“Fine, but you might want to turn a little more to the side. That’s it,” he said, backing away. “Zoe, you’re holding the bat like you’re going to use it to hammer a nail. Okay, here it comes.”

He tossed the ball soft and underhand, but she still had to grit her teeth to keep herself from jerking away. Because her pride and her son’s respect for women were at stake, she swung hard. No one was more stunned than Zoe when she connected. Coop snatched the ball an instant before it could smash his nose.

“Well.” Zoe handed the bat back to a wide-eyed Keenan, dusted her hands. “I’ll go see about those pancakes.”

“She hit it really hard,” Keenan said admiringly.

“Yeah.” Coop watched the back door swing shut behind her. “Your mother’s really . . . something, kid.”

“Will you pitch to me, Coop? Will you?”

“Sure. But let’s work on that stance, huh? You gotta look like a ballplayer.”

When Zoe finished flipping the last pancake on the stack, she looked out the window and saw her son swing the bat. The ball didn’t go far, but Coop made a pretense of a diving catch, missing, while Keenan danced gleefully in place.

“Too hot to handle,” Coop claimed, and Keenan jumped on top of him. “Hey, there’s no tackling in baseball. Football’s out of season.” He scooped the wriggling boy up and held him upside down. Somewhere along the line, his sour mood had vanished.

It became a habit to spend time with the boy. Nothing planned, just playing a little catch in the yard or showing Keenan how to dunk baskets in the apartment. It wasn’t as though he were attached to the kid, Coop assured himself. But when he had some free time and the boy wanted to hang around, what was the harm? Maybe it was sort of nice to see those big eyes all full of hero worship. And maybe it wasn’t so much of a hardship to listen to that rollicking belly laugh Keenan burst into when something struck his fancy.

If the boy sometimes came along with the bonus of his mother, it wasn’t exactly a hardship.

The fact was, he had seen a great deal more of Keenan than Zoe since the night of the thunderstorm. She was friendly enough, but she’d been careful—or so it seemed to Coop—not to be alone with him.

That was something he was going to fix, he decided as he shut down his computer.

He grabbed a couple of miniature race cars, some of the flotsam and jetsam of boyhood that Keenan had left in his apartment. If Coop knew Zoe as he thought he was beginning to, the toys would be an easier entry than a bouquet of long-stemmed roses.

Jiggling the cars in his hand, he strode down the steps to knock on her kitchen door.

In the laundry room, Zoe slammed down the lid on the washer. “Who is it?”