Chapter 25 Avery
AVERY
When I entered the bakery it wasn’t Beck wiping down the counter but a tall slim guy about my age with dark skin, an array of gold piercings in his ears.
His curly hair was tucked under a silk bandana and he wore a plain apron over jeans and a bright pink slim-fit T-shirt.
He looked up when I entered and a luminous smile broke out across his face. “You’re Avery!”
I returned his smile. “I am.”
“I’m Malcolm. I work here part-time.” He left his rag on the counter and crossed the bakery to shake my hand. “Beck’s been talking about you nonstop.”
“He has?”
“Girl, yes he has! And no wonder.” He leaned back to take me in, but there was nothing creepy about it. “I mean, women aren’t exactly my thing, but even I can see that you’re cute as a button. And gorgeous besides!”
My face got hot for the thousandth time since arriving in Blackwell Hollow. “I don’t know about that.”
I was still reeling from the fact that Beck had been talking about me.
“Well, I do.” Malcolm dropped my hand and returned for his rag, still on the counter. “And that hunk of burning love back there obviously does too.”
Beck chose that moment to push through the swinging doors that separated the shop from the kitchen. And I had to be honest, I couldn’t argue with Malcolm’s description of him.
His apron had an oven and the words When in doubt, pull it out emblazoned across the front, and his biceps flexed as he carried two baking sheets loaded with croissants to the counter.
He lit up when he saw me. “Hey!”
“Hey, figured I owed you another shift.”
His expression softened. “You don’t owe me anything. But I’m glad you’re here.”
I glanced at Malcolm, who was smirking while he wiped the same spot for the third time.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked. “In the back?”
“Obviously.” He set down the baking sheets. “Put these into the case, will you, Malcolm?”
“You got it, boss.” Malcolm looked at me. “Actually, I guess you’re my boss now.”
“Oh no…” I shook my head. “You still report to Beck. I don’t know enough about what goes on here to be your boss, and I won’t be here long anyway.”
Malcolm frowned. “You’re leaving? Already?”
“Not right away, but eventually… yeah. I have a job in the city, an apartment…” I wondered why suddenly neither of those things sounded like compelling reasons to leave Aunt Evelyn’s house and bakery.
To leave Blackwell Hollow.
“That’s too bad,” Malcolm said.
“It really is.” Beck sounded dejected.
“So can we…?” I gestured toward the swinging doors.
“Oh yeah! Definitely.” Beck held open the door and I crossed the room to enter the kitchen.
It was hard to be anything but happy and content here, the air heavy with yeast and sugar and the hints of lavender that seemed to be everywhere in Blackwell Hollow.
The ovens were on, the marble worktable dusted with flour. Beck had clearly been at it for hours, but in worn jeans and a deep green T-shirt that showed off the aforementioned biceps, he looked as fresh as if he’d just stepped out of the shower.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever had the urge to lick a man’s skin before.
Maybe it was the bakery. Maybe I was hungry.
I heard Bastien’s voice in my head, along with a burst of wicked laughter: Oh, you’re hungry all right.
Jiminy cricket, why was I acting like Bastien was my BFF? I was getting way too comfy here.
“Avery?”
It took me a second to realize Beck was talking to me, that he had already been talking to me and I’d been spaced out thinking about licking his skin like an ice cream cone and then telling Bastien all about it.
“Um… yeah?”
Beck grinned, like he knew exactly what I’d been thinking. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Oh… yeah.” I took a deep breath, trying to think of a good place to start. “I wanted to apologize.”
“Apologize?” He looked genuinely surprised. “For what?”
“For not being here more, and for…” I exhaled. “For avoiding you the last couple of days.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He walked toward me and placed his hands on my shoulders.
There was nothing but kindness and warmth in his brown eyes.
The problem was his hands on my bare skin were sending another kind of warmth to parts of my body that should not be part of this conversation.
“You have nothing to apologize for, cupcake. There’s no pressure.
I just figured you’d changed your mind, which you’re entitled to do. ”
I shook my head. “It’s not that. It’s just…”
“Just…?” His voice was gentle.
“I didn’t expect any of this.”
“The bakery?”
“Not that.” I’d known I’d inherited the bakery, although it was true that the idea was a lot more appealing now that I was in Blackwell Hollow. “The stuff with you. With Noah.”
With Dane. No. There was nothing — absolutely nothing — between Dane Calder and me.
“Ah.” Beck lifted his eyebrows. “Too much the other night?”
I chewed my lower lip. “No. That’s the problem actually. It was exactly what I wanted.”
“With me or with Noah? Or… both?”
“I don’t know.” I did know, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud. “I… I kissed him by the lake the other day, and then I felt weird and guilty, because I’d already kissed you. And then the same night I kissed Noah at the lake you… we…”
“I made you come in the kitchen.” He sounded pleased with himself, but I couldn’t be mad, because just hearing him say the words made me wet.
Made me want him again. All of him this time.
I nodded.
He lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. “I meant what I said. You’re the one calling the shots here. There’s no pressure. And if you decide you want to fuck Noah — or even Dane— ”
“I definitely don’t want to… fudge Dane.”
Liar.
His expression said he didn’t believe me. “But if you did, that would be okay too. Not saying I wouldn’t be jealous, because after the other night, I only want more of you, but like I said, it’s your call.” He hesitated. “And if you decided you wanted Noah and me at the same time…”
I held my breath, hating the fact that my embarrassment mingled with something like hope.
“Well, that would be okay too. I mean, I’ve never been super tight with Noah, but I’m willing to get up close and personal if that’s what you want.”
“You are?”
“It might even be fun.”
His grin made it clear he knew it would be fun. The thought of it — the fact that he was giving me permission to do the thing I didn’t even know for sure I wanted to do — went straight to my pussy.
And made it clear that I did, in fact, want to do it.
He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “The main thing is, I can’t have you avoiding me because you’re embarrassed. Nothing we could ever do together is embarrassing. Plus, it makes me kind of crazy to have you so close and not see you.”
“It does?”
He stroked my lower lip with his thumb, his gaze locked on mine. “It does.”
I heard the torment in his voice, could believe that during the nights I lay in bed, my body hungry for him, he’d been feeling the same way in one of the other rooms on the second floor of the house.
He leaned in, hovering over my lips, his brown eyes liquid with desire, and when he closed his mouth over mine, it was like coming home.
I opened eagerly when he touched his tongue to the seam of my lips, his big hand cradling my head as he stroked his way through my mouth. The sweeps of his tongue sent sparks to the darkest corners of my body, lighting me up like a fuse to the stick of dynamite at my core.
I knew what it felt like to have his fingers inside me now. My body knew too. It remembered him. Wanted more of him.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and met the parry of his tongue with my own, completely forgetting we were standing in the kitchen where Malcolm might walk in at any moment.
But in the end it wasn’t Malcolm who ended our tryst, it was the oven timer.
It dinged loudly enough to make me jump, and I pulled away from Beck like I’d been caught with my hand in the proverbial cookie jar.
Again.
Beck’s laughter was low and knowing. “It’s all good. It’s just the cupcakes… cupcake.”
He winked and the heat at my center turned to butterflies in my stomach. They took flight as he reached for the oven mitts sitting on the worktable, my desire morphing into something that somehow felt a lot more dangerous.
Because I didn’t just want Beck. I liked him.
And that was a lot more complicated.