“You’re not seducing me.”
“Talking about putting cookie dough on your nipples?” he asked.
She shifted her weight and dropped her gaze to the bowl again and he wondered what sensations were going through her body. Was she tingling and hot? Were her nipples hard? Because he was hot and hard, for sure.
“You have to respect what I’m feeling,” she finally said, meeting his gaze again. “This complicates things in a way that concerns me.”
He studied her. She seemed to be holding back. Which was interesting. Whitney had always been happy and sweet and confident. The girl he’d dated ten years ago had been accommodating and roll-with-it and always up for whatever he wanted.
“You’re the one who pointed out the doors and squeaky floor boards between your room and mine,” he said.
She nodded. “Momentary lapse of judgment.”
“Can we have a few more of those?”
She didn’t smile at that either. She shook her head. “No. I shouldn’t have said that.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped slightly. “It’s fun to flirt and tease with you. But it’s a bad idea. It’s distracting, and with you here all the time now”—she frowned at that—“I think it could be very easy to go… offtrack.”
“The track being Hot Cakes?” he asked.
She nodded. Then bit her bottom lip.
Them being together was offtrack? That was not how it felt to him. At all.
But they were, evidently on very different tracks. He had accomplished what he wanted with work. Hot Cakes was great. He wanted it to be successful too. Absolutely. But his huge accomplishment had been Fluke, Inc. and Warriors of Easton.
He’d absolutely been focused and determined when it had come to building the company and making it a fucking phenomenon.
Whitney hadn’t had a huge business accomplishment yet.
He got where she was coming from. But it was possible to have that and a personal life.
Probably.
He didn’t really know. He hadn’t had a relationship when they’d been getting Fluke off the ground. Hell, he hadn’t had a relationship since Whitney.
But she was trying to be successful with Hot Cakes. She wasn’t doing it alone. But she didn’t believe that. Or she didn’t know what that really meant. Yet.
“I don’t think I can keep from flirting with you,” he finally confessed. “Especially when you come down here at night in your nightgown looking…” He almost said totally fuckable. But that would likely go on her inappropriate list. “…so sexy.”
Then he cringed slightly. That was a little better, but he probably should have said “beautiful.” Or maybe not have said anything at all about how she looked.
He shrugged before she could say anything. “It’s going to be impossible for me to not notice how you look, Whit.”
She blew out a breath. “Which is another reason this is a bad idea.”
“Because it tempts you?”
Her eyes flashed. “Because I should get to come down to my kitchen in whatever I want to wear and not worry about getting hit on.” Then she took another breath. “I’m not used to having guests.”
He didn’t want her to think of him as a guest. That was for fucking sure. And he wasn’t hitting on her. That sounded like they were two strangers meeting for the first time in a bar or something.
They were hardly strangers.
Aren’t you? a tiny voice whispered at the back of his mind. Yeah, maybe they were. They’d been apart for years. And a lot had happened to them both in that time.
There was something else niggling at him. The way she kept seeming to calm herself. She’d never had a temper. Not that he’d seen anyway. She’d never snapped at him. Hell, he wasn’t sure they’d ever fought. They might have disagreed a few times, but they’d never had an actual argument. He’d never made her cry. He’d never laid awake at night regretting something he’d said. They’d never raised their voices.
Not until the end. They’d fought the night she’d broken up with him. She’d cried. He’d laid awake that night. He’d regretted more than a few things from that night.
But the idea of an angry Whitney was intriguing. If he could talk about bending her over her desk and licking cookie dough off her nipples, then she could certainly tell him if she thought he was being an asshole.
Not this “inappropriate” or “uncomfortable” stuff. Those words made him itchy. They weren’t right between them. But she could definitely be angry or frustrated.
“Are you actually uncomfortable around me?” he finally asked. He didn’t think it was true but he needed her to know it wasn’t true.
He couldn’t quite name the emotion that flickered across her face with that. It was surprise maybe, mixed with confusion. And maybe relief?
“Not exactly.”
“We still have chemistry.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“But you don’t want it. You’re afraid of it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know if I’d say that.”
“You do want it?” He knew that wasn’t what she meant.
“I’m not afraid of it.”
Good. That was really fucking good. “You just want to ignore it.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m pushing you on it, making you feel it and face it.”
She shifted her weight again and her hand tightened on the sheet where she was holding it between her breasts. “Yes,” she finally said.
“And that doesn’t make you uncomfortable. It makes you mad.”
She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said after a moment.
“Then tell me that,” he said.
She just pressed her lips together.
“Don’t try to make it polite and business-like,” he said. “Tell me how you really feel.”
“You’re my boss,” she said.
For fuck’s sake. “Not in this house, I’m not,” he said, letting his own exasperation show.
Her eyes widened. “You’re my boss no matter where we are.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “No. I’m not even really your boss at Hot Cakes and you know that.”
“Do I?”
“Of course you do. You know I’m not going to fire you. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t
