Page 390 of Summer Heat
She beamed. “Oh c’mon, just because you win an argument doesn’t mean I can’t get in some good blows. What kind of fight would that be?”
Choosing to hear only the most important part of that, he puffed up his chest in satisfaction. “So you’re admitting I’m right?”
Her pert little nose went up in the air. “Most certainly not. I’m saying I get why you think you’re right.”
Laughing, he kissed the tip of her nose and began arming up to go another round when the doorbell rang.
He ran over and pulled the door open to a less than welcome swirl of Chanel and platinum blonde hair.
“Hey, babe.” Victoria took off her suit jacket and popped a kiss on his lips. “If I beg really prettily will you give me one of your magic foot rubs tonight? I had a killer day today.”
She pulled off her designer stilettos one at a time as if they were singlehandedly responsible for all modern torture techniques. “In return, I’ll massage any part of your body you want.”
Connor jerked back and took a giant step away as he silently guided Victoria’s attention over to Abby on the couch.
“Oops! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company.” Victoria shrugged and grabbed his shoulder to slip her stilettos back on her feet, groaning in her usual, unintentionally triple-X way.
He threw a worried glance over at Abby, knowing how bad this looked. There was no way she could possibly know that flirting was basically Victoria’s first language, and that between them, proposi
tions involving body parts never actually meant anything.
It took him a fair amount of restraint not to forcibly shove Victoria’s hand off his shoulder while she was teetering on one ridiculously high heel. Partly, because he didn’t want her tripping over and showing Abby why she didn’t have any panty lines under that skintight suit skirt.
Not missing a thing, Victoria soon caught wind of his panic and slid a curious smile over at Abby.
Uh-oh.
“I’m Victoria, by the way,” she called out, vying for the crown of world’s slowest suit jacket wearer.
He should’ve let her fall on her ass.
“I’m Abby,” came the quiet, flat reply from the living room. He shot a quick look back her way, tried to get her to meet his eyes. She wouldn’t.
Victoria tilted her head to the side. “You look so familiar. Have we met?”
Connor jumped in on that one. “I highly doubt that. This is my little brother’s friend. She goes to ASU; you two don’t exactly run in the same circles.”
Abby went stiff.
Shit, now what’d he do? He’d only been trying to help by cutting off Victoria’s interrogation. But it seemed he somehow made things worse.
One perfectly arched eyebrow directly at his eye level harassed him without saying a word, told him she wasn’t leaving without at least a little more of an explanation.
“Abby’s staying here for a bit while the place she’s renting is being renovated.” He followed that up with a pointed glare that shouted, Now LEAVE.
But that’s when Abby chose to speak up. “Yeah, thank God for good old Connor here. He took pity on a starving college kid and offered to let me crash here.”
Ooh, this was so not good. There was no way Abby ever used ‘crash’ in that context before. He’d have no choice but to forgive the ‘old’ crack. She was clearly pissed.
Victoria, on the other hand, looked like she was ready to split a seam laughing. “I see. Well, like I said, I didn’t know Connor had company so I’m sorry for barging in.”
“No, don’t go.” Abby got up to grab her bag and keys. “I should be heading out anyway.”
What? “You didn’t mention you had plans tonight.”
As slippery as a ghost, Abby shot right past them and yanked open the front door before he could stop her. “A friend invited me to go clubbing so you two can have the place all to yourselves for your massage night.”
“Abby.” It came out a feral bark. And had zero effect on her.
