Semi-Sweet On You: Hot Cakes Series

by Nicholas, Erin

  He was right, of course. It had been a long time since they’d known each other and how well did two eighteen-year-olds really know one another? Or themselves for that matter? Especially when at least half of their time had been spent making out. They’d had to sneak around because of their families’ animosity toward one another, so she’d never seen him with his grandmother or gone to the movies with him or… anything else. Their time together had always been alone and it had been stolen, hidden time.

  “You have a point,” she said. “We’re just getting to know each other. Like new acquaintances.”

  “Well…” He gave her a slow smile. “We know a few things about each other. I mean… I do know that you’re ticklish behind your left knee and that tequila and Jason Aldean songs make you horny and you love when I kiss your—”

  She stepped forward, slapping her hand over his mouth.

  He lifted a brow and she felt his mouth curve behind her palm.

  “If I was taller, I would have kissed you to shut you up too because, yeah, the hand over the mouth is a little aggressive.”

  He nodded.

  She let her hand drop away. “But yeah, you need to shut up. That’s not stuff friends talk about.” The heat was still swirling through her body and she could hear Jason Aldean’s “Crazy Town” playing in her head.

  He held up a hand. “You’re right. Sorry.”

  She nodded. “Okay. So… friends.”

  “Friends.”

  She glanced at the cake pan on the counter. “And you didn’t make those bars to use the way you’d suggested using the cookie dough the other night then?”

  He cleared his throat. “Um, no. They’re for Didi actually.”

  “You made my grandmother bars?”

  “Letty’s recipe. Something she never made for the bakery. Only family and close friends ever got those bars. Didi mentioned to me that she missed Letty’s baking and cooking all these years. Thought she’d enjoy tasting some of it again.”

  Wow. That was pretty sweet. Nice even.

  “What?” he asked when she didn’t react.

  “You’re doing all of this, with my grandma and the bars and the support at work, and you’re actually insisting that we not sleep together.”

  He cleared his throat again. “Right.”

  “Huh.” She believed him. And that actually did make her relax a little. “Well, save me a bar? To eat.”

  “Sure.”

  She gave him a smile and turned to head upstairs.

  “Hey, Whit?”

  She turned back. “Yeah?”

  “Just out of curiosity… if I had made the bars for that purpose…”

  She grinned and her eyes went to the stool where she’d been very happily shirtless and he’d been the one to pull back. “Totally would have worked.”

  He grinned. “Good to know.”

  And even though they were talking about putting chocolate cookie dough on nipples, she felt a warm surge of happiness. Friendliness even.

  Friends. Just friends. With Camden McCaffery.

  Well, stranger things had happened.

  Probably.

  15

  She was so fucking gorgeous.

  Cam had always enjoyed the morning meetings of Fluke, Inc., but he’d never been hard and aching in the middle of one.

  He was sure his friends and partners would be glad to know that.

  But he was stunned by what a turn on it was to watch Whitney during the meeting a week later.

  She was freaking glowing.

  He knew he was staring at her like a lovesick idiot. He also knew that Aiden, Dax, and Grant had noticed. They kept casting glances in his direction. He felt their eyes on him. But he wasn’t looking at them.

  He was looking at Whitney. The way her eyes were sparkling, the faint flush to her cheeks, the smile that was so easy and genuine. He was even appreciating the way she looked in the boring-as-hell navy-blue pencil skirt and ivory blouse she wore. Hot. She looked hot. He still hated those skirts, but today the damned thing made her look hot. Of course, she could have been wearing a sack and he would have thought she looked hot, because it wasn’t about the skirt. It was about how she was standing there, excited, confident, and she hadn’t once lifted her chin in the way she did when she was gathering her fake confidence and meeting his eyes directly even though she didn’t want to.

  Today she was meeting his eyes directly. She was meeting everyone’s eyes directly.

  And the way she looked in that pencil skirt wasn’t about the skirt at all. It never had been. He’d hated those skirts because she’d worn them to make herself feel like the corporate executive that she wanted to be.

  Today she was that corporate executive. With or without that skirt.

  Cam shifted on his chair as he thought about how much he’d love to see that skirt crumpled on the floor of her office next to her desk—while he checked out what kind of panties she wore underneath those stupid skirts.

  Which was a completely inappropriate way for him to be thinking of his coworker and friend.

  “Our focus group thinks this has huge potential,” she was saying. “It’s also a focus on younger customers. Kids are already a part of our demographic, of course, but we’ve never focused on them before.”

  “But they’re still squares,” Ollie pointed out.

  “Yes,” Whitney agreed. “But doing it this way won’t require a massive overhaul to our equipment.” She hit a button on her laptop to display the next slide. “Your suggestion to make them in the shape of alpacas got me thinking,” she told Ollie. “But this way will be not only more cost effective for us, but will make more sense,” she added with a smile. She pointed to the images on the screen. “Each bar will have an animal footprint stamped into it. It will look a lot like the footprint would look if a kid saw it out in nature, in the dirt or mud.”

  “So instead of poop, people will think of mud when they see these bars,” Dax said with a grin. “Great.”

  Whitney laughed. “I’m not worried. The focus group didn’t bring that up at all.” She turned back to the presentation. “We’ll start with five different animal footprints. They will all be wild animals native to Iowa. White-tailed deer, fox, jackrabbit, coyote, and a beaver.”

  “No alpacas?” Ollie asked.

  “Alpacas aren’t native to Iowa. Kids aren’t likely to see those in nature around here,” Whitney told him.”

  Ollie frowned. “Shouldn’t we do interesting animals?”

  “I think fox and coyotes are interesting,” Cam said, giving Ollie a knock-it-off look.

  Ollie rolled his eyes.

  “We can add to the collection,” Whitney said. “If it takes off. The idea is that kids will want to collect all the footprints, so they’ll keep going back to the store for more Critter Tracks.”

  “But they’ll be eating the footprints,” Ollie said. “Right?” He looked around. “We don’t want them sticking these things under their beds, do we?”

  “They each come with a collectible card,” Whitney said, clicking to the next slide. “The card has a colorful photo of the track as well as a photo and facts about the animal it belongs to.”

  Ollie’s eyebrow went up. Cam grinned. Just like that, his friend was in.

  Dax sat forward. “You know, it would be easy to set up a website to go along with this. Kids could get codes from the collectible cards. They could go to the site to learn more. We could have a little virtual world where they could follow the animals around, learn about their natural habitats, that kind of thing.”

  Cam’s grin grew. Dax was in now too.

  He caught Whitney’s eye. She clearly realized it too. She was positively glowing.

  “Maybe the kids could become one of the animals,” Ollie added. “And interact in the world that way.”

  Dax was nodding.

  “This is a lot more than anything Hot Cakes has ever done before,” Grant said to no one in particular.

  But Whitney nodded
. “It’s a way for us to go above and beyond with our customer base. Be more than just a factory.” She smiled at Ollie and Dax. “To tap into the talents we have here rather than just sitting in offices and looking at spreadsheets.”

  Her eyes widened and she looked at Grant quickly.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with paying attention to the spreadsheets and bottom line. That’s important too. Of course.”

  Cam coughed and lifted his coffee cup to hide his smile.

  Aiden didn’t even try to hide his. “No offense taken,” he said. “Everyone here understands that profitability will be an important factor. But it’s not the only factor. Especially when we’re talking about branching out and growing the brand.”

  Whitney nodded, but she was still watching Grant for his agreement.

  Grant just looked at Whitney for a long moment. Cam could see that Whitney was holding her breath. Cam was too. He knew that Grant and Aiden’s approval mattered to her. Ollie’s and Dax’s did too, but frankly theirs was easier to get. They were always up for something new and different. It was Grant and Aiden she’d have to convince the new idea was worth the money and investment of resources. And risk.

  Finally Grant nodded. “I like it.”

  Whitney let her breath out and her smile grew. “And…” She clicked to the next slide. “If things go well, we could reach out to groups that do animal education to see if they would want to include our treats as a part of their program. Zoos, of course. And the Department of Natural Resources does some educational programs. We could even do some specialized things. Maybe, for a group that does a lot with, say, penguins. We could do treats with penguin footprints.”

  Cam looked at Ollie. Ollie’s eyes were bright and Cam could see his friend’s wheels turning.

  “Fundraising,” Ollie said. “We could offer a portion of the proceeds to a program for penguin preservation or something.”

  Whitney’s eyes brightened as well and she turned more fully toward Ollie. “Yes. There must be an awareness day for penguins. There are awareness days for everything. We could do something to coincide with that.”

  “We could have various habitats on the website,” Dax said. “They could click a tab to interact with animals in the prairies and then another tab to interact with penguins and polar bears.”

  “But penguins and polar bears don’t actually live together, right?” Ollie said. “They’re commonly put together in commercials and things, but they live on opposite poles.”

  Dax frowned at him. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “But… the snow.”

  “Polar bears live in the arctic and penguins live in the Antarctic,” Piper said, breezing into the room with a new carafe of coffee.

  “Oh.” Dax seemed disappointed.

  “You could still do different habitats,” Piper said, patting his arm. “Just have to put them on two different tabs.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Maybe Drew would want to do alpaca treats,” Piper said, leaning over Ollie’s shoulder to refill his cup.

  Ollie’s bright expression pulled into a frown. “Why would the alpaca farmer want treats? Nobody goes out there. Except you.”

  Piper gave him a big smile as she moved to Cam. He held his cup up for her to fill.

  “He and his brothers are talking about opening up the farm to some tours for kids. Day cares and preschools and things like that. Making it a full-time petting zoo so that kids can learn about the animals up close and personal. I was going to talk with him about teaching the kids about some of these wild animals too. Maybe looking around their property for jackrabbit and fox tracks. Drew and his brothers are real outdoorsy types.”

  Typically Cam would have exchanged a what’s-going-on look with Aiden or Grant as Piper poked at Ollie—a not outdoorsy type at all. But he found himself looking at Whitney instead. She was watching him too. She gave him an arched eyebrow and he shrugged. But he also grinned. He liked sharing that little nonverbal communication with her.

  Ollie scowled. “Kids will like Dax’s animals better, I guarantee.”

  “I’m sure Dax can make it a lot of fun, but learning about real animals in the real world could be good.” Piper’s smile had faded. “You spend a lot of time in virtual worlds. Maybe some time in the real world where you don’t get to call all the shots would be good.”

  Ollie swiveled in his chair and pinned her with a stare. “I call all the shots?”

  She propped a hand on her hip. “You try to.”

  “And then you go ahead and do whatever you want to anyway.”

  “You mean, I fix the things that won’t work your way or that you mess up by forgetting that the real world doesn’t follow your rules all the time like Easton does,” she said, referring to the magical land in their video game.

  “Piper,” Ollie said, his voice low and firm and far more serious than any of them were used to hearing. “Enough.”

  Piper didn’t look intimidated. Or impressed. She looked pissed.

  Cam felt his brows lift. Dax sat up straighter. Grant leaned forward in his chair. Aiden actually got to his feet.

  “Okay. Let’s get back to Whitney and the presentation,” Aiden said in his best knock-it-the-fuck-off voice. “Piper,” he added, his tone gentler. “We can talk later.”

  She stared at Ollie as she took a breath, then she looked at Aiden. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  Yeah, even Cam knew that when a woman said she was fine the way Piper had just said she was fine, she was most definitely not fine.

  Whitney spoke up. “Piper.”

  Their executive assistant looked at her.

  “We can talk later,” Whitney said.

  Piper nodded. “Great.”

  Aiden looked at Cam. Cam grinned at his friend. Then they both looked at Grant. Who also smiled. Then they all looked at Ollie. Who was frowning. But not in a confused, what’s-going-on way, rather in a oh-shit-this-isn’t-good way.

  On the contrary, Cam thought this was actually very good.

  Piper had been putting up with the Fluke guys and the stupid levels of testosterone in their conference rooms for years now. It was time for there to be more estrogen balancing things out.

  Piper and Whitney could be good for one another.

  He loved everything about this.

  “Whitney,” Aiden said. “Is there anything else we should know at this point about the new product?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll send an email summarizing everything. If you’re all okay with where we’re at, I’ll move ahead with getting the stamping equipment and talking to our accounts about the new bars.”

  “Great,” Aiden said. He glanced around the table. “Anyone have anything?”

  “Good to move forward in my mind,” Grant said. He met Whitney’s eyes. “Great job. You’ve pulled this together quickly and you’ve got all the I’s dotted.”

  It had only been two weeks since she’d first presented about how they needed to change up their machines and think about hiring more staff. It really had been fast. Then again, she’d been working until ten almost every night.

  Cam shook that off. It was fine. It was what she needed to do and he’d said he was in full support of it.

  Whitney smiled at Grant, clearly pleased. “Thank you.”

  “I fucking love it,” Dax told her, shoving his chair back and standing. “I’m going to do some website brainstorming this afternoon.”

  “Don’t you have a meeting with the Alzheimer’s Association people today?” Whitney asked with a frown.

  “He does,” Piper confirmed. She turned to Dax. “They’ll be in your office at one.”

  His office at Sunny Orchard, not here at Hot Cakes.

  “Right,” he muttered.

  Whitney chewed on her bottom lip and Cam felt his shoulders tightening as he watched her worry.

  “He’ll be able to do both,” Aiden assured her, pushing the papers in
front of him into a stack and then rising. “Honestly, Dax is best when he’s got a million things going on in his head.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  Aiden paused and reached out, squeezing her shoulder. “Seriously. Piper will be sure he stays on track. Sunny Orchard is a priority.”

  Cam didn’t say anything, but he felt himself frowning. Sunny Orchard and the Alzheimer’s programming better fucking be a priority for Dax. Aiden was right. Dax was a master multitasker and really did do best when he was juggling several balls. Cam had never been concerned about his partners getting their stuff done, and done well, before. One of the reasons Fluke worked well was because the guys all did their thing and trusted the others to do theirs.

  For the first time, Cam was going to follow up with one of his partners on something that wasn’t a legal matter and something that he didn’t really know much about at all. Just to be sure Dax was doing it. Hell, Dax wasn’t even a partner in Hot Cakes. If he did the website stuff for their new product, he’d be doing it as an outside consultant.

  But yeah, Cam was going to check in. He never did that.

  “Hey, guys, hang out for a minute,” Cam said, coming to his feet.

  Dax paused on his way to the door, looking back.

  Grant kept his seat and Aiden dropped his hand from Whitney’s shoulder and faced Cam.

  “Everything okay?” his friend asked.

  “Sure.” He was going to make sure everything was okay. “Just need to follow up on a couple of things,” Cam said. His eyes went to Whitney. “Thanks for the presentation.”

  She looked flustered suddenly, but she nodded.

  He didn’t like her flustered, but right now he needed to deal with the guys.

  “Of course,” she said as she gathered her things. She shut her computer and stacked her folder and notebook on top. She lifted them, wrapping her arms around it all. Then she took a breath and looked at him again. “I’ll… talk to you… later.”

  “At home,” he confirmed.

  He liked how that sounded. He also liked how it made her cheeks get pinker. Surely she knew that everyone in the room was aware of where he was sleeping. And why. But yeah, it sounded intimate and he liked it. He liked the idea of going home to her, with her, at the end of a workday.