“Hey, I meant to ask, are you staying over at Connor Sullivan’s place?”

Abby looked over at him warily.

“Don’t worry, I’m not following you or anything. It’s just I pass his home on my way over here and I could’ve sworn I saw your car parked in his driveway—the duct tape on the bumper is pretty distinctive.”

Oh. The tension quickly left her shoulders. “He’s my best friend’s brother. When he heard I needed a place to stay for a few weeks, he offered me one of his guestrooms.”

Tom nodded. “Yeah, sounds like him. He’s a really great guy.”

Surprised at the familiar tone, she asked nosily, “How do you know him?”

“He helped me and my brother out big time when we thought our business was done for.”

That didn’t make any sense. To her knowledge, Connor only did legal work for huge corporations—small construction businesses like Tom’s weren’t his normal clientele base.

At her puzzled expression, Tom explained, “It must’ve been five, six years ago, I think. Back when we’d just started the business. We’d been up and running for two years, making a decent name for ourselves by word of mouth referrals all over. The money was good, but not great. Mostly since there were long pockets of down time between projects. And that’s exactly why, after one really slow month, my brother decided he wanted us to take a shot at flipping houses. You know, like they do on TV? I wasn’t so sure about the whole thing, but he’d made it sound so easy, especially since we’d be doing all the work ourselves. So, I eventually got on board.”

“And at first, he had been right. We flipped five houses in half a year, and made twenty times more money than we would’ve made just picking up reno jobs here and there.” He shook his head in a big brotherly way. “But then my brilliant brother wanted to go after a bigger fish—a foreclosed mansion in Scottsdale.”

Tom nodded when she winced. “Yup. It was waaay too big a fish. We had to start taking money out of all our accounts just to cover the expenses; the house was just so frickin’ huge. The finish fixtures alone bled us dry since up until then, we hadn’t gotten all those high end fixtures. But our real estate person told us that if we went with the more standard stuff, the house just wouldn’t sell. Not in this neighborhood. So, we cleared out all our savings to cover it because at that point, we couldn’t even afford to stop.”

Abby couldn’t believe how angry he suddenly looked. Since meeting him a few months ago, she’d never once even seen the guy frown. He was just the jolliest man.

But at this moment, he looked downright scary.

“We worked nonstop to get the house ready as quickly as we could. Then fate threw us the worse possible curveball. With just a few days of work left before we could officially sign-off on everything and list the house for sale, a bunch of kids broke in and partied it up in there. Jacked the whole house up in the process, from top to bottom.”

Jesus. Now, she was scowling right along with him.

“We went in the next day to broken glass, graffiti, doors hanging off hinges, gouges in the hardwood floors, vomit and other crap all over the new carpet…shit, the place was a mess. These kids were frickin’ insane. The banister was hanging off the stairs with some rope strung from it like a noose, some of our tools had been launched up at the ceiling, and they’d even bashed something straight through one of the main weight bearing walls.”

He put his elbows on his knees and took a few calming breaths. “Anyway, I guess some neighbors finally called the cops and the kids all ran so they didn’t even catch who did it. The damages were in the hundreds of thousands. And our insurance would only cover part of it, in chunks, paid out over weeks if not months down the line. At that point, we knew we were through. We were shitting bricks over the house staying on the market past a few weeks even before all the vandalism. There was no avenue left for us to take; the general consensus with our financial advisors was that both my brother and I would have no choice but to declare bankruptcy both professionally, and personally.”

Abby could hardly breathe. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the rest, but she still wanted to hear the words, hear someone else speak about Connor the way she and Brian saw him.

“Just so happened Connor was driving by that day. I guess he’d been at a client’s house or something nearby. After seeing me and my brother talking to some cops and then some suits from the insurance company, he pulled over to ask what happened. He mentioned he was a lawyer and I thought he was just an ambulance chaser at first. But then we got to talking. Long story short, he ended up buying the house as is at a more than fair price. Then after the sale went through, he hired us back on to make all the fixes.”

Well, that solves the mystery of why Connor lives in such an extravagant house.

“Connor totally saved our asses. And to top it off, he referred us to a bunch of new, very rich clients. By the time we finished his house, we were booked a year out for jobs all over Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.” A long, emotional breath shot out of him. “My brother and I owe him everything.”

At some point, Abby had stopped being able to focus on what Tom was saying. She could barely hear him over the deafening sound of her own heartbeat echoing in her ears.

It was just a story, why was she reacting so strongly to it?

Stupid question.

Saint Connor saves another one.

First his brother and then perfect strangers he met driving past a vandalized house. The man was so…so frustrating. That whole bad boy part of him was just one tiny, inconsequential part of him that he so wrongfully defined himself by.

Inside that hard, gruff exterior was a kind, caring man. A sweet man. A man that seemed to be hellbent on buying up every ripe avocado in the area to make sure she’d have an endless supply of guacamole while she was staying at his home. Simply because she’d mentioned that was her dissertation writing snack of choice.

Out of nowhere, she saw Tom waving a hand in front of her face.

She blinked and focused back on him again. Shoot, had he asked her a question? If he had, he didn’t repeat it.

Instead, he just teased, “There’s that smile again, Abby.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CONNOR WALKED into his office, closed the door, and sat down before he let himself go quietly ape shit.

$7.3 billion.

That was the unexpectedly sudden, final closing agreement for the complex multi-corporation dual merger and acquisition case he’d devoted the last five months of his life to. Seven-point-three billion dollars.

Taking a deep breath, he stared out the window at the picturesque view that his equity partnership had bought him in the firm, even though he was way too keyed up and pumped full of adrenaline to see anything really.

Seven-point-three.

Billion.

Absently, he reached over and flicked the little stress reducing toy Abby had given him last week—a colorful little monster with wobbly arms, crazy troll hair, and a suction base that kept it secured to his desk for even the strongest stress-flicks to its googly-eyed head.

Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb. It didn’t go at all with his office décor and yet he found himself keeping it front and center next to his phone on his executive mahogany desk.

Because it was weird and funny in the cutest possible way, just like Abby.

And that’s why he loved it.

No woman he’d dated in the past would’ve gotten him anything like it. Nor would any of ‘em have gone to the trouble of looking up the 1971 Charger to learn all there was to know about the car’s history. But Abby had. In fact, she now knew more about his car’s engine stats than he did, something she’d excitedly displayed all throughout breakfast this morning.