Resisting the Bad Boy - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 1 (Can't Resist #1)(8)

“Uh huh.” Brian nodded over at her kitchen. “Nice flowers. Who died?”

Abby drew out a forlorn sigh. “The perils of ordering flowers online. Small summer bouquet, my ass.”

Connor’s shoulders shook in silent laughter.

Brian rolled his eyes. “You suck at lying.” He turned on his brother. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing!” Abby broke in, cutting Connor off at the pass. “It was just a small misunderstanding. No biggie.”

Arms folded over his chest, Brian silently looked from her to Connor then back to her. “This misunderstanding wouldn’t have anything to do with you and me would it?”

Abby shot Brian her loudest shut the hell up glare, knowing that the power of telepathy she’d wished for as a kid was still on back order.

“You did the big brother thing, didn’t you?” he sighed, shaking his head at Connor. “Did you grill her ‘til she broke?”

Connor pinned her with a dark look. “I tried. But Abby apparently keeps secrets extremely well.” Suspicion and something…weightier than distrust rolled off of him in waves.

Brian frowned. “Hey, ease up. I asked Abby to play along so you’d stop giving me all those pity looks.”

Connor snapped his gaze back over to Brian. “What? I haven’t been doing that have I?”

“Yeah,” Brian said softly, “you have. Look, I get it—my wife died, I’m a single dad of a preteen daughter, and my last date before Beth was at a bowling alley when I was fifteen. If the shoe was on the other foot, I’d be a pain in your ass too. But it’s been a year; I’m doing fine. Better than fine. You’ve got to stop worrying so much about me.”

“Not happening,” grunted Connor. “It’s all a part of the sibling platinum package. You have a lifetime membership.”

Brian grinned. “I wasn’t asking you to revoke my club card. Just…try to lay off the kid gloves around me, will you?”

Connor gave him another burly, noncommittal grumble that made Abby swoon just a tiny bit. If she was the type to keep a checklist for the perfect guy, ‘being a protective brother’ would now be a top ten criteria. It was incredibly sexy. And their manly bickering was just plain cute. She smiled, half expecting a poignantly awkward bro hug at some point.

Unfortunately, she realized much too late to do any good that she wasn’t just smiling, she was staring. At Connor.

And he was staring right back.

A slow smile transformed his expression, right before he abruptly asked the inevitable, “So that means the two of you…”

“—aren’t really dating,” shrugged Brian.

“Interesting.”

Lordy, Abby had heard of a ‘wolfish grin’ before, but no one told her it’d make her panties catch on fire.

She quickly moved to usher both brothers off her porch. “Well, since that’s all settled, everyone can head on home and I can get back to that shower I never got to take.”

Great, there was that wolfish grin again. You just had to bring up the shower didn’t you? Connor was practically eating her up with his eyes. And she liked it. Far too much. So she chose to treat his heated stare like an eclipse.

The moment both cars were out of sight, she rushed through her house to her bathroom, pulling her clothes off as she went.

Screw the shower, she needed a long, hot bath.

With some waterproof accessories.

She was stripped bare and just about done filling up the tub when her cell phone jangled from her bag in the bedroom. Groaning, she hurried out to grab the phone, answering it without checking the caller id. “Hello?”

“That was a quick shower.”

Abby almost dropped the phone. Luckily, she managed to hang on to her wits though. “You know, I’m starting to really hate your investigator.”

Connor chuckled. “Actually, Skylar gave me your cell number before I went to pick up the flowers. She figured I’d need it in the off chance that you’d slam the door in my face.”

“So it’s true, blood really is thicker than milkshakes,” she grumbled as she stomped over to the tub to shut off the water before it overfilled. “What do you want, Connor?”

“Now that’s a loaded question.”

The sigh she aimed at herself bounced off the tiled walls in stereo. She’d walked right into that one.

There was a brief pause over the phone line and then a very curious, “Are you talking to me from the bathroom?”

Oh my, Miss Manners would have a conniption. “Yes. But to be clear, I’m not using the bathroom or anything.”

His quiet laughter was the stuff of bath-time fodder. The deep sound went through her like whiskey as she perched on the tub edge and swished a lazy hand through the water.

She heard him suck in a soft breath. And every nerve in her body flared to life at the sound.

“You’re taking a bath.” His voice was a full octave lower, his tone almost reverent.

Startled, Abby looked around to check the walls for eyes. A pair of piercing blue eyes in particular…a distinctly sexy set that always looked deep in thought. “No. Not yet, anyway.”

Another pause. “So what’s stopping you?”

“You.”

Was it possible to hear someone smile?