Cam shook his head. “Stop distracting me. Whitney is fully focused on this project. As she should be. We should all be thrilled about that. As you noticed from the presentation today,” he said, looking at each of them pointedly. “She’s doing an amazing job. She’s completely pulling this off. She doesn’t have time to be messing around.”
Ollie nodded. “So you’re not messing around. That’s why you’re so grumpy.”
“I’m grumpy,” Cam said, “because you need to stop giving Piper a hard time.”
Ollie scowled. “Me and Piper are fine.”
“Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on there but if Whitney wants to put alpaca prints on those damned bars, then we’re going to do that. Even if it means that you have to think about Drew Ryan’s handsome face every time you see one of them,” Cam told him.
Ollie blew out a breath. “Whatever. I don’t give a fuck about Drew Ryan.”
Yeah. That was definitely not true.
“Whitney is doing a great job,” Aiden said. “And we get that you’re one hundred percent in her corner.”
“We should all be one hundred percent in her corner,” Cam said.
“Yeah, well, maybe not the way you are,” Aiden told him.
“What does that mean?”
“You were watching her during the presentation like you were proud and awed and imagining bending her over the conference table all at once,” Aiden replied bluntly.
Cam opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“I know how it feels to watch a woman and think all of that…” Aiden trailed off and cleared his throat.
Yeah, the woman he was talking about was Cam’s sister. They didn’t really need to delve into that too deeply. “Great,” Cam said. “I appreciate your commiseration.”
“It’s just that I get how you can get knotted up when you want her to be successful, but she needs to figure it out on her own,” Aiden said. “Just… lighten up. We’re on your side. Her side too.”
Cam took a deep breath.
Okay, yeah, he was being hard on these guys. His friends realized that Whitney was important here and they were treating her with respect and including her in these decisions. Hell, they were letting her lead the way.
“Fine,” he relented. “Just… pay attention and do your shit. And… be nice.”
They all grinned.
Yeah, okay, they were usually the ones telling Cam to be nice.
Everything was different now. Because of Whitney.
16
Cam knocked on Whitney’s office door five minutes later.
“Come in.”
She was standing behind her desk, her arms crossed.
He shut the door behind him. “You wanted to talk?”
“If there’s something about the new product idea that you don’t like, you can tell me to my face.”
That wasn’t what he’d been expected at all. “I like everything about the new product idea.”
“Then why didn’t you say one word about it during the meeting and then kick me out of the conference room to talk to the guys about it without me?”
Cam crossed the room, coming to stand opposite her across her wide desk. “That’s not what happened.”
“You kicked me out of the conference room to talk to the guys about something,” she said.
“I didn’t mean for that to come off as me kicking you out.”
She rolled her eyes and dropped her arms. “Seriously? How did you think it would come off?”
Okay, that was fair. “Sorry,” he said honestly. “I was…”
Did he want her to know that he’d been coming to her defense with his friends?
“You were…?”
Fuck. Honesty. That’s what he and Whitney needed a lot of. Open communication. “I was telling them how I expect them to treat you.”
She opened her mouth, but seemed to process his words and shut it again, simply frowning.
“I didn’t like how Grant wasn’t giving you immediate feedback and how Dax was getting distracted with the website idea.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can.”
She blew out a breath. “I need to handle all of that on my own, Cam. Grant doesn’t need to treat me any differently than he does anyone else. Dax is just Dax and—”
“And while we’re talking about how people are acting, you have to stop giving them passes,” Cam interrupted.
She looked surprised. “Excuse me?”
“If Grant isn’t communicating his thoughts about a project, you need to ask him for input and feedback. Don’t let him just sit there with that infuriating nonexpression on his face.”
She lifted her chin. “I will deal with—”
Cam was around the corner of her desk, his thumb on her chin before she even finished the word with. He pressed on the center of her chin, tipping it back down.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t lift your chin with me, Whit.”
“What?”
“This.” He pressed gently again. “You lift your chin whenever you’re getting pissed but are trying not to yell at me. You don’t have to act tough. You don’t have to gather your… fortitude. Or whatever that is.” He ran the pad of his thumb back and forth over the soft skin under her bottom lip. “Just talk. Tell me off. Tell me what you’re really thinking.”
She wet her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue and his gaze followed the movement.
“You find the way Grant sits there and doesn’t say anything infuriating?” she asked.
Cam met her eyes again. “Not until today. When he did it to you.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “I don’t find it infuriating.”
“No?”
She shook her head slightly, causing his thumb to slide over her chin again. “No. He’s just taking it all in. I know he’ll tell me what he thinks eventually.”
Cam thought about that. So it was all his problem. That didn’t surprise him, actually. “Guess I’m feeling a little protective of you.”
That corner of her mouth fully curled now. “You don’t need to.”
“I do. Those guys are used to working together only. And with Piper. They don’t know how to be gentlemen with a woman who doesn’t know them and their quirks and how to read them. I want you to know that
