“You and me.”

“Just us?”

“Yes.”

“Like a…business dinner? We’ll talk about plans for—”

“No. Dinner, wine, dessert, me feeling you up under the table, walking downtown and talking, late drinks, then sex all night in a suite at the Hilton.”

Whitney just stared at him. Her heart was thundering so loud that she almost couldn’t hear anything else. This was the thing with Cam’s straightforwardness—it was really hard to pretend that you misunderstood.

Okay, so her cool façade was going to waver a bit. So sue her.

“Not even a pretense of something else?” she finally asked.

“When have I ever been a pretense guy?”

He had a point. “So you actually want…” She trailed off and pressed her lips together, not sure she wanted him to fill that in.

He moved closer again. The air between them heated. At least she was feeling hotter.

“To look at you in that fucking dress all night long,” he said. “Getting harder and hotter as the time goes on until we can’t stand it any longer and I almost rip it off of you in the elevator on the way up to the room.”

Well. Holy. Shit.

She’d asked.

And she’d wanted an answer like that.

But that answer was really the worst thing he could have possibly said.

How was she supposed to be completely professional and pretend she was over him when he said stuff like that?

He’s just pushing your buttons, she told herself.

He didn’t look like he was kidding. Or messing around. But she had to tell herself that was exactly what he was doing. Or she was going to grab him and strip him out of that hot suit and lick the tattoos that he’d added to since she’d last been able to lick them.

Daaaaaamit.

She took a breath. Then nodded. “Okay, so I guess my butt doesn’t look weird in this dress, then.”

He didn’t seem surprised that was the only reaction she gave. “Definitely not.”

“Okay, thanks for the input.”

She stepped around him and headed for the bathroom.

2

He waited for her to change.

Of course he did.

He wasn’t the type of guy to leave and let her catch her breath and gather her composure and see each other the next day as if he hadn’t just confessed that he wanted to take her out.

And to a hotel. For sex.

He really hated beating around the bush, so he didn’t. It made it so much easier when he knew that everyone knew exactly where he stood on things.

It was very important that Whitney Lancaster know where he stood on things.

That was why he was still here in her office, perusing the stuff on her shelves, playing with the stress ball he’d picked up from her desk, and thinking about the fact that she was at least semi-naked on the other side of the thin door of her private bathroom. And wondering what color panties she had on. Or if maybe it was a thong. Like the one he’d picked up from the snowy pavement a few months ago.

A gentleman wouldn’t think about that. Or the last time he’d seen her in a thong. Or naked. Well, he assumed. He only knew maybe one and a half gentlemen and he didn’t spend a ton of time with them.

A guy who was over her probably wouldn’t think about any of that either.

Of course, he was neither of those things.

As evidenced by the things he’d said to her. And the fact that he was still here and planning to say more.

He squeezed the ball harder as he studied the framed photos that she had on the shelves of the massive cherrywood bookcase by her window.

The photos were of her with her family. Of course.

And wow, he really hated her grandfather and father.

He felt his chest tighten with bitterness and anger just looking at photos of them.

Dean and Eric Lancaster were the epitome of entitled, rich assholes who thought that they could do whatever they wanted to because they had money and power.

It was not a secret to anyone who knew Cam and his history with the Lancasters, or to himself—or the therapist that he’d seen for a while a few years ago—that a lot of his drive came from wanting to be a rich asshole too. He wanted to be at their level of wealth and success so that he could prove that they’d been wrong. About everything.

It absolutely wasn’t mentally healthy, but it had worked out so far. He was rich and successful and he had surpassed them in both wealth and success. And he was asshole, but he was less of one than Dean and Eric were.

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.