by Violet Duke
“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 entries.”
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?
CONNOR 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 cons
cious 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.”
“Right, of course. That happens on this street a lot too.” She chortled. Mostly at his expense.
Of all the different facets to Abby’s personality, Connor decided he liked the feisty one the best. “Don’t laugh. You’d be surprised what lengths some women will go to seduce a man they’ve build up in their heads.”
She leaned over and butted his shoulder with her own. “Oh, don’t get all modest on me now. We both know you live up to every expectation these women have of you.”
His smiled faded and he turned to face her fully. “Don’t.”
Startled, she looked up at him. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t go thinking I’m someone I’m not.”
Studying him carefully, she replied as if she were teaching something so obvious to a five year old, “I won’t if you won’t. Sounds to me like you think a lot less of yourself than you should.”
It was a compliment wrapped in a slap upside his head, and it had him actually wanting to be that man she seemed to see. Of course, figuring out how such a man would respond to her shut-up-and-accept-it admiration of him, however, had him stumped. Normally, this type of situation would call for a reply in the pulling off her clothes variety.
She cleared her throat, probably to bring his eyes back up from her bare shoulder. How the woman managed to look so sexy in a huge beat-up men’s shirt was beyond him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you just said.”
Her look told him she knew he was anything but sorry. “I asked why you were so convinced I was a gold-digger. You’re a handsome guy, couldn’t a half-naked woman on your porch step just be after you for sex? The uniform would suggest so.”
He shrugged. “Most of the ones who’ve shown up have been. But if I were broke off my ass, they wouldn’t have been standing at my door to begin with.”
“Point taken.” She chewed thoughtfully. “So you’re saying the only women who you deign to let in your home are the ones who aren’t interested in your money at all?”
“If I did, I’d have to take a vow of celibacy,” he replied honestly. “It’s a catch-22. Typically, the women not interested in my money are also not interested in a one-month arrangement.”
“Ah yes, the infamous one-month Connor Sullivan rule. Brian’s told me about it. I bet that’s another factor for some of these women who throw themselves at you—trying to become the white unicorn who you one day break your rule over.”
His jaw firmed. “Never going to happen.”
The corner of her lips quirked up. “Don’t worry, stud. I’m not submitting an application or anything.”
Now why did that declaration fill him with a touch of disappointment?
“Enough about me,” he said gruffly. “Tell me more about you. Something besides your research.”
She laughed. “Well that narrows it way down. Now that I’m in my final year of my PhD program and done with all my coursework, my dissertation is the only big thing in my life right now. Other than that, there’s really not much to tell.”
“What about work? Don’t you tutor at Skylar’s school?”
“Oh, I do that as a volunteer. A couple of afternoons a week for the kids that are struggling.”
How noble. He couldn’t remember the last woman he’d met whose idea of volunteering wasn’t strictly confined to sitting on executive boards and planning fundraising events. “I could’ve sworn Brian told me you teach English.”
“I do. I teach English at ASU as a part of my fellowship. I get my tuition covered and get paid a lecturer’s salary, which isn’t much. Thankfully, one of my professors offered to rent out this guesthouse to me—living here costs less than I used to pay for my apartment in Tempe two years ago, and I basically get the entire back half of their ginormous lot all to myself.”
Connor leaned back, stuffed, surprised at how easy it was to talk with Abby. “Doesn’t sound like you have that much time for yourself. What do you do for fun?”
She got up to grab them another two beers from the kitchen. “Honestly, I’m a homebody. Never got into the nightlife scene here. By the time I was twenty-one, I was basically babysitting Skylar every weekend, and half my weeknights. Since that pretty much carried on clear until last year, I guess my idea of fun is hanging out with her. Lame, I know.”
He felt like he was talking to a martian. He hadn’t realized she’d spent even more time babysitting Skylar than he had. And he knew for a fact—from Brian’s complaints about it—that she hadn’t taken a single cent from them for babysitting.
For God’s sakes, she was just so nice.
“So you don’t do anything just for yourself? Just for fun?”
“Well, I have been privately executing my mission to learn how to cook the most beloved dishes from every country in the world,” she returned with a smile. “That’s fun.”
It was possible baby bluebirds helped her get dressed in the morning.
She was just that sweet.
“You’re driving me crazy.” He swept an arm around her waist and lifted her right up onto his lap.
“Connor!”
He slid a hand into her hair, rubbed a thumb over her heated cheekbone as he brought his lips to within inches of hers. “I shouldn’t want you this much. You’re everything I’m not, and I’m everything you couldn’t possibly want. I know I should leave you alone, but I just can’t. I can’t stop myself from wanting you.”
Her breathing had grown so erratic, he was actually starting to get concerned. “Say something, sweetheart. I’m baring my soul here.”
“I shouldn’t want you either,” she whispered, “but I do.”
His arms locked around her, instinctively staking a claim on her. Mine.
For now.
The two words were his only two anchors keeping him in the reality he’d created for himself. He had to be brutally honest with her, with them both. “I meant what I said earlier, Abby. I’m never going to break my one-month rule.” Feeling like the lowest piece of scum, he hammered that last nail in, “Not for anyone. Not even you.”
She was silent for a long while, and Connor started preparing himself for the rejection to come.
“I know our fifteen minutes of friendship are up, but can I ask you something as a friend? Will you answer me as one?”
He tensed. “I’ll try.”
She chuckled. “Again with the copout.” Raising her warm doe eyes up to his, she asked quietly, “If you weren’t trying to get in my pants. If you were just my friend and I asked you what one thing I could do to stop being ‘a nice girl’ for just a little while. What advice would you give me?”
That was easy. “I’d tell you to try something new. Something that excites you. Something that’ll take you from zero to sixty just as fast as it could take you back to zero whenever you were ready to return.”
“Something wild and fast.” She loosened her death grip on his shoulders, slid her hands down his back slowly. “That’s good advice.”
He saw her gaze travel down to his lips and it took everything he had not to kiss her right then and there.
“Are you volunteering, Connor? To be that something wild and fast for me to try?”
“No,” he replied raggedly, breathing in her scent. “I’m insisting. Requiri
ng.” He dropped his forehead against hers. “Asking.”
Her eyelids dipped down, veiling her reaction from him.
And so he waited.
“I can’t do a whole month with you.”
He blinked in surprise. That, he hadn’t been expecting. No one had ever asked him for less time with him before. ‘Why not?” he demanded.
“It’s too long.”
Well, he did ask.
A touch indignant, he argued, “You said you don’t do one night stands. Now you’re saying a month is too long?” He knew he was getting overly worked up but he couldn’t help it, she was being irrational. His brain started firing on all pistons, every cell in his body taking a front seat like they did when he was about to do battle in the courtroom. “Or is it just one month with me that’s too long?”
She flinched.
He felt thoroughly insulted.
“It’s not how you’re making it. Being with you would be like…ice cream. The most decadent ice cream I could ever imagine. I’d be hooked after the first bite. And if I didn’t discipline myself, I’d overindulge.”
“Until it made you sick?” He wasn’t really good with metaphors.
A smiled peeked through. “No, until it was all I’d want to eat, all day, every day.”
What the hell was wrong with that?
Her smile broadened. “There’s everything wrong with that,” she continued, somehow reading his mind. “One month will take me right up to the third week of teaching for me, which is generally when my life starts getting busy. That means this month is my only time to really focus on getting a huge chunk of my dissertation written.”
“And if you overindulge on the ice cream…”
“I’d be in a sugar coma, incapable of doing or thinking of anything else.”
Call him a bastard but hearing that felt good. “Fine, I can respect that. How about this? What if I promise to leave you alone all day, every day throughout the week, and only send you into mini ice cream comas at night…as a build-up to one massive, no holds barred night to overindulge until we’re both too weak to move? Would that work for you?”
