“I want to be with him. And it’s amazing because he gets it. He wants me to be successful at work. He knows how important that is to me. But he’s fully supportive of it. Not just that, but he’s helping me make it work. He’s a part of all of that success. It feels like we’re a team and he’s totally behind me. I’m feeling like I—we—can have it all and I guess…” She took another breath. “I want to know how to let him know that.”

A muscle ticked along Cam’s jaw and he just stood looking at her, not saying a word.

She finally asked. “Do you think he’s going to be annoyed that I changed my mind?”

He cleared his throat. “No. I don’t think annoyed is how he’s going to feel about that.”

Then he stepped back and bent to open the cupboard under the breakfast bar. He pulled out a mixing bowl and the hand mixer. He got a spoon and a spatula from a drawer, then the measuring cups and spoons from another drawer. He set them all out on the counter between them. Without a word, he went into the pantry and came back with an armful of ingredients. He put them down before going to the refrigerator for butter and eggs.

She watched him measure everything out, melt the butter, and cream the eggs, butter and sugar before saying, “What are you doing?”

“Making chocolate chip cookie dough,” he said without looking up.

O-kay. She wasn’t worried here. At all. He wasn’t ignoring her. He hadn’t missed what she’d said. This wasn’t him blowing her off or changing the subject.

This was, somehow, part of the subject.

So she just watched him mix. Until he got to the point of adding the chips.

“No semisweet chips?” she asked.

He looked up. “No.”

“You use two kinds instead?”

He nodded. “Milk chocolate. The super sweet ones. And dark chocolate. A little more bitter and stronger. Together they make the overall semisweet flavor. But this way each bite has both distinct flavors.”

“That’s your secret with these cookies?”

“Part of it. Yeah.”

“From your grandma?”

“Nope. This is all mine. She liked mine better than her own.”

“Why do you like it this way better?” She somehow knew there was a reason.

“The semisweet chips aren’t really anything in particular. They’re kind of sweet and kind of dark. I think that if you’re going to be something you just be it. Be sweet. Be dark. But really be it.”

“People can’t be both? They can’t have times they feel sweet and times they feel dark?”

“Of course. But too often we try to cover the sweet times with a little self-deprecation or nonchalance because we don’t want to be too sweet. Or we try to cover our dark with more sugar because we don’t want to be too sad or too scary.”

“Like when we’re suddenly working from home and baking cookies with a friend’s grandma all day?”

He nodded without a smile. “We should embrace that. There’s nothing wrong with a soft, sweet side.”

There wasn’t. At all. It was hot as hell that this tough guy who loved to fight big corporations in court, who had tattoos and muscles and a smirk that wouldn’t quit and sarcasm that was as natural as breathing, had a secret to his chocolate chip cookies and had learned to love lemon drop martinis and liked looking at photo albums with his grandmother’s best childhood friend.

“And there’s nothing wrong with having a dark side sometimes,” he told her. “You don’t have to cover it up with sweetness. Sugar isn’t the answer to everything. It’s okay to be a little bitter, to have a little bite. It just makes the sweet stuff sweeter when it’s time for that.”

She nodded. He was right. Her being bitter about her family and the business and how things had been at Hot Cakes for the past ten years was okay. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t how she would have chosen it to be maybe. But it made everything now—her new bosses who were more like partners and were becoming friends, and their new ideas, and the new successes—even sweeter.

And the same was true with her and Cam. The little bit of bitterness between them was making this now sweeter.

“How long will those cookies for Didi take?” she asked. She assumed he was making them up now so they were done for when Didi woke up later. So that maybe he and Whitney could steal some time together before that happened.

“These aren’t for Didi,” he said. He met her eyes. “They’re your favorite, right?”

She swallowed. There was a heat in his eyes that she’d seen before, but there was something else there now. Something new.

Intention.

This wasn’t going to end with him pulling back and telling her that they couldn’t keep going.

“Yes,” she said. “Those are my favorite.” She wasn’t even going to ask how he knew that. She didn’t know if he remembered it from years ago or if Didi had told him or if he’d noticed that she’d eaten nearly a dozen of these when he’d made them before, whereas she’d only swiped maybe half a dozen of the others.

It didn’t matter. He’d been making cookies and bars for her. And, yes, Josie was right, that was romantic.

“You asked me what you should do with this guy you’re falling for,” he said.

She nodded.

“Take off your clothes.”

It was time.

He’d wanted to give her a chance to feel secure, to know he was here for her as a friend first, to figure out what she really wanted.

But… It. Was. Time.

Cam watched her take a deep breath and braced himself for her to lift her chin, gathering her nerve.

But she didn’t.

She slipped off the stool, stepped around the corner of the counter so she was facing him fully, and stripped her dress off.

The sweet little sundress that was nothing like those fucking corporate pencil skirts she wore that made him nuts.

His heart was thundering and he felt everything in his body tighten almost painfully. He wanted her. So much. She was gorgeous. Physically. Any man would think so. He’d always wanted her.

But now he wanted her. This woman. Not the girl he’d been missing for the past ten years, not the woman he’d run into here and there over the years when visiting Appleby, not the woman he’d thought he was sparring with in the offices at Hot Cakes. This woman.

The one he’d gotten to know better and watched grow and who now stood in front of him naked. Literally, but also figuratively. She was letting him in again and this time there was even more on the line than their parents finding out about them back in high school and making them break up.

It would have felt like the end of the world. It had felt that way when it had ended. But what they’d lost were stolen kisses and some messing around in the dark and some laughter and, yes, friendship. But kid friendship.

Now… if they messed this up it was so much more.

Now their hearts and their futures were wrapped up in all of this.

Now they really would lose a true friendship. With each other.

Yeah. That was true.

But if they did this… they could have all of this forever.

“You didn’t have panties on? This whole time?” he asked, his voice gruff, but trying to lighten the mood. Trying to make things playful and dirty. Because if he didn’t, he was going to propose to her and that might have been too much.