Semi-Sweet On You (a Second Chance Small Town Rom Com) (Hot Cakes Book 5)

by Erin Nicholas

  Semi-Sweet On You

  Hot Cakes Series

  Erin Nicholas

  Copyright © 2020 by Erin Nicholas

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-952280-01-6

  Editor: Lindsey Faber

  Cover design: Angela Waters

  Cover Photography: Lindee Robinson

  Models: Christina Engel and Camden Grigsby

  Contents

  The Hot Cakes Series

  About Semi-Sweet On You

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About Erin

  The Hot Cakes Series

  One small Iowa town.

  Two rival baking companies.

  A three-generation old family feud.

  And five guys who are going to be heating up a lot more than the kitchen.

  Books in the series:

  Sugar Rush (prequel)

  Sugarcoated

  Forking Around

  Making Whoopie

  Semi-Sweet On You

  Oh, Fudge

  Gimme S'more

  About Semi-Sweet On You

  A slow burn, second-chance rom com!

  She broke his heart ten years ago.

  Now he's back -- and her new boss.

  And she might still be semi in love with him.

  But that’s no problem, right? They can keep it professional.

  Until her grandmother gets involved.

  She’s thrilled to think that Whitney and Cam are still in love. And invites him to move in with her…and Whitney.

  Of course, Whitney can handle that too. Yeah, everything is fine. Just fine.

  Until Cam makes it clear that he’s all in.

  Having him back is very sweet, but can she really have it all? Or will it all crumble around her?

  1

  “I think my butt looks really weird in this. Can you come look?” Whitney called from inside the powder room in her office.

  Piper was out at her desk in the reception area of the Hot Cakes executive suites and this dress was hers. Whitney did not think she was pulling it off. At all. The other woman wore the pinup-style dresses and looked like a million bucks. But Piper had the curves for it. And the attitude. She was confident, sassy, and sexy.

  Whitney knew she didn’t have the curves, and she was pretty sure she didn’t have even half the attitude.

  But she wanted it.

  She really did.

  She wanted a change, that was for sure, and her attitude was just part of it.

  This dress might be a good start.

  She turned in front of the mirror on the back of her powder room door. Or maybe it wasn’t a good start.

  She wasn’t ready for a dress like this.

  “Seriously, I don’t have the curves for this,” she called. Piper might be on the phone, but Whitney really needed a second opinion.

  “I sincerely doubt I’d ever use the word ‘weird’ in regard to your ass.”

  Whitney swung around with a gasp. That was not Piper’s voice.

  “But I’m very happy to take a look.”

  Whitney sucked in a breath. Dammit. That was Cam.

  Camden McCaffery.

  One of the partners who owned Hot Cakes.

  One of her new bosses.

  Her ex.

  Oh, and the guy who she was still sort of in love with.

  Fuck.

  She took another breath and then peeked around the edge of the door.

  Cam was leaning against the doorjamb of her office door. Looking hot in a custom-tailored charcoal suit, the light blue shirt underneath unbuttoned at his throat. And cocky. As always. And amused.

  “I thought Piper was out there,” Whitney said. Which was obvious. But what the hell else was she supposed to say?

  “That’s who I came up to find too,” Cam said, stepping into Whitney’s office. “But she’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Whitney asked. Piper knew she was in here trying on dresses.

  Cam shrugged one big shoulder. “I guess.”

  Whitney swallowed, her eyes on that shoulder. He was so… yeah, big. Wide. Solid. He’d always been muscular, but now he was… big. He had definitely changed over the years. Grown. Filled out. Gone from cute to oh-my-God hot.

  Which was really unfortunate for a girl who was trying to her damnedest to be over him.

  She’d seen him here and there. It seemed every time he was home to visit they ran into each other. Sometimes literally. Like the time she’d come around the big display of marshmallows at the end of aisle three at the grocery store and run directly into his chest. She’d jumped back, trying to avoid him touching her, and fallen right into that big stack of marshmallows. The entire store had come rushing to see what had happened.

  And that wasn’t even the most embarrassing time.

  “So come on,” he said, motioning her forward with his hand. “Let’s see.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “See what?”

  “Your ass.” His lips curled on one end. “Isn’t that what you’re worried about?”

  “I can wait for Piper.”

  “Why?” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I’m quite qualified to judge how a woman’s ass looks. In dresses. In jeans. In shorts.” He paused. “Out of all of those things.”

  He was an ass. She couldn’t forget that. Of course, when he was an ass, it was on purpose. Especially when he was an ass to her. He was stubborn, had a quick temper, a deeply ingrained sense of justice and loyalty, and a pretty black and white view of how things should go, but he had never been an ass to her. He’d been downright sweet and protective and romantic and… sexy.

  Until she’d broken his heart ten years ago.

  So, yeah, she might deserve it a little. She knew that.

  They’d been in love. He’d wanted her to go to college with him. When she’d said no, he’d wanted to stay in Appleby with her. So she’d broken up with him. No way could she have kept him here. But it had broken his heart.

  And it certainly made working for him now a challenge. Hell, it made seeing him on Main Street a challenge.

  He’d been poking at her for the past month. Ever since he’d come back to Appleby full time. Every time they were in a meeting together or had a conversation, he made comments that were meant to annoy her. She didn’t know why, exactly. She could speculate, but she hadn’t even let herself go there.

  She just knew she had to hold her shit together. She couldn’t lose her temper. She couldn’t snap at him—or even glare at him, honestly. He was her boss. He was one of the reasons the company was still standing. That she had a job at all. That her family’s name wasn’t a curse word in this town.

  She freaking owed him.

  Which he was very aware of.

  Maybe that was why he was poking. Because he knew she couldn’t
give it back. Or maybe because he was hoping to push her to the point where she would lose it and he could fire her.

  Whatever the reason, she just had to breathe deeply, smile, let it roll off, and act professionally.

  Good thing she’d been practicing all of those things for the past ten years working with her grandfather, father, and brother.

  She was a fucking pro at letting male egos and snide remarks roll off.

  It was why she drank wine. And kickboxed. And did yoga. More the kickboxing, but still.

  Of course, Cam had started going to the morning yoga class she had always liked best, so she’d had to adjust her schedule because there was no way in hell she could be in a room with him for an hour watching him bend and stretch and flex.

  “Come on, Whit. Let me see.”

  Fine. What she’d learned about the asshole men she’d been working with for the past ten years—yes, all her relatives—was that not letting them know they were getting to her was the most important thing.

  She stepped out of the powder room, running her hands over her hips, smoothing the dress.

  Cam’s eyes widened as she came into full view.

  Yeah, take that.

  Hey, she didn’t say the stuff out loud but that didn’t mean she didn’t think it. She schooled her features and just watched him taking her in.

  His gaze tracked over her. Slowly. Twice.

  Her whole damned body was tingling by the time he was done.

  And if she didn’t want him to know that his comments about being her boss and saving the company and how her family had nearly put three hundred and forty-seven people out of work got to her, she sure as hell wasn’t going to let on that his biceps and tattoos and cocky smile got to her. And she was not going to react to him reacting to her.

  Because he was. He really was.

  His jaw was tight, he was standing straighter, and he looked as if he was putting every ounce of willpower into just standing there and not coming toward her.

  She lied to people all day long. For years it had been to her dad and brother and grandfather. She told them she was fine and on top of things and thought things were going well. Those were all lies. She hadn’t been fine, and she’d never felt like she was doing what she wanted to be doing, and no, she’d never liked how her family ran the business. She also lied to her grandmother, telling Didi that everything at Hot Cakes was great and she loved her job.

  Didi Lancaster had started Hot Cakes and had worked in the business for the first five years or so but Dean, her husband, had convinced her that it just wasn’t “right” for her to be working in their multimillion-dollar nationally renowned company. She was too good to be working in the factory, and she didn’t know enough about business to work in the business offices or executive suites. That’s where Dean and their son Eric—Whitney’s dad—and later Whitney’s brother, Wes, belonged. They let Whitney have an office too. Mostly because it had kept her under their thumbs.

  Of course, she hadn’t figured that out for about three years. But she’d known it for a long time now.

  So yes, she was fully prepared to lie to Cam. And the rest of her bosses, for that matter. She was going to tell them that everything was great, that she thought they were doing a great job because working for them could not be worse than working for her own family.

  She was also absolutely going to lie to Cam about how she felt about him.

  It was just all for the best.

  She had wine and kickboxing. It would all be okay.

  Whitney said nothing as Cam continued to study her. It was probably really only about a minute, but it felt like she’d been standing there under his hot gaze for a week. Still, she stubbornly stood, waiting for his reaction. Because, by God, he was going to be the one to react first.

  Finally he shifted his weight in a clear attempt to look more casual and lifted his gaze to hers. “You’re gonna have to turn around if I’m gonna make a judgment about your ass.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. Camden McCaffery was full of himself. Always had been. He didn’t care what people thought of him and he didn’t really care for rules. Like sexual harassment guidelines at Hot Cakes. He just said whatever the fuck he wanted to. She knew how to handle him. He expected other people to say what they were thinking and feeling too. Without getting fired, of course.

  Though she suspected she was less likely to get fired for speaking her mind with him than she would be if she lied.

  If he knew she was lying anyway.

  It was a good thing she was very good.

  “But you think I look okay from the front?” she asked, propping a hand on her hip.

  He shrugged. Shrugged. And her eyes narrowed.

  “Your tits look amazing,” he said. “But I’m not sure this dress is really right.”

  Yeah, bosses should not say things like your tits look amazing to employees. Guys should also not say things like that to their exes.

  But if Cam thought that sexism and blatant disregard for her feelings was somehow going to give him the upper hand, he was very badly mistaken. She could deal with sexist assholes all day without even rolling her eyes. Visibly anyway.

  It was so normal in her world, in fact, that dealing with his three partners—her other bosses, who were actually decent men who respected women and liked working with them—was a shock to her system. She found herself having to remind herself that they weren’t being sarcastic when they asked what she thought.

  But, yeah, she could handle Cam.

  She smoothed the front of the dress again and looked down at her breasts. “Amazing, huh?”

  That, of course, pulled his gaze back to her breasts. “Absolutely,” he said simply, with a nod.

  Yeah, she was a very accomplished, unapologetic liar. Except to herself.

  She liked his reaction.

  She was thinner now than when they’d dated. They’d been seventeen and eighteen when they’d been together but looking back, they’d been kids. She’d never been curvy but she’d been heavier than now. She was now more toned thanks to workouts to manage her stress. And now with Cam’s eyes on her, she was really glad about every one of those sweaty sessions in her home gym and the yoga studio downtown.

  “Well then, I’m thinking this dress might be just right.”

  He met her gaze. “Turn around.”

  She was also very grateful for ten years practicing schooling her reactions because that—the deep, gruff, firm command with the heat in his eyes—was really hard not to react to, even with all the experience she had.

  She licked her lips, watched his eyes drop to her mouth, then turned—before she smiled.

  She bent her knee, propping her hand on her cocked hip, and just stood, again letting him study her.

  What did she have to lose? Her butt didn’t look weird in it so much as she just looked weird in it. This was not her kind of dress. The dress was way too sassy for her. It was a wiggle dress—the hem narrower than the hips which caused the wearer to take shorter steps and added a little wiggle to the stride—and was bright red. She wore pencil skirts but they weren’t this tapered, for one thing. They also didn’t cling to her hips and butt like this. The material of the dress was a silky, stretchy fabric that hugged her body, giving the illusion of far curvier curves than were really there. The bodice was a halter style, cupping her breasts and dipping low between them, with the wide straps hooking behind her neck and leaving her upper back bare.

  And she never wore red. She wore black and gray and navy blue. She had one forest green skirt too. But, yes, lots and lots of black.

  It was another very, very long minute before Cam said anything.

  He cleared his throat though.

  And when he did, her stomach clenched. Or maybe what clenched was lower. It was an area that she hadn’t felt clench in a while.

  Probably since Christmas when Cam had nearly run her over in the crosswalk on Main and then had to come help her pick up her cookies and panties. She’d been carr
ying packages of both and had dropped them when he’d scared the ever-living shit out of her.

  Watching him pick up the bright blue thong and scrap of a bra—even brighter against the white snow and dark gray of the wet pavement they were lying on—and stare at them, had made her heart pound even harder than nearly being killed.

  Then it had gotten worse. The cookies in the box she’d been carrying had been frosted sugar cookies that she’d secretly bought from Buttered Up, Cam’s sister Zoe’s bakery. She’d paid a little girl twenty bucks to go in and buy the cookies for her and then pass them to her behind the lingerie store. Whitney had slipped them into a plain bag so no one would know. The family feud between Buttered Up and Hot Cakes was three generations old and meant she couldn’t freely shop in the bakery. Which sucked. It had always sucked.

  Thankfully, Aiden, one of the new Hot Cakes owners, had fallen in love with Zoe and they were quickly obliterating all of the stupid tension between the two businesses. And maybe, just maybe, her working with the guys to build Hot Cakes back up and make it even better would heal the tension between the families.

  Maybe.

  Of course, she and Cam were a big part of that.

  The feud had started with their grandmothers. But Cam’s grandma, Letty, was gone and Whitney’s, Didi, was in mental decline.

  But those damned cookies and their icing had come back to bite Whitney. Some frosting had gotten on the thong that Cam held. And as she squatted there on Main Street—in one of her black pencil skirts with cold December Iowa air blowing up underneath—he’d swiped the frosting off the thong, lifted it to his mouth, and licked it off.