She was silent for a long while, and Connor started preparing himself for the rejection to come.

“I know our fifteen minutes of friendship are up but can I ask you something as a friend? Will you answer me as one?”

He tensed. “I’ll try.”

She chuckled. “Again with the copout.” Raising her warm doe eyes up to his, she asked quietly, “If you weren’t trying to get in my pants, if you were just my friend and I asked you what one thing I could do to stop being ‘a nice girl’ for just a little while, what advice would you give me?”

That was easy. “I’d tell you to try something new. Something that excites you. Something that’ll take you from zero to sixty just as fast as it could take you back to zero whenever you were ready to return.”

“Something wild and fast...” She loosened her death grip on his shoulders, slid her hands down his back slowly. “That’s good advice.”

He saw her gaze travel down to his lips and it took everything he had not to kiss her right then and there.

“Are you volunteering, Connor? To be that something wild and fast for me to try?”

“No,” he replied raggedly, “I’m insisting. Requiring.” He dropped his forehead against hers. “Asking.”

Her eyelids dipped down, completely veiling her reaction from him.

So he waited.

“I can’t do a whole month with you.”

He blinked in surprise. That, he hadn’t been expecting. “Why not?!”

“It’s too long.”

Well, he did ask.

A touch indignant, he argued, “You said you don’t do one-night stands. Now you’re saying that a month is too long?”

He knew he was getting overly worked up but he couldn’t help it, she was being irrational. His brain started firing on all pistons, every combat cell in his body taking a front seat like they always did when he was about to do battle in the courtroom. “Or is it just one month with me that’s too long?”

She flinched.

He felt thoroughly insulted.

“It’s not how you’re making it. Being with you would be like…ice cream. The most decadent ice cream I could ever imagine. I’d be hooked after the first bite. And if I didn’t discipline myself, I’d...overindulge.”

“Until it made you sick?” He wasn’t really good with metaphors.

A smiled peeked through. “No, until it was all I’d want to eat, all day, every day.”

What the hell was wrong with that?

Her smile broadened. “There’s everything wrong with that,” she continued, somehow reading his mind. “One month will take me right up to the third week of teaching, which is generally when my life starts getting busy. That means this month is my only time to really focus on getting a huge chunk of my dissertation written.”

“And if you overindulge on the ice cream…”

“I’d be in a sugar coma, incapable of doing or thinking of anything else. But you.”

Call him a bastard but hearing that felt good. “Fine, I can respect that. How about this? What if I promise to leave you alone all day, every day throughout the week, and only send you into mini ice cream comas at night…as a build-up to one massive, no holds barred weekend to overindulge until we’re both too weak to move? Would that work for you?”

Hot, slick desire exploded in her expression.

His fingers instantly flexed against her hips in response.

“Stand down, counselor. You made your point.”

If she agreed to this arrangement, Connor fully intended to have her bring this legal speak into the bedroom—coming from Abby’s lips it was the equivalent of dirty talk.

“How about we reach a compromise?” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Two weeks.”

Two weeks? She was negotiating?

He didn’t like it. Not one bit. “Half? You’re only willing to give me half?”

Geez, he was doing a remarkable impression of a screech-fest he’d heard in the firm’s conference room the other day.

“What’s the big deal?” Now she looked genuinely mystified. “The one month is your maximum time period, isn’t it? What’s wrong with two weeks?”

Technically, nothing.

In reality, everything.

Though he wasn’t quite sure why. As he mulled it over, he contemplated temporarily agreeing to the two weeks and then appealing midway for an extension…

Why the hell was he strategizing this like it was a court case?

“Will there be a possibility for extension?”

She frowned. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of these relationship parameters of yours?”

It would, yes. “I’ll make an exception…unless you disclose a history of flipping out on the guys you date.”

She winged an eyebrow up. “What if I did?”

Hell, he’d probably date her anyway.

What was it about her?

“I’ll worry about that if it happens.” He smiled when she did, and then proceeded to renegotiate—an occupational reflex. “How about we do a month, and lessen it to two weeks if you feel you really want to?”

He could tell she was trying not to grin.

Eventually, she sighed. “Even if I wanted to agree to those terms, I couldn’t. I’m heading out of town the day after tomorrow for two weeks.”

Something unsettling pricked inside of him. Unease? No, it stung deeper than that. Burned, actually.

Whatever it was, he wanted to be rid of it. “You’re going on a trip? I thought you said you were busy.”

“It’s not a trip so much as me going home to stay with my parents for two weeks. My landlords are enclosing that huge patio off the kitchen to make an extra bedroom. They’re slowly making this guest house bigger since I’ll only be living here until next May, and their son is moving in with his wife and two kids after I’m gone.”

“So they’re kicking you out for two weeks? They should be providing you with an alternative place to live. It’s standard for a landlord—”

She threw her palms in the air. “Whoa. Don’t turn into Mr. Bigshot Lawyer. I offered to go home to California. Plus, they went out of their way to get a crew that could do the work really quick, specifically in these two weeks to fit my schedule. They even had the builders work out a plan where all the interior reno work would be completed before a lot of the less-pressing exterior projects, contrary to their normal construction routine, so all the more invasive parts would be taken care of before I got back. They really are being great about this.”

“But everything you need for your research is here.” He was well aware that he was pulling at threads now.

“True. But, the UC schools have an outstanding library system so I don’t think I’ll have too much difficulty accessing things. And at this portion of my write-up, a lot of what I need is online so I can easily take care of it in Santa Clara.”

“But you’ll lose half a day flying each way.” Okay, now he was reaching rock bottom. He was actually embarrassed for his law school diploma; it was probably getting ready to jump off his office wall in protest.

“I’m not flying, I’m driving. It’s peak travel season and flying over would cost more than I’d care to spend.”

“You can’t be serious.” Now he was more concerned than argumentative. “You’re planning on driving all the way to Santa Clara in that hunk of junk out in your driveway?”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, that very lovely POS ‘SUV’ out there.”

She kept right on glaring at him.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t entirely necessary for him to have included the air quotes, but really, the vehicle was more like a very tall, beat up clown car than an SUV, circa never-bothered-to-be-recorded.

“Face it, that thing is a nine-car pileup waiting to happen. You shouldn’t take it on that long of a road trip and you know it.”

“Well, it’s my only option right now.”

Something occurred to him then. “Wait, if you knew you were going to be gone, why did you counter with two weeks?”

He detested false bids.

Her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth. “Actually, I meant the two weeks after I get back, before my schedule starts getting busy.”