by Amy Andrews
“Hauser’s crossing between right and left field like the pro he is.”
His TV voice was back, and his fingers lingered for long, torturous minutes at her nipples until her pulse was a drum beat in her blood and she was panting and squirming against him, rubbing her ass into his crotch, using his fully fledged erection as some kind of erotic scratching pole to help soothe the ache between her legs.
Dear Lord, she wanted him inside her.
“Hauser decides to make a break for the try line.” His fingers left her nipples, heading south, bumping over the dips of her ribcage. “It’s clear midfield.” His fingers trekked to her belly button, slowly circling. “Looks like he has a straight run.”
Jane’s pulse fluttered madly as Cole’s fingers moved lower and lower, brushing the band of her bikini bottoms. The scene on the shoreline went a little hazy as his fingers breached the band.
“He’s stepped over the line. He’s well in the deep now.” She gasped as his fingers furrowed between her legs, where she was hot and slick and needy. “Oh yesss, baby.” He breathed it into her ear, his voice slipping to Cole the man as he found the hard knot of nerves he’d been seeking.
“Touchdown,” he muttered, slipping back into his professional commentator voice. Jane cried out; she couldn’t stop it, and he grunted a little as if he, too, was having difficulty keeping it together before saying, “And the crowd goes wild.”
If Jane hadn’t been so damn close to coming, she’d have probably laughed, but his fingers were working her so damn good, and all she could do was press her arms hard into the boards of the pier to stop herself from sinking down into the lake on a wave of boneless pleasure.
“The ground’s really soaked now,” Cole continued as he rubbed her clitoris, and Jane thought she might just pass out. “Everything’s slick and slippery, but Hauser has the safest hands in the business and does his best work in the wet.”
He rubbed harder, and even though she was pretty far gone, with every muscle in her pelvis and thighs and ass pulling tight, Jane could tell Cole was also losing his professional focus.
“There’s nothing he likes more than a good maul.” His voice was hella husky, and he was going to need to work on his breathing if he was serious about television. “Unless it’s a good ruck.”
Jane didn’t understand what any of that meant, but she was barely focusing on the terminology, and, as two of his fingers slipped inside her, she came so hard it was completely secondary. Cutting the cry off somewhere at the back of her throat, Jane bucked against him silently, her teeth gritted and her jaw tight as air sucked noisily in and out of her nose, and he whispered, “Yes, baby, yes,” over and over in her ear, his fingers relentless between her legs.
Clamping down on her response to her orgasm was like trying to contain a mushroom cloud, forcing it sideways instead, intensifying it, pushing it to every nook and cranny and increasing the dissipation time so that it seemed to go on forever. Everything went hazy and blurry, the scene before her eyes twisting and bending like time itself was being warped, like she was actually leaving her body.
And when it did finally dissolve like smoke into thin air, she was left limp and weak and gasping like a newly landed fish. His fingers left her body at that point, his arm slipping around her waist as if he was worried about her ability to hold on. “I got you,” he whispered.
But it still took several more minutes for the world to right itself, for it to come back into focus, for her to come back to herself. “So…what do you think? Think I can cut it?” he asked, his lips nuzzling her temple.
Jane laughed shakily. “I’m not one for Monday-morning quarterbacking, but I think you’ll do.”
His low chuckle shivered across her skin as he removed his arm from the pier and the one around her waist. His body was still solid behind her as he tread water, his fingers reaching for the loose strings of her bikini top and retying them at her nape. Pressing a kiss there when he was done, he said, “Go get Finn.”
Jane looked over her shoulder at him. “Aren’t you coming?”
He groaned and said, “No,” and Jane belatedly realized her Freudian slip as the hardness behind her registered. “You go on. I’m going to need some extra time in this cold lake to calm down before I get out.”
Then he dropped another kiss on her nape before pushing away, striking out in a brisk freestyle. Jane smiled, already thinking about the ways she could run the play on him tonight.
Chapter Twelve
The next afternoon, Cole was out in the backyard with Finn, pushing him on the swing. “Higher, Cole, higher!”
Cole smiled and pushed the kid higher. Finn was a fearless little dude—he had to give the boy that as he hung on to the rope and let his head fall back, his straight blond hair hanging off his scalp like spaghetti. It was making Cole dizzy just looking at him, but Finn clearly had a cast-iron gut.
“Wheeeeeee! I’m flying! I’m flying. Higher, Cole! Higher!”
Laughing, he gave the tire another round of pushes. Finn Spencer was a handful from the second he rose to the second he went to bed, but Cole hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. Never in a million years would he have thought entertaining a four-year-old all day would be this satisfying.
He’d meant it when he’d told Jane that he hadn’t ever given fatherhood serious thought because rugby was everything. But this playing house thing, hanging out with Finn and Jane, was forcing him to reassess a lot of things. And it wasn’t just that his plan A was smashed to smithereens or that he got a funny little kick in the vicinity of his heart whenever he looked at Jane or even the sexual halo ringing this whole experience.
Something inside him had made a seismic shift. He hadn’t given his own direction in life serious thought since he’d started taking care of Finn, and that should have scared the bejesus out of him—but it didn’t.
His phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket as Finn said, “More, more!” Cole grinned and gave the kid more, planning to reject the call outright. But then he glanced at the screen—it was Mitch Jellicoe, his agent. At only forty, Mitch was one of the top sporting agents in Australia and also apparently clairvoyant, calling like this when Cole was pondering over how little his future had been on his mind.
Glancing at the time, Cole did a quick calculation in his head. It was about nine on Friday morning back home in Sydney. Home. He glanced at the blond-haired little boy, then back at the phone, his ribs crimping tight around his lungs, his heart booming slow and hard. Two weeks ago, he’d have answered this call in a split second, but now his finger hovered indecisively over the reject button.
It had to be the sportscasting job. Had he gotten it, or was Mitch ringing with bad news? And how the fuck did he even feel about that?
Sucking up his indecision, he quickly pushed the answer button. “Hey, Mitch.”
Mitch was his usual upbeat self, wanting to shoot the breeze a while first, but Cole just wanted him to get to the point. He was supposed to be looking after Finn, not being distracted by a phone call. “Can we just cut to the chase, please, Mitch?”
There was a pause like Mitch hadn’t expected such directness, but he ploughed straight into it. “The job’s yours if you want it.”
The bands around Cole’s chest tightened as Mitch launched into the package, touting the salary and perks he’d managed to negotiate and studio expectations. But Cole barely heard any of it as he waited for the expected flood of relief to focus his mind.
It didn’t come.
When he first arrived here, this job—despite his reservations about it—had been his one hope to still stay connected to rugby. It was the basket into which he’d put all his eggs. And now?
He’d found some other baskets. God…when had that happened?
“You’re starting in two weeks.”
Whoa! Okay, that focused his mind. As Mitch prattled some more, Cole
glanced at Finn, who had a grin the size of Australia on his face as he spun around and around, clearly enjoying the way the world was spinning.
The world was spinning for Cole, too, but he was not enjoying it.
“Do you need the office to rearrange your flights?”
Cole blanked for a second, then panicked for another second. Two weeks. He glanced at Finn again as indecision raged. “Could I have a few days to think it over, Mitch?”
“I’m sorry?” Cole actually heard a thunk, like Mitch might’ve had his feet up on his desk and they’d suddenly fallen to the floor. Or maybe it was his forehead meeting his desk. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
“Yeah. It is. But…”
“But what?”
Yeah. But what, Cole? But…there’s this woman…
“Cole…mate. This is a good deal. They’re not going to go any higher, and…look, I know you think time will be some miracle healer, but you know the docs are unanimous about your inability to return to—”
“Goddamn it, Mitch!” Jesus. Cole knew that. He didn’t need his fucking agent to rub it in. “I just need a few days, okay?” It felt like there was a lot more at stake now than there had been even a few weeks ago when he’d left Australia. “Could you get me that?”
A beat or two of silence followed before Mitch answered. “Okay, sure thing. I can do that.”
“Thank you.” Cole hung up the phone, throwing it down on the grass, annoyed at Mitch and himself and his damn fucking leg.
“Who’s Mitch?”
Cole glanced up to find Finn watching him, the swing circling lazily now as it ran out of steam. “He’s…my agent.”
Finn frowned. “What’s an agent?”
“Someone who helps someone else find a job.”
“You got a job?”
“Yeah.” Absently, Cole gave the swing another push. It lacked enthusiasm, which kinda matched his mood. “I got a job.”
“Playing footy?”
Cole smiled at how foreign the very Australian colloquialism sounded coming out in a squeaky little-boy voice. He didn’t realize he’d said it that often. “Kinda.”
“In Credence?”
“No.” He grimaced. “In Sydney.” A fucking long way away from Credence.
“Do you want his guts for garters?”
Cole blinked and laughed despite his dark mood. The kid picked up everything. “No, why?”
“You sounded mad on the phone.”
Jesus. The kid had ears like a bat. “I think he wants my guts for garters,” Cole said with a rueful smile. “Now, how high this time? Higher than the treetops?”
He gave the swing an almighty push, getting an excited little giggle from Finn. “Higher than the mooooooon,” he said, leaning back and pointing at the white sliver high in the sky, just visible through the leaves and branches of the tree.
Cole laughed. He couldn’t get it that high, but, for Finn, he’d try his damndest.
A few hours later, with Finn finally tucked up in bed, Cole came downstairs to find Jane. She’d been operating an industrial-strength sanding machine most of the day, removing all the old tile crud from the parquetry floor in preparation for its first coat of gloss tomorrow. It was quiet now as he located her standing in the middle of the red sitting room, admiring her handiwork.
The parquetry, with the damaged timber pieces now completely replaced or restored thanks to Jane’s handiwork, had been heavily sanded.
“You did it,” Cole said, sliding his arm around her waist.
She looked up at him and smiled—beamed, actually—and Cole’s heart went thunk. She was radiant in her achievement. “Doesn’t it look amazing?”
Cole looked all around. To an untrained eye, it probably looked dusty and lackluster, dulled by the sanding process, the color differentiation between the three types of wood nonexistent. But Cole knew that would change with the first lick of gloss, that the richness of the wood would come to life, the individual color properties of the timber forming a vibrant red tapestry.
“It really does.”
“I love this bit. Where the wood is taken back to its bare bones, to what it was the day it was laid all those years ago. Knowing I’m seeing it as the person who painstakingly laid each piece saw it.” She shook her head as she also inspected the parquetry. “I wonder if they knew they were creating this thing of beauty that would be cherished and admired long after they were dead. That a woman two centuries later would be keeping their handiwork alive.”
Her voice was wistful, her face earnest. Her passion for what she did, her drive to restore and continue the provenance of a house or a chandelier or a floor, was infectious. She looked at it like it was a precious piece of art and she was its custodian.
“You’re so hot when you talk restoration.”
She laughed, her ponytail brushing her neck as she looked up at him again. “Oh yeah.”
“Not as hot as you were handling that machine before, but yeah.”
She frowned. “The sander?”
“Yep.” Cole nodded. “Your guns were popping.”
She shrugged. “It’s heavy and can get away from you if you don’t keep a firm hold.”
Having some experience with sanders, Cole knew of which she spoke. “Right. That’s what I said. Hot.”
“Oh yeah. With my goggles and my respirator mask. Very hot.” She pulled out her T-shirt and let it go again, a fine cloud of dust puffing into the air. “I have dust in places where dust should not go.”
Cole grinned. “Oh, I can help you with those places.”
He lowered his head, his mouth zeroing in on hers. Unfortunately, his phone had other ideas, cutting through the moment like the final hooter of a rugby match. “Sorry,” he muttered, his mouth lifting as he reached for his phone. “I’ll switch it off.”
Her attention returned to the parquetry as he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. The damn thing had barely rung in two weeks, and today it’d rung twice. Cole frowned at the name flashing on the screen.
Griffin King? The coach of the Sydney Smoke.
King was famously a man of few words, so Cole doubted he was ringing just to shoot the breeze. Maybe he’d heard about the commentary position being offered to Cole and he wanted to talk about Cole’s contract with the Smoke? The one he’d refused to revoke until Cole had made a decision about his future.
“I’m sorry. I need to get this.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s fine. I’ll be over here in all my hotness, loving on this floor for a bit longer.”
Cole laughed, answering the call as he walked over to the windows. “Griff?”
“Hauser.”
Cole leaned a hip into the windowsill, propping his cane beside him as he waited for Griff to say something else. Apparently, the old guy had mellowed a little since he had reconciled with his daughter and there was a grandbaby on the scene, but it sure hadn’t made him any chattier. “Everything okay?” he prompted.
“You’re in Denver, right?”
Cole had no idea how Griff knew his whereabouts. The only people he’d confided his travel plans to were Wade and Mitch. So Mitch must’ve spilled. Probably hoping Griff could talk Cole into taking the sportscaster job. Cole braced himself for that and the inevitable gut wrench that officially confirmed his career was over.
“Nearby, yes.” Cole didn’t think Griff King wanted to know the nitty-gritty of where he was and why. More silence as Cole waited for the order to get his arse on a plane and get home to the best offer he was ever going to get post-injury.
“I need you to check out a player for me.”
Cole blinked. If Griff had said he wanted Cole to swim back to Australia ASAP he’d have been less surprised. “A player?”
“Ronan Dempsey. He plays for the Barbarians.”
“O
kay.” Cole hadn’t heard the name, and he usually kept his finger on the pulse where worldwide talent was concerned. But he hadn’t exactly been paying attention to anything rugby since the accident.
“They have a game at four tomorrow afternoon your time.”
“Okay.”
“If he’s half as good in real life as the reports I’ve heard and what I’ve seen on screen, I want him to try out for us.”
A spike of jealousy lanced Cole right through his middle. Rugby players all around Australia would kill for such an endorsement from Griffin King. Ronan Dempsey must be something else.
“I need someone who knows their shit to take a look for me. I don’t want to be fed hyper-inflated bullcrap from his team or from those with a vested interest. I don’t want him to know there’s someone in the stands checking him out. I need someone I can trust to give me an objective assessment. Are you up for it?”
Could he go watch a game of rugby for the first time since his accident with the aim of scouting out a player who was probably going to be taking Cole’s place in the Sydney Smoke? Christ. Griff didn’t want much.
But…he couldn’t deny he was curious. If Griffin King thought this guy was something special, then hell if Cole didn’t want to see him in action. In fact, he was even a little excited at the prospect. There was nothing like watching a gifted player do his thing.
“Yeah. I’m up for it.”
“Good. If he’s special, I want you to go and introduce yourself. Sound him out. On the down low.”
“About?”
“Where he sees his career going. Would he consider moving to the other side of the planet for it?”
“Okay.”
“But only if he’s the one, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” And he did. He also knew that Griff was giving him a shitload of responsibility. Securing a top player could help a team win a competition. It could also make or break that player’s career.
“Call me after.”