“No,” Dax said. “I’ve got this.”

“Has to be you, huh?” Ollie asked. He was watching Dax thoughtfully.

Which made Jane look at Dax thoughtfully. He was watching her.

“Yes. I have a specialty that can help a lot in this area of the business, and a particular interest in this project, so my time would best spent in the factory,” Dax said.

“You have a particular interest in the factory?” Aiden repeated.

Dax was still looking directly at her when he said, “Definitely.”

Aiden nodded. “Ah.” His tone indicated he suddenly understood everything.

Shit, Jane thought maybe she did too.

She looked at Aiden. “Do I want to know what his specialty is?”

“That’s probably a no,” Aiden told her.

“Oh, ask me anyway,” Dax said, giving her a grin that was playful and sexy, heavy on the sexy.

She wet her lips and thought very hard about not asking him. She even pressed her lips together and shook her head.

He leaned in slightly. Not enough to come even close to any kind of potential sexual harassment—dammit anyway—and said, “Come on, ask me, Jane.”

She swallowed. Ugh, she was dumb. She’d never been dumb about a guy before. This was uncomfortable. “What’s your specialty?”

“Getting women to tell me all about what they want and need.”

Yeah. She’d asked. And she was glad.

That was super dumb.

She stared at him and had the definite urge to tell him she needed him covered in strawberry pie filling.

She loved cake, but if they were going for what she really wanted, it would always be pie. Strawberry pie.

“Jesus,” Ollie said, laughing. “I need to get Piper to fill me in on the sexual harassment policy and get me the forms over lunch today, for sure. I have a feeling we might be needing them soon.”

Aiden looked from Jane to Dax and back to Jane. “I absolutely will keep him as far away from that factory floor as possible. Just say the word.”

Jane studied Dax. Okay, so he was definitely flirting. But he was also serious about working in the factory. Was this was his way of… spending time with her or something?

This was definitely him being funny. He probably thought it would be hilarious to spend the week at the factory learning how the humongous mixers worked and how to set the machines to get the right coloring mixtures and how they sorted through the damaged products. Lord knew the tours of kids they brought through on a regular basis thought it was all pretty cool. Dax Marshall definitely had a kid-in-a-man’s-body vibe.

A very hot, hard, leanly muscled, sexy-beard, piercing-green-eyes, big-hands body…

Jane shook herself. This was clearly a lark to him. He probably thought he got to eat free cake all day. And he did. That was one of the perks working here. Employees could eat as much of the products as they wanted whenever they were on shift. Everyone took huge advantage. For about three days. New workers, surrounded by sugar and vanilla and sweet smells and sights all day, gorged themselves with free treats on their breaks. Then most of them never wanted to put another Hot Cakes snack cake in their mouths ever again. Being around it every single day just almost made you numb to it.

But in the midst of feeling her very-neglected-for-far-too-long girl parts reacting to his flirty smiles and sexy innuendos and doesn’t-make-sense attention, she was aware this could be a good thing.

The hot millionaire game designer thought it would be fun to make cake all day? Sure. She’d put a hair net on him and make him stand on his feet all day and show him how to work machines that would make his shoulders scream from the repetitive pulling for hours.

This really could be fun.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

If nothing else, he could report back to his friends, her other new bosses, what it was really like down in the factory.

“Yeah?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

And maybe she could show the laid-back charmer that most people didn’t get to coast through life on flukes. Raising his awareness of real life for real people could be a nice side effect to educating the new management about their workforce.

“Sure. Why not? We can always use some extra hands.”

She was 1,000 percent positive his hands would be completely worthless to them as far as their efficiency and productivity numbers, but hey, that would give her a chance to talk to Aiden and Oliver about those very measures and how they should actually look at what was going on in their factory.

“Great.” Dax looked at Ollie and Aiden, clearly pleased with the decision.

Ollie was smiling too, seeming completely agreeable.

Aiden, on the other hand, looked slightly suspicious. Of her. But the look he was giving her was also amused. Because Aiden had known her since high school, and he knew that she might tolerate cockiness and charm, but she saw right through it.

Aiden was wondering what she had planned for Dax.

She gave him a wink. He should definitely be wondering about that.

2

“I promise everything is fine,” Jane told her dad for the fifth time.

“Cassie j-j-just said K-K-Kelsey hadn’t been home m-m-much,” Jack said in his stilted speech.

“She’s been working on a school project,” Jane said, moving a stack of books and a pair of shoes so she could get his walker closer to his chair. “She’s been over at friends’ houses getting that done. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

“C-C-Cass thinks K-K-K doesn’t like her.”

He sometimes shortened their names to the first letter because it was easier to get out.

Jane put a hand on her hip and regarded her father. Jack had always been a strong man. He could do anything, in her eyes. Lift anything, fix anything, jerry-rig anything. He’d always been the one helping others, never the one needing help. She knew he hated it now. He often stalled when she was here and trying to get him to do something. He was fine if she’d just sit and chat, but if she wanted him to walk or show her his therapy exercises or even go out of his room, he balked and would try to distract her.

“If I confide something in you, will you stand up and walk out into the hall with me?” she asked him.

“B-br-bribery?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.”

She smiled. “Okay. I don’t think Kelsey likes Cassie all the time, no.”

She had to be honest with him. He would know if she was lying anyway, and the more sincere she was, the better the chances he’d follow through on his end of this bargain. The nurse said he hadn’t walked more than a few steps to and from the toilet in the past three days. That was not okay. It was difficult, for sure. She understood that. But he had to do it.

“But,” she went on. This was the part that was partially true and partially sugarcoated. “She’s a teenage girl, and Cassie tells her to do things like clean up the kitchen and do her homework and to be home by curfew.”

Jack thought about that then nodded. “M-makes sense.”

Jane nodded. It did. Most teenage girls didn’t like their parents all the time. Of course, she wasn’t telling Jack the whole story.

The things she’d told him were all true, but she’d left out the part about how Kelsey was expected to clean up the kitchen all the time, no matter who had last dirtied it up. Or that the homework she was supposed to do was “tutoring” Aspen, their stepsister, in English and math, both of which Aspen was horrible at, though it was Kelsey who got blamed when Aspen’s grades were poor. Or that the curfew was 9 p.m. whenever she went out with friends and didn’t take Aspen along. Most of Kelsey’s friends couldn’t stand Aspen, for good reason in Jane’s opinion, so that was almost all the time.