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Beth was going through hanging on them like a 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?”
    “Yes.” He looked up from the stove. “My mother was never 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 and said softly, “Skylar called me ‘dad’ once.”
    Sympathy kicked her in the gut. “She called me mommy a few times by accident, too. Twice, Beth heard it.”
    The curse under his breath was an all too familiar one for her as well. 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.
    “Hey,” he eventually broke the silence with a speculative glance, his tone several tons lighter, “what about Skylar’s third birthday party? 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 day 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 entr ies .”
    Slow understanding dawned in his eyes. “Shit, I’d completely forgotten.”
    “I think you made that admission a few times that day.”
    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 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.
    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 to like a cat finding her purr.
    She took another step back.
    He followed, invading her sanity even more than before. “No? So what do I have to do to try and change that?”
    Christ, he wasn’t even trying yet? “We’re just friends, remember, Connor?” It’d do a world of good to remind herself, too. “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 . 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?

    C ONNOR COULDN’T BELIEVE he was sitting on a living room floor eating dinner with a woman. He hadn’t done something