At the grand old age of twenty-six, she felt like she’d been on this treadmill for decades. This week more than ever. What with the most important job of her life about to be showcased in a national magazine—if it got finished in time!—and her ex bailing on his responsibilities with Finn, she was way behind the eight ball. Tad had turned up on Wade’s doorstep with Finn and a newly purchased chameleon—a freaking chameleon—on Sunday, just two days into what should’ve been his four-week summer break with his son.
The four weeks she’d scheduled to complete this job.
Apparently, the band had a last-minute gig in Vegas they couldn’t turn down, but he’d be back Wednesday morning. I promise, Jane. Wednesday had come and gone. As had Thursday. So, instead of finishing the job she’d been paid handsomely to complete within four weeks, Jane had been spending her days entertaining her energetic four-year-old and Carl the chameleon. Who was, she’d discovered, a gifted escape artist.
Yet another male in her life trying her patience. And her friends wondered why she’d become a freaking nun.
Like she even had the time or energy for that.
Consequently, she was burning the midnight oil to catch up on her interrupted days and collapsing into bed each night to sleep the sleep of the dead. She sure as hell slept through a man collapsing beside her in only his underwear.
She did not, however, sleep through her arm coming into contact with a male chest as she rolled on her side an hour later. A very naked male chest. It may have been a while, but some things remained embedded in that reptilian part of the brain, and it yanked her out of her REM by the roots of her hair.
Thankfully, having a four-year-old had also taught her the art of waking quickly and being instantly alert.
With her pulse skyrocketing and her heart taking up residence in her throat, Jane let loose a scream as she leaped from the bed. Groping for the needle-nose pliers she’d placed on the bedside table after she’d gently slid them from a sleeping Finn’s hand not that many hours ago, she flicked on the lamp. A man was curling into a sitting position, blinking blearily into the light as he pushed back a mass of dark, curly hair with the sweep of a big hand.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said, her voice shaky as she held the pliers like they were a handgun, “or why you’re here, but you have five seconds to get out of my bed, or I’m calling the police.”
The guy was large and solid and hairy. And almost naked. He didn’t look like he was about to do her harm. In fact, he looked like he’d woken from a sleep as deep as hers, but who knew what went on inside the mind of a guy who broke into houses in the middle of the night, took off his clothes, and got into bed with a sleeping woman?
He didn’t seem particularly perturbed by her threats. Nor did he move, other than squinting against the light as Jane picked up her phone. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice more confused than demanding.
Jane didn’t know how, above the racket of her pulse reverberating in her ears, she noticed his accent, but he sure as hell was not from around here. Maybe her brain had gone into Sherlock Holmes mode, gathering details for when the police arrived.
Big. Buff. Australian. Maybe a New Zealander. There were none of them in Credence.
“Mommy?”
A cold prickle inched down Jane’s spine. Crap. Just…crap. Now Finn was awake. He’d been sleeping on a cot bed in her room because it was a big house and even the next room seemed like a long way away compared to their two-bedroom apartment. It’d felt safer, given his tendency to rise early and go exploring, to have him close, but his presence in this situation ratcheted up her tension.
Her hands still trembling, she stabbed the long nose of the pliers in the intruder’s direction. She hoped he took it for the threat she meant. Turning her head, she hushed her son. “It’s okay, Finny. Go back to sleep.”
But she should have guessed there was little to zero chance of that happening. Once Finn was awake, he was awake, and he was already tumbling out of his bed and was at her side in seconds. His big blue eyes went round as donuts as he spotted