She took a breath and pulled up Paige’s number in her phone.

Paige was quite a bit younger but she was very… Whitney wasn’t sure of the word. Mature sounded dumb. She was, of course, but there was something else about Paige that made her seem older than her just-turned-twenty-two years. It was her calm spirituality. Or something. Paige was just very sure of herself, who she was, what she wanted. She did yoga and collected cats and was a vegetarian in a little town in Iowa where that was regarded as a bit strange. But she did it all with a smile and a general disregard for what others thought of her.

She was just… calm. She was very soothing.

It was why Whitney loved her yoga classes and just enjoyed talking with Paige whenever she had the chance.

Whitney probably needed more soothing in her life.

So she should definitely invite Paige for drinks and a girls’ night out with her.

Whitney typed and hit send quickly before she could think about it too hard.

Hi! It’s Whitney. Wondering if you’d be up for having a drink tonight?

Again, the two-minute lag time between sending and receiving a response felt like years.

Hi! I’m so sorry, Whitney! I have plans tonight. I would love to do it another time.

Oh, no problem. It’s last minute, I know, Whitney typed back quickly.

I can’t believe you’re asking me to go out on the ONE night that my friend is back in town from Louisiana and can get together! Paige texted back.

It’s fine! Whitney assured her. You should see your friend.

She moved to Louisiana because she fell in love a few months ago. Paige sent an eye-rolling emoji at that.

Whitney had to laugh. Paige was really not into falling in love and people upending their lives to be with Their One True Love.

Paige loved to date and didn’t sit home on the weekends unless she wanted to. But she did not get serious. Every time someone asked her when she was going to settle down, or worse, get married, she got another cat.

We can do it another time, Whitney replied. Maybe Paige would talk her out of all these mushy, semi-in-love feelings she was having for Cam.

Would that be a good thing? Or not?

Tori is a vet, Paige went on. She’s the one who took care of all my cats. Lol! So she’s looking at my new stray for me. She’s here to collect her own animals and take them back to Louisiana with her.

Whitney smiled. Seriously, no problem.

Well, she did bring her boyfriend and his HOT cousin with her. Paige sent a smiley face emoji with the tongue hanging out and then a fire emoji. So I’m not exactly upset. She included a winking emoji.

Whitney laughed. Have fun!

Oh, I will! This Louisiana drawl is doing it for me. Paige sent a grinning emoji. But I really want to go out with you sometime soon, okay?

Whitney nodded. She wanted to do this too. She had rain checks for two girls’ nights out now. That was a lot more than she’d had an hour ago. For sure. And then I can hear all about how things went with this guy. She hesitated before sending that, but that was the kind of stuff women talked about on girls’ nights out, right? She finally pushed the button.

Sounds good! Paige sent a GIF of a girl fanning her face. Then she added And then I can hear all about you and Cam.

Oh.

Well… if Paige was going to spill about this guy and whatever happened, then Whitney probably had to tell her something too. She just didn’t have much to tell. Well, nothing physical anyway. She had a whole lot of emotional stuff she could spill.

And suddenly having someone to bounce all of that off of sounded kind of great. She could use some advice.

Okay.

She sent the response, feeling like she was making a huge commitment.

The heart emoji she got back from Paige made her feel good though and she put her phone down smiling.

A second later though, she blew out a breath as she looked at her especially clean desk. She really was done for the day.

Well… fuck. She’d finally gotten her nerve up to reach out to potential new friends and they both, of course, already had plans. Normal people probably did make plans ahead of time. Whitney never really made plans because she worked all the time. But if she were going to do something other than work, she probably wouldn’t be able to plan it too far ahead. She never knew how long she’d be at the office.

But she sighed as she thought that.

It wasn’t entirely true.

She was in control, to an extent at least, of how long she stayed at the office. She worked a lot, yes, but she did it intentionally.

And she’d been realizing more and more over the past few days that it was, in part, because she’d been trying to prove herself. First to her family. Then to the Fluke guys. But it was also because she hadn’t really liked going home. Because she’d felt pretty damned useless there.

She wasn’t a cook or a baker. She didn’t enjoy keeping house. Not that anyone probably loved cleaning toilets, but she knew people liked decorating their homes for different holidays and changing up the little touches like throw pillows and centerpieces. She got the impression that Maggie McCaffery enjoyed things like making the little sachets Whitney had found in her drawer the other day. There was no way Cam had made those and she would bet half her salary he’d gotten them from his mother. Just like he’d surely gotten the hand soaps in the powder room on the first floor from Maggie.

Some people enjoyed that stuff. Cam even, clearly, enjoyed baking.

That wasn’t Whitney.

And she hadn’t known what to do for Didi, to make her happy and to help her. She’d struggled with things like the little parties at 3 a.m. and knowing if it was right or wrong. She’d struggled with juggling those things with work. She’d struggled with feeling that she was really doing a good job with any of it.

At work, at least she’d known what she was doing. Her dad and grandfather hadn’t let her do much, but she understood what was going on and enjoyed the atmosphere at Hot Cakes. It was more familiar. Her grandmother and mom had always had people cooking and cleaning for them, so she hadn’t seen that as a nurturing, happy thing people did.

Until Cam.

Cam had been raised with a mother who clearly loved to cook and have her family and their friends around in big groups, feeding and taking care of them.

It made Whitney wonder about Letty. Had she been like that too? She’d certainly been a baker. And she’d apparently staunchly stood by the idea that fresh-baked, homemade baked goods were superior to mass-produced snack cakes.

And that made Whitney wonder if Didi had missed that part of Letty too. Cam had told her that Didi said she missed Letty’s baked goods. But Whitney wondered if Letty had had that nurturing spirit too and if Didi missed that as well. Or more. She was certainly soaking that up from Cam. And his family.

Which gave her an idea.

A crazy, maybe-I-shouldn’t-do-this idea.

But as she pushed away from her desk, she felt a little flip in her stomach that told her she was going to do it.

And she couldn’t wait to see how Cam reacted.

17

Wanting to tell his parents and friends and little brother that they needed to get the hell out of the house so he could put Whitney Lancaster up on his mother’s kitchen counter and do very, very dirty things to her where he’d just helped make a chicken and ham casserole was probably not appropriate.