Choosing the Right Man - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 3 (Can't Resist #3)(10)

Every long term phrase spilling from his lips was effectively tangling her thoughts, confusing her heart, rebinding what she thought was all but lost.

“Of all the things I’ve had to give up in my life, you were the only one I couldn’t bear to lose, Abby,” he whispered roughly. “But it was killing me to think there would always be that possibility that I could lose you anyway if I held on. If I didn’t give you two a chance to see if the kind of love you had for each other was more than you thought it was.”

“Because that kind of thing never goes away. So I told myself that I’d give you both one month, just like you and I had...”

To fall in love.

It hung there silently between them though neither had ever said it aloud.

“I allotted one month for Brian to see if things would’ve worked out for you two without Beth being a factor.” He lifted his gaze to snag hers. “One month for you to see if he’s the one you really want.”

Abby rewound her time with Brian. Had it really only been a month? It felt like longer, like there’d been no real start date to her feelings for him. “Did Brian know about all this? About your one-month plan for us?” He’d let her believe that Connor wasn’t ever going to come back.

“Not about the one-month, no. And not about my feelings for you either, not really. At least not until that morning at the house.”

Right, Helen’s house. His spy. “So your mother was the only one who knew the whole story.” Abby sat there for a few minutes and attempted to make sense out of all this information. To make sense of Connor.

An improbable feat.

When she eventually looked up from her food, she saw him eyeing her like he was about to face a firing squad.

Good.

Leaning forward, she steepled her hands and asked the only question that hadn’t stopped echoing in her mind for the past few minutes. “When you said you waited one month, how many days exactly did you wait?”

He blinked at her, startled, and then seemingly pleased, before answering with a head-shaking smile, “Twenty-eight days. I waited exactly twenty-eight of the longest days of my life.”

Abby sat back with a nod wondering how it was that even though her brain seemed not to know what to do with that information, her racing heart was reacting like it had gotten the answer it was searching for.




CONNOR FELT HIS HEART pounding in his chest. Count on Abby to ask the most unlikely question—a question that looked deeper into him than most people knew how to or cared to...a question that gave him hope.

“So am I forgiven for leaving you?”

“Of course not,” she replied before biting into the summer roll she’d been turning into a voodoo doll for the past ten minutes.

Well, it was worth a shot.

“But,” she conceded, “you are forgiven for the length of time you left me.”

That was more than he was expecting, and truthfully, more than he thought he deserved.

“Gabriella mentioned you’d started seeing someone,” she said then from straight out of left field.

What? “When on earth did you talk to Gabriella?”

She paused in thought for a second and then answered as if surprised by her own answer. “About a month ago.”

Ah, and another piece of the puzzle in the Abby and Brian saga was revealed. “I haven’t dated anyone after you, sweetheart.”

“What about the woman you were with at the hospital?” Her voice was bolder now and hot damn if that wasn’t a spark of jealousy firing those sweetly sexy brown eyes of hers.

“She’s a friend, nothing more.”

Her eyes narrowed in naked disbelief. “You don’t have female friends. Besides Victoria, that is, and we both know that friendship will always be partly a get-into-bed-free card on her end.”

Another flare of jealousy. Along with a small smile she hid behind her napkin.

Funny, he never thought such a thing would ever factor into his feelings over a woman but the fact that Abby could see the good in Victoria meant a lot. He remembered now feeling the same way when she’d actually been complimentary about her, seemed to have liked her a bit even, after their first train wreck of an introduction to each other months ago.

Even though that hadn’t been a test, Abby was the only person in his life, man or woman, who’d ever aced it.

“The woman from the hospital is helping me with a few pro bono cases I’m working on,” he explained. “She’s one of the major representatives of an organization I care a lot about. And she’s a hell of a grant writer as well. The night you saw us, we’d been preparing for a trip the following day to the east coast for a day-long set of meetings we had regarding a series of cutting edge clinical trials she’d found and researched.”

A twinge of respect colored Abby’s expression. “She sounds incredible.”

None of the other women he’d been with in the past would’ve given the qualities he’d just listed the proper respect they deserved. Another aced non-test. “She is incredible. I admire her a lot, which was why we became friends so quickly. Nothing more. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

She nodded. “I know you wouldn’t.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “But I have to admit, I’m still a bit envious of her. Where was that sort of devoted friendship with us? You just up and extracted yourself from my life completely. I’d thought I meant enough to you that you’d want to stay friends at the bare minimum, that our friendship was worth at least that.”