Resisting the Bad Boy

by Violet Duke

  But the shrill appointment reminder alarm from her phone tossed that possibility out the window.

  “I can’t. I have to meet with my committee advisor today,” she replied, not recognizing the untamed embers in her voice. “Rain check?”

  He nudged his hard arousal against the inside of her thighs, close, but not quite high enough to break her resolve. “You’re going to owe me…” And then he did nudge higher. “…with interest.” A kiss and a nibble, and then a soft, “Have a good meeting today,” in her ear was his politely monogramed acceptance of said rain check before he stepped back to straighten his suit.

  She almost fell off the stool.

  What meeting was she going to again?

  Pulling up to her driveway, Abby couldn’t believe how tiny her cottage looked now, after just over a week staying at the Mini McMansion. Careful not to step on any industrial power cords or knock into any ladders, she slipped around back to where the builders were making steady progress on the extension. “Hey Tom,” she called out to the foreman.

  “Abby, hi.” A worried look flashed over his expression. “We’re not behind schedule are we? I could’ve sworn you were coming back next—”

  “No, no. Don’t worry. I’m just here to pick some books I left behind.”

  Connor would collapse in laughter over that one, she thought to herself.

  Tom raised an eyebrow. “Tell me what kind of books make you smile like that and I’ll go to the bookstore right now and get a set for my wife.”

  She blushed. “They’re just research books.”

  “If you’re looking for a more hands-on research, I’ll volunteer!” called out the journeyman passing by carrying sheets of drywall.

  Her face would never return to their normal color at this rate.

  Slinging a dusty arm around her shoulders, Tom led her away from all the whistling and howling echoing from his crew. “You’re too easy to tease.”

  She walked with him into the kitchen and offered him a bottled water, taking one to cool off her cheeks. “You guys are horrible,” she pouted, chuckling despite herself.

  “Hey, I meant to ask, are you staying over at Connor Sullivan’s place?”

  Abby looked over at him warily.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not following you or anything. It’s just I pass his home on my way over here and I could’ve sworn I saw your car parked in his driveway—the duct tape on the bumper is pretty distinctive.”

  Oh. The tension quickly left her shoulders. “He’s my best friend’s brother. When he heard I needed a place to stay for a few weeks, he offered me one of his guestrooms.”

  Tom nodded. “Yeah, sounds like him. He’s a really great guy.”

  Surprised at the familiar tone, she asked nosily, “How do you know him?”

  “He helped me and my brother out big time when we thought our business was done for.”

  That didn’t make any sense. To her knowledge, Connor only did legal work for huge corporations—small construction businesses like Tom’s weren’t his normal clientele base.

  At her puzzled expression, Tom explained, “It must’ve been five, six years ago, I think. Back when we’d just started the business. We’d been up and running for two years, making a name for ourselves by word of mouth referrals all over. The money was good, but not great. Mostly since there were long pockets of down time between projects. During one really slow month, my brilliant brother decided he wanted to try his hand at flipping houses. You know, like they do on TV? I wasn’t so sure, but he’d made it sound so easy, especially since we’d be doing all the work. So, I got on board. At first, he was right. We’d flipped five houses in half a year; made way more money than we would’ve made just picking up reno jobs here and there.” He shook his head in the big brotherly way. “But then he wanted to go for a bigger fish—a foreclosed mansion in Scottsdale.”

  Tom nodded when she winced. “Yup. It was waaay too big a fish. We had to start taking money out of all our accounts to just barely cover the expenses; the house was just so frickin’ huge. The finish fixtures alone bled us dry since up until then, we hadn’t gotten all those high end fixtures. Our real estate person told us that if we went with the more standard stuff, the house just wouldn’t sell. So, we cleared out all our savings to cover is because at that point, we couldn’t even afford to stop.”

  Abby couldn’t believe how angry he looked. Since meeting him a few months ago, she’d never once even seen the guy frown. He was just the jolliest man.

  Right now, he looked downright scary.

  “As luck would have it, when we were maybe a few days away from finishing everything and being able to list the house, a bunch of kids broke in and partied it up in there. Jacked the whole house up in the process.” This time, she was scowling alongside with him. “We went in the next day to broken glass, graffiti, doors hanging off hinges, gouges in the hardwood floors, vomit and other crap all over the new carpet…shit, the place was a mess. These kids were frickin’ insane. The banister was hanging off the stairs with some rope hanging off of it, and they’d even bashed something straight through the one of the weight bearing walls.” He put his elbows on his knees and took a few calming breaths. “Anyway, I guess some neighbors finally called the cops and the kids all ran so they didn’t even catch who did it. The damages were in the hundreds of thousands. And our insurance would only cover part of it—and only in chunks, paid out over weeks if not months down the line. At that point, we knew we were through. We were shitting bricks over the house staying on the market past a few weeks even before all the vandalism. There was no avenue left for us to take; the general consensus was that we’d have to declare bankruptcy.”

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out the rest, but she still wanted to hear the words, hear someone speak about Connor the way she and Brian saw him.

  “Just so happened Connor was driving by that day. I guess he’d been at a client’s house or something nearby. After seeing me and my brother talking to some cops and then some suits from the insurance company, he pulled over to ask what happened. He mentioned he was a lawyer and I thought he was just an ambulance chaser at first. But then we got to talking. Long story short, he bought the house as is at a more than fair price and then hired us back on to make the fixes.”

  Well, that solves the mystery of why Connor lives in such a huge house.

  “The man totally saved our asses. And to top it off, he referred us to a bunch of new, very rich clients. By the time we finished his house, we were booked a year out for jobs all over Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.” A long, emotional breath shot out of him. “My brother and I owe him everything.”

  At some point, Abby had stopped being able to focus on what Tom was saying. She could barely hear him over the deafening sound of her own heartbeat echoing in her ears.

  It was just a story, why was she reacting so strongly to it?

  Stupid question.

  Saint Connor saves another one. First his brother and then perfect strangers he met driving past a vandalized house. The man was so…so frustrating. That whole bad boy part of him was just one tiny, inconsequential part of him that he seemed to define himself by.

  Inside that hard, gruff exterior was a kind, caring man. A sweet man. A man that seemed to be buying up every ripe avocado in the area to make sure she’d have an endless supply of guacamole while she was staying at his home. Simply because she’d mentioned that was her dissertation writing snack of choice.

  Out of nowhere, she saw Tom waving a hand in front of her face.

  She blinked and focused back on him again. Shoot, had he asked her a question or something? If he had, he didn’t repeat it.

  Instead, he just teased, “There’s that smile again, Abby.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CONNOR WALKED into his office and closed the door before he let himself go quietly ape shit. $7.3 billion. That was the final closing agreement for the complex multi-corporation dual merger and acquisition case he’d devoted the
last five months of his life to.

  Taking a deep breath, he sat at his desk and waited for the pumping adrenaline to subside, stared out the window even though he was too keyed up to really see anything.

  Absently, he reached over and flicked the little stress reducing toy Abby had given him last week—a weird little monster with wobbly arms, crazy troll hair, and a suction base that kept it secured to his desk so he could flick its googly-eyed head whenever he got stressed. It didn’t go at all with his office décor, and yet he found himself keeping it front and center next to his phone on his executive mahogany desk.

  Because it was weird, just like Abby. And that’s why he loved it.

  No woman he’d dated in the past would’ve gone to the trouble of looking up the 1971 Charger to learn more about it. But Abby had. In fact, she now knew more about his car’s engine history than he did, something she excitedly displayed during breakfast this morning.

  It’d been adorable.

  Then she’d gone and slipped him the tongue, and he’d experienced an actual leave of his senses. He’d been ready to throw her up against the nearest table, floor, or wall and have all kinds of acrobatic sex with her. It was a near thing, too. If the appointment alarm on her phone hadn’t sounded, there was a good chance he’d still be there right now going for round two…or ten.

  He flicked the stress monster again.

  Before he quite realized he was doing it, his fingers were reaching for his phone and dialing her number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey.” Okay, now what? Another flick. “So…we closed the deal for $7.3 billion today.”

  The sound of books falling had him sitting up taller. And grinning. She’d dropped her books for him.

  “Oh my god, congratulations, Connor! Was it the carve-outs you renegotiated that sold them? I bet it was. Oh, and what about all those re-management concerns you had for the merger side? Did the spin-off push anything back at all? $7.3 billion. Holy crap! Were all the parties happy with the new deal? I know you were worried about the intellectual property on the acquisition end. How are you not completely freaking out right now?!”

  Connor laughed silently when Abby finally dragged in a gasping breath. Christ, she was priceless. “When I get home, I’ll be sure to give you the short version of everything that happened.”

  “Screw the short version, I want to hear it all. It’s a good thing I made—”

  Silence.

  “Abby? Hello?”

  “Sorry, yes, I’m still here.”

  He frowned. “Are you okay? You got cut off there for a bit.”

  “I dropped my phone.”

  That sounded like a lie. “Okay…well, what were you saying? You mentioned making something.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I can save it for another night. I’m sure you have some big celebration planned with all your colleagues. So of course the short version, definitely. Even if I’m sleeping, come wake me up okay? I’m dying to know the details.”

  He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and kiss her senseless. She actually thought he was going to celebrate without her. “Abby, I’ve seen way more than enough of my colleagues for the past five months. I want to spend my night with you, share everything that happened today with you. If you don’t want to cook whatever you had planned, we can go out. Anywhere you want.”

  “Anywhere I want?” Her voice still had that heart-tugging hesitancy. “We should go where ever you want to go.”

  That was a first. To his knowledge, the standard reply to that offer was usually the most expensive restaurant and/or the most exclusive club. At least in his experience with women.

  He embraced the novelty. “Well, if you’re going to let me choose, I’d kind of like to stay in.”

  “Really?” He could almost see her skeptical frown through the phone.

  “Yes. But again, if you don’t want to cook, I will. Or we can do take-out.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. Of course I’m going to cook. This is your big night. But are you sure you don’t want to—”

  “I’m coming home for dinner, Abby. Period. I’ll be there at eight.” Damn, that sounded light years away. Maybe he could cancel his next few meetings…

  “If you’re absolutely—”

  “Abby.” She was so freakin’ precious.

  “Okay, okay. Yes, eight o’clock. But, if you make it nine, you can probably get in some celebratory drinks with your friends and that’ll give me extra time to make something more elaborate and—”

  “I’m hanging up now, sweetie,” he sang out. “See you tonight.”

  All he caught after that were razor sharp snippets about pigheads and horse butt as he replaced the phone back in its cradle. Knowing Abby, she could’ve easily been talking about him or the menu she had planned.

  Either way, this was already promising to be an interesting night.

  At eight o’clock on the dot, he walked in his house to the sight of Abby bursting out from the kitchen at full speed. She launched herself at him and peppered his face with kisses. “Congrats, congrats, congrats!”

  Chuckling, he caught her face in his hands and gave her a long, slow kiss.

  “You smell good.” He stopped and sniffed again. “In fact, this whole house smells good. What is that?” Definitely not pighead or horse’s butt.

  She gave him a strange look. “Cookies.”

  He looked over and sure enough there on the big granite island was a platter of warm cookies. He grew still as a statue.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He was wondering the same thing as well. And then it hit him. “No one’s ever made me cookies before.”

  In no way was he prepared to see tears wash over Abby’s eyes. Though she covered it up well with a whole lot of blinking, he saw it, along with her pain…for the boy whose mother never baked him cookies.

  “Well, that puts a bunch of pressure on me,” she said, audibly modulating her voice. “Hopefully, you have the same taste in cookies as your niece.”

  Now that she mentioned it, he did recall Skylar raving about Abby’s cookies. “How long have you been baking these for her?”

  She shrugged. “Since Beth’s hands started failing her pretty early on, it was hard for her to do things in the kitchen so…I don’t know, maybe grade school?”

  He picked up a cookie and felt a strange desire to crystallize the moment, savor his first bite of a cookie made just for him. As his teeth closed on the warm, chewy cookie, he looked over and caught Abby gnawing on a thumbnail nervously, watching his reaction.

  He wanted to crystalize that moment as well.

  “They’re delicious.” His voice was rougher, thicker than usual.

  She averted her eyes again. “Oh, good. I’m glad you like it. I didn’t know how to help you celebrate your big win in the courthouse. I tend to defer to baking for all things celebratory…which is why I keep an extra pair of jeans the next size up when any holidays come rolling around…” She was babbling adorably, seemingly unable to stop. “I’m sure you’re used to more lavish hooplas—”

  He grabbed her and kissed her again.

  As his male ego was pleased to note, that seemed to ground her. By the time he relinquished his hold on her lips, she was smiling again. “I made pot roast. Since you’re such a fan of good ole fashioned dishes and all, I called my mom for her recipe and wrote it out on an index card for you so you can add it to your collection.”

  That small gesture tugged at his chest. In unique little Abby ways, she was burrowing the most unlikely, but clear cut path to his heart. It hit him then how different the house was going to be tomorrow. After she left. His gut clenched, rebelled the thought of her heading back to her own home since his only concept of home for the past few weeks had existed around her. Because of her. And now he didn’t want to give that up, didn’t want her to go back to her own home. And he especially didn’t want to think about the deadline that was coming in two weeks.

  The end of their month
together.

  Somewhere between his bedroom door and his closet, he was struck with the inane thought that there were thirty-one days in August. It stood to reason that their arrangement could be a thirty-one day month instead of thirty…never mind the fact that in the past few one-monthers he’d had, he’d been paring it down to four square weeks.

  The lawyer in him told him it was a stupid argument to make, but some other unnamed voice inside him said it was genius, and that they were to present the stipulation to her as soon as possible. Because it all boiled down to one thing: one more day with Abby.

  “Okay, it’s ready!”

  Blinking himself back to the present, he quickly shucked off his clothes to rejoin Abby downstairs. On the way, he passed an email printout peeking out from under her bag on the couch. The first sentence of the message caught his attention before he could stop himself. The second sentence had him outright invading her privacy. He smiled, picked up the paper and brought it with him into the dining room.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, coming up behind her and slipping his arms around her waist for a warm hug.

  “About what?”

  “About getting an article accepted for publication.”

  She spun around and grabbed the printout from his hand. Even though she was remaining impassive, he could see her eyes practically dancing the conga.

  “I was going to tell you tomorrow. It’s not exactly on par with a $7.8 billion dollar deal.”

  “Where’s the woman who reamed my ass for downplaying her accomplishments?” he asked sternly. “You getting an article published in a journal is a very big deal.”

  Her lips curved up at the corners.

  “So we should celebrate,” he suggested, nuzzling the side of her neck.

  “We already are.”

  “But this is your gift to me. I want to give you something you want. So tell me. How can we celebrate your amazing news? Name it and it’s yours.”