Resisting the Bad Boy - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 1 (Can't Resist #1)(11)

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 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.