It was the right thing to say. She let out a surprised laugh, but he could tell by the warmth in her eyes that she was pleased with the compliment.

Cole just hoped she knew he meant every damn word.

He handed her clothes to her, then turned slightly so she could dress in some semblance of privacy.

Cole frowned a little as he tugged his own pants back up over his hips, wondering, not for the first time, who or what had made Penelope think she was anything less than a sexy, hot-blooded woman. That Evan bastard back in Chicago?

He wanted to ask her, but it felt like a boyfriend kind of question, and she’d made it perfectly clear she wasn’t looking for one of those.

Great. Fine. He certainly wasn’t in the market for a relationship.

He wasn’t commitment-phobic per se, he just hadn’t yet been in a relationship that wasn’t a hell of a lot more headache than it was worth.

Cole mentally braced himself for Penelope to go skulking out of his office, probably to avoid him for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the week.

But she surprised him. When he turned back around, she was fully dressed, looking completely composed as she scooped her purse off the floor and walked toward his desk.

She set the purse on his chair then went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Is it slutty if I say thanks?” she asked.

He grinned. “If it is, I like slutty.”

Penelope grinned back at him, then went to unlock the door, swinging it wide open as though nothing out of the ordinary had just transpired.

When she turned back, she smiled her friendly work-Penelope smile at him. “So. Should we review those page layouts?”

Cole shook his head at how easy this all felt as he went around to the other side of his desk.

He didn’t know exactly what this was.

But whatever they decided to call it—or not call it—he could all too easily get used to it.

Chapter 17

Penelope told herself that it was a good thing that Cole was busy on Sunday.

Just because they’d agreed to limit their, um, sexy times to weekends didn’t mean that it should take up the whole weekend.

They’d spent Friday night together at her place. Thai takeout, baseball, and really good sex…basically her idea of heaven.

Saturday night had been more or less a repeat, except with Italian food.

And then Sunday rolled around, and Cole had told her he had other plans.

She didn’t ask what they were. It wasn’t her business. Besides, they’d totally violated her rules by having sex on a Thursday—lots, so really, it was just like she was trading one day for another.

But confident as Penelope was that their maintaining some sort of boundaries and distance was a smart decision, there was this tiny, stupid part of her brain that kept wondering if his plans involved another woman.

She couldn’t blame him if they did. She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want a boyfriend.

And he’d flat out promised never to fall in love with her—not that that had ever been a serious possibility. They were really just co-workers who slept together, on weekends, but not the entire weekend, apparently, because he had plans.

So who was she to judge him if he dated on the side? Perfectly acceptable.

Even if the thought of another woman putting her hands on Cole made Penelope a bit…stabby.

And it was these wicked, torturous thoughts of him undressing another woman…of him kissing her neck…making her gasp…

It was these torturous thoughts that made Penelope realize she needed a distraction.

Penelope flopped on her couch and pulled out her cellphone, scrolling through her favorites until she found the one person who could soothe her nerves even when she was at her most jittery.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, as soon as he picked up.

“Penny!”

Both her parents had called her Penny for as long as she could remember. She didn’t mind, but neither did she exactly bring the nickname outside the Pope household. She didn’t need a childish nickname to make her appear younger than she was. She seemed to manage that all on her own.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I was just thinking of you, actually. Thinking of heading over to the Sox game today.”

She lifted her eyebrow. Her father was a die-hard Cubs fan through and through. “Oh yeah?”

“Your mother’s having her book club over, God help me, which means I need to get out of the house. Cubs are away, so I figured…why not?”

Why not indeed. Rick Pope was single-handedly responsible for teaching Penelope her love of the game—all games. Her dad was an avid sportsman, and rather than bemoan his lack of a son, had dragged both Janie and Penelope into the world of athletics.

He’d had only partial success with Janie. He’d had to spray-paint her bat hot pink in order to get her to play softball on long summer evenings, and the only sport she’d stuck to for more than a month was tennis, and she quit that in seventh grade.

But he’d hit the jackpot with Penelope. Janie was the spitting image of their mother in looks and personality, while Penelope was her father’s daughter, from the dark hair to the love of sports to the flat chest.

She didn’t exactly love that last one.

“So tell me, how’s my little New Yorker?”

“Missing you,” Penelope said.

Just because New York was starting to feel like home didn’t mean that a huge chunk of her heart wasn’t still back in the Chicago suburbs at the house where she’d grown up. Right about now she could have used one of her mom’s famous oatmeal cookies, or her dad’s bear hugs…

“What’s got my girl down? Is it a boy? If it’s a boy, I know a guy….”

She rolled her eyes, smiling. “You know a guy, and what? You gonna break someone’s kneecaps? Come on, Dad, Janie and I figured out around age fifteen that you’re all talk.”

“There are nonviolent ways to break a man,” her father said in a faux-Mafia-style voice. “And don’t think I missed that you didn’t deny having a boyfriend.”

Penelope blew out a long breath and said nothing.

“Penny…”

“If I tell you, you’ll tell Mom, and if you tell Mom, she’ll start sending me pictures of mother-of-the-bride dresses.”

“I can keep a secret if you need me to.”

She blew out a breath. The thing was, he probably could. And the thought of talking to someone about Cole was tempting, but her father? Much as she loved the man, and forward thinking as he was, there was no way she could even think about telling him about her and Cole’s weekend-only sex rule.

“I’m just in a thinking place right now,” she replied.

“Ah yes. Understood.”

Penelope smiled, knowing that he really did understand. Rick Pope had forever been telling his wife that Penelope was in a thinking place, back when Penelope’s well-meaning mother had tried to coax Penelope to talk about whatever was bothering her as a kid.

Janie and her mother were extroverts—they liked to talk about anything and everything, and tended to solve problems best by discussing them.

Penelope was more like her father—outgoing when they needed to be, but introverted at heart, especially when she was mulling over a problem.

“Sounds like you need to go to a thinking place, if you know what I mean,” her dad said.

Penelope sat up on the couch as inspiration struck. “Dad, I know exactly what you mean. And you’re a freaking genius.”

Ten minutes later, Penelope had hung up with her father and was out the door heading to the place where she’d always done some of her best thinking: the ballpark. Any ballpark.