bra—even brighter against the white snow and dark gray of the wet pavement they were lying on—and stare at them, had made her heart pound even harder than nearly being killed.
Then it had gotten worse. The cookies in the box she’d been carrying had been frosted sugar cookies that she’d secretly bought from Buttered Up, Cam’s sister Zoe’s bakery. She’d paid a little girl twenty bucks to go in and buy the cookies for her and then pass them to her behind the lingerie store. Whitney had slipped them into a plain bag so no one would know. The family feud between Buttered Up and Hot Cakes was three generations old and meant she couldn’t freely shop in the bakery. Which sucked. It had always sucked.
Thankfully, Aiden, one of the new Hot Cakes owners, had fallen in love with Zoe and they were quickly obliterating all of the stupid tension between the two businesses. And maybe, just maybe, her working with the guys to build Hot Cakes back up and make it even better would heal the tension between the families.
Maybe.
Of course, she and Cam were a big part of that.
The feud had started with their grandmothers. But Cam’s grandma, Letty, was gone and Whitney’s, Didi, was in mental decline.
But those damned cookies and their icing had come back to bite Whitney. Some frosting had gotten on the thong that Cam held. And as she squatted there on Main Street—in one of her black pencil skirts with cold December Iowa air blowing up underneath—he’d swiped the frosting off the thong, lifted it to his mouth, and licked it off.
She hadn’t felt one bit of cold air in that moment.
“Yeah, definitely not weird,” he finally said, his voice huskier than before.
Whitney breathed out. He’d spoken first. She’d won that round of chicken.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “So I’m good to go in this one?”
“You can’t wear this dress in Appleby,” he said, shaking his head.
She frowned and turned. “Why not?”
“This dress is not you.”
He was right.
She’d been dressing in conservative business attire because of her grandfather and dad. She’d been trying to be taken seriously for the past decade by the very men who should have been encouraging her to be involved in the company and proud of the things she’d tried to do. Not that the skirts and pants had worked. But this dress? No way would this have convinced her grandfather she should be introducing a new product to their line.
These guys though? Cam, Aiden, Ollie, and Grant? They were all in. They not only thought it was a great idea, they were very happy to have her leading the charge.
She couldn’t wear this dress to the big dessert-baking competition and auction they were holding in the town square tomorrow. But she would love to hear Cam explain to her why.
It was too clingy. It was too red. It was too sexy. It was too… not Whitney Lancaster.
Which was why she loved it. She wanted to wear this dress. She wanted to have a man—she corrected that almost immediately—she wanted Cam looking at her in this dress exactly the way he was looking at her right now.
Like he was seriously considering how sturdy the desk behind her was and if they were really alone here.
Her pulse skittered under her skin.
They were alone. And that desk was very sturdy.
But, yeah, she suddenly wanted to hear Cam say all of that to her. Would he? Would he just put it out there?
She’d, of course, turn him down. She was not the sex-on-her-desk kind of girl. Either.
But she wanted to be that too…
Not with Cam, of course. That would be really, really, really stupid.
Whitney swallowed and worked on keeping her cool.
She was now thinking about sex on her desk. With Cam. Because of course she was.
He was looking at her like he was too.
And if she were being totally honest with herself—and she really did try to be that—Cam was the only one she could imagine having sex with. Period. Because he was one of three guys she’d had sex with. Ever. And she absolutely knew that it was pathetic and that was probably a huge part of why she was uptight and tense and kind of cool and bitchy at times.
But being Whitney Lancaster meant there weren’t many guys in Appleby who were willing to approach her for dates, and she was not at all the type to go to another town. That would require girlfriends. And a desire