emergency which required us to do a Skylar hand-off at Brian’s house.”
“That explains it,” he said quietly.
Abby knew what he meant. Each time she’d run into him, the fact that he’d looked criminally handsome had hardly even had a chance to register. Not with everything Beth was going through hanging on them like a cloud—the heftiness of why they’d been on opposite sides of a lonely two-way road to and from Brian’s house so often to begin with. “Was it as hard for you to go there as it was for me?”
“Yes.” He looked up from the stove. “My mother was never over enough to get it, and as cold as it sounds, I don’t know if my father really
cared
enough to either.” With a heavy sigh, he turned the steak and said softly, “Skylar called me ‘dad’ once.”
Sympathy kicked her in the gut. “She called me mommy a few times by accident, too. Twice, Beth heard it.”
The curse under his breath was an all too familiar one for her as well. The only f-bombs she ever dropped almost exclusively had the word Huntington’s strapped to it. It was a sad comfort to have someone else around that knew exactly what the last decade had been like for her as Brian’s best friend.
“Hey,” he eventually broke the silence with a speculative glance, his tone several tons lighter, “what about Skylar’s third birthday party? The pool party?” His eyes made a slow pass over her, the return trip back up lingering in places that made her think of sexy supervillains with flame-throwing gazes. “You in a swimsuit? There is just no way I could’ve seen that and not remembered.” If it was possible, his hot look scorched ten degrees higher when it settled back on her eyes.
Luckily, the very vivid memory of that day was funny enough to prevent her from succumbing to a heat stroke. “I think you had your hands full that day.”
He looked genuinely puzzled by that.
“Oh, to be an archived entry in your little black book,” she tsked. “Or should I say entr
ies
.”
Slow understanding dawned in his eyes. “Shit, I’d completely forgotten.”
“I think you made that admission a few times that day.”
He cringed. “To be fair, I didn’t actually invite either of those women to that party.” His tone turned innocent. “Just like I didn’t invite the woman I was dating at the time, either.”
Shaking her head, she began setting the food on the coffee table. “No wonder you have the reputation you do.”
“I don’t
have
a reputation.” He brought over the steak and their beer, correcting her with a grin, “I
earned
it.”
Abby burst out laughing. “You’re kind of an ass, you know that, right?” The rest of her laughs got lodged in her throat when she turned and practically ran right into him.
Did he have to be so
masculine
?
“But you like me anyway,” he prodded in that low, melting Vegas hypnotist voice, leaning in without any regard for her personal space. “Despite my ass-likeness.”
So close. He was so close she could bury her face against his neck if she wanted. Breathe him in whether she wanted to or not. “No,” she lied, backing up a step since it was clear he had no intention of doing so. Yep, an ass for sure.
One she wanted to rub up to like a cat finding her purr.
She took another step back.
He followed, invading her sanity even more than before. “No? So what do I have to do to try and change that?”
Christ, he wasn’t even
trying
yet? “We’re just friends, remember, Connor?” It’d do a world of good to remind herself, too. “C’mon, let’s eat. Sit. The food’s getting cold.”
At first, she felt a twinge of disappointment when he conceded and reluctantly backed away…until she heard his husky, murmured caveat, “Fifteen more minutes, Abby.”
The time remaining in their friend truce.
She held strong, refusing to let her imagination run with what exactly the man could do in fifteen minutes otherwise.
But then he had to go and tuck a throw pillow behind her as she sat down
.
Not to win points. Rather, just because he was that guy—the unconsciously sweet bad boy.
Now why’d she insist on this truce again?
C
ONNOR COULDN’T BELIEVE
he was sitting on a living room floor eating dinner with a woman. He hadn’t done something like this since college. It was…nice. “So besides hiding from me, what were you doing in the library today?”
She gave him a shy smile. “One of my dissertation research questions focuses on the swinging pendulum of business and technical writing instruction throughout history. While my literature review is heavy on collegiate instruction, particularly after the technology boom, my archival research has unearthed some marked cases in high school settings through the early 1900s. To contrast these findings with the present, I’ve been collecting data from school resources all across Arizona.”
She was speaking so fast now, it was kind of adorable. “I’ve found old educational materials that show teaching variations of technical and business writing strikingly similar to current trends, though it’s rarely identified as such, and almost never referenced in scholarly articles. Each instance that has had an impact on the pedagogical foundation of writing education correlates directly to societal goings-on at the time,”
Oh yeah, she was an academic alright, through and through. He grinned at the pink in her cheeks, not quite the type of passion he’d been hoping to inspire in her, but moving just the same.
“What’s wrong?” he asked when she didn’t continue; she’d been on such a roll.
She gnawed on her lip. “Sorry, I know this all sounds boring and nerdy to…well, any normal person. You’ve actually lasted longer than most of my friends and family. Their eyes would’ve been glazed over by my second sentence.”
The way she smiled at him, like he was a foot taller than he’d been a minute ago filled him with an inordinate amount of pleasure. “On the contrary, a lot of what you said was pretty thought-provoking.” He gave her a reassuring grin. “I mean, some of your explanations did bear an uncanny resemblance to the lectures I used to somehow take notes in without any conscious brain involvement,” he teased, “but your passion kept me engaged in everything you were saying. Like any good teacher does with any topic, in my experience.”
There was that smile again. If she kept it up, he’d be growing in other ways too.
She shook her head and focused on assembling another fajita. “You know, you’re nothing like I expected.”
“I’m glad you gave me a chance to redeem myself.”
Her brows rose at the reminder. “Yeah what was with that freak-out at your house yesterday? It seemed a little excessive.”
He took his time chewing his food, trying to phrase his answer in the least offensive way. “Let’s just say women showing up at my home half-dressed isn’t exactly an unusual occurrence for me.”