Semi-Sweet On You (Hot Cakes #4) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,7
Or messing around. But she had to tell herself that was exactly what he was doing. Or she was going to grab him and strip him out of that hot suit and lick the tattoos that he’d added to since she’d last been able to lick them.
Daaaaaamit.
She took a breath. Then nodded. “Okay, so I guess my butt doesn’t look weird in this dress, then.”
He didn’t seem surprised that was the only reaction she gave. “Definitely not.”
“Okay, thanks for the input.”
She stepped around him and headed for the bathroom.
2
He waited for her to change.
Of course he did.
He wasn’t the type of guy to leave and let her catch her breath and gather her composure and see each other the next day as if he hadn’t just confessed that he wanted to take her out.
And to a hotel. For sex.
He really hated beating around the bush, so he didn’t. It made it so much easier when he knew that everyone knew exactly where he stood on things.
It was very important that Whitney Lancaster know where he stood on things.
That was why he was still here in her office, perusing the stuff on her shelves, playing with the stress ball he’d picked up from her desk, and thinking about the fact that she was at least semi-naked on the other side of the thin door of her private bathroom. And wondering what color panties she had on. Or if maybe it was a thong. Like the one he’d picked up from the snowy pavement a few months ago.
A gentleman wouldn’t think about that. Or the last time he’d seen her in a thong. Or naked. Well, he assumed. He only knew maybe one and a half gentlemen and he didn’t spend a ton of time with them.
A guy who was over her probably wouldn’t think about any of that either.
Of course, he was neither of those things.
As evidenced by the things he’d said to her. And the fact that he was still here and planning to say more.
He squeezed the ball harder as he studied the framed photos that she had on the shelves of the massive cherrywood bookcase by her window.
The photos were of her with her family. Of course.
And wow, he really hated her grandfather and father.
He felt his chest tighten with bitterness and anger just looking at photos of them.
Dean and Eric Lancaster were the epitome of entitled, rich assholes who thought that they could do whatever they wanted to because they had money and power.
It was not a secret to anyone who knew Cam and his history with the Lancasters, or to himself—or the therapist that he’d seen for a while a few years ago—that a lot of his drive came from wanting to be a rich asshole too. He wanted to be at their level of wealth and success so that he could prove that they’d been wrong. About everything.
It absolutely wasn’t mentally healthy, but it had worked out so far. He was rich and successful and he had surpassed them in both wealth and success. And he was asshole, but he was less of one than Dean and Eric were.
In fact, he now owned their business and was in the midst of helping build it into something that was bigger and better than anything they’d ever done.
The Lancaster family had run Hot Cakes for as long as it had existed. Up until about two months ago when Cam and his partners had bought it. Whitney’s grandmother had started the company. After she’d stolen the first recipe from his grandmother. Him now owning the factory was fucking sweet. Pun totally intended.
Clenching and relaxing his fist around the lime-green stress ball, Cam leaned in to peer closer at the photo of Whitney and Dorothy—Didi to everyone who knew her—in front of the factory. Whitney had to have been about six or seven.
Even then she’d been cute. Long, dark hair, those big brown eyes that he’d always been a sucker for, that huge smile. She was wearing a red coat, grinning at the camera, while holding Didi’s hand with one of hers, hoisting a Hot Cakes snack cake—it was too small in the photo to tell which one—in the air with the other.
It was strange, but it was the red coat that caught his attention.
Red.
She never wore red.
That was one of the reasons seeing her in Piper’s dress had punched him in the chest. It was a bright, bold, happy color. She never wore bright, bold, happy colors.