by Amy Andrews
But it did.
Cole painted with Finn for well over an hour. After they finished, they pegged their many works of art on the clothesline to dry, and then Cole set up the sprinkler in the backyard under the huge Burr Oak. He didn’t check in with Jane or ask permission; he just went ahead. It had been a hot day, but now it was after four—the harsh heat of the sun had mellowed. Plus, the kid was covered in paint, despite the apron Jane had insisted he wear.
Win. Win.
And then there was the added advantage of running off Finn’s pent up energy. The kid was a real live wire, constantly running off at the mouth and always moving. Even watching the cricket, he’d squirmed and fidgeted and chatted continuously to Cole and Carl and the cricketers on the screen. Cole could relate. He might not have suffered from Finn’s verbal diarrhea, but Cole’s mother had always said he’d had ants in his pants and had gotten him into sport at an early age.
She’d known, in the way that mothers did, that those ants needed to be channeled for good or they’d be channeled for bad, particularly in the dodgy area he’d grown up. Cole had started off with basketball because of his height, and swimming, then tennis. He’d excelled at all of them, but then soccer had come along, and he’d realized he was better still at kicking a ball.
But nothing had been like the adrenaline rush of his first rugby game. Hard and fast and…gladiatorial in a way that gave all his teenage energy and rage at his deadbeat father an outlet.
And the rest was history.
“Look at me, Cole!”
Cole, who was watching from the top of the four wide, shallow steps that connected the back portico with the yard, waved at Finn, who’d stripped to his underwear. Cole had found some empty plastic containers of various sizes in the kitchen cupboards and had given them to Finn to fill with water and generally mess around with. Having grown up with few toys, Cole had learned to improvise early, and his mother had firmly believed that anything could be used as a toy.
Finn had filled up the largest container and was now tipping it over his head, drenching himself and grinning a crazily happy grin. “Do it again,” Cole called. “I think you missed some!” And Finn set about filling the container again with the light spray coming from the sprinkler.
It was pleasant on the stairs; the sun had gone down enough now to shade the entire back yard, not just the area under the tree, and the light breeze occasionally wafted some spray his way, cooling Cole even further. The yard wasn’t huge, but it was big enough for a kid to run around in and was fully walled. He’d have killed to have had space like this growing up instead of a small courtyard crammed full of his father’s crap stolen from work sites and left to rust and rot.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” he called to Finn. “Just getting a drink. You want a juice box?”
“Oh yes, please!”
Finn’s smile was so big and so happy it slugged Cole right in the center of his chest. Anyone would think he’d offered the kid a ticket to the moon or something.
Levering himself upright with the help of his cane, Cole headed for the kitchen. Jane was there cleaning up the mess of paints and paper they’d left behind. His irritation from earlier returned. The slight purse of her lips as her gaze had fallen on his empty beer bottles had rankled, and he noticed the beer he’d started and finished while they’d been painting and hadn’t yet disposed of was no longer on the bench.
He’d had four beers in about seven hours. He was hardly getting hammered every day. He was on vacation, for fuck’s sake.
“I was going to do that,” he said gruffly as he limped into the room. He’d had every intention of cleaning up once Finn was done under the sprinkler.
She glanced over her shoulder. “I don’t mind.”
“You’re supposed to be using this time to work, not clean up after me when I’m perfectly capable. Don’t let the cane fool you. I’m not an invalid.”
He couldn’t decide if he was cranky about her thinking him lazy or thinking him incapable. Or maybe it was that high ponytail of hers bobbing away, the end swishing against her nape, making him want to tug on it, making him want to press his lips to that nape, making him a little crazy.
He didn’t understand why he was so damn fascinated with this woman. He barely knew her, other than the fact she was pricklier than a hedgehog and also a little judgy. Plus, she was a single mum with a kid. She was so not his type. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He’d been weirdly alert to the low murmur of her voice wafting into the parlor these past couple of days, and he’d found himself thinking about her before he went to sleep and first thing when he woke.
Her eyes raked over him with a frankness he felt right down to his balls, but it was only brief before her brows arched and she bristled again. “I never thought you were.”
Her frame had tensed, and her words were stiff and stilted, but his body was still feeling the effects of her head-to-toe. He was pretty sure it was meant to be clinically assessing, but Cole had been subjected to the female gaze quite a lot in his life, and he knew when a woman was assessing and when she was looking.
“I needed a break and came out to see how you were going and saw you’d moved outside to the sprinkler. Cleaning up was the least I could do for entertaining Finn for me this afternoon and letting me get some work done.”
She stopped and hesitated, and Cole thought she was done before she added, “Thank you. I…appreciate it.”
Cole almost laughed. It was the most reluctant thank-you he’d ever heard. It seemed every time they had a genuine chance to connect, they botched it, rubbing against each other like sandpaper and zapping at each other like static.
He didn’t know why. He was usually pretty smooth with women, but this one hadn’t fallen for the old Cole Hauser charm. Maybe it was the whole mommy thing she had going on. She seemed to treat him like a second child, another person to take care of—which probably said a lot more about her ex than him. But to a guy who already felt like he was learning to walk all over again, taking baby steps in a long, drawn-out recovery, it pissed him off.
This was not the time for that kind of analysis, however. She had a job to get back to, and he should get back to Finn in case he’d found some mischief to get into without the watchful eye of an adult. “Like I said, I don’t mind.”
And if it came out a little testy, then too bad.
Crossing to the fridge, he reached for Finn’s drink and a beer for himself. Except…there was no beer. A couple of hours ago, there’d been a six-pack. And he didn’t have to look too far to know what had happened.
Cole turned to face Jane, the juice box in hand. “Where’s my beer?”
She crossed over to Cole, relieving him of the juice and replacing it with a bottle of water from the fridge door. “I don’t like Finn having too much juice. It’s not good for his teeth. He can have water.” She pulled out a second one and shoved it at Cole’s chest. “So can you.”
Cole blinked. That was not what he asked. He put the water back in the fridge. “Where. Is. My. Beer?”
“I have no idea.”
Except clearly she did. What the actual fuck. “You stole my beer?”
“Nuh-uh. The beer fairy did.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The beer fairy? She sounds like someone who should be leaving beer in the fridge, not removing it.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?”
That smug little self-satisfied smile should not be a turn-on. Sadly, it was. Cole sighed. “You happen to know where this…beer fairy stashed my booze?”
“She…or maybe he…we shouldn’t assume gender…never divulges a hiding place.”
Cole couldn’t decide if the idea of a beer fairy was even more mind-boggling than pondering said fairy’s gender. “Jane.” He was done with the pretense.
“Look… Cole.” She moved around to the other side of the bench; he wasn’t sure if that was
to see him better or to put a large object between them. “I do really appreciate what you’ve done today, but I don’t want my kid exposed to your day drinking.”
His what now? “My…day drinking? I’m on vacation.”
“Studies have shown that kids who are exposed to adults regularly drinking around them are more likely to indulge in risky behaviors surrounding alcohol and have more alcohol-related issues as they navigate their teens.”
Cole shook his head. Was she for real? “I’ve been here for five days. I’m going to be gone soon. And I’m on vacation.”
She folded her arms. “He likes you. He’s impressionable.”
“He’s four!” Cole tried and failed to keep the exasperation out of his voice.
“Good habits start young.” She pursed her lips, which was strangely distracting. A little twist to her mouth that looked all schoolmistress again and made him wonder what she thought about day boinking. “So do bad.”
Christ… He gave himself a mental shake, engaging the brain in his head, not his pants. Jane Spencer was the full mommy catastrophe. He bet she had a dozen books on child-rearing somewhere at home. He had a feeling her standards would be impossible, which made the fact he really, really wanted to kiss that mouth so hard right now super confusing.
“Fine…” Cole shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. Finn was out there unsupervised, and there was no time to argue about something he wasn’t really doing with a woman who made him think of other things he’d rather be doing.
With her. During the day. Although that probably breached her standards, too. Only night fucking for the mommy, and then only strictly missionary.
“I’ll drink water.” He’d lost all appetite for beer, anyway. What he really needed now was tequila. Reaching into the fridge again, he dragged out the bottle she’d handed him before.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “I appreciate it.”
Cole was getting sick of hearing that word. It was so damn…bland. A mommy word used to make a kid feel special but made Cole feel like she was patting him on the head and sending him away, and he wondered how she’d react if he leaned in right now and kissed her mouth. Kissed her in a way that went beyond appreciation.
In a way that would wipe the word from her vocabulary forever.
But his life was fucked-up enough now without doing something monumentally stupid. Jane was a divorced, single mum who didn’t deserve to be messed with because he wanted to be seen. Not to mention how dangerous to his health she could be, considering how well the woman could wield a tool.
So he got out of the kitchen as quickly as his damn useless leg would carry him and continued down the stairs, kicking off his flip-flops, stripping off his T-shirt, and, much to Finn’s delight, walking straight into the sprinkler.
Cole found himself out on the stairs later that evening, just after eight, watching the day turn to night. The setting sun had given the oak tree a golden crown, but it was slowly fading as a blush stole across the sky, heralding twilight. He could even see the faint glimmer of the first star trying to twinkle through the last dying rays of sunlight. It was peaceful out here, nothing but insect song and the occasional bark from Betty—Tucker and Della’s dog next door—breaking the evening hush.
Cole dragged in a deep cleansing breath of eastern Colorado air, which had cooled nicely.
His gaze fell on the plastic containers still sitting under the tree near the now-dry sprinkler head. After they’d finished in the yard, Jane had taken over, and Cole had gone back to the cricket. He’d vaguely heard her and Finn messing around in the kitchen and then Finn tearing up the stairs at his usual breakneck speed with Jane’s slower, more measured footsteps following behind, but it’d been all quiet for the last hour or so.
He assumed Jane was putting Finn to bed, which meant she’d be down soon getting back to work on the floor. As if he’d conjured her up, he heard the soft shuffle of footsteps behind him, and he tensed as they drew closer. She was probably coming to bollock him over the containers still being in the yard or, worse, compensate for his injury by collecting them herself, and he braced himself for whatever form her criticism would take—verbal or implied.
Cole wasn’t sure he was up for either—not when all he’d been thinking about all afternoon was kissing her. Her steps stopped behind him, and he was excruciatingly aware of her presence just beyond his right shoulder.
“Nice night,” she murmured.
Cole opened his mouth to give a noncommittal reply when something cold and wet bumped against his upper arm, and he flinched. A frosty bottle of beer appeared over his shoulder then, and he grabbed it automatically as she said, “Truce?”
“Truce,” he said as she sat on the stair beside him, because questioning her definition would probably have the opposite effect.
She didn’t sit too close, nor was she too far. She was what Cole or any other onlooker might describe as a companionable distance. A space Finn could’ve comfortably occupied. But it didn’t feel companionable. It felt as charged as an electric fence.
That big motherfucker in Jurassic Park.
Cole twisted the top off his bottle, noting that Jane had also helped herself to his beer. “I see the beer fairy gave up my stash.”
“Let’s just say I may have…stumbled across it.” She twisted the top off her bottle. “Consider this my finder’s fee.” Then she raised it, angling the neck in is direction. “Cheers.”
Cole wasn’t sure what had gotten into Jane. She seemed relaxed—friendly, even. Had she already had a couple of beers? Is that what had taken her so long to come downstairs? It was like the night they’d bonded over parquetry flooring all over again, and he liked this version of Jane. He didn’t trust that she was going to be around for too long before her prickles—or his, for that matter—flared again.
Their relationship—for want of a better word—blew so hot and cold he was bound to come down with the flu sooner or later.
Cole tapped the neck of his bottle against hers. “Cheers.”
They drank for a moment or two, and Cole shut his eyes as the taste of cold lager flowed over his tongue. There was nothing better at the end of a warm day than a cold beer. Well, there were actually a lot of things better, but he was trying not to think about them right now.
Inappropriate didn’t even begin to cut it.
A small, grunty kind of noise interrupted the silence, dragging his gaze to the plastic-coated antenna of the baby monitor sticking out of Jane’s short’s pocket. He lifted his eyes to her face. “Finn snores?”
She smiled as she placed the beer to her lips once more. “Like a train.” Then she took a swig.
Cole’s breath hitched. Well, fuck him sideways…that was sexy. That smiling-around-the-lip-of-the-bottle thing, her mouth all turned up and glistening. It made him think about her mouth wet from his kisses, her mouth wet around other things. His gaze slid to her throat, which undulated as she swallowed.
The beer left her lips, and Jane wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes finding his again. “It’s his adenoids.” She said it like she thought him fully capable of following along and not still in a brain fuzz from the sexy smiling-around-the-bottle thing.
“He may need them out at some point. The ENT guy is keeping an eye on it at the moment.”
And if that didn’t make Cole acutely aware that this woman beside him was a mother with a kid and all the responsibilities that went along with that, then nothing else would. “He doesn’t look much like you.”
She gave a laugh. “No. Finn is the spitting image of his father. Blond, blue-eyed, carefree with the gift of the gab.”
Cole thought he detected a trace of something in her laugh. Bitterness? Regret? “Is that hard?”
She frowned, turning her eyes on him. “What?”
“Seeing your ex in him every day?”
“No.” She laughed again as she turned her gaze back to the encroaching night beyond the porch. “Absolutely not.”
“Finn’s not a constant reminder of what you had?”
“Of course he is. Tad is Finn’s father and always will be. But it’s not how you’re implying. Tad and I are long over.”
Cole took a sip of his beer. “It sounds like there’s some friction between the two of you.”
“No.” She sighed. “Not exactly. When he puts his mind to it, Tad is a great dad—very attentive. He’s just…prone to distraction.”
“Is that what happened with this job? You said Finn was supposed to be with his father in California.”
“Yeah. A…gig came up.”
Jane’s voice was achingly neutral, but the white clench at the angle of her jaw was a tell. “Finn’s father is a musician?”
“Yes.”
Never in a million years would Cole have guessed that Jane had been married to a muso. She seemed far too practical to fall in love with a dreamer. “What’s his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him?”
She gave a half laugh. “I doubt it. He plays with a band called Two Hands Clapping. His name is Tad Spencer.”
Nope. Never heard of him. “You kept your married name?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It’s Finn’s last name, too, and all my business stuff was already in that name, and it was just…way down on my list of priorities, I guess.”
Cole nodded. He imagined she had enough to do without dealing with a bunch of red tape. “You don’t have…parents or friends or a sister who could look after Finn?”
“My parents are in the military. They’re currently based in Germany. I don’t have siblings. Tad’s parents are on a cruise. And yes, I do have friends back in California I could call on, but not for four weeks. That’s not fair on them or Finn. And besides, he was expecting some fun time with his dad. He doesn’t need to be shunted somewhere else or get the message that I’m somehow unavailable to him.”
“Will you be able to finish the job in time?”
She took a sip of the beer before she answered. “I’m…not sure. I think I’m going to have to call on some help just in case.”