NICE GIRL TO LOVE (THE COMPLETE THREE-BOOK COLLECTION)(115)

“Do you know how long it took me to decipher the damn thing?”

“Didn’t you have your magic decoder ring?” she asked, her voice trembling worse than her limbs. How on earth she was managing to speak right now was beyond her.

Connor placed his hands on the doorframe and leaned in, piercing her with those ice blue eyes of his, both warmer and hotter than she’d ever seen them before. “Yes, but do you have any idea how many sentences can result out of those five number combinations you sent?”

“How many?”

“Too many,” he grumbled, his gaze roaming over her like he was memorizing, cherishing every bit of her. “It took me hours to decode!”

“Hours?” At this point, one-worded responses were the best she’d be able to get out.

“Well, about five minutes to translate it once I figured it out.” A loving timbre dropped his tone a vulnerable octave lower. “But it took me another two hours after that to try every other possible number-letter conversion just in case my first deciphering was simply wishful thinking on my part.”

Her heart soared.




WHEN CONNOR HAD FIRST OPENED the text message from Abby’s phone number earlier in the evening, he’d thought it was the cruelest butt-dial in the history of mankind. After what had happened back at the house the night before, after they’d finally found Skylar curled up in Abby’s guestroom, he’d been so sure…

He’d spent the entire day preparing his heart to let her go.

It was by sheer luck—and perhaps the fact that he’d been staring at the nonsensical string of numbers in her text like a lovesick pup—that he’d discovered the strategic spaces between the number sequences. Those four little spaces had sent hope rushing in his bloodstream like a drug, which he’d nearly OD’d off of when he started seeing the words unravel before his eyes.

I’m in love with you.

Trust Abby to put him through the emotional torture of translating a coded message using a magic decoder ring cipher.

The woman was going to drive him crazy for the rest of his life.

He couldn’t wait.

Shoving his phone back in his pocket, Connor stepped through the doorway, nearly stalking Abby as he edged her back through the foyer and into the living room. “Hours, Abby. I spent hours driving myself crazy when I could have been here driving you crazy instead. Doing this—”

In one hard swoop, he strapped a steel arm around her waist to pull her flush against him before he caught her jaw, and molded his mouth to hers.

An eternity later, which still felt far too soon to let her go, he pulled back, breathing ragged, heart stripped bare as he whispered against her lips, “I’m in love with you too, Abby.”

Seeing her face light up with such joy, such love, Connor steeled his heart one final time and asked, “Are you sure, sweetheart? Are you sure I’m the one you want?”

“Yes. A thousand times, yes.” Her voice overflowed with emotion. “Brian’s my best friend. I love him, I have for years. But you’re the one I’m in love with, Connor. In more ways than I can describe or define, in more ways than I’ve ever even imagined, and in more ways I discover every day. I’m in love with you.”

“Thank god.” He sagged against her. “You don’t know what it cost me to ask you that.”

When he smoothed her hair back and saw not just the shining love in her eyes, but the lingering sadness still in there as well, he tried to offer the only comfort he could.

“Skylar will come around, sweetheart. If it helps, she texted to tell me that if I ever hurt you, she and Brian would come after me and ‘go postal on my ass.’”

Abby’s eyes crinkled affectionately at the corners as her soft laughter filled the room. “I love that little girl so much. I’ve been with her from the very beginning. I don’t know how not to be a part of her life. Raising her all these years, I felt like…”

“Her mom,” he said gently.

“Yes.” She looked up at him as if he held all the answers. “So how do I go backward from there? How do I become just her friend Abby after all that?”

Connor studied her expression and ventured cautiously, “You could meet her in the middle and be her favorite aunt.”

Abby chuckled. “Skylar’s too old to call me that. We stopped having her call me Aunty Abby when she was three.”

“Well, what if we have her call you Aunt Abby, instead?”

She froze on a silent gasp and he saw his words finally filtering through. She stepped back and searched his gaze, as if she were looking for another hidden message there.

“You’re never going to need another decoder ring to know how I feel, sweetheart. I meant it exactly as I said it.”

“We can’t—” She bit her lip. “Yet. We can’t yet, Connor, it’s too soon.”

“I know it is,” he replied pulling her into his arms. “So I’ll wait. I’ve been waiting my whole life to find you, Abby. And now that I have, I’m not going anywhere. You tell me when you’re ready to be my wife, when you’re ready to be Skylar’s aunt.”

“And I’ll have a ring on your finger so fast it’ll make your head spin.”





CHAPTER THIRTY