15

She was so fucking gorgeous.

Cam had always enjoyed the morning meetings of Fluke, Inc., but he’d never been hard and aching in the middle of one.

He was sure his friends and partners would be glad to know that.

But he was stunned by what a turn on it was to watch Whitney during the meeting a week later.

She was freaking glowing.

He knew he was staring at her like a lovesick idiot. He also knew that Aiden, Dax, and Grant had noticed. They kept casting glances in his direction. He felt their eyes on him. But he wasn’t looking at them.

He was looking at Whitney. The way her eyes were sparkling, the faint flush to her cheeks, the smile that was so easy and genuine. He was even appreciating the way she looked in the boring-as-hell navy-blue pencil skirt and ivory blouse she wore. Hot. She looked hot. He still hated those skirts, but today the damned thing made her look hot. Of course, she could have been wearing a sack and he would have thought she looked hot, because it wasn’t about the skirt. It was about how she was standing there, excited, confident, and she hadn’t once lifted her chin in the way she did when she was gathering her fake confidence and meeting his eyes directly even though she didn’t want to.

Today she was meeting his eyes directly. She was meeting everyone’s eyes directly.

And the way she looked in that pencil skirt wasn’t about the skirt at all. It never had been. He’d hated those skirts because she’d worn them to make herself feel like the corporate executive that she wanted to be.

Today she was that corporate executive. With or without that skirt.

Cam shifted on his chair as he thought about how much he’d love to see that skirt crumpled on the floor of her office next to her desk—while he checked out what kind of panties she wore underneath those stupid skirts.

Which was a completely inappropriate way for him to be thinking of his coworker and friend.

“Our focus group thinks this has huge potential,” she was saying. “It’s also a focus on younger customers. Kids are already a part of our demographic, of course, but we’ve never focused on them before.”

“But they’re still squares,” Ollie pointed out.

“Yes,” Whitney agreed. “But doing it this way won’t require a massive overhaul to our equipment.” She hit a button on her laptop to display the next slide. “Your suggestion to make them in the shape of alpacas got me thinking,” she told Ollie. “But this way will be not only more cost effective for us, but will make more sense,” she added with a smile. She pointed to the images on the screen. “Each bar will have an animal footprint stamped into it. It will look a lot like the footprint would look if a kid saw it out in nature, in the dirt or mud.”

“So instead of poop, people will think of mud when they see these bars,” Dax said with a grin. “Great.”

Whitney laughed. “I’m not worried. The focus group didn’t bring that up at all.” She turned back to the presentation. “We’ll start with five different animal footprints. They will all be wild animals native to Iowa. White-tailed deer, fox, jackrabbit, coyote, and a beaver.”

“No alpacas?” Ollie asked.

“Alpacas aren’t native to Iowa. Kids aren’t likely to see those in nature around here,” Whitney told him.”

Ollie frowned. “Shouldn’t we do interesting animals?”

“I think fox and coyotes are interesting,” Cam said, giving Ollie a knock-it-off look.

Ollie rolled his eyes.

“We can add to the collection,” Whitney said. “If it takes off. The idea is that kids will want to collect all the footprints, so they’ll keep going back to the store for more Critter Tracks.”

“But they’ll be eating the footprints,” Ollie said. “Right?” He looked around. “We don’t want them sticking these things under their beds, do we?”

“They each come with a collectible card,” Whitney said, clicking to the next slide. “The card has a colorful photo of the track as well as a photo and facts about the animal it belongs to.”

Ollie’s eyebrow went up. Cam grinned. Just like that, his friend was in.

Dax sat forward. “You know, it would be easy to set up a website to go along with this. Kids could get codes from the collectible cards. They could go to the site to learn more. We could have a little virtual world where they could follow the animals around, learn about their natural habitats, that kind of thing.”

Cam’s grin grew. Dax was in now too.

He caught Whitney’s eye. She clearly realized it too. She was positively glowing.

“Maybe the kids could become one of the animals,” Ollie added. “And interact in the world that way.”

Dax was nodding.

“This is a lot more than anything Hot Cakes has ever done before,” Grant said to no one in particular.

But Whitney nodded. “It’s a way for us to go above and beyond with our customer base. Be more than just a factory.” She smiled at Ollie and Dax. “To tap into the talents we have here rather than just sitting in offices and looking at spreadsheets.”

Her eyes widened and she looked at Grant quickly.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with paying attention to the spreadsheets and bottom line. That’s important too. Of course.”

Cam coughed and lifted his coffee cup to hide his smile.

Aiden didn’t even try to hide his. “No offense taken,” he said. “Everyone here understands that profitability will be an important factor. But it’s not the only factor. Especially when we’re talking about branching out and growing the brand.”

Whitney nodded, but she was still watching Grant for his agreement.

Grant just looked at Whitney for a long moment. Cam could see that Whitney was holding her breath. Cam was too. He knew that Grant and Aiden’s approval mattered to her. Ollie’s and Dax’s did too, but frankly theirs was easier to get. They were always up for something new and different. It was Grant and Aiden she’d have to convince the new idea was worth the money and investment of resources. And risk.

Finally Grant nodded. “I like it.”

Whitney let her breath out and her smile grew. “And…” She clicked to the next slide. “If things go well, we could reach out to groups that do animal education to see if they would want to include our treats as a part of their program. Zoos, of course. And the Department of Natural Resources does some educational programs. We could even do some specialized things. Maybe, for a group that does a lot with, say, penguins. We could do treats with penguin footprints.”

Cam looked at Ollie. Ollie’s eyes were bright and Cam could see his friend’s wheels turning.

“Fundraising,” Ollie said. “We could offer a portion of the proceeds to a program for penguin preservation or something.”

Whitney’s eyes brightened as well and she turned more fully toward Ollie. “Yes. There must be an awareness day for penguins. There are awareness days for everything. We could do something to coincide with that.”

“We could have various habitats on the website,” Dax said. “They could click a tab to interact with animals in the prairies and then another tab to interact with penguins and polar bears.”