Aiden gave him a little frown. “You sure?”

“We were kids. We’re both different people now.” Cam took a breath and looked at the other men. They were his best friends. They knew him better than anyone. They had his back. “She and I haven’t talked, not really, in years. We haven’t spent time together. When I think of her, I think of the girl I knew. I’m just getting to know the woman who is now my business partner for all intents and purposes. How can I be angry with her? Or hurt by her? Or… in love with her? I’ve just met her in a lot of ways.”

The guys just looked at him. Dax looked confused, Grant looked skeptical, and Aiden looked worried.

Cam shrugged. She might physically want him. They did have chemistry. And a history. But she didn’t want him. Not as a boyfriend. Not as someone she confided in. Not as someone she turned to for help.

Not as a friend.

She might let him kiss her. Maybe even strip her naked and smear cookie dough all over her. But when it came to brainstorming at work, she clearly loved doing that with Ollie and Dax. Obviously she respected and admired Grant and Aiden because it was important to her to impress them. She’d rather work late than come home and hang out with him and Didi.

He wanted to be important to her somehow. Someone she needed. And it was clear that what she needed most was a friend.

“I might be a different guy than I was ten years ago, but there’s something that just makes me want to be what she needs.”

“And she needs an ally right now,” Grant said.

Cam looked at him. “Yeah.”

Grant nodded. “I noticed she seemed nervous, or worried, during the meeting the other day.”

Cam didn’t like that the other man could read Whitney like that. But then again, maybe her discomfort had been really obvious.

“She was,” he said. “I saw it too. She wants to impress us, show us that she can be valuable to us.”

“She is valuable to us,” Aiden said.

“I know. But she has to prove it. She doesn’t just want words. She needs to pull this project off, make it successful.”

Aiden took a breath. “So we just back off? Tread carefully? Be sure to, what? Praise her a lot or something?”

“Nope,” Cam said. “You guys don’t treat her any differently. Treat her like a colleague. Ask her opinions, question what she’s telling you. Nothing different than how you’ve treated her in the past. When she pulls this off, she’ll know it’s because she really did it. There won’t be a question about if you were easy on her or anything.” He paused. “I’m the one who’s going to treat her differently than I have in the past.”

After a moment, Aiden nodded and clapped him on the back.

Cam was expecting to hear, “Good job, buddy. Proud of you.”

Instead Aiden said, “Good luck.”

To which Grant and Dax simply nodded.

Cam blew out a breath. Yeah. He was going to need it.

13

Whitney hadn’t been killing time at the office. Exactly. She’d wanted to dive into the huge to-do list she’d ended up with after the meeting two days ago. But it had been really nice to think that she could stay late. She didn’t need to rush home. She’d never had to rush home. Katherine had been there with Didi. But Didi had been grumpy when she’d gotten home too late and left her with that woman. Tonight Didi was with Cam.

And this had been Didi’s idea. Whitney felt a lot less compelled to get home and “rescue” Didi if she didn’t like how things were going.

Of course, Didi would have to remember that the whole thing had been her idea.

Didi was delightful. She really was. But she had always been a high-energy person and that hadn’t diminished at all with her cognitive decline. In fact, she now got her time mixed up and got bored more easily which made her boundless energy harder on family, friends, and caregivers. She liked to be entertained and, like getting up around midnight to watch Magnum, P.I., she didn’t follow the clock that others did. She just did what felt good in the moment. At times, when she wasn’t sleep deprived or watching an episode of Magnum, P.I. for the seventh time, Whitney actually envied that about her grandmother. Whitney would love to just do whatever felt good when it felt good.

Didi might be in the mood for a burger at seven in the morning or pancakes at seven at night. She might want to go to bed at 10 a.m. and sleep for eight hours or she might want to go for a swim at ten at night.

It was all harmless, for the most part, but Katherine had wanted to try to keep her on a “normal schedule” and they’d butted heads. In Katherine’s defense, it was a little tough for a caregiver to adjust to things like sleeping the day away and staying up all night, but Whitney had been torn between understanding where Katherine was coming from and wondering why the hell you couldn’t just have a burger at 7 a.m. Or 3 a.m.

Whitney had tried to just roll with Didi’s schedule and her family had been lenient… okay, that wasn’t true. Her family hadn’t noticed when Whitney came and went from the office. Because she was never considered vital and was never in charge of anything important. If she wasn’t at a meeting, it didn’t make a difference. She didn’t have deadlines. So she could sleep late with Didi after being up grilling burgers by the pool at 3 a.m. and watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—one of Didi’s favorites—on a huge movie projector from their chaise lounge chairs until five.

Now she couldn’t do that. Not only would the guys notice—something she actually appreciated—but she now did have work to do. Work she wanted to do. Work she wanted to do well.

Work she couldn’t do while a little hung over from 3 a.m. hard root beers that Didi insisted went with the burgers—she wasn’t wrong—or the heartburn that went with eating the french fries dipped in spicy aioli—that Didi also insisted went with the burgers and that she also wasn’t wrong about—at 3 a.m.

Whitney let herself into the house, wondering what shenanigans Didi had been up to today and how Cam had handled it. Because Whitney was sure there had been shenanigans. Of course, the way Didi had talked him into this crazy plan of moving in here in the first place had Whitney pretty sure that Didi was getting her way with Camden McCaffery. The big, tough bad-boy lawyer was probably wrapped around Didi’s little finger.

Then again, Didi had a thing for muscles and tattoos—something Whitney had found out watching movies with her grandmother and hadn’t particularly needed or wanted to know. So Whitney wouldn’t be surprised to find out Cam had charmed Didi into doing whatever he told her to do.

Either way, honestly, it had been nice to not feel the need to rush home and to be able to focus at work until she got through what she’d determined to be the top things on her to-do list.

The house was quiet. Surprisingly so.

Lights were on and she heard the sounds of water running and a hand mixer from the kitchen. She glanced up the stairs. The upper hallway light was on, as it was once Didi went to bed so that when she inevitably got up in the night, she wouldn’t stumble in the dark.

It was likely Cam in the kitchen.

Whitney’s heart thumped at the realization. She also realized she’d been anticipating seeing him.