over him at Jack’s revisited. He should eat. Put something in his stomach before he went to bed, even if it meant raiding Little Miss Prickle’s stash. But right now, all he wanted was a hot shower and the beckoning oblivion of sleep.
Hiking the strap of his backpack higher on his shoulder, he made a beeline for the stairs. He hadn’t bothered bringing it in from his rental car last night. He’d been in too much pain and too damn exhausted, and he was pleased now that he’d waited. It was so much easier tonight, even if climbing the stairs while trying to balance the competing forces of his bag on one side and the cane on the other would be tricky.
Before he even put his foot on the first step, he heard loud banging coming from a room off to the right, then a muffled female curse. Jane. He remembered the quick, fierce shake of her head as he’d almost cursed in front of Finn earlier and smiled. So it wasn’t cussing that offended her; it was the company.
His tiredness from moments ago miraculously vanishing, Cole let the bag drop to the floor at the foot of the stairs and went in search of the source. He told himself it was just about investigating all the banging, but hell if he wasn’t curious about why she was making so much damn noise at almost eight on a Friday night, when most people were doing peaceful things, like watching television or reading a book. Or at least indulging in other forms of banging, which was a different kind of noisy and a lot more fun.
She’d said she’d been employed to do a job. He’d assumed it was housekeeping or gardening or something. Not…demolition?
His bad.
With the banging resuming, it didn’t take him long to locate his unwilling housemate. She was on all fours in the middle of the floor of a large, empty room, where walls of old-fashioned flocked scarlet wallpaper met rich, red, cherrywood paneling and three large, high windows draped in curtains of rich burgundy velvet dominated the far wall. Above her head, hanging from the high ceiling, was another chandelier almost as big as the one in the foyer.
A large fireplace with an impressive mantel was centered on the wall to his right, its tiled surround fitting in perfectly with the old-world elegance of the room. The floor, however, did not. Or most of it, anyway. Three-quarters of the large area was covered in some kind of relatively modern black-and-white tiling in a harlequin pattern. She was obviously in the process of removing them, exposing the original parquetry beneath.
It was hard to tell the colors of the wood, given that it was covered in remnants of black grout or some kind of glue, but he’d bet it’d polish up beautifully. Cole might not have been an expert on old houses, but he’d been halfway through a carpentry apprenticeship when he’d quit to join the Sydney Centaurs for his debut season, so he knew wood.
Jane was banging randomly at sections of the parquetry floor. He assumed she was realigning loose pieces, since there were segments of wood that had been lifted out of their patterns sitting scattered about like jigsaw pieces patiently waiting to be slotted into place. Each blow of the hammer rocked through her knees and her opposite arm, which was locked tight at the elbow, the hand splayed against the floor for balance.
She looked even smaller hunched over in the center of this huge, empty room, a thoroughly modern woman in shorts and T-shirt amidst the aging elegance and grandeur of times gone by. Her ponytail swished with each rock, and loose strands of hair teased at her neck, and with her arse and the bare backs of her thighs pointing firmly in his direction, he was thinking things he really, really shouldn’t right now.
Not when the woman in question was armed with a weapon more lethal than a pair of needle-nose pliers this time.
Abruptly sitting back on her haunches, cutting off his very fine view, she paused for a moment to stick the tip of her thumb in her mouth. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say that had been the cause of her cursing.
“Did you smack your thumb with the hammer?”
Cole noticed her startle before she twisted at the waist, looking over her shoulder at where he lounged in the doorway. She did not look pleased to see him as she dropped