Page 355 of Summer Heat
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 co
mplicated 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?
