Forking Around

by Erin Nicholas

  That was fine. Whatever worked for them. She certainly couldn’t argue with their success. She wasn’t the one he was nagging about working too hard and taking things too seriously. But this was good to know. She couldn’t hang out with a guy who thought life was just one big happy hour. Happy hour was supposed to be just that. One hour. Compared to the eight—or more—hours people spent at work.

  “I feel like I’ve given you the wrong impression of Dax,” Piper said, worrying her bottom lip.

  Jane met the other woman’s gaze. “Have you?” she asked seriously.

  Piper’s brow creased. Then she sighed. “I mean… not really. He is definitely the fun one. But he works…” It was clear she wanted to say that he worked hard. But was unable to.

  “He works. He does his part,” Jane filled in.

  “For sure,” Piper said adamantly. “I mean, he’s the heart of Fluke. Without him, we wouldn’t have a game at all. The idea and story for Warriors of Easton were mostly Oliver’s,” she went on. “But Dax made it all actually happen. He’s designed every part of it and oversees the team of designers now.”

  Jane nodded. She believed all that. Hell, she knew most of it from her online search from last night. “But he doesn’t have to really work at it,” she said. “That’s all really easy and natural for him, right?”

  Piper looked like she regretted getting into this, but she nodded. “His greatest gifts are having fun and thinking outside the box and being big and over the top.”

  Jane couldn’t judge him for that. Dax had found Oliver, and they’d been given the chance to do something big, and it had turned out amazing.

  “So, um… the guys are just finishing up a call with Grant, but it shouldn’t be too much longer,” Piper said. She was maybe feeling the sooner she and Jane stopped talking, the sooner she’d stop saying things that made Dax look bad.

  “Okay, I can wait. I guess.” Jane shrugged. “They’re my bosses now. I suppose they can’t yell if I’m not down on the floor.”

  “Well, I’ll cut them off in another few minutes if they keep going,” Piper said. “In my experience, they can stay on track and be productive for about forty-five minutes. We’re at…” She glanced at her computer. “Thirty-three. So they’re going to veer off into crazy territory if it goes much longer,”

  Piper said with a totally straight face, and Jane, again, found herself mildly intrigued by the way this company worked and the way the people in it kept it going smoothly.

  “Do you want to sit and wait? Do you want coffee or anything?” Piper asked.

  “Um…” Jane looked around and noticed a sitting area along the far wall across from the desk. There was a couch and two chairs around a coffee table. “No. I’m fine. I think.”

  She honestly had no idea how she was.

  She’d been surprised for only about five seconds that Dax had found out who she was and wanted to see her again. Then her imagination had definitely wandered into dirty fantasies about bosses and suits and desks. There had been a spark between them the other night. She hadn’t wanted it. Or so she’d thought. But she hadn’t been able to forget it.

  Then all it had taken was a bouquet of cake pops to get her thinking that seeing him again was a great idea.

  And now she was sitting outside his office, talking with his assistant, and realizing they had nothing in common.

  Jane made her way over to the couch and took a seat on the leather couch that probably cost more than all her living room furniture combined. Hell, she could throw her kitchen table and chairs into that total too. She looked around.

  She’d never been up to these offices until two weeks ago when all her coworkers had been freaking out about the new owners. She’d worked with some of these people for twelve years, and they’d been terrified of things changing. They were working moms and dads, grandparents, people supporting their families. Some of them had sick kids, or disabled spouses, or were just regular people who lived paycheck to paycheck. None of them had loved the Lancasters, but they’d known what to expect from the family that had owned Hot Cakes as long as it had been in business. The idea of change had sent a wave of panic through the workforce.

  So before she’d realized that two guys she’d gone to high school with and knew pretty well were their new bosses, Jane had stomped into the CEO’s office and confronted Oliver Caprinelli. She’d demanded to know what was going on and what their plans were and when they intended to tell the workers about what was going to happen with the transition process.

  He hadn’t had any answers.

  That was when she’d gotten riled up herself. She’d been a little anxious before. It wasn’t like she had any other true skills, and she hadn’t gone to college. Her dad had been sick before she’d even graduated high school, and her stepmother had been horrible and had been trying to control Jane’s little sister, Kelsey, even before that. Jane hadn’t felt like her family would be safe if she left, honestly.

  Hot Cakes had always been fine. It hadn’t been something she’d been all that excited about, but she hadn’t dreaded going to work either. It had been… work. It had been exactly what she wanted it to be—a paycheck. And benefits. Those she definitely needed. But otherwise, it was just a place she showed up to for a few hours, did work that was pretty easy with people she generally liked being around, and then she went home. She didn’t have to think about anything too hard. She didn’t have to do anything that was too hard. She didn’t have to really get too invested. It wasn’t dramatic or emotional. Which was fantastic, and she didn’t apologize for it because, good Lord, things were plenty dramatic and emotional outside of work.

  The door to one of the offices swung open, and Aiden stuck his head out. “Hey, Piper—” He spotted Jane and straightened. “Jane. Hi.” He stepped fully out the door. “Everything okay?”

  Jane got to her feet. “I have no idea.” Well, she had an idea, but she wasn’t going to tell Aiden she was here so Dax could ask her out.

  “Dax requested a meeting with Jane,” Piper said smoothly, handing Aiden a folder.

  He glanced down at it, read the front, then looked at Piper. “How did you know this was what I needed?”

  She smiled. “You guys are so cute when you forget how good I am at my job.”

  She rose and came around the other side of the desk as Aiden continued to stand there looking impressed.

  “Right in here, Jane.” She took Jane by the elbow and steered her around Aiden and toward the door to the office he’d just emerged from.

  “Huh.” Piper paused just outside the doorway. “Dax is wearing his lip tie today.” She said it almost thoughtfully as if something was just occurring to her. “He might have decided this should be a surprise to everyone.”

  Jane felt something that was a very weird mix of dread and excitement flutter through her stomach. “This?” she repeated, her voice a little squeaky.

  Piper nodded. “Whatever he’s got in mind.”

  That didn’t make Jane feel calmer. Even before she’d realized that Dax was probably the one voted Most Likely to Take a Stupid Road Trip on Ten Minutes’ Notice and Most Likely to Blow Four Million Dollars on an Idea Written on a Bar Napkin, she’d had an inkling that Dax Marshall would be a handful.

  But the idea of him being a temporary handful—and being a literal handful—involving cake and icing and mouths and dirty talk and nothing else, had been okay. More than okay. Enticing. Tempting. Doable.

  This… whatever this was… was going to be too much. She could feel it.

  “’Mornin,’ Red.” Dax rose from the bright red beanbag chair he’d been lounging in.

  She was distracted for a moment by that beanbag chair. The thing was huge. More like a chair than the type of kids’ beanbag she typically thought of. But it was still… a beanbag chair.

  Then she was distracted by the rest of the office.

  The big desk had been pushed to the far end of the room with the swivel leather chair, and the beanbags had been g
rouped in the middle of the office.

  The whiteboard on the wall was covered in words and a few diagrams done in multicolored marker. Then she looked closer. Some of the words and numbers looked like official business, but on the one edge there was definitely a completed game of hangman.

  She looked back at Dax and realized he’d called her Red. That immediately gave her the surge of hell no she needed. She narrowed her eyes. “No,” she told him.

  He just grinned. “Ms. Kemper?” he asked.

  “How about in between? It’s just Jane,” she said.

  “Jane,” he repeated, his smile still in place but softer now. Less teasing. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  She took him in as he came toward her. He was in black dress slacks, a black button-down shirt and a white tie with red lip prints all over it as if a woman wearing bright red lipstick had kissed her way up and down the length of the tie—from the base of his throat, down his chest and abs, to the middle of his belt buckle.

  Jane felt herself grow a little warmer. She didn’t have red lipstick like that, but she suddenly wanted to buy some.

  “Hi,” she finally managed when he stopped in front of her.

  “Thanks for coming up.”

  “I didn’t realize I had a choice.”

  One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Of course you did.”

  “The cake pops would suggest otherwise.”

  “You’d do anything for a dozen cake pops?” he asked, one eyebrow going up in a way she found sexy, distracting, and annoying all at the same time.

  “In my world, a dozen cake pops are a serious gesture. Someone must really need my attention to send those.”

  “Duly noted.”

  He hadn’t expected her to show up here? Right. “I don’t remember the note with the one o’clock meeting on it including a question mark,” she said dryly.

  “I’ll admit I’m not used to people not wanting to spend time with me,” he said in a flirty, self-deprecating way she was sure he thought was adorably sexy.

  He was kind of right.

  “Well, here I am, so I guess your ego can pretend that your record is intact,” she said. “For now.”

  His grinned at her add-on. “For some reason I have no question that my ego will always know exactly where it stands with you around.”

  “I think that’s a fair assumption,” she admitted.

  “Want to share what’s going on with the rest of the class?” Oliver asked, coming up next to Dax.

  She’d been vaguely aware that he’d been sitting in the green beanbag. But honestly, Dax—and the presence of beanbags in the first place—had sidetracked her from many of the other details of the room. Like other people.

  And like the narrow table that was sitting under the window along the west wall. The table that held a collection of glass jars that were full of what appeared to be gummy bears and M&Ms.

  “I have a sweet tooth,” Dax said, noticing her gaze.

  “I remember,” she said before she thought better of it.

  He gave her a sexy grin.

  Ollie interrupted, extending his hand. “Hello, again.”

  “Hello, Mr. Caprinelli.” She took his hand a bit sheepishly. The last time she’d talked to him, she hadn’t been especially friendly. Or professional.

  “Good God, call him Oliver. Or Ollie,” Dax said. “When I hear Caprinelli, I look around for his grandmother and a plate of cannoli. Then I’m disappointed when I realize someone is talking about the guy who thinks Hamburger Helper can technically be considered pasta.”

  “It can be,” Ollie insisted. “It’s got pasta in it.”

  “How do you even face your grandparents?” Dax asked him. “How do you not feel your Italian ancestors stabbing your soul with their ravioli cutters from their graves?”

  “Ravioli cutters aren’t really appropriate for stabbing,” Oliver said. “They’ve got rollers and they’re for cutting ravioli out of rolled out sheets of pasta.”

  “Are there special forks for making pasta? Or for eating pasta?” Dax asked. “Because they’d be stabbing you with those.”

  “We always just used regular forks,” Oliver told him.

  Dax shook his head as if disappointed. “Well, at least I know you used a spoon with the forks to twirl the spaghetti.” He looked at Jane. “His grandmother taught me how to do that.” Then he looked back at Oliver. “Your ancestors’ spirits are stabbing you with regular forks.”

  “Weird, I don’t feel a thing,” Oliver said.

  “Is Hamburger Helper a pasta?” Dax suddenly asked Jane. “And be honest. You don’t have to worry about hurting his feelings.”

  Jane had been watching and listening to this exchange with a mix of amusement and a touch of they-can’t-be-serious. But they’d seemed serious.

  “Uh…” She looked at both men then decided to actually think about what they were asking. Finally, she shrugged and answered honestly. “Yeah, I guess I would have classified it as a pasta dish. I mean, most of them have noodles or something in them.”

  Dax’s eyes widened and he slowly shook his head. “Wow. I almost don’t want to sleep with you as much now.”

  Jane felt her mouth drop open. That was… kind of funny. She was definitely realizing that thinking she knew what to expect from this guy was a big miscalculation. “Almost?” she finally said.

  “Well, now I have to make you pasta and show just how far from the real thing Hamburger Helper is,” Dax said.

  “What does that have to do with us sleeping together?” she asked. Probably stupidly.

  “Once you’ve had my homemade pasta, you’re going to be all over me,” he said very matter-of-factly. “And I won’t be able to resist you offering to do all the dirty things with those cake pops.”

  She felt warmth flood through her. It was maybe because she hadn’t pegged him for the type of guy to make homemade pasta. It was probably because the charm and confidence just dripped from him like the sugary syrup that dripped out of the icing machine downstairs. It was definitely not because he kept surprising her. She didn’t want to hang out with a guy who kept her on her toes. Her toes were very tired from all the time she spent on them.

  “The cake pops you sent are going to get very stale,” she said. Unless he wanted to make her that pasta tonight…

  “Well, obviously you’ll have to bring new ones over when you come to dinner.” He gave her a wink. “It’s the least you can do when I’m making you dinner and rocking your world.”

  Yeah, that confidence was oozing.

  She looked at Ollie, who had been standing there just watching the entire exchange. “Isn’t this sexual harassment or something?” she asked.

  He looked at Dax. “Do you feel harassed?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “I meant me,” she said, fighting a smile.

  “Oh.” Ollie tried to look concerned. “Are you feeling harassed? I mean, you don’t have to do a single thing he says, and if you knee him in the balls, all I’m going to need is a little warning, so I can get my phone out to record it, but if you’re feeling harassed I’ll… do something about it.”

  She shook her head. She could not smile about this. She was definitely not feeling harassed, and she had a feeling pasta and cake pops were in her and Dax’s future—she’d worry about what that meant later—but she couldn’t pass up this opportunity to make a point.

  “You should probably figure out what you would do if someone came to you with an actual sexual harassment complaint,” she said.

  Ollie nodded and went to the door and pulled it open. “Piper?”

  “Yeah?” Jane heard the other woman answer.

  “Do we have a sexual harassment policy?”

  “We do,” she said. “It’s don’t sexually harass people.”

  Ollie looked back at Jane. She shook her head. “More.”

  “We need more than that,” he told Piper.

  “No shit,” Piper retorted. “It’s in the file on y
our computer.”

  “Which file?”

  “The one labeled Sexual Harassment Policy,” she said, her tone long suffering. “I apologize for hiding it like that.”

  Oliver grinned. “Want to go over it with me at lunch?”

  “You mean, read it to you while you eat?” Piper asked.

  He glanced over at Jane and winked. “That would be great. I’d love a chicken salad sandwich.”

  “You bet, boss.”

  He shut the door and turned back.

  “Wow,” Jane said. “She’s very… patient.”

  Oliver chuckled. “Well, I’m sure I’m getting ham and cheese. Or a salad. Likely with kale. And when she reads it to me it will be with embellishments like ‘... and if some dumbass thinks he can touch your ass while at work, you have every right to stab him in the back of the hand with a letter opener,’ but it will be far more entertaining than reading through it myself.”

  “Ollie is basically a huge child, and he doesn’t like to work alone at his desk,” Dax said.

  “Oh, hey, pot, I’m kettle,” Ollie said.

  Dax just shrugged.

  Jane wondered how Piper managed to not stab both of them with letter openers.

  “So… can we get on with… whatever this is?” she asked. After witnessing all this, she wasn’t at all surprised Dax would be asking her out in front of Ollie. “I really do have work to do downstairs.”

  Aiden came into the room just then. “So what’s going on with this meeting with Jane?” he asked.

  “Just waiting for you,” Dax said.

  They’d been waiting for Aiden? Jane frowned. He wanted Aiden to witness this too? Dax definitely seemed like the grand-gesture type, but this was a little ridiculous.

  “He hasn’t been at all,” Ollie told Aiden. “He’s been sexually harassing Jane.”

  Aiden looked at Jane quickly. “What?” He frowned. “He has?” He turned his frown on Dax. “What the hell?”

  “He hasn’t,” Jane said quickly. She was sure Aiden knew Dax well and surely wouldn’t believe that of his friend, but she also knew Aiden would be protective of her.

  Aiden was a good guy. And Dax was clearly… a goofball? That wasn’t exactly the word she wanted to use. He was fun, as Piper had put it. He was playful and irreverent. Those were maybe more accurate. She also knew Aiden was trying very hard to make this new shift in management at Hot Cakes a good move for everyone, and he was taking it seriously. Someone like Dax could probably be annoying to someone who took things seriously and wanted to buckle down and just focus on work.