Semi-Sweet On You (Hot Cakes #4) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,55
makes me jumpy and makes it hard to concentrate on work. I want to do a good job for me too, Cam. I haven’t had a chance to prove myself to others before, but at the same time I haven’t had a chance to prove myself to me either. Because I’ve never been able to really implement my ideas or projects, I don’t actually know if they’re good. I think they are. They seem to be. But…” She pressed her lips together. “Ollie thinks my ideas are good.”
“Of course he does,” Cam said.
“But Ollie also thought having a petting zoo at the cake tasting was a good idea,” she said.
Cam couldn’t help his grin. “Everyone loved the petting zoo.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, implementing ideas, actually doing the things I think up, is new to me. I have no idea if I’m actually good at any of this.”
“You are.”
“You have no idea if that’s true,” she said. “And you have to stop saying it until you do. Don’t placate me. Don’t compliment me because you want in my pants. Just let me do my job and do it the best I can and let’s see how it turns out.”
She had a point.
Dammit.
He figured she was good at it, but honestly, if she hadn’t had much to do with Hot Cakes other than having her name associated because of her family then… well, maybe she wasn’t good at it. He didn’t believe that, really, but she had a point about wanting to prove it. To them and to herself.
This was important to her for her too.
“Fine,” he finally conceded. “No more compliments on your work until you prove yourself.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“But I can still say that you look hot as hell wrapped in a sheet with your hair up like that?”
Heat flickered in her eyes. The only sign that he wasn’t way off base here.
Still, she shook her head. “No, you can’t say that.”
“Because it makes you uncomfortable?” he asked.
She hesitated, then said, “Because it makes me think about how hot you would look wrapped in only a sheet.”
That hit him with heat but also satisfaction. She wasn’t uncomfortable with their chemistry. She was distracted. That was okay.
“I would look really good wrapped in only a sheet. Down low. Around my waist.”
She pulled in a long breath. “Stop it.”
He grinned. “Okay.”
Her gaze tracked over his torso, then she sighed. “Asshole thing to do before I go back upstairs.”
She could take that thought with her when she went back upstairs to bed. He wasn’t apologetic about the idea of keeping her awake for a bit.
“Not sorry.”
“I know.”
Then she narrowed her eyes again. Though this time it seemed she was just thinking about something. “So I can do whatever I want? Say whatever I want? No consequences? No issues?”
He hesitated for some reason, but then nodded, mostly curious. He wanted her to be totally honest with him. He wanted her to feel free to feel and think anything and to tell him. “Yep.”
“Okay.” She stepped close, took the front of his shirt in her fist, rose on tiptoe and kissed him.
It was the first time their lips had been against the others in a decade. Far, far too long. Which had to be why it took him a good three seconds to respond. Just as he was lifting his hand to cup the back of her head and deepen the contact, she pulled back, smiled up at him, and then turned and left the kitchen.
He stood staring at the doorway for a good minute, his hand suspended in the air.
She’d tasted like toothpaste. She’d smelled like soap. Not a specific aroma, just soap. Clean and fresh and sweet.
But mostly she’d felt like… home.
He had never forgotten what it felt like to hold her, to kiss her, to make her laugh, to taste her—all over—and it all slammed into him in those moments after she left him in the kitchen.
It was like when memories came flooding back when he heard a song from the past or tasted one of his mom’s recipes he hadn’t had in a long time or when he saw one of the photos that hung on the wall on the way up the stairs to his childhood bedroom.
It was as real as if it had just happened and yet seemed a little like a dream.
Holy hell.
He wanted more of that. A lot more.
Yeah, moving in with Whitney and her grandmother on a whim had to be the best idea