Semi-Sweet On You: Hot Cakes Series

by Nicholas, Erin

  “I’ll go check on Didi,” Whitney said.

  Cam wasn’t sure if she said it to inform him of where she would be when he was done meeting with his partners, or, possibly to remind him that Didi was waiting for him.

  He nodded. “I’m sure she’s happy with Max. They were drinking cappuccino and watching the Game Show Network when I left them.”

  By now they were probably playing Ping-Pong on one of the tables Dax had brought in when he’d self-appointed himself in charge of employee morale. Before he’d sold his shares in Hot Cakes. They’d kept the break room with all of Dax’s touches though. He really did know how to make a place one-hundred times more fun.

  “I’ll go get her when I’m done here,” he told her. “I’ll take her home and see you later.”

  Whitney lifted her chin. In that fucking way she did when she was gathering her resolve.

  “Stop by my office before you go get her,” Whitney said.

  He gave her a nod. “Okay.”

  She nodded in return, then gave the rest of the men a smile. But this smile was forced. Cam felt his eyes narrow.

  “I’ll see you all later,” she said. “Thank you for your time this morning.”

  Then she stepped around the edge of the conference table and left the room. Her chin still up.

  “What the hell was that?” Aiden asked as the door shut behind her and Piper.

  Cam turned and realized Aiden was speaking to him. “What do you mean?”

  “You were pretty cool with Whitney there at the end. Basically dismissing her like that.”

  Cam lifted a brow. “I didn’t dismiss her.”

  “You did,” Grant said, sitting back in his chair and smoothing his tie. “You said you needed to speak to us, making it clear that you didn’t want her to stay.”

  Cam opened his mouth, then shut it. Well, fuck. “I didn’t want her to stay,” he said after a second.

  “Why not?” Aiden took his seat again.

  “Because I wanted to talk to you all. About her.”

  Aiden gave Grant a look.

  “Knock it off,” Cam snapped, scowling at them.

  “What?” Aiden asked.

  “Looking at each other like you know what’s going on in my head.”

  “Okay,” Grant said, in the very annoying I-already-know-what-you’re-going-to-say tone he used. Often.

  Which was a lot like the look that said he knew what was going on in Cam’s head.

  “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on in your head?” Grant asked.

  Fine. He wasn’t going to waste time and breath telling Grant he was being a condescending ass. Grant was doing it on purpose. And Cam needed to get down to Didi and get her home so they could get to yoga on time.

  “You need to stop being stoic when Whitney’s talking to you about ideas,” Cam said to Grant.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You do. You do it to all of us all the time,” Cam said. He planted his hands on his hips. “You sit there, your face completely devoid of emotion or reaction so that none of us know what you’re thinking until you’re good and ready to let us know. The thing is, it doesn’t matter with us. We know that’s how you are. But Whitney… she…” He sighed. “She wants your approval. She wants you to like her ideas. You can’t just sit there like… you.”

  Grant lifted a brow. “I told her I liked the idea.”

  “After you made her sweat. I don’t like that. You have to let her see you engaging with her ideas.” He shook his head. “She had dealt with enough of that bullshit where people she cared about withheld their thoughts and feelings and left her out. She’s not going to get that here from us.”

  Grant gave him an indecipherable look, but, to Cam’s surprise, nodded. “I hear you. I’ll work on that.”

  Cam straightened. “You will?”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. I know how I feel when Jocelyn is proud of her work. I’ll do better with Whitney.”

  Cam wasn’t sure what to say. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “What about with us?” Ollie asked Grant. “Will you be nicer to us when we bring you new ideas too?”

  Grant shook his head. “I doubt it.”

  Ollie just sighed.

  Cam looked at Dax. “And you—”

  “What I’d do?”

  “You better fucking pay attention to what’s happening at Sunny Orchard,” Cam said.

  “Wow,” Dax said. “Relax.”

  “I’m not going to relax,” Cam told him. “This is important.”

  “You’re overreacting. I know that Whitney isn’t just some employee, but you don’t have to come to her defense here. There’s no enemy here.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” Cam said. Defensively.

  “You glared at me twice for coughing during her presentation,” Dax said. “Like you were pissed I was interrupting her or something.”

  “I was pissed you were making it hard for everyone else to hear. And that you might miss what she was saying,” Cam said.

  Dax nodded. “That’s not an overreaction at all.”

  Cam shook his head. “You can’t be spacing out in your office, thinking about little video foxes and rabbits running around instead of getting that Alzheimer’s program going, Dax. That’s a big deal.”

  Dax looked genuinely surprised. “I wouldn’t space out that far. Of course that’s a big deal.”

  “You forgot you even had that meeting today,” Cam pointed out.

  “For two seconds,” Dax protested. “I’ve got it. I can do both things.”

  “He’s best when he’s not focused on just one thing,” Ollie defended Dax. “He’s great at juggling lots of balls.”

  Dax gave his friend a grateful smile. “Thanks. I make a point of taking care of my balls.”

  “And you don’t get worked up about how we all do stuff,” Ollie said to Cam. “What the hell? We all do our shit, our way, get it done. You don’t have to babysit us.”

  “Yeah, well, Dax’s balls had never been this important to me before.” Cam winced as he said that out loud. He scowled as Ollie grinned. “I mean it. Now that Dax brought up the website, now Whitney’s thinking about it too. So now he needs to pull that off. But the programs at the nursing home matter because of Didi. So now he has to do it all. Well. Very well.” He frowned at Dax. “You drop any of those balls and you’ll have to answer to me.”

  Dax didn’t look impressed, but he held up his hands. “It’s all good. I care about those things too, you know.”

  Cam believed that he did. Just not as much as Cam did. Or as much as Whitney did.

  “And you need to get your shit together too,” Cam said, pointing at Ollie.

  “Me? I’m easily Whitney’s favorite person here.”

  Cam felt a very stupid, very juvenile surge of jealousy at that. He shook his head. “No. You’re not.”

  “Well, I’m her favorite when it comes to business ideas,” Ollie said, with a shit-eating grin. “I’m always up for anything. I never tell her no.”

  Cam debated just letting that go. He knew he should definitely let that go. “What are you talking about?” he asked instead.

  “I’m just saying, I don’t know how you do it,” Ollie said with a shrug, sitting back in his chair and propping one ankle on his opposite knee.

  “Do what?” Cam asked.

  “Say no to that girl. She’s gorgeous when she gets excited about work ideas. I can only imagine how she looks when she’s… just excited.”

  Cam gritted his teeth. Ollie was messing with him. Oliver wasn’t usually the one to give the rest of them crap like that. That line right there was more of a Dax line. Or, honestly, a Cam line. He’d very much enjoyed saying stuff like that to Grant in the time between Grant meeting Josie and realizing that he was just going to fall in love with her and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  “How do you know I say no to her?” Cam asked.
r />   “You have definitely not said yes to her,” Ollie said. “Not yes yes anyway.”

  Cam narrowed his eyes. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “That.” Ollie pointed at Cam. “You’re too wound up to have said yes to Whitney. Though I don’t know how you’re helping it.”

  Cam took a breath. Okay, Ollie was assuming he and Whitney hadn’t slept together because Cam needed to get laid. That was fair. Kind of. “Maybe she’s said no to me.”

  She had. Basically. Once. But he’d been the one to pull back from their kiss the other night. The kiss where her skirt had been hiked up and her shirt had been on the floor and her breast had been in his hand…

  Ollie shook his head. “She doesn’t look at you like she said no to you.”

  “She doesn’t?” Dammit. He didn’t need to act interested in that.

  Dax was the one to answer that though. “Definitely not. She looks at you like you said no to her.” He tipped his head to the side. “Like maybe you started something you didn’t finish?”

  “You can not read all of that from me,” Cam said. Dammit. These guys knew him well, but there was no way they knew him that well.

  “Jane looks at me like that,” Dax said. “When I start something in my office just before we have to go somewhere. The whole rest of the time we’re with other people she gives me these looks that are part I-want-to-smother-you-with-a-pillow and part I-want-to-tear-your-clothes-off.” He grinned. “It’s worth doin’ once in a while just because the anticipation makes it so great later.”

  Awesome. Now Cam was going to get to think about that for the rest of the day. Was Whitney thinking about their kiss? Had she realized she was grateful he’d pulled back or was she thinking about repeating it sometime? Picking up where they’d left off?

  She’d made a lot of progress on the project. Surely, she was feeling more secure here. Surely, she was feeling more comfortable and a part of the team and confident in her ability to pull this all off. He’d given her space and time to get the work done as well as all the resources she needed. Piper had even been assigned to be her right-hand person for the duration of the project. She’d been given full latitude to do whatever needed done with staffing and the machinery and the supplies. She was fully in charge.

  And she was rising to every bit of the challenge.

  But maybe, once this was wrapped up and she’d realized she belonged here, she was valued here, and could pull all of this off—she’d relax and would be able to think about something else.

  Cam shook his head. “Stop distracting me. Whitney is fully focused on this project. As she should be. We should all be thrilled about that. As you noticed from the presentation today,” he said, looking at each of them pointedly. “She’s doing an amazing job. She’s completely pulling this off. She doesn’t have time to be messing around.”

  Ollie nodded. “So you’re not messing around. That’s why you’re so grumpy.”

  “I’m grumpy,” Cam said, “because you need to stop giving Piper a hard time.”

  Ollie scowled. “Me and Piper are fine.”

  “Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on there but if Whitney wants to put alpaca prints on those damned bars, then we’re going to do that. Even if it means that you have to think about Drew Ryan’s handsome face every time you see one of them,” Cam told him.

  Ollie blew out a breath. “Whatever. I don’t give a fuck about Drew Ryan.”

  Yeah. That was definitely not true.

  “Whitney is doing a great job,” Aiden said. “And we get that you’re one hundred percent in her corner.”

  “We should all be one hundred percent in her corner,” Cam said.

  “Yeah, well, maybe not the way you are,” Aiden told him.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You were watching her during the presentation like you were proud and awed and imagining bending her over the conference table all at once,” Aiden replied bluntly.

  Cam opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  “I know how it feels to watch a woman and think all of that…” Aiden trailed off and cleared his throat.

  Yeah, the woman he was talking about was Cam’s sister. They didn’t really need to delve into that too deeply. “Great,” Cam said. “I appreciate your commiseration.”

  “It’s just that I get how you can get knotted up when you want her to be successful, but she needs to figure it out on her own,” Aiden said. “Just… lighten up. We’re on your side. Her side too.”

  Cam took a deep breath.

  Okay, yeah, he was being hard on these guys. His friends realized that Whitney was important here and they were treating her with respect and including her in these decisions. Hell, they were letting her lead the way.

  “Fine,” he relented. “Just… pay attention and do your shit. And… be nice.”

  They all grinned.

  Yeah, okay, they were usually the ones telling Cam to be nice.

  Everything was different now. Because of Whitney.

  16

  Cam knocked on Whitney’s office door five minutes later.

  “Come in.”

  She was standing behind her desk, her arms crossed.

  He shut the door behind him. “You wanted to talk?”

  “If there’s something about the new product idea that you don’t like, you can tell me to my face.”

  That wasn’t what he’d been expected at all. “I like everything about the new product idea.”

  “Then why didn’t you say one word about it during the meeting and then kick me out of the conference room to talk to the guys about it without me?”

  Cam crossed the room, coming to stand opposite her across her wide desk. “That’s not what happened.”

  “You kicked me out of the conference room to talk to the guys about something,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean for that to come off as me kicking you out.”

  She rolled her eyes and dropped her arms. “Seriously? How did you think it would come off?”

  Okay, that was fair. “Sorry,” he said honestly. “I was…”

  Did he want her to know that he’d been coming to her defense with his friends?

  “You were…?”

  Fuck. Honesty. That’s what he and Whitney needed a lot of. Open communication. “I was telling them how I expect them to treat you.”

  She opened her mouth, but seemed to process his words and shut it again, simply frowning.

  “I didn’t like how Grant wasn’t giving you immediate feedback and how Dax was getting distracted with the website idea.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  She blew out a breath. “I need to handle all of that on my own, Cam. Grant doesn’t need to treat me any differently than he does anyone else. Dax is just Dax and—”

  “And while we’re talking about how people are acting, you have to stop giving them passes,” Cam interrupted.

  She looked surprised. “Excuse me?”

  “If Grant isn’t communicating his thoughts about a project, you need to ask him for input and feedback. Don’t let him just sit there with that infuriating nonexpression on his face.”

  She lifted her chin. “I will deal with—”

  Cam was around the corner of her desk, his thumb on her chin before she even finished the word with. He pressed on the center of her chin, tipping it back down.

  “Don’t,” he said softly.

  Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t lift your chin with me, Whit.”

  “What?”

  “This.” He pressed gently again. “You lift your chin whenever you’re getting pissed but are trying not to yell at me. You don’t have to act tough. You don’t have to gather your… fortitude. Or whatever that is.” He ran the pad of his thumb back and forth over the soft skin under her bottom lip. “Just talk. Tell me off. Tell me what you’re really thinking.”

  She wet her
bottom lip with the tip of her tongue and his gaze followed the movement.

  “You find the way Grant sits there and doesn’t say anything infuriating?” she asked.

  Cam met her eyes again. “Not until today. When he did it to you.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “I don’t find it infuriating.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head slightly, causing his thumb to slide over her chin again. “No. He’s just taking it all in. I know he’ll tell me what he thinks eventually.”

  Cam thought about that. So it was all his problem. That didn’t surprise him, actually. “Guess I’m feeling a little protective of you.”

  That corner of her mouth fully curled now. “You don’t need to.”

  “I do. Those guys are used to working together only. And with Piper. They don’t know how to be gentlemen with a woman who doesn’t know them and their quirks and how to read them. I want you to know that they all think you’re amazing and they’re completely impressed with you and what you’re doing.”

  Something in her expression softened and she fully smiled. “And all this time I expected you to be the one that wasn’t a gentleman when we worked together.”

  He nodded. “I expected that too. I guess…” He swallowed. “I didn’t expect soft feelings. I expected fighting and fireworks. Especially when it came to this company.” He felt himself smile. “Who would have guessed that the thing I’d want most would be for you to be successful and happy at Hot Cakes?”

  She gave a soft, surprised laugh. “Crazy.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was gruff and his eyes were on her lips again.

  “What did you think of the new ideas?” she asked.

  He looked up. “I love it. All of it.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  “You didn’t say that. You didn’t say anything.”

  “I knew you wanted to hear from Aiden and Grant,” he said.

  A slight frown pulled her eyebrows together. “I did. But I certainly wanted to hear it from you too.”

  “But…” He shrugged. “You know I think you’re amazing.”

  She stared at him. Slowly she shook her head. “No. I don’t.” She leaned in slightly. “I don’t even know if you want to kiss me anymore.”