Resisting the Bad Boy - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 1 (Can't Resist #1)(12)

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 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.”

“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.”