Semi-Sweet On You (Hot Cakes #4) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,99

them married.

Things had shifted between him and Whitney then. Things had gotten easier. They’d been a team. One small thing. Not about them. About two people they cared about. But they’d both recognized the love and that Josie and Grant needed each other, and that had felt like a particularly important bond for them to share.

Now, smiling about it across the table made him feel like he’d love a lot more bonding with her.

Yep, across his mother’s dining room table with cheesy potato remnants between them.

“This definitely calls for cinnamon roll cheesecake!” Dax announced.

They all laughed.

“What do you see in me?” Jane asked. “I don’t bake, and with your sweet tooth, I don’t know why you’re with me.”

“Well, honey, there’s sweets and then there are sweets,” Dax told her, sliding his arm over the back of her chair and leaning in to nuzzle her neck.

Grant and Josie were beaming about their engagement, Dax and Jane were nuzzling, Zoe and Aiden were whispering about something and… Cam wanted that. All of that. Looking across the table at Whitney gave him a sense of anticipation and nostalgia at the same time. Nostalgia didn’t completely make sense. They’d never had this. They hadn’t been a couple in public. They’d never sat at his mother’s table together. They’d never hung out with friends together. But he’d wanted to. He’d imagined it. This. He’d wanted and imagined this.

And now he had it.

And he wanted so much more.

Whitney couldn’t believe how nervous she was to step out onto that back patio. She trailed behind the other women as they headed outside with glasses of lemonade. Spiked lemonade. Apparently it was the drink of choice with the girls of the group, and when they’d heard Whitney had brought lemon vodka they’d declared they had to try it.

She swallowed hard and thought about chugging the drink in her hand. She wasn’t sure why Zoe, Jane, and Josie made her nervous. They were nice women. Jane and Josie were in love with two men that Whitney liked a lot. Men who were on their way to being her friends. That felt strange to think about, but it was true. She and Dax and Grant were getting to be friends. And Cam liked and cared about Jane and Josie. That was a big plus. Surely Whitney would like them too.

But that wasn’t the problem. She wanted them to like her.

And then there was Zoe. She was Cam’s sister. She was the sister to the man that Whitney was falling for. If she and Cam were involved, if they really tried to make this happen, it would mean more dinners around that very table in that very dining room in this very house and…

She felt her heart start racing. She was so glad that she’d been caught up in Didi and Henry and watching everyone interact and then the excitement of Josie and Grant announcing their engagement. The shared smile with Cam when they announced they were getting married had made her heart race too, but not in the panicky, I-need-a-lot-more-vodka way she was experiencing at the moment. It had been a very intimate and strangely hot moment between them. Having a shared memory, a shared secret had made her want to have a lot more of those. Secrets like the sound he made when she ran her tongue over the ridges of his abs and down the V on either side that she’d been fantasizing about since seeing him in the hallway in only a towel the other day.

But also secrets like what they’d gotten Maggie for Christmas. They. Not him, but they. As in they were giving her a gift from both of them. As a couple.

Or secrets like that they’d let Henry stay up extra late and have brownies for breakfast when he spent the weekend with them. Secrets like that they were going to sneak out of town for a romantic getaway and were only going to text to say they were fine and they’d see everyone on Monday morning. Secrets like a new idea for Hot Cakes that Cam was in on before any of the other partners because he’d sat up at the kitchen table with her designing the presentation and helping her brainstorm. Secrets like that they were engaged for a few days, or even hours, before telling anyone else. Or that the pregnancy test had been positive.

Her heart squeezed hard. She was getting way ahead of herself here. They weren’t even dating. They