Both of them focused on her, their gazes dazed, as if coming out of a trance. Delaney’s sharpened first. Her smoky-blue eyes darted to the mixer, then to the trays of cinnamon rolls covering every horizontal surface, waiting for frosting.
Something clicked in her gaze. She pulled in a sharp breath, and a smile broke out over her face. “Butterscotch.”
Avery frowned. “There is no butterscotch in these rolls. Maybe you need a taste-bud checkup.”
“But there was butterscotch in the scones you made earlier.”
Ethan glanced at his beer, his brow tight as he contemplated her revelation. “Butterscotch?” Some sort of wisdom hit, and his face opened with a smile. “Butterscotch.”
Delaney was already flipping back through Ethan’s brewing journal, where he wrote down every detail of his process for every batch. “You must have . . . Here.” She pointed to something on the page. “Your second fermentation temperature was low.”
He frowned at the note. “Not that low.”
“Low enough.” She cut a sidelong grin at him. “You can never admit you made a mistake.”
He gave her a heavy-lidded, how-dare-you-say-that-word-in-my-presence look. “That’s because I don’t make mistakes with my beer. Just ask my mom.”
Delaney burst out laughing, head thrown back.
Delight washed over Ethan’s face. He set his glass down, took Delaney’s head between his hands, and pulled her in for a kiss.
Avery was about to look away, but Ethan’s expression trapped her. A look drenched with desire and affection and so much raw want—a want transcending the physical. His gaze held on Delaney’s mouth until their lips met and his lids closed. Delaney’s grin melted into instant heat, and she wrapped an arm around his neck as she sank into the kiss.
The sight shot a spray of heat through Avery’s belly.
I bet Trace kisses like that.
The thought poured fire through Avery’s lower body and snapped her out of her trance. “Oh-kay . . .”
She refocused on her bright-red mixer. With a sigh, she pushed the speed control higher, whipping more air into the frosting and drowning out the hums and moans between Delaney and Ethan.
Too bad it didn’t unknot Avery’s gut or dim the fantasies of Trace in her mind.
She shook her head, silently reprimanding herself. She might not have had a man around in years who had acted like a husband, but her divorce was still only two months old. And Trace worked for her. They were friends. She shouldn’t be thinking about him like this.
In fact, he was probably the best friend she’d ever had outside of her aunt and sister. Avery’s return home with nothing to show for her turbulent eight years away—no husband, no education, no career—had been the hardest transition of her life. Trace had been a constant source of encouragement and empowerment. Of support and sanity. Of humor and honesty.
And, yes, he’d also been the origination of all her fantasies.
The sight of him, shirtless, with icing sprayed across his abdomen, made a smile curve Avery’s mouth. That had been so unlike her. But Trace had a way of making her feel completely accepted, like no matter how she acted or what she said—naive, silly, serious, or awkward—it was all good.
She couldn’t imagine him in prison. Couldn’t imagine a person as easygoing and as thoughtful as Trace living among the ugliest criminals in the state. It didn’t seem right to house someone convicted of a drug charge, but with no violent history, with murderers, rapists, and armed robbers.
The oven timer dinged, and she eagerly switched her focus away from the uncomfortable thoughts. After shutting off the mixer, she grabbed a folded kitchen towel in each hand and pulled more cinnamon rolls from the oven, closing the door with a bump of her hip. She realized too late that she should have thought it through first. The small kitchen’s limited counter space left her spinning in circles, searching for a place to put the hot pans.
“I hate to pull you away from your, uh, moment,” she said to the still-kissing couple, “but, Delaney, could you pop a trivet on that table for me? I don’t have any more counter space.”
A warm wave of cinnamon and almond wafted through the kitchen, perfuming the air with sticky, sugary goodness. Love in edible form—that’s what Avery had dubbed her sweet treats long ago. And even now, she sometimes wondered if the warm, gooey feeling that filled her with every new, delicious batch would ever fade.
She hoped not. It had started her baking during that long, lonely stretch after David’s first deployment. It had earned her friends and created purpose in her young life as nothing but a soldier’s wife. It had soothed her through their turbulent, vacant marriage. And now, not only was it all she had, it was what continued to drive her.
While Delaney looked through drawers for something to protect Phoebe’s table, the heat of the pans leaked through the towels.
The front door opened, and their aunt’s voice bubbled through the living room. “Guess who I dragged in from the street?”
Avery didn’t care what member of the Wildwood community Phoebe had brought home to sample her latest delicacy straight out of the oven. She deeply appreciated her aunt’s enthusiasm, support, and kick start on this venture, but Avery was dead tired and she ached—everywhere. Her legs, her feet, her back, her shoulders, her arms, and God, her hands . . . With as much kneading as she’d done to perfect her baking during the last two months, she’d developed ridiculous strength, along with strains and probably premature arthritis. And even if putting on the good hostess face for Phoebe’s guest meant making another sale, all Avery wanted to do now was sink into a steaming-hot bubble bath up to her nose.
Or into bed with Trace.