Wild Kisses (Wildwood 2)

Which included staying away from Avery.

“I wanted you. I’ve wanted you from the moment I met you. That’s why I haven’t gone on a second date with anyone else. Because I want you.”

He tossed another tile into the pile and wiped sweat from his forehead with his shoulder. God, he wanted her the same way. Wanted what he hadn’t wanted since he’d been screwed over by Corina.

He wanted to take Avery to dinner and stay three hours over drinks, talking. He wanted to sleep in with her cuddled close, eat breakfast in bed, make love all afternoon, and fall asleep together again. He wanted inside jokes. He wanted conversations through a look across a room.

Trace drove the crowbar under the next tile, and the old nails screeched loose.

“This fucker . . . ,” Cody muttered.

Trace glanced up and found Cody straddling the roofline, putting all his weight into the crowbar to loosen the stake holding the brace into a two-by-four. Alarm rocketed up Trace’s spine. Consequences flashed through his mind in split-second screenshots.

“Hey, don’t lean into it.” He barked the inst

ruction he’d already given Cody three times that day. “I told you to knock it loose.”

Cody looked up but continued to lean into the bar, shoving it with all his strength and placing three-quarters of his weight to one side of the roof.

“Cody, stop.” Trace dropped his tool and scuttled toward Cody. “This roof is too old—”

The nail snapped, the rotted two-by-four beneath cracked and pulled through the particleboard. And Cody tumbled head over ass down the slope.

“Fuck!” Trace pushed off with both feet, throwing himself over the bracket and the tearing roof.

Cody hit the gutter, reaching the end of the safety rope. The roof beneath Trace lifted, punching him in the chest. He grunted and lost all his air. Pain crushed his ribs, and for long, excruciating moments, he couldn’t breathe. His vision blurred and went dark before his throat finally opened and his lungs greedily sucked in oxygen.

“Ah, God . . . ,” he groaned.

He turned his head and found Cody with one leg slung over the gutter as he clung to the roof edge.

“You okay?” Trace called.

“Uh . . .” Cody was breathing hard and fast. “Probably not.”

Henry rushed outside and looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Should I call the fire department?”

Wouldn’t that be just perfect?

“Cody,” Trace called. “Do you need a fireman to save your sorry ass, or can you do it yourself?”

“I can do it myself, thanks. Think my ego’s bruised enough.”

“We’ve got this, Henry,” Trace said. “Thank you.”

The old man didn’t look convinced, but he went back inside.

Trace banged his forehead to the hot roof. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

If he hadn’t been so goddamned obsessed with Avery, he’d have been paying attention, and this wouldn’t have happened.

“Let me know when you’re secure,” he told Cody. “Then we can figure out which one of us losers is in better shape to drive to the ER.”

NINE

Avery had avoided Trace and the café as long as she could. She’d overstocked her space at Phoebe’s shop, filled and shipped her Internet orders, taken care of her lunch orders for the day, dropped off samples all over town, stocked Finley’s Market, and even held a successful focus-group tasting to help her refine her opening menu.

Now she needed to spend some time on the small jobs at the café to make sure the opening day happened as planned. And, in truth, as she drove toward the café at 10:00 a.m. after forty-eight full hours away from Trace, her stomach flipped and fluttered with anticipation.