Semi-Sweet On You: Hot Cakes Series

by Nicholas, Erin

  That’s why it had been such a big deal when he’d told her he was willing to stay home, skip college, and come to work for Hot Cakes so he could stay in Appleby with her.

  And it had been one of the reasons she had pushed him away.

  “We don’t have enough money,” Henry told her.

  “I’ve got ten dollars,” Hunter said.

  “I can ask my mom,” Jack added.

  Whitney shook off the thoughts of young Cam and all the things they’d missed out on back then. And since.

  She grinned. “That’s the even better news. I’ve got the money.”

  Henry, Hunter, and Jack’s eyes all grew round.

  “You would give us money to use?” Henry asked.

  “Yep.” Whitney gestured to Piper. “This is Piper. She’s the only one that will take care of the money if you win.”

  “So what do we do?” Hunter asked.

  “You get up there toward the front, and when it’s Ollie’s turn, you raise your hand,” Whitney said. “You keep raising your hand until they say you won.”

  Henry looked downright amazed. “Wow. That sounds easy.”

  “Super easy,” Whitney agreed.

  “I’ll even go up there with you,” Piper said. “To help you with what you should do.”

  Whitney smiled at that. Piper was very used to herding and taking care of a group of guys. Honestly, these boys being eleven wouldn’t faze her a bit—the Hot Cakes guys were sometimes very much eleven-year-olds in their behaviors.

  “I’m going to go… check on the llamas,” Whitney said.

  She for sure couldn’t be right up front for this. Watching Cam baking would be hard enough, but no way was she going to watch him get auctioned off.

  Piper gave her a knowing look.

  “They’re actually alpacas,” Henry told her.

  With a surprised laugh, Whitney nodded, “Right. Alpacas.”

  “Let’s go, guys. You want to be right down front,” Piper said, nudging them in the direction of the stage.

  Whitney watched them weave through the crowd and took a second to appreciate that there was a crowd.

  Then her eyes wandered to where Cam was standing on stage. He was behind the middle cooking station. He was wearing a bright yellow apron over his fitted black t-shirt now—a not-really-that-subtle nod to his family’s bakery which was all yellow and white from their décor to their take-out boxes to, yes, their aprons—but his tattoos and muscles and the black stud earring he wore in his left ear and his this-is-gonna-be-fun grin were all still on full display.

  His eyes met hers, and even from the distance she felt the jolt of awareness.

  “When we decided to introduce a new product, for the first time in the company’s history, we knew it had to be something special,” Dax was saying, having just explained how the baking competition and auction were going to work. “We wanted to make a big deal out of it, because it is a big deal. The new product represents the new directions and plans that we have for Hot Cakes. But it has to fit in with the Hot Cakes history and story. And who knows that better than the people of this town who have been a part of it?”

  Whitney felt her throat tighten unexpectedly. She hadn’t known what Dax was going to say but that was so… nice.

  It was no small thing that her family had owned Hot Cakes for the past three generations. And that it was her father who hadn’t cared about the business and as soon as her grandfather passed away had been ready to let it fold.

  Her family had almost caused three hundred and forty-seven people to have to find new jobs and, in most cases, uproot their families and move. Appleby was a very small town. There were only so many jobs. Those people would have all had to seek employment elsewhere. In some cases it would have meant taking their entire family away from Appleby. Many of those people had grown up here, had raised their families here. This was their home. Leaving because the factory closed would have been huge.

  Of course, it would have affected the town in general too. All of those people leaving would have meant many would have taken spouses with them. That would have caused Appleby to lose teachers and nurses and business owners, daycare providers, community volunteers. The entire community would have felt it.

  “And just so you all know,” Dax continued from the stage. “The guys up here have a bet as to who will go for the highest amount.”

  The crowd laughed and Whitney had to smile. That sounded just like them. Max, who wasn’t an owner, but a Hot Cakes employee, was just as cocky and fun-loving as the other guys. According to Aiden, he was thrilled to be included and was ready to ham it up for the crowd.

  “And whatever that highest bid is, Hot Cakes is going to match it,” Dax said. “That means our local food bank is going to get an even bigger check. So be very generous. These guys will earn it.”

  She really liked them all. Whitney took a deep breath. She really did. She liked the guys who’d taken over for so many reasons, and she particularly liked them all together. She loved sitting in the meetings and just watching them interact.

  She really liked Cam.

  That was why she would love to be his friend. Be someone he joked with and teased like he did Piper. Someone he could laugh with and brainstorm with and even argue with like he did the rest of the guys. They all butted heads at times but it never affected their relationship and it was always with the ultimate goal in mind. They all were also pretty good at admitting when someone else had a better idea. They encouraged each other even as they sometimes disagreed.

  She wanted that. She wanted to work with a group of friends that she respected and knew respected her. She wanted to be proud of their accomplishments individually as much as she was with her own. She wanted to share a common purpose with people who were as passionate as she was, yet always wanted to do the right thing and really cared.

  Whitney had pleaded with her father to let her take over operations if he was no longer interested, but he’d blown off her suggestion—as he had practically every other suggestion she’d ever made in relation to the business—and declared that he was tired of being tied down in Iowa and was heading to Dallas.

  But now, thanks to these guys, she had the chance to be important.

  She was grateful to Aiden, and Dax, and Grant, and Ollie, and Cam. Maybe especially Cam. He could have probably shut the whole thing down. He could have said fuck no to saving Hot Cakes and the Lancasters’ reputation. But he hadn’t. She was undeniably grateful for that.

  Now that the Lancasters were no longer in control of Hot Cakes, she wanted Appleby to feel secure and happy about having Hot Cakes here and to know that it was going to be here for a very long time. She wanted to help the guys make this business venture wildly successful. They’d taken a chance on all of it and she was going to make them glad they had.

  That meant she and Cam had to keep from breaking each other’s hearts. Period. And the only way to do that was to stay away from each other. Personally anyway.

  That meant no sexy red dresses, no private time in her office, no dating.

  They were going to be business associates and maybe, eventually, hopefully, friends.

  So being an adult woman fully in control of her emotions, she turned on her heel and headed for the alpaca pen.

  5

  Well, there was no way he was going to be able to be just coworkers or even friends with Whitney.

  At least not until he tried to be more.

  Cam was grateful that he could bake and flirt on autopilot—one of the perks to growing up in a bakery and having lots of practice. At both.

  He was somehow pulling off the chocolate coconut bars while entertaining the audience by giving Ollie and Max shit about their own baking, while thinking about Whitney.

  And how hot she looked in that stupid, ugly pencil skirt she was wearing today.

  It was ninety-two degrees on a bright, sunny summer day in the town square. The event was casual and fun and outside. What was she wearing that stupid skirt
and blouse and heels for? She should be in a sundress and sandals. Showing lots of creamy skin. And she should have her hair up in a ponytail. At least until he pulled it down to run his hands through it as he kissed her.

  She should look like a small-town girl at a town event. Not a corporate shark trying to sell stuff to people.

  Cam worked on not scowling as he melted the chocolate over a low flame on the built-in stove top in his mini kitchen. He didn’t care about the auction except he’d be damned if he’d lose the top bid designation to Ollie or Max.

  They both had date plants in the audience anyway. And surely that came with a budget.

  Cam was on his own in upping his bid amount.

  But he wasn’t worried.

  He was from here and knew all twelve of the ladies in the front row. He also had a reputation. And the best recipe.

  He wasn’t worried about fetching a big price.

  He did wonder how Whitney felt about that though.

  She’d gone off toward the petting zoo several minutes ago. Which was annoying. How was he going to impress her with his baking and flirting if she wasn’t even here?

  Not that he should have to impress her with either thing. He’d baked for her before. And he’d flirted her right out of her panties on numerous occasions. Including last night in her office. Okay, he hadn’t quite gotten her panties off, but he’d proven she wasn’t immune. That’s all he’d really needed to know.

  She’d never been immune to him. Even in high school, when their families were stubbornly feuding with one another and both of their grandmothers would have lost their minds if they’d known he and Whit were dating, it had only taken a dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies and a whispered, “sneak down to the park with me and I’ll give you something even sweeter” to get her to say yes to him.

  And now she was off looking at alpacas instead of watching this baking-auction thing? That had been her idea?

  He realized that he’d been whipping the melting chocolate way too hard, and he made himself take a breath and slow down.

  He glanced up at the girls in the front row. They were definitely still watching him. At least the whisking had made his arm muscles bulge. He almost laughed. He wasn’t really the flex-for-it type of guy. Except when he was giving his friends shit about his muscles and tats giving him an edge with the ladies. But hey, you had to use what you had when you were in competition. Mostly it was his intellect and stubbornness that he flexed in his job, but Piper had insisted on the t-shirt to show off his arms, so he was going to assume that was his greatest asset today. And his cookies. The literal ones.

  “So once everything has heated up and is nice and firm,” Max was saying to Cam’s left. “That’s when you know it’s time to pour on the sticky stuff.”

  Cam almost snorted. But they were all wearing mics so that everyone could hear their “baking” instructions. He had to admit, Max was good at the innuendo. It was partly the tone of voice he was using. And the way he was looking at Elliot, his date plant—and one of Fluke, Inc.’s best programmers—right down front.

  But Max was a big, burly guy who also had muscles and tats and a beard, along with a very deep voice, and with the way he said some of the things he said, like “sticky stuff,” even the girls in the crowd who knew he was gay were watching him with interest.

  “You have to be sure that everything is soft and warm and ready,” Cam agreed. “But you also don’t want to go too fast when it comes to the sticky stuff.” He removed his saucepan of chocolate from the burner and turned to the cookie crust he’d made a few minutes ago. “It’s okay to take it slow,” he said, letting his voice drop as well as he poured the chocolate over the crust. “There’s no need to rush. The firm parts and the soft parts need to come together easy.”

  Max, on the other hand, did snort, the sound loud in his mic. The crowd laughed.

  “I’m with you,” Max said. “Sometimes slow is the way to go. But if you get things firm enough before you even start the sticky stuff, you don’t have to be overly gentle.” He winked at the crowd. “Of course I mean the crust of this caramel crunch bar. You want that crust firm enough so it doesn’t fall apart when you’re… eating it.” That little pause before “eating it” definitely made those two words sound very dirty.

  Cam loved it. Max was a ton of fun.

  Cam nodded with a grin. “Though, honestly, things… coming apart…” He used that same pause and tone. “Once I get my hands on them isn’t that unusual.”

  “So you… make a mess?” Max asked. “When you’re baking?” He said baking with a tone that clearly conveyed I-do-not-mean-baking.

  “Hey, as long as the good stuff gets to my mouth, I’m absolutely okay with a little mess,” Cam returned with a grin.

  Max gave him a nod. “I’m with you on that, brother.”

  The crowd was completely with them. Grinning and laughing and nudging each other and whispering. Cam and Max were doing everything Whitney had asked—baking while making it fun and a little sexy but still family-appropriate since the innuendo would go over kids’ heads.

  He glanced around again, trying to not seem obvious. Where the hell was she? She was missing all the fun. And why did he get the impression that was pretty usual for her?

  He spotted her, and her ugly skirt, over by the alpaca pen.

  She was choosing alpacas over watching him be funny and charming and kick ass at baking?

  Well, she could run, but she couldn’t hide. Their conversation about getting back together—okay, he’d been the only one talking about that, but she’d been there—was not over.

  “This doesn’t look right.”

  Cam and Max glanced over at Ollie. Ollie wasn’t doing as well with the sexy innuendo and bro-banter. He had been far too preoccupied with following the recipe he’d been given. Piper had assured them that Ollie had practiced it prior, but he was clearly not a natural in the kitchen.

  That made some sense. Ollie was a big-picture guy, much less concerned with details. Like the difference between a quarter tsp and a half tsp.

  That was because the rest of them, including Piper, took care of that stuff for him.

  So Ollie baking, in front of the whole town, was kind of a bad idea.

  But very entertaining.

  “What do you mean?” Cam asked, peering over at Ollie’s kitchen center.

  Cam was in the middle—as he should be, in his opinion—and could see that the filling for the lemon bars Ollie was supposed to be putting together did, indeed, look odd.

  As in, it was brown and not yellow. For one thing.

  Ollie scooped up a spoonful of the brown liquid and then let it dribble back into the pan.

  Yeah, that wasn’t right. It was the consistency of soup.

  “Well, someone has to be the loser,” Max said, lifting one huge shoulder. “Better you than me.”

  Ollie looked over at him. He was wearing his black rimmed glasses and a t-shirt that said I paused my game to be here. He didn’t always wear glasses, but Piper and Whitney had decided that Ollie should play up the “hot nerd” role—definitely their words, not Cam’s. Ollie was a nerd. In some ways, anyway. But Cam had always gotten the impression that women were drawn to his creativity and adventurous side more than his intellect. Or his glasses. Ollie was brilliant and very interesting, as long as you were talking about things he was interested in. He had the attention span of a fifth grader. But he was a hell of a lot of fun. And he always wanted to try new things, do more, go places. That was probably part of that short-attention-span thing, but he was always the one saying “let’s see what happens” and “no reason not to try it.”

  He wasn’t quite as over the top as Dax. He also wasn’t the goofball that loved to make people laugh. He didn’t jump out of airplanes, buy a racehorse, or fly to Japan on a whim for the story or the YouTube video like Dax did. Ollie did the things he did for the experience of it.

  Fortunately he’d found Dax to be there beside him so he wasn�
�t wandering in foreign countries alone. Or maybe unfortunately. Ollie had never had an idea that Dax hadn’t said, “hell yes, I’m in” too.

  “Can we fix this?” Ollie asked Cam.

  He seemed oblivious to the audience watching them.

  Cam took pity on his friend though. “I think you just need to start over. You have to stir it the whole time.” Clearly the sugar had burned.

  Ollie sighed. “The whole time?”

  “Yep.” Cam tried not to grin.

  Ollie turned to the audience. “I’ll give someone a hundred bucks to come up here and stir this for me.”

  Cam rolled his eyes. He even had to make stirring a big deal?

  There was a small shift in the front row toward the stage, but Aiden stepped forward and turned to face the crowd.

  “That’s against the rules,” he said. “The guys each have to do all of their own baking.”

  Now see? Shouldn’t Whitney be over here enforcing the rules?

  Cam glanced toward the alpacas again. She was now petting one of their noses. Surely she could hear what was going on over here though. At least the stuff he and Max and Ollie were saying into the mics. Like that Ollie was trying to cheat.

  “Yep, do it yourself, Caprinelli,” Cam said, focusing on toasting his coconut.

  Whitney is kind of toasting my coconut right now, he thought to himself.

  “If you want anyone bidding on you, you better get going too,” Max said, folding the “crunch” part of the caramel crunch bars into his own melted chocolate.

  “I’ll still bid on you, Ollie!” a female voice called from the crowd.

  “I don’t need cookies! Just you!” another woman called.

  “Yeah, I can get cookies anywhere!” someone else added.

  Cam glanced over at his friend with a grin. Ollie pushed his glasses up his nose and looked out at the crowd.

  “Well, in that case…” he started.

  “Just make your stupid bars!” another woman called.

  This voice Cam knew though. It was Piper.

  He found her standing a few people back. She was easy to spot. She was wearing bright yellow today. As always, she stood out. In a very good way. Piper Barry wasn’t like the other girls in Appleby. She was funny and smart and blunt as well as incredibly capable and organized, keeping them all in line with barely an effort. Seemingly, anyway. Yet she had this high-maintenance way of putting herself together and an I-know-who-I-am-and-what-I-want air about her that kept her just shy of being completely down to earth.