Falling for the Good Guy (Can't Resist #2)(38)

The smile he’d witnessed on Abby’s face was different from any he’d ever seen on her. That magical sanctuary, those flowers…they were a part of her past that she’d lost because of whatever horrible thing she’d gone through in high school. And it killed him to see that smile disappear whenever the talk would eventually end the same way, with an uncomfortable, vague statement about them not being able to uproot the wild orchids and take it with them when they’d moved into their new home without a yard.

For the past few months, Brian had done a ton of research trying to find out for one, if the White Egret Orchid could even survive in Arizona, and secondly, if he could get any growers to ship the rare flower to Arizona. Luckily it could, and he did. The orchid had come in about a month ago, around the time he and Abby decided to give their relationship a try. Unbeknownst to her, that’s why he hadn’t let her go out back for the past few weeks; he wanted to make absolutely sure he could keep the little flower alive. With Skylar’s help and a whole lot of googling, the flower had done very nicely in their secret hideout on the back porch.

Since then, he’d spent his free time building an orchid shade house that doubled as a gazebo in his back yard using redwood lattice, similar to the ones in the photos Abby’s mom emailed him. He’d always planned on having a pergola back there anyway so the gazebo fit just as well.

The White Egret Orchid was the first of a bunch of orchids native to California and Arizona that he was already lining the shade house with. He wanted to surprise her with it today after her defense so she could see that he wasn’t just building a sanctuary for her.

He was building a life with her.

After one more glance at the delicate white flower, Brian replayed Connor’s words back in his head.

Don’t bring Abby up again unless it’s to tell me you’re ready to propose…or let her go.

He picked up his phone.

It was time to call Connor.




ABBY WAS PRACTICALLY GIDDY as she unlocked her office door and set down her laptop and books and posterboards and handouts...

She did it.

The past two hours of her dissertation defense had gone by like two minutes. But of course, it had been fully balanced out by the fifteen minutes she’d spent waiting outside afterward while they deliberated—that had felt like a lifetime.

And though she had planned, prepped, and dreamed of the moment, she still hadn’t been prepared to be so overwhelmed when her five distinguished panel members called her back in the room and greeted her with a simple, “Congratulations, Doctor.”

She’d been replaying that moment on loop in her head ever since.

Through all the paperwork and the celebratory hugs, those two words just kept reverberating in her brain.

After four long years of work, almost three hundred dissertation pages that had gone through nearly as many drafts, and an absolutely indecent number of books on loan from the library, she was now Dr. Abby Bartlett.

Like a complete dork, she whispered it aloud to herself in the privacy of her office.

And then grabbed the phone to call Brian.

He picked up on the first ring. “So are you going to let me call you doctor in bed tonight? Because I’ve been having all sorts of wicked fantasies about that.”

She giggled. “You’re determined to make this dirty aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.” His voice warmed. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.”

And that right there was just the icing on an utterly perfect day—nothing could top how insanely happy she felt right now.

“By the way, I have another gift for you. I’m heading over to you right now to drop it off.”

Clearly, Brian was intending to raise the bar for her definition of perfection.

After hanging up with Brian, Abby made sure to text Skylar, and then call her parents. By the time she was finally alone with just her thoughts in her office, the future ahead of her suddenly seemed so clear. For the past year, heck, the past four years, getting to this point had been the goal. Now that she’d reached it, she had some big decisions to make.

She went into her calendar on her smartphone and slid over to the four dates highlighted over the next three weeks, each with the word INTERVIEW in all caps. She’d been extremely lucky to have received four final round tenure-line faculty callbacks—two professor interviews in California, one in the Midwest, and a final one for a position right here in Arizona.

The only thing was that her employment priorities now were vastly different from what they’d been over winter break when her applications had gone in. Those applications had gone in before her relationship with Brian and Skylar had become what it is now…before she knew that she, Brian, and Skylar could really, truly have the happily ever after she’d never fully allowed herself to believe could come true.

Now, as she gazed at the interview dates for the three universities outside of Arizona, it seemed crazy for her to even go to the interviews. She certainly couldn’t ask Brian and Skylar to uproot their lives and move to a different state. And there was no way she was leaving them behind. Ever.

So Arizona it was.

It hit her then how different her life was now. Brian and Skylar were no longer just factors in her decisions of what she’d be doing today, but rather, the deciding factor of what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

She loved that.