Sugarcoated

by Erin Nicholas

  “That… might be a good idea?” Aiden was aware that sounded like a question.

  “I agree,” Piper told him.

  Okay, then it was a good idea.

  “I’ll let him know you’re going to wait on the employee survey.” She stopped and focused on Aiden. “Do you want me to write up a more general survey? Maybe ask them about general satisfaction? Changes they might like to see?”

  “That would be…”

  “I think it could be a good place to start. Especially paired with the information I sent you about current benefits.”

  “Then yes,” Aiden said.

  “Great. I’ll tap into my network and see who’s done something similar and can give me some direction.” She was typing this up as she spoke to him.

  “Hey, Piper?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do we pay you enough?”

  She paused in her typing and smiled at him. Then she glanced at Ollie. Then back to Aiden. She had a strange expression on her face when she said, “Working with you guys is a dream job.”

  Aiden studied her for a moment. He’d always thought maybe, just maybe, Piper had a little thing for Ollie. But Ollie treated her like a sister at best. A nagging assistant at worst. Hell, she made dinner reservations for him and the women he took out. Aiden was pretty sure she’d sent flower arrangements and possibly even a birthday gift or two on Ollie’s behalf as well. Knowing Piper, she was the one who remembered there were birthday gifts that needed to be sent.

  Oliver Caprinelli would be a very hard man to be in love with. His head was in the clouds 99 percent of the time. Getting his attention would be a feat. He would forget about you the second even the spark of a new idea came to him. He’d close himself in his office to brainstorm and not emerge for hours. He’d forget to eat. He didn’t always go home to sleep. He missed phone calls, dinners, and yes, birthdays.

  It was even hard to be his friend sometimes. Aiden couldn’t imagine being a girlfriend. Or a wife.

  And no one would know that better than Piper.

  “That wasn’t really an answer to my question,” Aiden pointed out.

  She grinned. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready for a raise.”

  “No raises for wenches who dangle meatballs in front of their bosses,” Ollie groused from off camera.

  Maybe she should try dangling other things in front of him, Aiden thought. Then frowned. Piper didn’t need to go out of her way to get Ollie’s attention. She was amazing and beautiful, and every other man who walked into their office noticed everything she had going on. If Ollie wasn’t smart enough to notice Piper, that was his own damned fault.

  Besides, if they did hook up and Ollie pissed her off or broke her heart, then Fluke would lose Piper, and they all needed her. Aiden should be working to keep Ollie completely distracted from Piper as a woman. She was his nagging assistant. That was perfect.

  “Just type the email, Oliver,” Piper said in a very old schoolmarm tone. In spite of her cherry-red glasses that matched the red cherries that dotted her white dress, she pulled off the I’ll-rap-your-knuckles-with-my-ruler attitude very well.

  “Don’t give him the meatballs even when he’s finished,” Aiden said. “His attitude is crap.”

  “It is,” she agreed.

  “Don’t you have a cute cupcake baker you need to be covering in frosting?” Ollie called.

  Aiden froze. “What?”

  Piper frowned at Ollie. “Keep typing.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Aiden pressed.

  “Cam got a call from his mom a little bit ago,” Piper said. “She asked if he knew about you and Zoe.”

  “Oh.” Shit. Aiden thought fast. Cam did not know about him and Zoe. Cam was protective of Zoe. To an extent. If someone hurt her, Cam would absolutely hurt that person. But Cam wasn’t the type to punch Aiden for kissing Zoe.

  He didn’t think.

  “What did he say?” Aiden finally asked. Cam hadn’t called him or Zoe about it. What did that mean?

  Piper chewed on her bottom lip for a moment.

  “Piper?”

  “He didn’t call you?”

  “No.”

  “Text? Email?”

  “No. No.”

  “Oh.” She sighed. “All he said to me was to book him a room at the hotel too.”

  Aiden frowned. “He’s coming to Iowa?”

  “Yeah. He left right after Dax did.”

  “But he’s staying at the hotel? Not in Appleby?”

  Piper shrugged. “He asked me to book him a room, so I did.”

  What the hell? “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see him soon enough, and I can ask him what’s up.” Aiden wasn’t looking forward to that reunion. “Did he seem… angry?” Aiden asked. He really liked this tie. If Cam was going to punch him, he didn’t want to bleed on it.

  “He seemed… resigned?” Piper said. She ended that with a question mark though. She looked at Ollie. “Didn’t you think?”

  “Determined,” Ollie said. “Or… annoyed. Yeah, maybe a little annoyed too.”

  Great. A determined and annoyed Camden McCaffery. That wasn’t as bad as a pissed-off, unreasonable one, but it wasn’t great either.

  Aiden reached up and pulled his tie loose.

  Dammit.

  Twenty minutes later, he strode into the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Dubuque, Iowa.

  He’d texted Dax that he was here, and Dax had replied with a simple, “1247.”

  Of course Dax was on the top floor. He did love a great view. And Dubuque might be in what some people considered a flyover state, but it was right on the Mississippi and definitely had a pretty view. If you were into rivers and bluffs and trees and rolling hills and stuff.

  Aiden was. He’d missed his home state. Chicago was a great city, and he’d loved city life at first. Chicago and its many resources had been an important place for them to be as they got Fluke off the ground, and trusting Grant to take them back to his hometown had been a good move.

  But Aiden was ready to be back in Iowa.

  And yeah, he did have a cute cupcake baker to be covering in frosting as a matter of fact.

  He thought about Zoe as the elevator climbed to the twelfth floor. Cam would get over it. Or used to it. Or whatever. Aiden and Zoe were together now, and Cam would just have to deal. That wasn’t really Cam’s strong suit—dealing with things he didn’t like—but this was his best friend and sister. He wouldn’t want to lose either of them, and if Aiden could prove he was the best thing for Zoe and that he really wanted to take care of her and love her, then Cam would be good with it.

  He would definitely need to leave out the frosting stuff though.

  The doors swished open, and Aiden blew out a breath. Cam was very likely in there with Dax. They’d probably already raided the minibar and had room service on its way up.

  The thing about hanging out with Dax… he didn’t let you let things like practicality and huge price tags and it being 2 p.m. keep you from enjoying yourself. Two p.m. on a weekday? Why not have a T-bone steak with the works? And dessert. Especially dessert. Dax was a dessert-first kind of guy. Not because of a sweet tooth exactly. More because of a life philosophy. Live life to the fullest. Get what you wanted when you wanted it. Always.

  Aiden rapped his knuckles against the door to Suite 1247. The corner suite. Of course.

  Dax opened it with a flourish a moment later. He was wearing one of the hotel robes. And probably nothing else. Aiden didn’t need to know.

  “Hey.” Dax stepped back to let Aiden in.

  Clearly room service was not on its way up. They’d already been there. Dax picked a french fry off the plate as he passed, tossing it into the air and catching it before settling back on the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table, and pointed to the remote and the gigantic television. He shut it off.

  “I see you’ve settled in easily,” Aiden said, taking the armchair perpendicular to where Dax sat. Dax’s robe was loose around the wa
ist, and he didn’t want to accidentally catch a glimpse of anything underneath.

  “I think best when I’m comfortable,” Dax told him with a grin.

  Dax was very rarely uncomfortable. Physically or emotionally. Zoe’s assumption about the guys sitting around their office in beanbag chairs was true if she was referring only to Dax’s office. He had two oversized beanbags in there, and he claimed he did his best thinking in them. As a group they never met in Dax’s office. Grant refused to do serious work while sitting in a beanbag chair in an office with a cappuccino machine in the corner. Grant Lorre was very much a black-coffee kind of guy. Strong black coffee.

  And yes, Dax claimed cinnamon sprinkles on top of his cappuccino helped his creative process. Just like the gummy bears in the glass candy jar on his desk did. Just like the music from the Rat Pack—played on vinyl on an old turntable—did. Just like the daily ping-pong game against Elliot, one of their best graphics guys, did.

  But the truth was, bugging the shit out of and getting smiles out of Grant, helped Dax’s creative process and all that—from the Rat Pack to the gummy bears—did that.

  Yes, hanging out with Dax Marshall was a little like hanging out with a thirteen-year-old with a credit card and no limit. Or being stuck in one of The Hangover movies.

  Still, the guy made a kick-ass video game and was the star at every con he’d ever been to. Aiden knew Grant would never admit it, at least not where Dax could hear him, but Dax and his YouTube videos and his appearances at conventions and his insistence on high quality, unique merchandise, had made them more money than anything Aiden and Grant actually did for the company.

  Bottom line, Warriors of Easton wouldn’t even exist without Dax. Ollie was the storyteller, the world builder, the visionary, but Dax made it all real. He took Ollie’s ideas and made them come to life. On screen anyway. He put movement and color and sound to everything, and without him, Warriors would have never come to be. He worked his ass off, honestly, to make Warriors of Easton everything it could possibly be.

  Aiden, Grant, and Cam were completely worthless when it came to all that.

  They were the paper and money and regulations and business guys. Sure, the company needed them too, but Ollie and Dax could have found three other marketing and business majors just by throwing a rock. It was a good thing Aiden, Grant, and Cam had found them and had recognized brilliance when they saw it.

  “Have you seen Cam?” Aiden asked, propping one of his feet up on the coffee table next to Dax’s bare foot.

  Dax also rarely wore shoes around the office. That also bugged the shit out of Grant.

  “Yeah, he’s on his way. Went to upgrade his room.” Dax grinned.

  “Upgrade?”

  “Piper put him in the executive suite down the hall. Figured we’d want to be on the same floor to work. There’s only one of these deluxe suites on each floor. He’s down there working to get a deluxe on another floor. Can’t handle me having a better place than his.”

  Aiden rolled his eyes. That sounded exactly like Cam. “He’s not planning to stay in Appleby?”

  “Said he didn’t want to walk in on you banging his sister on the kitchen table.”

  Aiden started choking. On nothing. He coughed hard and sent Dax a glare.

  Dax waited for him to quiet then gave him a grin.

  “Did he actually say that?” Aiden asked.

  “I sure fucking did.”

  Aiden looked over his shoulder at Cam. Who evidently had a key to Dax’s room.

  13

  “Uh, hey,” Aiden greeted Cam.

  “Yeah, hey.” Cam dropped into the chair opposite Aiden. He glanced at Dax. “Jesus, cover your junk, Marshall.”

  “You’re in my room,” Dax informed him, leaning to grab a package of M&M’s—that probably cost thirteen dollars—from the spread on the coffee table. “You don’t want to see all my glory, go to your room.”

  Cam grabbed the throw pillow from behind him on the chair and tossed it at Dax. “This must be what it’s like to hang out with rock stars who think they’re hot shit and that everyone should just let them do whatever they want.”

  The truth was, Dax was kind of their rock star. He was the face of the company—and it was, by all accounts, a good-looking face—and he was the freaking Wizard of Oz. The guy who made the magic happen. That was why Grant went along with all the stupid shit Dax claimed he needed to be creative. The same reason Grant often, and always, begrudgingly, accompanied Ollie and Dax when they traveled. Grant was protecting his investment.

  Dax just nodded. “Probably.” He looked from Cam to Aiden. “I prefer to travel with Ollie. He gets me.”

  “Translation, ‘Ollie is as special as I am,’” Cam said in his usual imitation of Dax. Which sounded nothing like Dax and completely like a California surfer dude from a bad beach movie. Dax was from San Francisco, actually, but was apparently a terrible surfer.

  “You say I’m special, but I don’t think you mean it,” Dax replied, pretending to be hurt.

  Cam rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “Oh, I mean it. I just don’t mean that I think you slide to work on a sparkly rainbow or that your farts smell like cookies.”

  Dax grinned at him. “Good thing millions of boys between the ages of ten and twenty-five, not to mention a fairly significant number of guys twenty-five to forty, think both of those things about me.”

  “Metaphorically, anyway,” Cam said.

  “Bet I could convince a chunk of them those things are actually true,” Dax said, almost thoughtfully.

  It was never a good idea for Dax to get thoughtful when the topic of conversation was ridiculous. Thank God Ollie wasn’t here, or they’d end up with a fucking plastic rainbow running from the parking garage into Dax’s office window that he would literally slide in on every day.

  “We need to talk about Hot Cakes,” Aiden said, trying to steer the conversation.

  “Or we could talk about you banging Cam’s sister on her kitchen table.”

  Aiden stared at him. They could find another computer genius, right? Surely there was another one in the world that could pick up right where Dax left off when Aiden killed him.

  “The only thing I have to say about that—” Cam said, his voice deep and firm from across the coffee table and a pile of Dax snacks.

  Aiden looked up at his best friend reluctantly. They’d done a lot of awesome things together. Not the least of which was harnessing Dax and Ollie’s brilliance. A huge, amazing, multimillion dollar business. They’d always been honest with one another and they trusted each other completely. He couldn’t lose Cam.

  Unless it came down to Cam or Zoe.

  The revelation hit him hard. He’d never thought about it. Had never let himself think about it. Cam was not an easygoing guy, but he also wasn’t the type to get all riled up about his sister’s sex or love life. If the guy treated her badly, then definitely Cam would make him regret it. But if Zoe chose to be with someone, Cam trusted her to make that decision.

  Probably.

  It had never really been an issue before. Aiden had never heard Cam talk about Zoe’s dating life or any guys she’d ever been involved with. Then again, she hadn’t dated much.

  But yeah, if Cam was going to be a dick—and that was something Cam McCaffery did very well—then Aiden was going to lose one of his best friends and business partners.

  Fuck.

  “I’m never eating at that table again.”

  “I love her, man.”

  They spoke at the same time. Then stared at each other.

  “What?”

  “What?”

  Again they spoke simultaneously.

  Then Aiden took a breath. “I love her.”

  Cam just nodded. “Good.”

  “Yeah? That’s it? Just good?”

  “Yeah. I love you both, and I know you’ll be good to her. And as long as I don’t have to hear about your sex life… or hear your sex life.” He frowned. “Fuck. Where
am I going to stay when I come home now? I can’t stay at the house.”

  “You can stay at the house,” Aiden said.

  “I can’t listen to the headboards banging or come down the hall knowing you’re in the shower together.” He shook his head. “Dammit. I’ll have to stay at Mom’s.”

  Aiden laughed. “When you stay over, I’ll sleep in my own room.”

  “So what?” Cam asked. “That didn’t stop her from sneaking in there on Christmas Eve.”

  Aiden froze. “What?”

  Cam gave him a “come on” look. “Yeah, I saw her coming back out of your room.”

  “You didn’t say anything,” Aiden said carefully.

  “I thought maybe you were just screwing around that one night or something,” Cam said.

  “And you didn’t care?”

  “You’re both grown-ups,” Cam said with a shrug. “Who the hell am I to be judging other people about relationships?”

  “That is a really good point,” Dax said.

  “This from a guy who likes to bang chicks who dress up like fairies and princesses?” Cam asked. “That he created? That’s kind of creepy, don’t you think?”

  “It’s fucking awesome,” Dax said. “I draw stuff in a notebook, and six months later that drawing is showing up in the flesh at cons and thinking my farts smell like cookies.” Dax crossed his ankles on the coffee table and grinned. “It’s like magic.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Aiden had seen Dax’s creations walking and talking—and fawning all over him—at cons all across the country and at one in London.

  “And by the way, my fairies and princesses and warriors really like it when I refer to my cock as my staff. What do you think of that?”

  Cam looked like he was also wondering about finding a new brilliant computer genius to take Dax’s place.

  “Anyway,” Cam finally said. “I figure if you do anything to mess up with Zoe, you’ve got my mom and dad and Josie and Jane to deal with, and they’re going to give you a lot more trouble than I ever could.”

  Ugh. Aiden nodded. “Yeah.”