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.”