Falling for the Good Guy (Can't Resist #2)(26)

“I gave a silent thank-you for your efforts.” She spread a slow, roaming glance over his chest. “And the view.”

“And here I thought I was being so slick.”

Laughing, Abby shook her head. “Nope, Skylar’s right. You’ve got absolutely no game.”

His fragile male ego now completely offended, he lunged for her, presumably to give her a noogie as well, but she slipped through his arms and tossed back with a coyote grin, “So glad you had your middle school daughter to help you out with that.”

Then, wisely, she ran.

The girls paused their game to hoot and cheer her on as he chased her around the living room.

“You’ve turned my own flesh and blood against me,” he complained, nearly catching the tail of her tshirt on her last rabbit scamper right past him.

“Maybe if you made better meatloaf, you’d have more allies,” she taunted, showing no signs of weakness even though she knew he was quickly closing her into a corner.

He launched into an airborne tackle at the precise moment she turned and spun out of his grasp. With a loud oomph, he landed on his stomach on the floor, to the resounding hollers of the girls, jumping up and down on the couch.

“I knew it was a mistake to show you that spin-out move,” he muttered, rolling onto his back and rubbing his chest. “You did it better than some of my varsity boys.”

She offered him a hand up. “That’s because I had a good coach.” When he hopped up and whisked her into his arms to demand the kiss he’d been chasing, she whispered, “And if Becky’s folks can return the sleepover favor, maybe you can show me a few more moves tomorrow night as well.”

His voice dropped a full sexy octave lower, and took on the most decadent growl. “Skylar’s right, you don’t play fair at all.”

“It’ll do you a world of good to remember that from now on.”




“IT’S YOUR FAULT the girls stayed up as late as they did, you know,” declared Brian as he returned to the living room after checking one final time to make sure the girls were indeed asleep and not just faking it like the last two times. “You sugared them up with cookies right before bed.”

“Excuse me?” Abby, waved a soapy spatula at him from the sink. “Who’s the one who begged me to make homemade frosting and then insisted we frost every last cookie? Talk about sugaring them up.”

Brian grinned. “Again your fault. You shouldn’t make such good frosting.”

Wrapping his arms around her middle, Brian cradled her in close. “Thanks for coming over tonight. I’m sorry I canceled our Valentine date.”

“Ready to talk about it?” she asked quietly.

He held her tighter. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”

Abby remained silent as she rinsed her hands and shut the water off. He grabbed the kitchen towel and wiped her hands idly, letting his mouth ramble off everything his brain was trying not to think about. “What if it’s true, Abby? What if Skylar has juvenile HD like Beth did? She has a 50% chance of having it, and she’s showing symptoms already.”

“We don’t know that, Brian. Remember the literature. We can’t jump to that conclusion based on one unexplained seizure.”

“But what if?” he pressed on. “It broke my heart to hear her saying she didn’t need her ring finger because she’d be dead before she ever got to get married. Everything that normal kids can look forward to—dating, prom, college…she may never get to do any of that either.”

“The doctors showed us those videos of all those kids who did get to do all of those things—”

“Don’t, Abby. Don’t try to cheer me up right now. I need to face the real possibility that Skylar might already have JHD.” Hot tears burned in his eyes. “That I may have to bury my daughter sometime in the next decade, right next to my wife.”

Abby spun around and clutched his face. “You listen here, Brian. I get that you’re trying to be realistic and prepare yourself but I raised that little girl right alongside you. I refuse to let myself imagine her being taken from us. Who knows what they may find in the next decade, what clinical trials are being developed right now that could help her, save her? So even if the worst possible fate does become a reality, I’m not going to give up hoping, believing.”

“I can’t ask you to go through that, Abby,” he whispered raggedly. “It’ll consume your whole life. Trust me, I know. You deserve better; you deserve to start a family and have a happily ever after…not…this.”

Her voice gentled. “Brian, you two already are my life.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. The little girl you love will stop remembering you. Are you ready for that? Because it’s one of the worst feelings in the world. All those years with Beth when she looked at me like I was a total stranger… I wouldn’t wish that life for you.”

“Stop it, Brian.”

But he was too far gone, he was sinking in a sea of despair he’d never allowed himself to wallow in throughout Beth’s entire battle with Huntington’s. And now he didn’t know how to come out of it. “You don’t want to be with me, Abby. I barely kept it together after Beth died. If Skylar…” He dropped his head into his hands and repeated, “You don’t want to be with me.”