Distracted as I was by the possibility that Noah was checking out my tits, I didn’t know what he meant at first. Then I followed his gaze and remembered: my iced coffee — and my shirt — had been the first casualty of Cleopatra’s rampage.
“Oh, sugar,” I said. “I really liked this shirt too.”
“I don’t know about the shirt, but I can fix your coffee problem.” He reached for his wallet.
“You want the… strawberry situation?” Rosie asked.
Noah shook his head. “Not today. Two of whatever Avery was having. To go.”
16
NOAH
Avery’s shirt was a mess.She was beautiful.
I held the door to the Common Ground open and followed her out of the shop and onto the sidewalk.
I looked down at her. “Walk to the lake?”
Running into her at the Common Ground had been a happy accident, and I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. I’d been fighting off jealousy ever since Beck took her to the bakery the day before, and since I was elbow-deep in mulch and soil most days, I wasn’t going to blow my chance at some one-on-one time.
“Sure.” She peered up at me in the sunlight as we started walking toward the lake, shimmering at the end of the road. She’d pulled her long brown hair into a ponytail that made her look extra adorable, and I tried not to stare at her thighs, full and bare, under her shorts. “I feel like I got caught cheating.”
“Cheating?” I wasn’t following, although that might have been on account of Avery’s face, which made me want to stare until I figured out why she was so appealing, or maybe her tits, which spilled into the neckline of her coffee-stained shirt just enough to make my dick hard.
Or both. Probably.
I was suddenly thankful for the constraint of my jeans even though it was more than a little uncomfortable to sport a hard-on in denim.
She held up her iced coffee. “On the bakery.”
I laughed. “Yeah, what’s up with that?”
Beck served coffee at the Golden Crumb. The drink menu didn’t include all the fancy stuff Rosie sold at the Common Ground, but Avery was drinking an iced coffee straight up.
Not exactly gourmet.
She avoided my gaze as we passed the inn and started across Foxglove Lane. “Thought I’d get the lay of the land.”
I sensed there was more to the story. Had Beck made an unwanted move? The thought pissed me off, but it didn’t ring true. Unwanted moves weren’t Beck’s style.
Or mine.
Which was why I was treading carefully, walking the line between my professional relationship with Avery and my desire to kiss her until she was gasping for air.
And let’s be honest:professionalwasn’t at all the word that came to mind when I thought about Avery Hart. Not because she wasn’t capable but because I’d never wanted to fuck my boss before, and now I very much wanted to fuck my boss.
“What’s the verdict?” I asked as we approached the footpath that wound around the lake.
We were past the shops on Main. The park stretched to the left, winding around the lake. Across the overflow parking lot near the boat launches, Walter Finch’s property lay between the shops on State Street and the vacant land where Hearthstone’s proposed gated community would be built.
Avery laughed, a bright ring that reminded me of a bell. “I didn’t get very far. I need coffee first.”
“Understandable.”
“What about you?” she asked. “You were cheating too.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to let you in on my deepest darkest secret.”