Page 73 of Feeding Hope
No, it wasn’t something that he’d said or that someone had said about him. It was a feeling.
The same feeling she had around the firefighters at House Twenty-nine. They were all good men. She trusted them with her life. And in the same way, she just knew, deep in her gut that Wayne Reynolds was a good man.
“Avery?”
She looked up at him, smiling. “Sorry. I was just trying to remember if I left my underwear on the floor.”
She saw his smile and knew that he knew she was making an excuse. “Come on up. I have some halfway decent coffee.”
Before he let go of her hand, he lifted their hands and leaned in. He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Five.
WAYNE
Earlier when Avery had described the building she and Aidan lived in, she’d done it in such a tongue-in-cheek manner that he’d thought she was joking. But taking in the cinder block walls and institutional paint scheme, it did look more like a mid-century sanatorium than a place where families lived.
The fact that there were a number of windows on the outside boarded up with particle board and a few interior spaces that had been marked with graffiti, made it all look a little more run down than he’d like to see.
When they left the staircase, he let out a breath and must have made some kind of noise that she heard because Avery turned her head to look at him.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
He grimaced at that, not even bothering to hide his feelings.
“It looks pretty bad.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, “but Aidan and I are safe. Most days there are cameras that work at the entryway and in the stairs. I-”
He reached out and grabbed her arm. He turned to face her in the hallway. “Maybe we could just not talk about this until we’re inside your apartment.”
He felt a muscle tick in his jaw, and he felt a flare of pain in his head, but neither held a candle to the feeling that was constricting around his heart.
“Hey,” she covered his hand with her own, “we’ve lived here for the better part of five years. Nothing dangerous has happened to either of us.”
He didn’t know if he believed it fully. Avery was a strong woman. It didn’t take more than a minute or two for him to know that about her. She fairly radiated with strength and intelligence. She might just be seeing things with her own brand of rose-colored glasses.
“Let’s go inside. I have a feeling that coffee might do both of us some good.”
He bit down on the inside of his cheek, nodding.
She turned her back to him for a moment and when she turned back around, she had her house key in hand. He felt his eyes widening at the sight.
He felt his tongue pass over his lips. “I’d ask where that came from, but I don’t think my heart could survive hearing it.”
Avery leaned in, her eye bright with something like humor. “Come on, Coach. Your heart is made of stronger stuff than that.”
Wayne shook his head. He would have thought so before, but the idea that her key had been tucked away between her fantastic breasts left him more than a little breathless. With a wink she turned and opened the door to her apartment.
She stepped inside and turned to face him. “Well, are you coming in or not?”
Damn, he heard the invitation in her voice and all the challenge as well. He wasn’t a man to let opportunities pass him by, but he was also a man who knew how to judge those opportunities for the ability to turn them over into winning situations. In this case, winning wasn’t about where the nightwould end, it was about spending time with this incredible woman.
He stepped inside as she reached around him, to close the door. It made him smile to see that she had a set of locks to secure the door beyond just the lock on the doorknob.
As she set the deadbolt, he had to wonder. “Where did you say Aidan was tonight?”
She smiled, a wistful grin. “He’s at a friend’s house working on a project. Something I have you to thank for.”
