Wild Kisses (Wildwood)

by Skye Jordan

  “That would be so amazing.” Avery offered Phoebe a grateful grin. “Thank you.”

  Her aunt’s sharp gaze held on Avery’s a second too long. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

  Heat burst at the pit of her stomach and rushed her cheeks. Avery refocused on her rolls. “Sure. It’s just been a long day. I appreciate the help.”

  “Then maybe you’ll like this.” Trace’s voice, suddenly so close again, kicked her heart into a double beat.

  She looked up and found him coming toward her with . . . a cutting board? In fact, it was the biggest cutting board she’d ever seen. She checked Trace’s expression and found him avoiding her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “More counter space.” He stepped between her and Phoebe and fitted the board over Phoebe’s sink, instantly adding six more square feet of countertop to the tight kitchen.

  Avery’s mouth dropped open, and a space deep in her belly warmed, something that happened on a daily basis around Trace. “Oh, wow.”

  His gaze met hers with more uncertainty than she’d ever seen. “I know I’m always kicking you out of your kitchen. Thought this might help when you have to work here.”

  Her smile came straight from that warm place at her core. She spanned the multicolored wood he’d pieced together with both hands, recognizing the precious value of the counter space he’d just handed her. “Oh, Trace, it’s beautiful. It’s perfect.” Damn, the man was so thoughtful. She turned her gaze on him again. “Thank you so much. You didn’t have to do this. I know you don’t have time—”

  “You have even less time,” he said. “So I’m glad it will help.”

  He held her gaze beyond that extra second. Beyond that awkward moment. Beyond that point at which one or both of them should have looked away.

  He held it right up until Phoebe said, “Sweetheart, you’ve been on your feet for eighteen hours.” Her aunt opened the pantry and pulled out a stack of specialty boxes for her cinnamon rolls. “Why don’t you go take a long, hot shower and turn in?”

  Now all Avery could think about was taking a long hot shower with Trace. In split-second flashes, she saw his chiseled body drenched in clear rivulets, his perfect, droplet-covered lips sucking at hers the way they’d just sucked at her fingers . . .

  “And on that note, I’ll let you all get on with your evening,” he said.

  Evidently, the idea had the opposite effect on Trace. He turned and set that sexy swagger toward the door.

  “Trace, wait.” She grabbed a bag from the fridge and another from the counter. “Sandwiches, salads, and a few cinnamon rolls. Figured you and George could use something in the fridge.”

  She was rewarded with a soft, lopsided smile. “You’re a lifesaver. Thanks.”

  Another extended moment of eye contact made Avery’s chest squeeze. Warmth and longing seeped through her body. God, she wished they were alone so they could just continue talking. So this awkwardness wasn’t so overwhelming. So they could have taken that whole erotic finger sucking to the next level.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Trace broke their gaze. “See you tomorrow.”

  He turned for the door, and by the time he’d offered a round of good-byes and exited the house, all the heat inside Avery had drained.

  “Sweetheart.” Phoebe’s hand slid down Avery’s back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  No. She was a mess. An emotional mess.

  Avery nodded. “Yes. Fine.”

  Yep, perfectly fine.

  Great.

  Living the dream.

  “But, you’re right. I could use some good sleep. Are you sure you don’t mind frosting and boxing these?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Avery leaned in and kissed Phoebe’s cheek. “Thank you.” She pulled back and blew a kiss to Delaney and Ethan. “Good night, lovebirds.”

  Avery continued to pep-talk herself right into the shower. “I’m fine. Everything is fine. Life is good.”

  It was true. Her heart may not believe it, but facts were facts, and she couldn’t deny she had what millions of people wanted—a chance to follow her passion.

  She’d just never imagined following that passion without a man she loved beside her. For Avery, love had always trumped money or status or fame or success. Love had always been worth sacrifice and hard work. And here she was with everything but the one thing that had always mattered most. Which only made her even more grateful for the way Delaney and Phoebe had rallied around her with unconditional support.

  As she ducked her head beneath the hot stream of water and closed her eyes, Avery didn’t see lighted glass pastry cases lining the lobby of Wild Harts. She saw Trace and all the mixed expressions she’d read on his face tonight.

  “He’s not in your stratosphere.” Reminding herself out loud helped a little. “And you don’t want the mess of a man anyway.”

  Now, that rang true. After David, she didn’t even know if she believed in love anymore. At least not true love. If such a thing existed, she doubted her jaded heart was capable of trusting enough to experience it.

  No. She absolutely did not want the mess of a man in her life.

  He would forever be a fuck-up.

  Trace cranked the handle on his ancient truck to lower the window and let the October air blow across his overheated body.

  The road was all but deserted at 10:00 p.m., giving him plenty of time to replay that asinine move he’d made with Avery.

  The renovation of her café was the most important job he’d had since he’d gotten out of prison and reestablished his contractor’s license. He couldn’t blow it by messing around with his employer, no matter how badly he wanted her. He’d spent the last eight years painstakingly hauling his life out of the gutter with an impeccable work record, a perfect credit record, and a pristine criminal record. He rarely drank, never used drugs, and chose his buddies carefully. In fact, Trace’s only “fun” fell into the hot, young chicks category. But his desire for other women had tanked since he’d set eyes on Avery.

  “Stupid sonofabitch.”

  His cell rang. He pulled it from his belt on the third ring, didn’t recognize the number, and by the time he’d decided to pick up, the call had gone to voice mail. Better anyway—he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

  He rested his elbow on the open window ledge and rubbed a hand down his face, letting it rest on his mouth. His memory flooded with the feel of her long, slim fingers between his lips. Of the raw, open look of lust on her pretty face.

  Trace closed his eyes for a brief second and moaned. Hot blood pooled between his legs, tightening his cock. “Stupid fucking sonofabitch.”

  He slowed in front of the sheriff’s substation and turned into the parking lot. He stopped next to a cruiser in the first row, shut off his truck, and stared at the double doors he’d entered far too often in his younger years.

  The thought brought reality into full focus. Avery was a beautiful woman, just flowering into life now that she’d shed a neglectful, selfish husband. She deserved fun and freedom. She deserved the experience of dating that she’d missed when she was young. She deserved happiness.

  And Trace was nothing but a stain.

  He shoved the door open and stopped short when a woman with big brown eyes looked up from the computer at the front desk.

  Fuck me.

  The moment the thought crossed his mind, he wished he could wipe it clean, because that was exactly what the woman had done.

  “Well, hey there, Trace.”

  Discomfort balled at the center of his chest. Trace pushed his hands into his pockets. “Cindy. Didn’t know you worked here.”

  “You would have if you’d returned my calls.”

  Great. Fucking great. This just topped off his night.

  Trace wasn’t going to pull any punches here. When it came to women, he played straight and clean—at least he had until it came to Avery. “We talked about that.”

  Cindy sighed and offered a halfhearted smile.
“A girl can dream.”

  “Can you let Zane know I’m—”

  “Hey.” Zane stood in the doorway to the foyer. He always looked so stern in his uniform. So unlike the little brother Trace used to wrestle into the dirt as kids. Zane darted a look between Cindy and Trace, then said, “Come on back.”

  As they walked down the hall, Zane shot Trace a look over his shoulder and muttered, “Is there a woman in town you haven’t slept with?”

  “Shut up. Where’s Dad?”

  “Asleep in one of the cells.”

  Trace fisted the collar of Zane’s uniform shirt and yanked him back. Zane immediately swiveled and knocked Trace’s hand away with a what-the-fuck? look. At Trace’s height and weight with a hell of a lot more fight training behind him, Zane was no longer the kid Trace could dominate.

  “You put him in a cell?”

  “I didn’t lock him in a cell. It’s the only place he could lie down.” Zane took a breath, still scowling. “Don’t fuckin’ grab a cop like that, idiot.”

  “You’re not a cop. You’re my little brother.”

  “Who’s a cop?”

  They continued around the corner to where the office opened to a large area filled with desks pushed together in pairs. Two other deputies sat across the room with their feet up, chatting, Austin Hayes being one of them. Perfect. This night just kept spiraling. “When you’ve been a cop longer than you’ve been my little brother,” Trace told Zane, ignoring Austin rising to his feet, “you can put ‘cop’ first.” Then he headed toward the cages in the back of the station.

  “You’re welcome for taking care of him while you finished up work,” Zane called after him.

  “You’re welcome for taking care of him for the last five years while you built a career,” Trace shot back.

  “What are you going to do about the doors? We’re lucky Mrs. Coolidge was home when he wandered out.”

  “I’m installing special locks and a video monitoring system tonight, because, yeah, I’ve got so much extra time and energy after working for the last sixteen goddamned hours.”

  As soon as Trace stepped into the row of cells, the familiar chill, the familiar smell, the familiar echoes closed around him and formed a rock in his gut. The sound of his brother’s boots on the cement behind him made all his muscles tighten up and his teeth clench.

  Trace found his dad asleep in the second cell on the left. He stepped halfway in, his skin jumping with nerves, his mind sparking with flashbacks. “Hey, Dad, wake up. Let’s head home, get you into a bed.”

  Not a bed much better than this cot, but better than any kind of bed inside a cell. Trace had rented a house a little over a mile away from the construction site for himself and his dad for the short term. It had come furnished, but in truth the place was a dump, which was all Trace could afford even with Zane and their grandmother Pearl chipping in to care for George during Trace’s work hours. But because of Zane’s hours and Pearl’s age, Trace still ended up responsible for his dad 80 percent of the time.

  “Dad,” Trace said again.

  George didn’t move. His eyelids didn’t flutter.

  Trace sighed, edged deeper into the cell, and tugged on his dad’s sleeve. “Wake up, Dad. Let’s get home.”

  His father slowly rolled to his back and focused on Trace. “Where’s your uniform? Are you off duty?”

  “It’s me, Dad. Trace. Zane’s right there.” He gestured toward his brother. “It’s time to go home.”

  George pushed up to a sitting position slowly, painfully. By the scowl on his father’s face, Trace knew he was in for a struggle. “Where the hell am I?”

  “At Zane’s station.”

  Trace relented to reality and sat on the edge of the bunk. His father’s dementia had taught Trace a lot of things, but the one he used most often was patience. George’s mood varied from day to day. Situation to situation. Hour to hour. Sometimes moment to moment. Nothing moved quickly or easily in George’s world.

  “Zane,” one of the guys called from the office. “Phone call.”

  Zane left to take the call, and the sight of him walking away while Trace was still inside a cell rocketed ice through the middle of his chest. Anxiety crawled along his skin.

  “Come on, Dad—we’ve really gotta go.”

  His father rubbed his hands over the top of his mostly bald head and turned his scowl on Trace. “You in jail again, boy?”

  A rich laugh sounded at the doorway to the office and scraped its way down Trace’s spine. Austin. Trace should have known the asshole couldn’t resist an opportunity to dig.

  “Your daddy’s got your number,” Austin said, his boots making a slow clomp, clomp, clomp down the aisle. “He knows where you belong. And we all know there’s no such thing as a reformed drug addict. Once a druggie, always a druggie.”

  Trace’s jaw clenched. The fight reflex that had been seeded in prison flared, but the control he’d developed since he’d been released prevailed. He stood and shook his father’s arm. “It’s late, Dad. Come on.”

  “You ought to save yourself a lot of time and work and take your dad back to Santa Rosa,” Austin said at Trace’s back, his voice low and threatening. “You can make that old bar as pretty as you want, call it a café or a bakery or a fuckin’ museum, but it’ll always be the ratty Bad Seed to everyone around here. Avery is never going to make a go of a business in that building, and you’re stealing money from her by working on it.”

  Trace turned on Austin. “Just because you’ve got a fucked-up way of looking at things doesn’t mean others do. The people in this town love Avery, and they’d support her even if she opened a stand on the street corner.”

  A deep, brewing anger lived in Austin’s dark eyes. He may be Ethan’s brother by blood, but the two men were nothing alike. Ethan was all light to Austin’s dark.

  “She’d be better off on a street corner,” Austin said, “because I’m watching you, and the first time I get even a whiff of stink coming from your direction, I’m gonna be all over it. If I have to shut down that bar and Avery’s business with it, I will.”

  Trace didn’t blame the Hayeses for their contempt for the old bar Avery’s father had left to his daughters when he died. If a member of Trace’s family had been killed there, he’d hold a grudge, too. It was Austin’s abuse of power and attempted manipulation that pissed Trace off.

  Austin was nothing but a bully with a badge, and everything inside Trace fought to lash out. He was caught in a battle between emotion and common sense when Austin’s radio crackled then hummed with the dispatcher’s voice, issuing a call.

  Austin pressed the mic on his shoulder and responded to the dispatcher, then smiled at Trace. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  Trace’s nerves were still rattling even after Austin left the building. He took a deep breath and turned back to his father—only to find him asleep again.

  “Jesus, Dad, come on.”

  When George came around again, his gaze sharpened on Trace. “Did you get it?” he asked, voice lowered to a tone so familiar Trace would have recognized it over the phone. “The stuff. The good stuff. None of that generic crap.”

  “Yeah, got it.” Lying had always been easy for Trace, probably because his father had coached him so young. But now the lies spilled out as easily as water from a faucet, because reality and truth meant nothing to people with dementia. More often than not, reality and truth caused arguments and anxiety. So in this case, he told his father he had the drugs George was asking for, because Trace knew that by the time they got home, his father would forget he’d asked. “I’ve got to go pick it up before he sells it to someone else. Let’s go.”

  A fatigued grin turned his father’s mouth. “That’s my boy.”

  Trace took his father’s elbow and walked him from the jail with a familiar darkness spreading inside him like spilled ink.

  On the way home, he picked up his voice mail.

  “Hey, Trace, this is your old buddy JT, from Folsom.”
>
  The raspy voice turned Trace’s stomach to ice.

  “I’m free as a bird can be with a ball and chain around its leg. You know how those POs can be. Old nags. Gotta find me a job, and I remember us talking about your contracting work. I ain’t got much experience, but I been lifting and running, so I got a strong back, and I’m willin’ to do anything you need. No job, no pay too small. Promise I won’t give you no trouble. Give me a call. Let’s catch up. Later, buddy.”

  Trace disconnected and immediately erased the message. Suddenly cold, he dropped his phone into the console and turned up the heat.

  “Was that Chip?” his dad asked, half-asleep.

  Trace cut a look at his father. He hadn’t heard George mention the main drug dealer they’d bought from in a long time. “Who?”

  “You know, Chip. The guy who’s dating Joe’s daughter, the oldest one. Can’t remember her name.”

  “Delaney?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. Her daddy says she’s a wild little thing, that one. Chip’s always got the best stuff.”

  Trace ran a hand over his damp forehead. God, he was glad his dad hadn’t said that in front of Austin. Talk about dredging up ugly memories. Mention of the man who’d killed Austin’s brother could have sent the bully into meltdown mode. And that wouldn’t be pretty. “Yeah.” Trace hadn’t been this shaken since one of his nightmares of being thrown back into prison. “Go back to sleep, I’ve got it handled.”

  Ten seconds later, his father started snoring.

  Trace took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d definitely done the right thing with Avery tonight. What happened between them was nothing. It had to be nothing. Because he was his father’s son. A man wholly unworthy of a woman like Avery Hart.

  THREE

  Avery threaded her fingers on the linen tablecloth and bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from butting into the animated conversation between mother and daughter across the table. Avery could suggest and guide, but she believed the final decision on a wedding cake belonged to the client.

  She glanced around at the other three dozen family and friends who’d come for the bridal shower. Each guest had already cast a vote for which flavor combination they preferred for Tiffany’s ginormous cake. But judging by the continued mother-daughter tug-of-war, it appeared that exercise had been more of a game than a true poll, because Nancy had her mind set on a very specific, very elegant creation with no visible intention of compromise. In that way, mother and daughter were very much alike.