The outside door to the kitchen opened and then slammed shut, and Sierra jumped away from him at the same moment he snapped to attention and stood up tall, stepped away from the table. Sierra swiped a hand over her lips as if she could erase any evidence of what they’d been doing, and he turned around to face the table, pulled his bag close, struggled with the zipper, his hands shaking.

“Morning,” Reggie said from the office doorway mere seconds later.

Cole picked up his sweatshirt, grabbed his bag, hoped like hell his face was blank, and turned around. “Hey, Reggie. See you on-site,” he said to Sierra, and then he walked out of the office and out of the building at a normal pace, as if his heart wasn’t about to pound right out of his damn chest.

Chapter Ten

Sierra had managed, nearly nine hours ago, to shove that kiss into a mental lockbox. Nine everlasting hours. She’d had to in order to get through the grueling day with Cole at her side, a day when they’d only gotten half as much done as they’d planned due to a crap ton of unforeseen challenges with the century-old house.

As she drove toward home, in the relative privacy of her truck, she let out a semi-hysterical laugh-howl she’d had bottled up all day because she’d kissed Cole. One of her employees. She’d broken her own rule, done something she’d never done before, and it’d been impulsive—she could own that—and crazy and spectacular.

She hadn’t planned it, but when he’d walked in so closed-up this morning, acting like none of Saturday night had happened, she’d wanted to shake him up, pull him close, scream in frustration, hug him… And she’d ended up kissing him.

“Got his attention anyway,” she muttered, still unsure whether it was good attention or bad.

She and Cole hadn’t spoken a single word about it. There hadn’t been an opportunity, and for that she was grateful, because she didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if she should say anything.

It might be ludicrous to think they could just carry on without ever acknowledging that lip-lock, especially since it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill kiss. No, in roughly two minutes and two seconds, Cole had pretty much raised Sierra’s baseline for kissing for the rest of her life.

At last, she drove her truck down the alley behind her apartment and parked it in her spot. Without hesitation, she got out and strode past the stairs that led up to her place. Instead, she headed toward the green space that bordered her building and went through it to get to the sidewalk on Hale Street.