Текст книги "Resisting the Bad Boy"

Автор книги: Violet Duke

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CHAPTER THREE

AS CONNOR WATCHED ABBY flee his lot, upset and clearly mortified, he wondered why the sight of her tears was having such an effect on him.

It’s not as if she were the first woman he’d shot down for showing up at his house half-dressed and looking for a good time. She was, however, the only one he’d ever had to turn away because of his brother.

Okay, so a part of him felt like a jerk for what he’d said to her. But just picturing how bummed Brian would be about all this was enough to send those guilty feelings packing.

Running off with her tail between her legs was the very least she deserved for screwing with Brian. Connor just hoped his brother wasn’t too serious about her yet. The fact that the two had been best friends for so long surely complicated things.

Regardless, he’d be brutally honest and help Brian nip the doomed relationship in the bud before she broke his heart down the line.

There would be no backseat-brothering on this one.

Standing idly by while Brian had limited his life to just plain existing for the past year had been torture.

But it had been a cakewalk compared to seeing him spend a decade waiting for a horrible illness to slowly kill the love of his life.

Beth had been Brian’s world, his high school sweetheart, the girl he’d come home vowing he was going to spend his life with the day he’d met her.

Receiving the devastating news that Beth’s time with him would be far shorter and infinitely rougher—mere weeks after their unplanned child was born—simply prompted Brian to love and live every day following like it was their last.

And he’d only been nineteen at the time.

Connor wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy.

Day after day, he’d watched Brian go to that hospital room and whisper reminders to Beth of how much she was loved, long after the dementia from her disease had stolen everything that was sweet and good in her...along with all her memories of her husband and child.

Honestly, Connor wasn’t sure he’d have been able to survive it had the roles been reversed, and God knew the years before the hospitalization had been just as bad, in an entirely different way. He still got chills thinking of the day he’d heard Beth’s slurred voice screaming for Brian to take Skylar and leave, let her kill herself to end it all.

Damn that disease.

“Uncle Connor? What are you doing home?”

Connor almost jumped out of his skin.

Shit, Skylar.

The whole reason he was home this afternoon to begin with.

It was no secret Connor adored his niece Skylar. And with him living so close to the middle school she’d just gotten a boundary exemption to attend, her walking over to his home while he was at work had been his no-brainer solution to Brian’s dilemma over whether to go back to coaching afterschool this year.

Fast forward to today, however, and Connor had found himself envisioning everything from kidnappers to sudden black holes opening up in his quiet street for most of the morning.

It was just a few measly blocks for crying out loud but he couldn’t help it. After the rough hand the universe has dealt the poor girl, they were all a little overprotective of her.

Hell, Brian had moved mountains just to get Skylar into this new school to begin with. The minute he’d found out that Skylar’s best friend would be moving away not long after Beth’s passing, Brian had begun a campaign involving everything short of stalking the educational board to get district approval so the two best-friends-since-daycare could at least be in the same school again this upcoming year.

Thank God it had worked out.

Connor couldn’t imagine what it was like for an eleven-year old to lose her mom the way she did. She’d barely said one word throughout the entire holiday season last winter. Really, the school transfer was the first thing she’d seemed truly happy about all year.

Ditto for her dad.

And now this Abby fiasco to add to everything Brian’s already been through? For Pete’s sake, couldn’t the universe give his little brother a break for a change?

His silent Abby-riled diatribe temporarily forgotten at the sound of Skylar coming up beside him on the walkway, Connor immediately shifted to damage control assessment.

What were the chances that Skylar had caught the full frontal of Abby all slutted-up just now?

With Abby being the closest thing Skylar had for an aunt, how the hell was he supposed to explain this without traumatizing the poor girl?

Damn that woman for putting me in this situation.

“Why hello to you too, princess,” he tossed out casually, turning to greet her with a smile. “I had a few hours free so I thought I’d hang out with you on your first day here.”

“Oh, cool.” She looked around. “Hey, where’d Abby go?”

Fan-frickin-tastic. “So you saw her here, huh? She wasn’t here long…she just stopped by to, uh—”

“She left?” A too-mature frown marred Skylar’s little pixie face. “I told her to wait ‘til I brought back an umbrella for her.” Shaking out a butt-ugly yellow rain slicker, she pouted some more. “And she didn’t even take back her poncho!”

He did a double take. “What do you mean?”

“Abby lent it to me before we ran over here.”

Gulping, Connor felt cold hard shame start to prickle over his skin. “Abby ran all the way here in the rain with you?”

“Yeah, it started coming down right when I left school. She found me under a tree trying to stay dry.”

Skylar surveyed the rapidly worsening weather worriedly. “Dad will totally kill me if she catches a cold this week with all her…wait a sec—” She swung a suspicious look back his way. “Abby never leaves without saying bye. Did you say something to her?”

Smart girl.

Choosing to sidestep her question for the time being, Connor pulled out his smartphone and asked instead, “Do you spell Abby’s last name with two T’s or one at the end?”

“Two.” She raised a brow. “Why? Are you looking her up to apologize for something? If so, I have her cell phone number.”

He sighed. “Unfortunately, I don’t think a simple apology is going to cut it. I think I need to send her a whole bunch of sorry-I-was-such-an-idiot flowers.”

“Holy moly, what did you say to her?”

He again, refrained from answering.

No need to piss his niece off too.

Quickly texting a request for his assistant to order him the most extravagant floral arrangement she could find, he ignored his niece’s interrogation once again. “You wouldn’t happen to know Abby’s address would you?”

“Nope.” A slow, serves-you-right smile hooked her lips. “But dad does.”

Silently, he unleashed a string of expletives and began estimating what the going rate was for bribing a kid nowadays.

It’d be worth it for the stay of execution by Brian’s hand.

* * * * *

“HOW THE HELL did you find out where I live?”

Connor winced, but stood his ground atop Abby’s doorstep. Thankfully, the gigantic doorway-filling flower arrangement his assistant had purchased for him was allowing him to hide for a few precious seconds longer.

Blindly shoving the flowers forward, he waited for Abby to take them.

When she didn’t, he took a peek around the massive bouquet to see if she was even still there. She was.

And she was trying her damndest not to laugh.

“Is this monstrosity for a funeral?”

Grateful for the buried humor he heard in her voice, he let out the breath he’d been holding and ventured with caution, “Depends. Are you going to kill me for what I said earlier?”

“Right after I maim your brother for giving you my address,” she promised sweetly, with just the hint of a smile.

He dropped the ridiculously heavy flowers onto the ground. “He didn’t. I asked one of my investigators at the firm to dig up your info. Brian doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“Afraid to tell him?” she prodded with little sympathy.

“Shouldn’t I be?”

Leaning against the doorframe, she took her sweet time answering, “Nah, Brian will probably just laugh his ass off.”

That’s what he was afraid of.

And clearly, the grinning imp darn well knew it, too.

Seeing her amusement at his expense ripen even more, he saw a brief opening and took a shot, “So are you going to put me out of my misery already and forgive me?”

“I don’t know. Did you apologize?” she countered.

Damn, she wasn’t going to make this easy for him.

“I’m…sorry, Abby. Truly.” The words were rusty and foreign in his mouth; they weren’t ones he used very often.

Suddenly, her smile dissolved into a look of remembered irritation. “Sorry for calling me a gold digging whore or for saying I was too fat to be in a trashy wet t-shirt contest?”

He reeled back as if bitch-slapped. “I didn’t call you fat! Good lord, you don’t really think that about yourself, do you?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.

“Good.” He wasn’t a fan of women who were constantly putting themselves down. “If you did, I’d tell you to go get some new glasses. Your body’s gorgeous.”

She bristled in disbelief. “I’m not some self-conscious girl in need of your validation, you big twerp. I laugh when my dress size stays in the double digits during holiday months; it means my friends and family put that much more love into their dishes that year. I don’t need false compliments from a guy who dates size zero models to feel good about myself.”

He shot his hands in the air like a good little gunfire target. “It wasn’t a false compliment. What I said back at my house was the lie—if any of it had been even remotely true, I wouldn’t have said it. I’m not a cruel person. The fact that I did say it meant it was the furthest thing from the truth, which made it a safe insult.”

Doing his damndest to keep his eyes from drifting down to said gorgeous body, he admitted in complete honesty, “Truth is, you were so unbelievably sexy in that wet t-shirt earlier, I could hardly bear it.”

Even now, the lingering memory of how she’d looked with the soaked fabric plastered to her smoking hot body was more than he—and the fit of slacks—could bear.

She paused long enough for him to see about five different emotions flit across her face before she eventually landed on one…and exploded.

“You are SO annoying! Are you really trying to turn an insulting, objectifying, insanely illogical comment like that into a half-baked compliment?!”

He grinned. “Is it working?”

“No!” But she couldn’t completely tamp down the smile that was obviously trying to escape.

She really did have a great smile.

Danger, Connor Sullivan, danger. He was getting sucked in by her all over again. “So, where should I put these?” he asked levelly, picking up the flowers again to avoid looking at her. “Over on that table by the window?”

“And have it block all the light in my living room?” she laughed, opening the door all the way to let him in, seemingly unaffected by the electricity he felt buzzing between them. “I guess you can put it on the kitchen table; I’m pretty sure it’s sturdy enough to handle the weight.”

She gazed admiringly at the colorful assortment as he set it down. “Thank you, Connor. They’re beautiful. Unnecessary, but appreciated all the same.”

“They’re entirely necessary,” he said gruffly, rejoining her in the living room, “I was way out of line.”

She lifted a shoulder. “You thought you were protecting Brian; I understand the compulsion, trust me.”

Brian. The mental splash of ice-cold reality was just as effective today as it’d been the other night. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he switched over to small talk. “Yeah, he’s one of the good ones. Have you two been dating long?”

She replied very…carefully, “What has Brian told you?”

“Nothing at all, really. I was actually surprised to see you with him at the party.” Stunned was more like it. Seeing Brian with any woman other than Beth had been an altogether surreal experience. “You look cute together.”

Okay, now the shifty woman looked like she was chewing on an old wad of gum.

His eyes narrowed.

Had he been right in his accusations earlier? Maybe she’d just used Skylar as her cover. A very effective one.

“How serious are you about Brian? If you don’t mind me asking.”

With a quick glance at the clock, she evaded poorly, “Oh, look at the time. I’ve got a meeting to get to and I need to shower first.”

She reopened the front door. Subtle.

“Thanks for the flowers, Connor. I accept your apology, of course.”

Briskly ignoring his body’s response to the image of her in the shower, he caught her by the elbow and crowded her against the wall.

“You’re hiding something. What is it?”

She shook her head in denial and suddenly, the warm scent of chocolate assailed his senses.

His gaze dropped down to her lips. “Hot cocoa,” he murmured. So the empty mug on the kitchen table hadn’t been filled with coffee then.

Her response was barely a whisper. “I was cold.”

His blood fired. Imagining all the ways he could’ve helped warm her up nearly brought him to his knees.

Tugging on her elbow once more, he pulled her body flush against his.

Jesus, every inch of her fit him perfectly.

Damn it.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M NOT POACHING my brother’s woman,” he rumbled in her ear, his words a hot, rough brand against her skin.

Abby shivered, arched her neck at the sensation. No, of course he wouldn’t poach. Not Connor. She’d been hearing about Saint Connor for years now from both Brian and Beth. A bit of a man whore, yes, but an otherwise great guy.

A noble bad boy.

And all the more irresistible for it.

A large part of her reasoned she should set the record straight right now. Explain that she wasn’t Brian’s woman. Free Connor’s guilty conscience.

Give the green light for the kiss they both wanted.

Instead, she turned her head away. “You should go.”

His sharp inhalation cut the air like a knife as he backed quickly away from her. “Abby, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

The slamming of a car door had them jumping apart another three feet. Abby shifted her gaze to the driveway and saw Brian bounding toward them, sprinting through the rain.

Geez, when it rained it poured.

“Hey, Brian. What’s up?”

“We just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” He sluiced water off his jacket and pointed back to the SUV.

Seeing Skylar rapid-fire waving from the passenger seat, Abby smiled and waved back. “What’s with all the worrying? You’d think this was acid rain I ran home in.”

Instead of replying, Brian slid his attention over to Connor. “Skylar mentioned you might be here. Everything alright?”

“Never better.” Connor’s face was the picture of innocence. “Just checking in on Skylar’s guardian angel here, same as you.”

“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 secretly 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 looking at me with such pity.”

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 were 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. And 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 were the type to keep a checklist for the dream-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 out of her doorway. “Well, since that’s all settled, everyone can head on home and I can get back to that much-needed 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 a solar eclipse and blindly push both men right off her porch back into the rain.

Eventually, they had no choice but to run back to their cars to avoid getting soaked.

And the very moment they were both 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 on the way back into the bathroom without checking the caller id. “Hello?”

“That was a quick shower.”

Abby almost fell headfirst into the tub.

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

Connor chuckled. “Actually, Skylar gave me your cell phone number before I went to pick up the flowers. She figured I might need it in case you slammed the door in my face.”

“So 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 there’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 silence 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?

“So because of me, your water’s getting cold?”

“Exactly. Now if you’d hurry and tell me what you want, I could get back to my bath before it gets any colder.”

“Maybe what I want is to join you in the tub. What are the chances of that happening?”

“None to none at all.” Liar.

He made a disappointed sound, but didn’t give up that easily. “I promise I’ll behave. Unless…you’re going to do something in the bath that you’d need privacy for.” He put just enough goading in his tone to tick her off, but not enough for her to hang up on him. “Is that the case?”

Yes. And the jerk was being deliberately obtuse about it.

She maintained radio silence.

“Because if that is the case, I don’t have to behave. I could…misbehave.”

Her jaw locked at his audacity.

A firm believer that one should never negotiate with terrorists, she decided to instead fight fire with fire. “Since it doesn’t look like I’m getting rid of you anytime soon, I’m just going to go ahead and start…my bath.”

She grinned in triumph when a quiet groan came from his end.

Placing her phone on the counter, she dropped her towel and slid into the water. The slow, purring sound she let out wasn’t for his benefit.

But it seemed to affect him all the same.

“Am I on speaker?” The words were smoky, stilted.

“Mmm hmm.” Her eyelids drifted closed as she sank back against the tub, letting the hot water unravel the tension from this crazy day. “Connor, you have maybe a minute before I start dozing off so if you have something to say, you better say it now.”

“Have dinner with me.”

She bolted upright—to avoid taking in a gaping mouthful of bath water.

“Dinner? Why?”

“Because the next time you’re in that tub, I want to be there with you. And, well, I figure it’d be wise for us to eat beforehand.”

He was smiling again, she could hear it.

The guy had balls, she had to give him that. “What on earth makes you think I’d agree to take a bath with you?”

“Nothing but sheer hope.”

She resisted the urge to melt at that, reminding herself that this was a veteran player she was talking to here.

And she’d barely even cut it in little league.

“I don’t think dinner would be a good idea.”

“Okay, lunch then. Afternoon baths are fun too.”

Dang it, she was really close to laughing. “No. And don’t you dare suggest breakfast or dessert. Or brunch!”

“Well then we have a problem. Call me old fashioned but I’d really like to feed you before we take a bath together.”

Somehow, she managed to smother the life out of a burgeoning giggle. “That was a blanket no. To the bath also.”

“Fine. But you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ll have you know, I give a pretty mean underwater massage.”

Ooh, that was low. Her achy muscles wanted in. But her common sense knew better. “Oh, I believe you. I’d be more surprised if you told me you gave a nice one.”

“Ouch. Okay, okay, I deserved that. Well, since you’ve now clearly moved on to the brutally honest portion of our phone call, why don’t you explain why you told me to leave earlier?”

“Brian already covered all that,” she skirted.

“So that was the only reason? Honoring that favor?”

God save her from insightful men. “Not exactly,” she confessed. “It was just…easier to let you believe it.”

“Easier than…”

“Saying no to you.” She stared at the water, admitting quietly to herself as well as to him, “When all I wanted was to say yes.”

“Abby.”

It came out as a groan.

And sounded like pure sin.

She couldn’t help it, in the thick quiet that followed, her hands began drifting over her skin without any preauthorization from her brain whatsoever.

Eyes closed, she let her fingers roam. Until her broken breathing fractured the silence.

“Invite me over, Abby,” Connor rasped. “Let me see you. Help you.”

Her eyes shot open and she yanked her hands back to safer territory.

What the heck was she thinking?

“What? No.”

“Why not?” His voice sounded strained.

“Because we just met!”

“No, we met well over a decade ago. And as you so delicately reminded me the other night,” he added almost teasingly, “we’ve kept in fairly regular contact since.”

She tried to keep her smile from showing in her voice. Why was it so easy to like this man? “You can’t come over.”

“Then at least agree to dinner, Abby. Just one night.”

“Coming from you, Connor, that sounds less like a reassurance and more like a mandate.”

Crap. She hadn't intended for that to sound so bitchy. She had no right to judge him. “Errr...not that that's a bad thing.”

He was silent for a second. “Are you saying you’ve never had a one-night stand? Ever?” All their earlier playfulness was wiped clean from his voice.

“Nope.”

But for once, she was tempted. Boy, was she tempted. “Besides, even if I were that kind of girl, I couldn’t have one with you. Our lives are too connected. There’s Brian and Skylar to think about.”

Not to mention, you’d utterly break my heart.

“We both know it wouldn’t be a good idea, Connor.”

A resigned grumble vibrated over the phone line. “You’re probably right.”

“Sheesh, you don't have to be so upset about it...don't worry, I'll let you be right next time,” she teased without thinking.

A big, surprised chuckle burst out of him. “If you want to take the sting out of this rejection you just handed out, you’re going to have to work on being a hell of a lot less cute. And smart. The snappy comebacks are becoming a major turn on for me.”

She bit her lip. That was just about the sweetest compliment she’d ever received. “You know, we can still be friends.”

This time his laughter sounded almost regretful. “What’d I say about cutting down on the cuteness?”

“Is that a no?”

He sighed. “That’s a maybe. Or at least an ‘I’ll try.’”

“I hate it when people say that,” she complained. “It’s such a copout.”

“Well, it’s the best you’re going to get. ‘I’ll try’ means I’m going to let you go finish your bath alone, and not hit on you again for at least another twenty-four hours.”

She’d never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Fine. You have a deal. For now. I’ll work on wearing you down later.”

“Funny, I was just about to say the same thing to you.”

A strange thrill ran up her spine. “Goodbye, Connor.”

“Bye Abby…and have a good bath.”

“You too.” She frowned. “Wait. That came out weird. I meant a good one; have a good one.”

She paused again. Was it her or did that sound a little dirty?

Pinching her bridge of her nose, she tried again, “A good one as in a good time. Like I’m planning to have in the tub.”

Jesus.

A double-shot of oxygen hissed past her teeth.

Flustered, she attempted one more fix, “Not that I’m implying you’ll be doing what I’ll be doing—”

Oh. Good. Lord!

He growled. “Twenty-four hours, Abby. We’ll be ‘friends’ for twenty-four more hours and then you better believe we’ll be having this conversation again.”

She dunked her head under water as soon as he hung up, dazed at the prospect of resisting a man like Connor Sullivan.

Soon, she was the one spouting copouts.