Jane sagged a little with relief. “Oh good. God, I just thought of that. That maybe she was telling you how her grandmother is sick. She and Danielle are close.”

“Why would she be telling me about that?”

“Well, you…” She frowned at him, almost puzzled. “Well, you make people feel better. You get them talking. And you’re very concerned with people being happy. I just thought maybe she was kind of drawn to you and wanted to tell you about it because she knew you’d make her feel better.”

Dax honestly didn’t know what to say to that for several seconds. He leaned in. “Well.” Then he blew out a breath and shook his head. Shit, now he absolutely wanted to make everything better in this woman’s life. “I’ll be honest with you… people do feel better after they hang out with me, but they don’t always come to me intending to spill. They come to play Ping-Pong or grab a beer or to hear one of my stupid stories. They usually come to me to forget about things. They don’t usually fill me in.”

He hadn’t thought about that in a long time. But he knew it was true and he was okay with it. Ping-Pong, beer, and stupid stories were easy.

“Huh.” She was watching him but clearly thinking something through. “So what was she telling you about?”

“How good her pot roast is. And that I should come try it sometime.”

Jane frowned and glanced in the direction Danielle had gone. “I knew it.”

“You did?”

“I knew she was hitting on you. For a second, I panicked about her grandma, I’ll admit, but I was right in the beginning.” She narrowed her eyes. “And did you want to hear about her pot roast?”

She was asking about more than actual pot roast. Dax grinned. “Not even a little.”

“Good.” Then she realized how that sounded. “She’s… made pot roast… for a lot of guys.”

Dax chuckled and took a drink of the amazingly good hard cider he’d ordered, suddenly feeling really good about, well, a lot of things. “You realize what you’ve done, don’t you?” he asked.

“What?”

“You staked a claim.”

“A… claim.” But her eyes flickered with realization.

He nodded seriously. “You basically told another woman to back off. From me. In a very social situation. So… guess I’m all yours now.” He was so fucking incredibly okay with that, he was a little rocked by it.

“Oh, I…” She glanced toward the bar again, where Danielle was gathered with other women about their age from Hot Cakes. Then she looked back at Dax. And sighed. “Shit.”

He laughed. “I assume you know how to make pot roast?” Somehow “pot roast” had turned into a flirty euphemism.

“I am not making you pot roast,” Jane said. But the corner of her mouth was twitching.

“Well, you have to now,” he insisted. “You can’t scare another pot roast maker off and then not do it for me yourself.”

She lifted a brow. “What if I can do something way better than pot roast? Maybe I saved you from just pot roast.”

He really did like this girl. “Absolutely wouldn’t surprise me,” he said honestly. “And knowing you as I do, I’m guessing whatever you’ve got has a lot more sugar.”

Yeah, dirty sounding and true. He loved it.

She laughed lightly. “Good guess.”

He hoped that was true for any actual food she might make and for well, anything else she was offering.

“So what did you want to talk to me about? If not Section 47C of the employee manual?” he asked. As intrigued as he was with Jane and any sugar she might give him—literal and otherwise—he was equally interested in her wanting to talk to him. He wasn’t being self-deprecating when he said people didn’t come to him to spill their guts. To have fun, be distracted from their problems, just let loose? For sure. And that was great. But people didn’t really seek him out for conversation. Other than his closest friends, of course. That Jane would assume someone would come to him for that was really… pretty damned awesome. Because it meant she thought maybe she could do that.

“I was just feeling… kind of… yuck,” she said. “And I knew you’d make me…”

She stopped, pressing her lips together.

“What?” he prompted.

“I just realized it might sound a little dirty.”

“Love a little dirty,” he said. “Love a lot dirty too.”

He’d give a million dollars, cash, right now to hear a lot of dirty from this woman, in fact.

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, I knew you’d make me feel good.”

Yeah, he would. And he only kind of meant that dirty.

He leaned in, forearms on the table. “Okay, well, I really want to. Make you feel good.”

There was a flicker in her expression that said it sounded dirty to her. But that she didn’t mind.

“So is this like you’re hungry and need food to feel good? Or you had a bad night with your dad and need to feel good?”

She looked surprised by that.

“Max mentioned you spend Thursday evenings with your dad,” Dax told her.

“Oh. You asked?”

“Asked where you were? Of course.”

She smiled softly at that.

He went on. “Or is this a thing where you need a bunch of liquor to feel good and so also need to know you have a ride home? Or is this horniness and need to feel good in every single way I’ve been thinking of since I met you?”

Yeah, he’d dropped that last one in there as if it were like everything else on the list. In a way, it was. He’d do whatever she needed, from feeding her to driving her home to stripping her naked and making her forget how to even spell Hot Cakes. But he also really did want her to know, boss or no, inappropriate or gray area, he had been thinking those things. They needed to be very much on the same page there.

She blinked at him. Without saying anything. For a long time.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just wondering,” she said.

“About?”

“If it can be all those things at once.”

He felt his grin. Wide and instantaneous. “Oh yeah, it can.”

“Then… yes. It’s… that.”

Thank God. He knew how to fix three of those for sure, and if he was good at those, that fourth one—the one about her dad—might be easier. He had to admit, he was a little intimidated by her actually having real problems to deal with and wanting to talk to him about them. None of his close friends had problems. They were all young, vibrant, highly intelligent, good-looking, rich guys. They pretty much had it made. People came to Dax to forget about their problems, not to hash them out.

But he wanted to help Jane. He’d try for her. And if he sucked at it… well, hopefully the liquor would take the edge off that.

And the sex, of course. He knew he was good at that, at least.

“Now I just need the order,” he told her.

“Oh, a small Squealer. With extra marinara for dipping,” she said. “And a shot of tequila. Just one though, I’ll switch to soda after that. But yeah, one shot for sure.”