Going for Four: Counting on Love, Book 4 by Erin Nicholas Page A

shrugged. “Not entirely. But if he has a reservation about someone, like he does about Cody, I can’t just ignore that. And…” she started, then thought better of it.
    “And?” Amanda pressed.
    Olivia knew that Amanda was torn on this issue. Amanda knew personally that Conner’s misgivings were often overly dramatic. But she was also concerned about Olivia and couldn’t deny that Olivia hadn’t always made the best decisions in her love life.
    “I have some reservations about Cody too,” Olivia admitted.
    “Like what?” Isabelle wanted to know.
    “He doesn’t do relationships.” Olivia held up a finger. “He could very easily lose interest after we sleep together.” She added a second finger. “He could decide that monogamy isn’t for him long-term,” she said as she put up her third finger. “And he doesn’t want to ruin his friendship with Conner either,” she concluded, extending a fourth finger.
    “Well, first of all, Cody doesn’t do serious relationships because he wants you ,” Isabelle said.
    “And second of all,” Amanda added. “There is no way he’d lose interest in you. He’s been interested in everything else for two years. You add in sex and you’ve got him for good.”
    Olivia felt her stomach flip at that. She liked how that sounded.
    “All I know,” Emma said, “is he better have a damned good reason for putting Conner before you.”
    Olivia knew her sister was trying to be supportive. “He must. Right? I mean, it must be something big to be more important than me and how he feels about me,” she said, expressing a thought—and concern—she’d had for a while. What if it wasn’t all that big and important? What if it was just more important than her ? Did she really even want to know?
    But she did. Desperately. “I need to know what happened between Conner and Cody,” she said. “I need to know what Conner’s problem really is and why Cody’s letting it get in the way.”
    Amanda looked at Emma, who looked at Isabelle.
    Isabelle shrugged. “I don’t know the story.”
    “All I know is that it’s something that happened when they lived together in college,” Amanda said.
    “It’s about a girl,” Emma said.
    They all looked at her.
    “A girl?” Olivia asked. “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know much more than that,” Emma said. “And I only know that much because one night we were all drinking at Trudy’s and some girl came in and Cody commented that she looked a lot like someone named Ashley. Conner turned to him and said, ‘I can’t believe you said her name. We promised to never talk about her’, and Cody goes, ‘Sorry man. You’re right’.”
    Amanda shook her head. “That doesn’t really mean anything.”
    “There was something about their reactions. It was suddenly majorly tense.” Emma shrugged. “But yeah, that doesn’t tell much. Sorry.”
    Olivia hated the idea that there had been a girl at the center of the strain between her brother and the man she was pretty sure she was in love with. But it made some sense.
    “I need this whole story,” she said.
    “Conner’s never going to tell you,” Amanda told her. “And if you ask, he’s going to suspect why you want to know.”
    “That’s okay,” Olivia said. “I want to hear it from Cody anyway.”
    Olivia felt her heart rate kick up. She’d never asked Cody about the story. Another thing she’d simply ignored, hoping it would never matter. But now that she was going to hear it from him, she was equally nervous and excited.
    She looked around the table. “So will you help me?”
    Isabelle was the first to say, “What do you need?”
    “I need you to find out Conner’s side of the story,” Olivia said to Amanda.
    “Me? Why me?”
    Amanda was the most responsible, the one who had taken a lot of the worry and burden from Conner without him even realizing it when they’d been growing up. He trusted Amanda to share his concerns for their younger sisters. And he’d