“Sorry, I’ll get the AC going. You can grab a beer from the fridge if you want. I was thinking of making some steak fajitas and a salad,” she called out as she made her way to the bedroom to change. “That okay with you?”

“Sounds great.”

She came back out in an old t-shirt and sweats, purposely choosing not to pretty up for Connor.

Oddly, he seemed to appreciate that fact, judging by the pleased smile he gave her when she returned. “Do you need help cooking? I want to earn my meal.”

“Sure. Can you fry up the flank steak for me? The meat is marinating in a ziploc in the fridge.”

She was surprised at how normal she sounded, what with his presence seemingly sucking up all her usual oxygen supply in the kitchen. Her whole house, really, if she was being honest with herself.

Damn, when was that AC going to kick in?

“Hey, are you going to have enough food for me too?” asked Connor as he poked around in her fridge. “Because I can always just eat a ham and cheese or PB&J.”

The thought of this high-powered attorney with his head to toe dry clean only ensemble eating a brown bag sandwich served to finally calm her nerves down. “I always make extra for leftovers the next day so it’ll be fine.”

She started cutting up a few avocados to make some fresh guacamole. “Cilantro, onions, and tomatoes okay in the guac? I make mine chunky.”

“Perfect. Brian makes it the same way.”

“He would. I’m the one who got him hooked on it.”

Connor tilted his head at that tidbit as he threw the meat in the skillet. “I still find it so hard to believe I don’t have any recollection of seeing you after that first day at the hospital.”

She went with a breezy, unoffended shrug. “Guess I just have one of those forgettable faces.”

He gave her a quiet look. “No, you don’t. My point, exactly.”

Good lord, so that’s what a ‘smoldering glance’ looked like? With Connor’s ice blue eyes, the effect was lethal to her lady parts.

“Well, it’s not as if the times we saw each other in passing were momentous events,” she recovered, just barely stopping herself from telling him how unforgettable she’d always found him. “Plus, family gatherings for siblings and friends to meet and hang out weren’t really your parents’ sort of thing.”

“No,” he snorted, “unless you count the occasional $500 a plate fundraising dinners. Which I don’t.”

“Honestly, I think we only actually ‘saw’ each other the couple of times there was some emergency requiring us to do a Skylar hand-off at Brian’s house.”

“That explains it,” he said quietly.

Abby knew what he meant. Each time she’d run into him, the fact that he’d looked criminally handsome had hardly even had a chance to register. Not with everything Beth was going through hanging on them like a dark cloud—the heftiness of why they’d been on opposite sides of a lonely two-way road to and from Brian’s house so often to begin with.

“Was it as hard for you to go there as it was for me?” she asked softly.

“Yes.” He looked up from the stove. “My mother never went over enough to get it, and as cold as it sounds, I don’t know if my father really cared enough to either.”

With a heavy sigh, he turned the steak over and murmured, “You know, Skylar called me ‘dad’ once.”

To anyone outside of the conversation, the comment would seem totally random.

But she got it.

Stark, bleak sympathy kicked her in the gut as she admitted in an equally saddened tone, “Skylar called me mommy a few times, too. Twice, Beth heard it.”

The frustration-laden curse under his breath was an all too familiar one for her too, as the only f-bombs she ever dropped almost exclusively had the word Huntington’s strapped to it.

It was a sad comfort to have someone else around that knew exactly what the last decade had been like for her as Brian’s best friend.

After a long, heavy silence, Connor eventually looked up at her again with a speculative glance. “Hey, what about Skylar’s third birthday party?” he asked, his tone now several tons lighter. “The pool party?” His eyes made a slow pass over her, the return trip back up lingering in places that made her think of sexy supervillains with flame-throwing gazes. “You in a swimsuit? There is just no way I could’ve seen that and not remembered.”

If it was possible, his hot look scorched ten degrees higher when it settled back on her eyes.

Luckily, the very vivid memory of that party was funny enough to prevent her from succumbing to a heat stroke. “I think you had your hands full that day.”

He looked genuinely puzzled by that.

“Oh, to be an archived entry in your little black book,” she tsked. “Or should I say entries.”

Slow understanding dawned in his eyes. “Shit, I forgot about that.”

“Yup, you made that admission a few times that day.” And the resulting reality show worthy catfight at the pool had been colossal.

He cringed. “To be fair, I didn’t actually invite either of those women to that party.” His tone turned innocent. “Just like I didn’t invite the woman I was dating at the time, either.”

Shaking her head, she began setting the food on the coffee table. “No wonder you have the reputation you do.”

“I don’t have a reputation.” He brought over the steak and their bottles of beer, correcting her with a grin, “I earned it.”

Abby burst out laughing. “You’re kind of an ass, you know that, right?” The rest of her laughs got lodged in her throat when she turned and practically ran right into him.

Holy swizzle sticks, did he have to be so masculine?

“But you like me anyway,” he prodded in that low, melting Vegas hypnotist voice, leaning in without any regard for her personal space. “Despite my ass-likeness.”

So close. He was so close she could bury her face against his neck if she wanted. Breathe him in whether she wanted to or not. “No,” she lied, backing up a step since it was clear he had no intention of doing so. Yep, an ass for sure.

One she wanted to rub up against like a cat finding her purr.

She took another ginormous step back.

He followed, invading her sanity even more than before. “No? So what do I have to do to change that?”

Christ, he wasn’t even trying yet?

“Alright, alright, so I like you. Why wouldn’t I? We’re friends, right?” It’d do a world of good to remind herself, too. With a big, friendly smile, she sidestepped him and gestured back over to the coffee table. “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, fluff it for her to make sure she was comfortable.

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?

CHAPTER SIX

CONNOR COULDN’T BELIEVE he was sitting on a living room floor eating dinner with Abby. 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. My research has unearthed some pre-college cases after the technology boom—a few pivotal high school cases as early as the 1900s. To contrast these findings with the present, I’ve been collecting data from school resources all across Arizona.”