were a sweet couple—good for them—it had nothing to do with her or her circumstances, and she needed to check the floor.
Again. For the tenth time today.
Casting her eyes down, she let them rove over the parquetry. Truth was, she didn’t need to check it at all—it was perfect. She just couldn’t stop looking at it. It was a visual feast, and the privilege she felt at being the person that had been entrusted with its care and restoration would, she hoped, always be with her.
A knock on the front door interrupted her feast, and her heart rate spiked a little. Cole? But Cole had a key, or at least knew where it was, so why would he knock? She frowned as she hurried to see who it was, knowing that Wade and CC wouldn’t have heard the knock from out back. Had the magazine people arrived early?
It wasn’t the magazine people. It was Cole. Standing on the portico like he hadn’t been AWOL for a week.
“Hi,” Jane said, vaguely aware of a car pulling away from the curb behind his head as her eyes devoured the breadth of him and her pulse fluttered madly at her wrists and temples.
He was wearing dark blue trousers that clung to his powerful quads and a yellow shirt. The top two buttons were undone, and his shoulders were really testing out the seams as he leaned on his stick. His dark, unruly hair had been pulled back into a man bun, and his jawline sported a five-o’clock shadow.
It was so different to his usual board shorts and T-shirt it caused a pulse to flutter right between her legs.
A slight smile curved his mouth at the corners. “Hey.”
And then neither of them said anything for a moment or two as Jane tried to process that he was actually here. In Credence. Despite his text, she’d been sure she was never going to see him again, and to have him standing here—so close she could feel the heat coming off his body, smell the sweet, heady aroma of his aftershave—was unexpected.
Overwhelming.
Things stirring inside her chest—growing and expanding—were making it difficult to breathe. For one awful moment, she thought she might cry, and she panicked at the thought. What the hell was happening to her? God…she wasn’t developing feelings for him, was she?
No. She’d known him for two weeks. She’d just…missed his company, that’s all this was. “I suppose you’ve come for your things?” She forced the words out as she clung tight to the doorknob, quelling the urge to lift her foot and fling herself into his arms.
She’d known him for two weeks. He lived in Australia.
The small smile on his mouth disappeared. “No.” He shook his head. “I’ve come for you.”
Jane would have been inhuman had her heart not skipped a beat. In fact, hers skipped several. But she stayed put, her grip on the doorknob so tight now she was surprised it didn’t just buckle in her hand. “What does that mean?”
He glanced over her shoulder. “Do you think I could come in so we could talk?”
“No.” It might not be her place to deny a friend of Wade’s access to Wade’s house, particularly when he was in residence, but she needed to be out in public with this man. She’d missed him, and that may cause her to do something dumb, like drag him into her magnificent red sitting room and have her way with him, and that was not going to help the situation.
Or be good for the parquetry.
“Okay.”
“What does it mean?” Jane repeated.
“It means—” He shoved a hand in his hair, dropping it to his side when his man bun stopped his fingers from going any farther. His gaze settled on hers and held. “I love you. And I want to be with you.”
Jane blinked. And blinked again. Love? Her heart banged so loud she thought it had exploded. Love? That was… They’d been with each other for two weeks. That was madness.
Sure, it was fair to say she had a bad case of lust for Cole Hauser, and she was pretty sure that was reciprocated.
But love? How absolutely preposterous.
Tad had always maintained he knew he loved her within a couple of hours, but it had taken her much longer to fall for him. And besides, Tad had cheated on her, and they were divorced—hardly a great advertisement for the staying power of instalove.
“Well?” He gave her a tentative smile. “Are you going to say anything?”