Stevie almost gasped in response to the deep voice from the doorway leading into the kitchen. She looked around to see Cole standing there, his eyes locked with hers, his expression somber.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.
“I came in through the back door.”
She moved to draw him into the room, standing beside him as they faced her friends. “Jenny, Tess, I’d like you to meet my husband, Cole McKellar.”
* * *
“Oh, my God.” Cole draped himself over a living room chair, his limbs hanging bonelessly, his hair rumpled from being scraped through with both hands. “I’ve had job interviews complete with FBI background checks that were less grueling.”
Reclined on the couch, Stevie laughed. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was that bad. I had the feeling that if I gave one wrong answer, your friend Jenny would throw me out on my ear.”
“Just give her a little time to adjust. You have to admit I sort of sprang all this on them.”
He opened one eye to look at her. “You think she will? Adjust, I mean?”
“Of course. She already likes you. I could tell, and I know Jen better than anyone. She’s just a little worried.”
He grew serious. “Your friends seem nice. I figured they would be, from everything you’ve told me about them.”
“You’ll like their guys, too. You and Scott have quite a bit in common, actually. He’s into tech stuff, too. Always buying new computer equipment for his commercial construction business. Gavin’s more into sports and cop stuff, but he’s a great guy.”
“Cop stuff, huh?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll try to find things to talk about with him. Something tells me we’ll be spending time with them since you girls are so tight.”
“I’d like to meet your friends, too. We haven’t talked about them much. Who’s your best friend?”
“Probably Joel Bradley. He’s an engineer, living and working in Dubai at the moment. He’s the one I told you about, my friend from school who was adopted?”
“Of course I remember.” He’d said his friend was closer to his adopted family than Cole was to his biological one. Having seen Cole with his Dad, Stevie didn’t find that hard to believe now. “Do you hear from Joel much?”
“We stay in touch. Through computers, of course,” he added with a wry smile. “It’s been a while since we’ve touched base, but we’ll talk again soon.”
“And what about your friends here?”
“Sometimes I meet up with a couple of guys from my gym for beers and conversation. And I’m still tight with some friends from the dojo where I trained for a while. We try to get together once a month for some friendly sparring or gomoku tournaments.”
“Go—?”
“Gomoku. It’s a traditional Japanese board game played with black and white stones. My friends and I are kind of nerdy,” he confessed with a chuckle that made no apologies.
Fascinated by this new glimpse into his private life, she prodded, “You said you met at a dojo? You trained in martial arts?”
“Yes.”
In the year she’d known him, it was the first she’d heard about this. Swinging her feet to the floor, she studied his face. “What kind?”
“Karate.”
“How high did you advance? The belt color thing, I mean?”
“I have a black belt. Second degree.”