any of her input. Which was kinda nice, actually. Jane had never realized how exhausting it was being talked at all the time, all day, every day, until she’d had a little break from it, thanks to Cole.
Also, and completely selfishly, it gave her a chance to observe Cole further. To confirm she wasn’t fooling herself about how good he was with Finn. To just…admire the hell out of him. And maybe even pretend—just for a second—that this was her life instead of the real world, where she was a single mom juggling a small boy, a business, and an ex with a laissez-faire attitude towards responsibility.
Oh, and now also a freaking Houdini chameleon!
“So, what are we cooking for Mummy today?” Cole asked as he licked toast crumbs from his fingers.
“Actually.” Jane tuned back into their conversation at the mention of her name, grateful to be relieved of several pornographic images dancing in her head of Cole making a great show of licking his fingers last night. “I was going to suggest we go on a real picnic today. To the lake.”
Finn gasped in delight. “Really, Mommy?”
Jane nodded. “Yep. The last of the tiles will be up in the next couple of hours, so I should be done by lunch, and since Benji can’t drop off the replacement pieces of wood until later this afternoon, I’ll be free for a while.”
“Can we swim?”
“Of course.”
“What about jump off the end of the pier?”
Jane had taken Finn out to the lake the day after Tad had taken off as a distraction, and he’d loved jumping off the end of the pier into her arms. The sturdy wooden structure sat on the waterline, and Finn had been wearing his float suit.
“Of course.” Cole hadn’t said anything, and Jane switched her attention to him. He was looking at her intensely. “You don’t have to come.” Maybe the man would appreciate a couple of hours alone? Some down time? “If you want your space or there’s…” She glanced at his cane. “Issues with your leg. The shore’s a little rocky. It’s probably not the most stable surface.”
At the beginning, he would’ve gotten grumpy indeed at Jane calling his abilities into question, but now he just smiled and shook his head. “And miss out on seeing you in a bikini?”
Jane laughed, a flush of relief making it much giddier than was probably warranted. “What makes you think I have a bikini?”
“A hunch. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Will you wear it?”
Jane’s breath hitched. She’d jump in the damn lake naked if he wanted. “Yes.”
“Then the lake it is.”
Jane couldn’t remember a time in recent memory she’d been so carefree. There weren’t a lot of people at the lake in the middle of the week, despite it being summer break. Later in the afternoon, there’d be more, but for now it was pretty much them and some teenagers who’d been goofing around in the water when they’d first arrived and were now goofing around farther down the shoreline, listening to music and talking smack.
The sun was hot in the middle of the day, so they swam for a while first, cooling off, taking turns diving off the end of the pier, then scrambling back up and do it again. Finn’s cries of “Catch me, Cole!” echoed around the lake and got stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe. The way Cole caught him every single time without fail wormed into her heart.
God…this was bad, but Jane was too damn carefree to worry at the moment. She was in a bubble, and she knew it.
After an hour, they found a nice shady tree not far from the pier and ate the food that Cole and Finn had thrown together. It wasn’t gourmet—sandwiches and fruit and cookies they’d cooked that morning all washed down with iced tea—but it tasted like manna from heaven to Jane as she lounged back against the picnic blanket and listened drowsily to Cole explaining why the sky was blue to Finn, among a dozen other things.
She decided she could listen to Cole talk all damn day. She’d gotten used to his accent, to the lazy way he pronounced things, to the phrases that were purely Aussie, to the deepness and inflections of his tone. His voice was so easy on the ear.
Hell if she wouldn’t happily listen to him reading the dictionary.
Occasionally, Cole would look over Finn’s head and stare at her, buzzing electricity to all the cells in her body. She’d put her shorts back