NICE GIRL TO LOVE (THE COMPLETE THREE-BOOK COLLECTION)(122)

“So you think because it’s fun, it’s okay to arm random children with knifes without at least asking their parents first?”

“I didn’t arm her, I taught her how to use a cooking utensil. And I didn’t ask you because I knew you’d say no.”

He’d never lost his temper so irretrievably before.

“Let me get this straight. You thought this was dangerous enough that I would say no, and you just plain did it anyway?”

“No. I think it’s perfectly safe with the right training and supervision. I knew you would say no to it regardless.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Brian—”

“And how in the world do you know my name?”

“We talked on the phone once a long time ago.”

Suddenly, he remembered her voice. And her unforgettable weirdness. “You were the one with Connor’s phone, the one who likes hanging up on people to go eat cake.”

“Actually, I was serving cake that day but...huh, you know what, that does sound like something I would do,” she beamed, visibly pleased.

Weirder and weirder.

“Look, just because you know my brother, doesn’t mean you know me. Don’t make baseless assumptions about me.”

“Oh, they weren’t baseless.”

And then the woman up and simply walked away.

Of all the aggravating… He stomped after her. “Explain.” He didn’t trust himself with longer sentences at this point.

“I was at the hospital that day Skylar cut her finger off.”

She was?

“That’s why I knew you’d think this was too dangerous.”

He took in a long, slow breath. “So you knew Skylar cut her finger off, and your brilliant idea was to then give her a gigantic knife to play with?”

“Yes. Skylar clearly developed a fear of knives after that accident. I saw the way she looked at them. So I was trying to help her.”

“What are you a part-time shrink as well?”

“Nope. I just know that she’s better off without harboring an unnecessary fear.”

“You don’t know anything about her. You may have been at the hospital, but you don’t know a damn thing about what she’s gone through. What she’s going through.”

Tessa finally stopped working then. She came toe to toe with him and said, “Maybe not all of it, but I know some. I do a lot of volunteer work with Huntington’s patients. That’s how I met Connor, in fact. I’ve been working with him on a lot of grant projects for new clinical trials and a few of his pro bono cases that involve alternative healing practices for Huntington’s patients.”

Brian just stood there and stared. Connor never said he was working on anything like that.

“Plus,” her voice crackled with pain, “my sister died of Juvenile Huntington’s. She had more than enough things to be afraid of in her life. If I’d been able to help her overcome even one more of her fears before she died, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat.” She flashed him a stubborn look. “I realize that Skylar doesn’t know if she has JHD yet but I can guarantee you she’s scared. So what’s the harm in my helping her get rid of one of her other, smaller fears?”

Well hell, when she put it like that.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Brian said softly.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” she replied, just as softly.

Mulishly, he maintained, “I still think you were wrong about giving her a knife.”

She burst out laughing then. A musical, effervescent laugh full of life and hope and things he couldn’t remember, even.

How on earth was she still able to laugh like that?

“I think I like you, Brian. I think I like you a lot, actually.” Still chuckling to herself, she walked back to the kitchen, her long, dark, pink-tipped ponytail swishing behind her like a metronome.

What a strange woman.

Never had he met anyone so frighteningly good at pushing his buttons.

And damn, if she didn’t have the cutest smile too…



THE END