up at the chandelier before he finally transferred his attention to the floor.
“Hell…Jane…” He glanced at her quickly before looking back at the parquetry, sweeping the sole of a shoe back and forth over the wooden surface. He crouched, leaning into his cane as he eased down, his hands caressing the gloss like a true connoisseur. He looked up at her. “It’s…” He shook his head. “Magnificent. You’re brilliant.” He looked around him again, using his cane for purchase as he pushed to his feet. “It’s amazing.”
Jane gave a half smile, pride swelling despite her misery. She ground her feet into the floor to stop herself from walking right into his arms.
“You must be really happy with the way it turned out.”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat because her voice sounded a little croaky after all the crying. “It’s far better than I even imagined.”
He tipped his head back to inspect the chandelier again. “The magazine people are going to love this.” Rainbows of light played across his shirt and danced down his throat, and god help her, she wanted to press her mouth there so badly. Lay her head against his shirt and listen to the steady thump of his heart beneath her ear.
“It should photograph well.”
Jane couldn’t take her eyes off him; she was powerless to look away as he stood under the magnificent specimen of Czech crystal craftsmanship. Given his own magnificent-specimen status, it seemed fitting. She watched until he was no longer staring up, his face slowly lowering until his eyes were firmly fixed on hers, and she was just as powerless to look away as his gaze roamed thoroughly over her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
No. She wasn’t. She should be. She should be on top of the world on the eve of the magazine shoot that had the potential to catapult her business into the stratosphere. She was broken.
“What if I did love you?”
The question was clunky and sounded awkward as fuck in this grand old room where people would have once spoken in subtleties, but the time for avoidance and pretending this was something else was behind her. The minute she’d admitted it out loud—to CC Carter, of all people—it was behind her. She loved him. Now she had to work out how to move forward.
He took a step in her direction. “Do you?”
“What then?” she asked, ignoring his question and the husky note in his voice, because her loving him was neither here nor there. And no, it wasn’t lost on her that the one thing that had seemed liked the biggest hurdle not that long ago—falling in love with Cole—was the least problematic right now.
“How does that even work?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, obviously trying to quell any urge to reach for her as he just as obviously chose his words carefully. “However you want it to work.”
Jane gave a small grunt. Good freaking answer. But she needed specifics. If this was going to work, it was going to need a concrete plan. “Okay. I’ve been thinking, and this isn’t a green light or anything, because I honestly don’t think it can work. It’s just spitballing for the moment.”
“Okay.”
His response was measured, but she could hear the echo of hope in the huskiness of his voice. “I could visit you in Australia once every few weeks. For, say, a couple of weeks at a time. I think between Tad and his parents and mine, I could manage that with Finn’s care, but—”
“Wait.” He shook his head vigorously, cutting her off. “No.”
Propelling himself forward, he crossed the space between them pretty damn fast for a man hampered by a cane and a limp. Before she knew it, he was standing within touching distance, and every cell in her body was humming with electricity.
“Cole…” She held up her hand in case he decided to come any closer. She couldn’t think when he was so close.
“No, Jane…please let me explain.” He reached for her hands, and instead of refusing, she let him take them, because he was close and she was weak—damn it. “I turned the sportscasting job down.”
Jane blinked. What now? “You did?”
“I did. I appreciate”—he smiled then, and so did she—“more than you know that you are even thinking about flying back and forth around the globe for me, but you don’t need to, and I would never ask you to do that. To spend such long periods away from Finn. I got offered a job here, in the U.S., with