by Skye Jordan
“Yeah, I will. Thanks for the heads-up.”
She squeezed his arm. “I’m always thinking about you. Have you gotten any new bites?”
“Just a roof for Gabe Snyder.” Not something he was thrilled about, but a job he’d take because he needed it.
“Hang in there, Trace. Good things are coming.”
“We’ll see. One step at a time.” Future success in Wildwood, or anywhere else for that matter, depended entirely on how well he followed through on Wild Harts. Which was a reminder to get his ass in gear. He kissed Pearl’s forehead and stepped onto the porch.
She moved into the doorway. “Any more trouble from Austin?”
An immediate squeeze tightened Trace’s chest.
“He’s not a problem,” he told his grandmother, hoping he sounded confident. Realistically, Trace knew Austin would be trouble until Trace left town. “Zane’s got him under control.”
His grandmother’s watery blue eyes narrowed. “No one truly has any of the Hayeses well controlled.”
Trace forced the raw fear associated with prison away and grinned for his grandmother. “Not true. Delaney’s got Ethan hog-tied and lovin’ every minute of it.”
“An exception to the rule.” Pearl’s smile put a fresh glint in her eyes. “Don’t ever underestimate the love of a good woman, son. It can move mountains.”
Trace wouldn’t know anything about that. “Go on. Get inside, and let me hear that door lock behind you.”
“Get some sleep, Trace.” Pearl closed the door and tripped the dead bolt. “Happy?”
Happy? No. Trace didn’t know how to be happy. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d been truly happy. Of course the question brought Avery to mind because, hell, why not, everything else did. And when he thought of Avery, Trace could almost imagine happiness—with his body buried deep inside hers, their limbs tangled, mouths fused, those clear blue eyes of hers heavy-lidded and sparkling with lust, and those perfectly plump, pink lips forming his name as she rose to orgasm.
Yeah, he was pretty damn sure that was the one thing that could make him happy.
But that would never happen.
So, no. He wasn’t happy.
“Yep,” he said, patting the door with a flat hand. “Love you, Gram.”
“Love you, too.”
The drive from Gram’s to Wild Harts took fifteen minutes but only because he meandered. He really didn’t want to work tonight, but he was behind again, thanks to his father’s bizarre tirade that afternoon, something that was becoming entirely too common. He wasn’t seeing the calm in George that Gram had described.
Trace’s mind drifted to the bathroom mirror he’d come home to earlier that evening. The one his father had broken but didn’t know how. Then to the time and money it would cost to fix it—neither of which Trace had.
With his elbow on the open window frame, he scraped a hand through his hair. He really didn’t know what he was going to do if his father didn’t adjust to this move soon. No one in the family could afford an in-home caretaker, to say nothing of the cost of putting him into a facility. Hopefully they’d hear from Medicare soon.
For now, all Trace could do was take things day by day. With his father. With this renovation. With Avery. And tonight his father was safely sedated into a tranquil sleep, and locked inside their small cottage, freeing Trace up to get some extra work done on the café. As far as Avery went . . .
He rubbed his forehead. “Fuck if I know.”
His wild attraction to her was so wrong on so many levels. He’d admit to preferring hookups with younger women, but Avery was way too young—and not just in chronological age. Not only was she eight years his junior, but even more troubling, she was decades younger in sexual experience. From the information he’d gathered between Avery herself, Avery’s family, and now Gram, Trace knew she’d run off with David at seventeen and stayed faithful even while David had been deployed for the majority of their marriage. A marriage that, by all accounts, had headed downhill after the first year, becoming far more of a long-term emotional jail and far less of an actual marriage.
If that was true, Trace estimated Avery was about as sexually experienced now as he’d been at fifteen. And he was beginning to believe there was something seriously twisted in his head, because the more he thought about it, the more her inexperience and abstinence turned him the fuck on.
All that beautiful skin to touch and tease in ways she’d never been touched and teased before. All the wild variations of sex to explore that she’d never explored, some she probably didn’t even know existed. Owning all that gorgeous, uncharted territory for his very own. Watching her experience pleasure she’d never known—at his hands, his mouth, his cock. Introducing her to the amazing world of sex awaiting her now that she was single and in her prime . . .
“Fuck that’s hot. Why is that so hot?” He shifted in his seat and adjusted the bulge of his cock against his jeans with a groan of frustration. “And why am I such a goddamned idiot?”
She’d probably had plenty of sex with her husband. They’d probably gone at each other like animals as soon as he returned from a tour and never left the bed until he deployed again. And why was Trace so ready to believe the stories of her faithfulness during their eight years of marriage? He’d been with enough women to know few remained faithful when they weren’t getting what they wanted at home—sexual or otherwise. He didn’t do married or committed women, but he’d discovered long ago that women lied like demons when they wanted what they wanted.
Then again, he didn’t exactly hang out with a normal cross section of the female population. He, admittedly, liked his women young, easy, energetic, knowledgeable, and ready to move on in the morning. Preferably sooner. In short: slutty. Which only made this semi-virginal fantasy playing in his head even more bizarre.
A headache throbbed at the center of his brain by the time he turned onto the drive of the bar-turned-café. With fatigue stinging his eyes, Trace didn’t notice the Jeep parked near the kitchen door on the far side of the building until he’d pulled to a stop and shut off his engine.
With his hand still on the keys in the ignition, his mind pinged from one thought to another, in no order, making no sense. “What the hell is she doing here now?”
She should be at Phoebe’s with her nose to a sketch pad, planning out Tiffany’s wedding cake. Or researching recipes for her opening lineup at the café.
“Dammit.” He’d come to get his mind off her, and now . . . “God, I hope she changed out of that dress.”
He sat back and stared at the café, illuminated in the exterior lighting and situated on a private corner of the property’s five acres. His eyes took in the smoky-green siding of the two-story, turn-of-the-century building, the crisp white trim around windows and doors, and the gingerbread at the roofline, but his mind was somewhere else entirely.
“Maybe I liked it. Maybe I wanted it to happen again.” If she’d developed a crush on him, he hadn’t noticed. She had probably been drunk. One glass of champagne was all it took with her.
But whatever was happening, he had to deal with it. He had to get it out from between them. He needed this job. He needed her recommendation. But even more, he missed her easy friendship. He wanted things to go back to the way they were before his restraint had slipped and he’d sucked icing off her fingers.
A shiver of lust traveled down his spine, and his mind veered toward other places on her sweet little body he’d like to lick . . . and suck . . . and bite . . .
“Stop, dumbass.”
Trace stood from the truck, took a deep breath of the cool fall night air, and let the driver’s door close quietly. Lights from the kitchen area glowed through the double front glass doors.
After Delaney had realized their father’s ramshackle bar was the perfect location for Avery’s bakery and café, she’d abandoned her plan to restore and sell the building as a bar. Instead, she’d used her experience as a historical renovation specialist to rede
sign the interior to accommodate Avery’s every need, setting her sister up to grow Wild Harts into any size café or bakery Avery wanted.
Looking through the doors now, past the dining counter and the open plastic drapes, into an open baking area beyond, Trace didn’t see Avery. What he did see was one colossal mess. Baking supplies littered the stainless steel countertops, mutilated fruit lay abandoned on the cutting block, bowls and measuring cups and utensils lay haphazardly on every surface or resting in dirty bowls.
“What the hell?”
Something was very wrong. Avery was an absolute perfectionist when it came to her profession. An utter clean freak in her kitchen—even if her kitchen was still only half-finished. Not only did Avery never cook like that, but she would never, ever, not in a million years, leave her kitchen like that.
His stomach knotted with apprehension. He jerked the door open, stepped in, and scanned the space, calling a worried, “Avery?”
“Go away.” The irritated return bark came from the other side of the eat-in counter.
Relief rolled through him first, instantly followed by confusion. Trace strode to the counter, squeezed between two barstools, and planted his palms on the shiny surface to lean over.
He found Avery sitting on the floor.
Sitting on the floor.
She’d thrown her hair up into a messy bun, and her back rested against the center island, facing the wall to Trace’s right. She was still wearing that sex kitten dress that sent Trace’s mind in a million inappropriate directions, and those sparkling heels that turned her legs into a curvy, toned, mouthwatering display of perfection. She had the leg closest to Trace bent at the knee, her sparkling heel planted firmly on the floor, causing her skirt to slide all the way to her hip. Her other leg was bent underneath the first and lying against the floor, half cross-legged.
One arm curved protectively around a pie pan with a baseball-size hole missing from the center of the pie; the other hand held a fork mounded with some kind of creamy, whipped-cream goodness. And a bottle of open red wine sat at her hip.
Trace couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Avery’s heart was still racing from Trace’s sudden appearance. The disbelief in his voice only raked fingers across a chalkboard. To add to her irritation, shame ramped up her body temperature. Of all the people to catch her in this unholy state, sitting on the cement floor of her unfinished café in Delaney’s expensive dress eating a hole in the middle of a pie, Trace Hutton was the absolute worst.
Just perfect.
“Are you blind?” she bit out, embracing her complete loser status. “I’m eating pie. One I made from scratch for no one but me. So go away.”
She dropped the fork into the pan with a clank. She grabbed the bottle of wine and took a big swig, so she would be drinking when she heard Trace walk out. But he didn’t go anywhere. Avery set the wine down on the cement with a clank, hoping if she ignored him, he’d get the message.
Ah, but no. His footsteps came around the counter, and she took another drink of wine. She didn’t want it, but she knew she needed it. At the island, standing beside her, he checked out the disaster she’d left, which only made her cringe.
“Well,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “This is definitely an Avery I haven’t seen yet.”
Guilt snuck in as she envisioned the remnants of fruit, sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla she’d left strewn all over the brand-new butcher block he’d installed just two days ago. “I was going to clean it up. If you hadn’t come, you would never have even known.”
“It’s your kitchen, Jelly Bean. I’m just building it. I don’t care what kind of mess you make.”
“Jelly Bean? What kind of nickname is Jelly Bean?”
“They’re sweet. Forgive me for not finding one more closely related to baking. I’m tired, and I’m running out of originality. What kind of pie is that?”
Sweet. Yeah. That’s how he saw her. Not like the sexy playthings he was used to.
She licked her fork and sighed. “Mango-pineapple-coconut cream dream.”
He turned, hands in the front pockets of his jeans. His gaze darted to the pie but swung back to Avery, openly scanning her legs. “Damn”—he half laughed the word—“that’s one hell of a good look on you, girl.”
He turned his focus toward his feet, clearing his throat. Then he sighed heavily, pressed his back against the cabinet, and slid to a seat on his ass beside her. Knees up, he wrapped his arms around them and kept his attention straight ahead.
“Gram told me about the music you made for my dad. That was really sweet of you.”
There was that sweet again. And she didn’t want to talk about his father or the music or anything sweet. “Why are you here?”
His gaze darted to her face, then back to the cabinets in front of them. “I was going to work on your kitchen. But seeing as it’s currently in use . . .”
“I guess you’re off the hook.”
A moment of silence passed. An odd, highly charged silence she didn’t understand.
“Why are you here?” he finally asked. “My grandma would tell you what she just told me—you’re burning the candle at both ends.”
“Pearl isn’t trying to start a business with every last penny she has in the world. That generally motivates a person to burn a hundred candles at both ends.”
After a moment, he turned to face her. “Whatever’s going on inside you is bigger than the business.”
“Ya think?”
He huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Baby, you give a whole new meaning to the slogan ‘Army Strong,’ you know that?”
That hit her hard—another one of those backhanded compliments she’d been getting since she returned to town. She might be proud of all she’d endured and how she’d matured, but tonight she didn’t want to be reminded that she’d done it all for nothing.
“Don’t,” she warned him. “Just don’t.”
“Avery,” he said, voice serious and soft. “What’s wrong? Did something happen tonight?”
Frustration skyrocketed. She didn’t need his smoldering temptation around when she was feeling weak. He was hard enough to resist sober and levelheaded.
“We already talked about this. I’m dealing with it the way I always deal with everything. Which means it’ll be fine, just like I told you it would be fine, because I always make everything fine. I’m the goddess of fine.”
“You’re a whole lot of goddess, sugar—that’s for sure. And while you definitely look fine,” he said, taking a sweeping glance of her legs before looking away again, “you don’t look fine, if you know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t know what you mean, because you’re sending all kinds of mixed messages.” And he was prying at a door she didn’t want open. Her eyes teared up against her will. “Please, Trace, just go.”
“Hey, now,” he said, his voice softer as he leaned his leg toward hers until they bumped. “The goddess of fine would never cry.”
“You’re right, she’d eat.” She stuffed one more mouthful of pie between her lips, dropped the fork into the pie pan, and pushed it away, leaving a stupid mess of custard and cream on her mouth.
Trace chuckled, reached over, and wiped cream off her mouth. But as soon as he touched her lips, his finger slowed and deliberately moved from one side to the other, his bright-blue gaze hot as it followed the movement. Then he sucked the custard off his finger with his eyes on her mouth, and the entire atmosphere in the room shifted on a dime.
Avery’s stomach pitched and swirled.
“I saw Huck Stevens at the gas station today,” Trace said. “He asked about you.”
What? If that’s where his head was at, she was reading him completely wrong.
“He says you keep turning him down for a second date.”
“That would be because I’m not interested in a second date.”
“He’s a really stand-up guy. Makes good money, smart, great famil
y, and the girls seem to like him.”
“Which means he won’t have trouble finding female company.”
“Why won’t that be your company?”
She angled toward him, annoyed as hell that he was trying to pawn her off on another guy. “What the hell do you care?”
His gaze lowered to her mouth. “Just can’t figure you out.”
What a joke. “You’re not trying.”
He looked away, focusing on the pie. “Are you really gonna eat that all by yourself? Thought I was your official taste-tester.”
This was ridiculous. She was sick of wandering around on eggshells. She just needed to get this over with. Make the move he wouldn’t and get rejected; then she could let go of this attraction and focus 100 percent on her business.
“You know, you’re right.” She rolled to her knees and scooped up another forkful of pie. “I should really get your take on it, shouldn’t I?”
Before he could answer, she slid the pie into her mouth, swung one leg across his lap, took his face in both hands, and kissed him.
He made a sound of surprise and grabbed her wrists. Before he could push her away, Avery added pressure. When he still didn’t open, she brushed her tongue across his lips with a little mewl of frustration.
That did it. With an answering growl, his fingers tightened on her arms, he tilted his head, and he opened to her.
Avery’s breath caught as his tongue stroked in, sharing the sweet, soft cream. He moaned, long and low. The sound rumbled through her mouth, and fire erupted low in her body.
In an instant, she lost track of everything but Trace’s mouth. Trace’s lips. Trace’s tongue. She hadn’t been kissed in so long, she’d forgotten what it felt like. Forgotten the heat of a man’s mouth. But even if she’d remembered, she wouldn’t have recognized this kind of kiss. A desperate, unrestrained, uninhibited, expressive kiss that sparked every single cell in her body back to life.
