we only want to be work partners now and everyone can finally exhale because the sexual tension will be gone and people won’t have to walk on eggshells around us.”
She frowned. “People aren’t—”
“They are,” he interrupted. “They don’t know how to act around us because we don’t know how to act. Are we friends? Are we more? Are we less? Are we just work associates? And are we both cool with that if so? Or is one of us uncomfortable or upset or horny? What if we’re not together and we have a big company party and we bring other dates? How are we both going to act? Is anything going to get thrown and broken? Anyone going to get punched?”
She rolled her eyes at that.
Yeah, he’d punched a guy over her in high school. Twice.
Not the same guy. Two different occasions. One of them might have been an overreaction on his part though.
“We need to figure all of that out and get a handle on how we feel. We don’t know because we haven’t talked about it. We haven’t explored it.”
“Horny?” she repeated.
So she’d focused on that word. Interesting.
“Yeah, horny,” he said. “My friends are wondering if I’m sitting in meetings thinking about fucking you on the conference table instead of actually listening to the details of the new proposal.”
She blew out a breath. “You keep saying this stuff just to get a rise out of me.”
“I’m saying it because it’s true.”
“Why would your friends be wondering that?”
“Because they know how I feel about you.”
She wet her lips. “Which is… horny?”
“We can call it intensely attracted if that sounds classier to you.”
“That would sound classier to anyone.”
He just lifted a shoulder. Not many people would apply the word classy to him. Or any people.
She was watching him, her eyes slightly narrowed.
“What?”
“That all sounds very… mature.”
He lifted a brow. “I’ve got my moments.”
“Huh.”
He couldn’t help the half smile. He could admit that “mature” was another word that not many people had used to describe him in the past.
“We’re ten years older, Whit. We’ve grown up. I went away and did other stuff. Now we have to find out what this is.”
She took a deep breath, focused on the very boring black and silver lamp on her desk. “It’s nothing, Cam.” She met his eyes. “It can’t be.”
He felt his gut tighten. “I don’t believe you.”
She lifted a shoulder. “We’ll just tell everyone we talked about it, decided to be friendly coworkers, that everything is fine and no one has to worry or wonder about anything.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m wondering, Whitney.”
She shook her head. “You’re not. Not really. Not if you thought about it.”
“What the hell does that mean?” He felt the back of his neck tightening with frustration. He really hated this uptight, cool side of her. Clearly she’d been perfecting this persona or whatever the fuck it was over the past ten years because it was pretty damned solid. Even when he was saying things about bending over her desk or fucking her on the conference room table. She was just facing it all. And still saying no.
“It means that the story hasn’t changed. This is just chapter two.”
He scowled. “What?”
“This company, Hot Cakes, has always been my priority,” she said. She pulled in a deep breath. “It still is. Now even more than ever. Now I have a chance to really be a part of it in a way I haven’t before. I’m not going to do anything that would keep me from showing my family that they were wrong to not put me in charge a long time ago.”
Frustration slammed into him. Fuck this company. That was his first reaction. He was happy to be an owner now but—he had to stop even that train of thought. There was only one reason he was an owner. Aiden had asked him to be.
Aiden Anderson was his best friend. Had been since kindergarten. Aiden had wanted to come back to Appleby to be with Zoe and buying the factory had been a great investment and a way to save the town. That was right up Aiden’s alley. Cam was with Aiden on anything his friend wanted to do.
It was a definite perk that this company had been the reason Whitney had dumped him and he now had the chance to build it up and show everyone that the minute a McCaffery got involved was the minute things got really good. But at the time Aiden had wanted to