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.
But he hadn’t realized it until he saw her in that fucking dress.
That was only one of the things about the dress that had sucked every molecule of oxygen out of his lungs and made him hard and stupid all at once.
Her tits really had looked amazing in that thing. And no, her ass had not looked weird.
But he could not get over that color.
She used to wear red.
Not just as a little girl, but in high school too. In the time he’d know her she’d worn red. And other bright colors.
Hell, he’d picked bright blue panties—well, it had technically been a thong, a detail he had not missed—up off the street at Christmas.
So she wore red under her black and gray and navy blue clothes that she wore to the office.
He hadn’t put his finger on it until this very second, but that was why he hated her fucking clothes.
At first he’d thought it was because those pencil skirts did actually make her ass and legs look great and he figured he was just dealing with horniness and the whole wanting-what-he-couldn’t-have that always simmered in the air when he was near Whitney.
Then he thought it was because they were very conservative, something he was not, and she paired them with those buttoned-up blouses that reminded him of what a good girl she’d always tried to be. Or the image of one that she’d tried to project at least. Which then reminded him of how naughty and fun that good girl could be when he got her to loosen up. Which led back to the horniness and the wanting-what-he-couldn’t-fucking-have that plagued him.
But now he put his finger on it.
She wore those damned boring-assed colors that were not her and he would put a million dollars—and he could literally do that, thank you very fucking much—on the fact that she wore those because her grandfather or father had told her that’s how she should dress to work for Hot Cakes.
He loved her in that red dress of Piper’s.
Not just because she looked sexy as hell but because he would bet another million that she really liked that dress.
The door to the powder room opened behind him and he turned to face her.
She came up short when she saw that he was still there.
She was back in her silky light blue blouse and the dark gray skirt. He found it interesting they were wearing the same colors today.
But he really fucking hated her outfit.
He frowned and moved to her desk to return the stress ball to its spot next to her plain black pencil holder. Damn, even the stress ball and pencil holder were boring. Dax had one that when you squeezed it the inner liquid squished out into multicolored bubbles. Whitney needed one of those. Desperately. Literally and metaphorically.
“You’re still here,” she said.
“You didn’t tell me if we’re going to dinner tomorrow night or the next night,” he said, tucking his hands into his pockets.
She tossed Piper’s dress over the back of one of the chairs that faced her desk and regarded him with narrowed eyes.
“Neither. But you already knew that answer. So why are you really still here?”
Ah, see, that was the other reason he hated her clothes. When she dressed like this it was clear that she felt more buttoned up and cool. Not at all vulnerable and sexy.
“I’m really still here because I want to know when we’re going out. We don’t have to go to Timothy’s. Hell, we don’t have to go to dinner for that matter.”
“Just straight to the hotel then?” she asked.
“Sure.” He shrugged.
“Well, I guess it’s a step up from the riverbank.”
He lifted a brow and took a step closer to her. He didn’t miss the way her breath caught for just a second. “You had no complaints on that riverbank, Whit.” They’d been so damned hot together. Even as teenagers.
She wet her lips. “I was seventeen. What did I know?”
Yeah, well, at seventeen Miss Whitney Lancaster had been the best sex of his life. And that was still true ten years later. And he’d absolutely tried to erase that memory.
“You knew that you were madly in love with me and that nothing felt better than when we were naked together,” he said.
She pressed her lips together, lifted her chin, and met his gaze directly.
He appreciated that. She was tough. She didn’t want him to see that he affected her. That made this all so much more fun.
He took another step. Now he could reach her.
