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?”