She just looked at him, saying nothing, looking confused and concerned. Finally she shook her head. “Hot Cakes is too important. To both of us.”
Now, see, that pissed him off.
It was a total flashback to the past. She’d chosen Hot Cakes over him before.
And when he got pissed, he wanted to dig in, wanted to fight, wanted to win.
He felt the surge of anticipation that he always got when he heard the words, “We’re going to court.”
He didn’t punch people anymore. He wore them down with excellent arguments and being fucking right.
He gave her a big grin. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the dessert auction.”
Her eyes got round. Clearly, him grinning also made her nervous.
Good.
His gaze landed on the red dress draped over the back of the chair in front of her desk. He crossed to it in four strides, swept it up, and then headed for the door.
“Hey!”
“You don’t need this until the night of our first date,” he told her.
He left her standing behind her perfectly neat and organized, boring as fuck, corporate desk in her damned gray pencil skirt, looking dazed.
3
“What do llamas have to do with cake?” Whitney turned to Piper as the other woman came up next to her. “Nothing,” Whitney answered her own question. “That’s what. Llamas have nothing to do with cake.”
“I think those are actually alpacas,” Piper said, looking toward the pen where the petting zoo was set up about fifty feet from the stage where the baking competition was about to begin.
Whitney felt her eyes widen. “That is not helpful.”
Piper laughed, then looked at Whitney’s face closer. She frowned. “You okay?”
Whitney took a deep breath—got a lungful of alpaca-scented air—and shook her head. “No, I am not okay.” She turned her attention back to the stage that had been constructed four days ago in the center of the Appleby town square.
“Why not?” Piper looked around. “Everything seems great. Everyone is having so much fun.”
Whitney sighed. “I have a baking competition happening on an outdoor stage as the temperature is inching past ninety. There are bugs out here, the butter and cream cheese are melting, and I have no idea if our release forms cover if someone gets diarrhea from eating desserts made with eggs and cream that have been sitting out in ninety-two-degree weather.”
Piper’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“And there are not just llamas—or alpacas or whatever—in a petting zoo stinking the place up, but there are also goats, a potbellied pig, a miniature cow, and an emu.”
Piper nodded. “I saw the emu.”
“I didn’t even know the Ryan boys had an emu,” Whitney said. Drew Ryan and his brothers ran the alpaca farm outside of Appleby. Apparently, they had more than alpacas.
“Dave is cute.”
“Dave?” Whitney asked.
“The emu’s name is Dave,” Piper said.
Of course it was. “I never should have let Oliver handle the petting zoo details,” Whitney said, shaking her head. “But I was so busy with coordinating the baking competition and I was so happy that he’d let go of the idea of the Ferris wheel and actual circus tent that I figured a petting zoo would be harmless.”
Piper nodded. “Well, in Oliver’s defense, he’s never put in charge of details. Of any kind. He probably didn’t know what to do. He’s not really the detail guy.”
Piper would know. She was Oliver’s executive assistant. Piper was actually the executive assistant to all five of the partners in Fluke, Inc., but it had taken Whitney only a few weeks around her new bosses to figure out that, while they all needed Piper, Oliver was the main reason for Piper’s job. Ollie was… a dreamer. He was the visionary of the company, the big ideas guy. He was brilliant and creative and practically a genius. But he was also not into things like schedules and plans and rules.
“I should have known when he was so disappointed that we couldn’t get actual acrobats to perform,” Whitney said.
Piper just shrugged. “You really should have. Never put Ollie in charge of something. Everything should go through Grant or Aiden,” she said, naming the CFO and CEO of the company. “Or me,” she said with a smile.
Piper really did handle Oliver. He listened to her in a way he didn’t to anyone else. Piper had a way of communicating with him that seemed almost magical. She could anticipate most of his thoughts and needs. And Oliver could be hard to keep focused unless Piper was involved. She could absolutely get and hold his attention. It was fascinating.
Whitney blew out a breath. “That doesn’t make this better now. Why didn’t you stop him from having goats here?”
They were having a baking contest. On a stage. In the middle of the town square. Three handsome men were going to make three different desserts, cooking-show style, then the final judge was going to choose the winner. That winning recipe would become Hot Cakes’ newest product.
This was Whitney’s first big project for Hot Cakes since she’d gotten new bosses. The first big project she’d pitched to someone other than a family member. Ever.
The first big project that someone had said, “Wow. Yes. Let’s do that.” Ever.
And now she felt like she was going to throw up.
Hot Cakes had never added a new product. The products that made the company millions of dollars every year had been the same for over fifty years. But now with new owners it was the perfect time to launch something fresh.
Or so Whitney had told Aiden, Grant, Ollie, Dax, and Cam during her pitch last month.
And they’d bought it. They loved the idea. They thought it was brilliant. Well, four of them had anyway. Cam had seemed… determined to make her squirm.
She shifted her weight and shot a glance in his direction. He was standing off to the side of the stage with Ollie and one of the Hot Cakes employees, Max.
This was a terrible idea.
Cam had been making her squirm since he’d gotten back to
