Semi-Sweet On You (Hot Cakes #4) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,106
in the way he encouraged her with work, the way he took care of her from the little things like the way her room smelled to the way he made her grandmother smile to the way he called her grandmother out when she was being mean. It was in the way he looked at her. Strangely, it was in the way he hadn’t gotten them both naked yet.
“So what advice do you need?” he asked. His voice was gruff now and his gaze was burning into hers. Even across the granite countertop she could feel the heat.
“I guess I just want to know if you think he’ll be annoyed that I’ve changed my mind.”
He arched a brow. “About?”
“I made a big deal about not wanting to get involved because I wanted to focus on work, but… I’ve changed my mind. I’m still very focused on work, and I’m really proud of what I’m doing there, but”—she took a deep breath—“I want him.”
Cam’s eyes flared, and Whitney felt her reaction deep in her belly and between her legs.
She went on before he said anything. Or did anything. Because once he did something, she wasn’t going to want to talk much anymore.
“I want to be with him. And it’s amazing because he gets it. He wants me to be successful at work. He knows how important that is to me. But he’s fully supportive of it. Not just that, but he’s helping me make it work. He’s a part of all of that success. It feels like we’re a team and he’s totally behind me. I’m feeling like I—we—can have it all and I guess…” She took another breath. “I want to know how to let him know that.”
A muscle ticked along Cam’s jaw and he just stood looking at her, not saying a word.
She finally asked. “Do you think he’s going to be annoyed that I changed my mind?”
He cleared his throat. “No. I don’t think annoyed is how he’s going to feel about that.”
Then he stepped back and bent to open the cupboard under the breakfast bar. He pulled out a mixing bowl and the hand mixer. He got a spoon and a spatula from a drawer, then the measuring cups and spoons from another drawer. He set them all out on the counter between them. Without a word, he went into the pantry and came back with an armful of ingredients. He put them down before going to the refrigerator for butter and eggs.
She watched him measure everything out, melt the butter, and cream the eggs, butter and sugar before saying, “What are you doing?”
“Making chocolate chip cookie dough,” he said without looking up.
O-kay. She wasn’t worried here. At all. He wasn’t ignoring her. He hadn’t missed what she’d said. This wasn’t him blowing her off or changing the subject.
This was, somehow, part of the subject.
So she just watched him mix. Until he got to the point of adding the chips.
“No semisweet chips?” she asked.
He looked up. “No.”
“You use two kinds instead?”
He nodded. “Milk chocolate. The super sweet ones. And dark chocolate. A little more bitter and stronger. Together they make the overall semisweet flavor. But this way each bite has both distinct flavors.”
“That’s your secret with these cookies?”
“Part of it. Yeah.”
“From your grandma?”
“Nope. This is all mine. She liked mine better than her own.”
“Why do you like it this way better?” She somehow knew there was a reason.
“The semisweet chips aren’t really anything in particular. They’re kind of sweet and kind of dark. I think that if you’re going to be something you just be it. Be sweet. Be dark. But really be it.”
“People can’t be both? They can’t have times they feel sweet and times they feel dark?”
“Of course. But too often we try to cover the sweet times with a little self-deprecation or nonchalance because we don’t want to be too sweet. Or we try to cover our dark with more sugar because we don’t want to be too sad or too scary.”
“Like when we’re suddenly working from home and baking cookies with a friend’s grandma all day?”
He nodded without a smile. “We should embrace that. There’s nothing wrong with a soft, sweet side.”
There wasn’t. At all. It was hot as hell that this tough guy who loved to fight big corporations in court, who had tattoos and muscles and a smirk that wouldn’t quit and sarcasm that was as natural as breathing, had a secret to his chocolate chip cookies and had learned to love