“What’s your idea?” she asked.

He shook himself. Right, he wanted to ask her about… work. Something about Hot Cakes. And the employees. Something that had occurred to him over the past couple of days. But he bet her lips tasted like the strawberries she liked so much. And he did intend to find out.

“Right.” He leaned in as the thoughts came flooding back. “I have an idea about employee scheduling and stuff.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Oh.”

Her surprise was fair. So far he’d been more the air-hockey-table type. Dax actually smiled at that. He was more the air-hockey-table type. But this was a great idea. He knew it.

“I was reading about companies where employees set their own hours. They’re given a base salary based on their type of work. Expectations are set about what they’re going to produce in exchange for that salary. But how and when they do it is up to them. As long as the outcome is there, no one cares when they do the work.”

Jane frowned and sat forward in her chair. But she didn’t say anything.

“There’s a lot of research behind employee happiness and satisfaction being tied to autonomy,” Dax said, feeling the need to keep talking. “There’s also a lot of research showing that happy employees are more productive and are more loyal to their companies and their output is higher quality.”

Jane held up a hand. “Just give me a second,” she said. “I need to switch gears. You’re actually being serious here.”

Now his eyebrows went up. “I can do that sometimes.”

“I’ve seen zero evidence of that,” she threw back.

He opened his mouth then shut it. That was fair. He could be serious, but he preferred to leave that to Grant and Aiden. They were a lot better at it, for one thing. But he couldn’t deny it made him itch a little to know Jane had no clue that he could take things seriously when needed.

“You’ve been reading about this?” she asked.

“I can read,” he said. That was a little more defensive than it needed to be. Relax, man, he told himself.

“Good to know Piper doesn’t have to read things to you like she does Ollie,” Jane commented dryly.

Dax grinned. “He only does that because Piper has the prettiest eye roll on the planet and her sarcasm is magical.”

Jane actually smiled at that. “I can’t imagine keeping you all in line.”

“And she does it all without breaking a nail. Thank God. Because, holy shit, the one time she did break a nail… we heard about that for a month after. Do you have any idea how expensive manicures can be? She’s written those into her employee benefits package.”

Jane wiggled her fingers at him. Her nails were unpainted and short. “I actually have no idea.”

He smiled. He’d never talked about factory work shifts with his past girlfriends, but he’d had a few conversations about manicures.

“I don’t see how what you’re talking about could work here,” she said, switching gears back to the idea of self-scheduling and salaries. “In offices where people are doing marketing projects and things, maybe. But how would that work here? You need a certain number of people to complete a process. And we need to turn out a certain amount of the product every day for the bottom line. It’s not an advertising campaign. There is actual inventory that needs to get loaded onto a truck and shipped out before people can buy it.”

He nodded. “But the concept could work. I was thinking about it after Alecia and Marsha told me about you switching up your schedule to help them out.”

Jane blinked at him again the way she had when they’d been talking about the game shows. “You were thinking about this because of me?”

“I was thinking about you, and then this idea came to me,” he corrected.

“You were thinking about me?”

“I’ve been thinking about you since I saw you fit an entire cake ball in your mouth,” he told her.

Her cheeks got pink but she snorted. “Not my finest moment.”

“I disagree. That told me so much about you in one little action.”

She arched an eyebrow. “All about my oral capacity and willingness to stick a lot in there?”

Surprise hit him in the chest, and he tried to suck in a breath while also saying something and he ended up coughing.

She grinned. He shook his head.

“You’re… unexpected.”

Her grin grew. “Good.”

“What I meant,” he said, shifting on his chair as his body was still responding to ideas about her sticking a lot in her mouth, “was that you were going for it because you wanted it and didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

“Well, if someone judges a grown-ass woman, who can clearly make her own decisions, for something as harmless as eating cake, that person is an asshole.”

“Absolutely.”

They just grinned at each other for a long moment.

“Tell me more about this idea,” she finally said. “I don’t think I’m getting how it can work here, but I’m listening.”

Dax was shocked by how much that made him want to kiss her.

Eating cake pops? Licking frosting off her fingers and lips? Checking out his abs? Being sassy and sarcastic? Pitching in to help the people around her and then being surprised when someone thought that was really great? Driving a forklift? Sure, that all made sense. But her wanting to hear more about his idea? Taking it seriously enough to sit and listen? It made him want to kiss the hell out of her. And then impress her. With more than his tongue.

He cleared his throat. He had to talk first. Then kiss. Maybe. If he was lucky. “The people here know what they’re doing. Hot Cakes is fortunate as hell to have a ton of people who have been here a long time. Even when new people come in, the current employees are very capable of training them and demanding good work.”

“They’ve been demanding good work from you?” she asked. “Really?”

He nodded. “They have. They’ve been… deferential because, I guess, I’m kind of the boss, but yeah, they correct me and make me do things over if I mess it up.”

She laughed. “You are the boss. Period. There’s no guessing or kind of about it.”

He sighed. “I don’t feel like a boss.”

“You’re new here. This is all new,” she said.

He shook his head. “Ever.”

“You never feel like a boss?”

“I’d much rather just work with people. I’m only a boss because I have money. There are a lot of people who know more than I do, who are more talented than I am, who have better ideas than I do.”

She gave him a funny look.

“What?”

“Yeah, you’re not a very good boss.”

He laughed.

“Seriously, that is not any kind of boss attitude I’ve ever seen before. You need to be full of yourself and certain that you know more and that you’re always right.”

“And certain that my farts smell like cookies?”

Her eyes widened. “Pardon me?”

He chuckled. “Cam says he doesn’t believe that my farts smell like cookies, but that I walk around as if they do.”

She narrowed her eyes. “But you walk around like that because you’re trying to convince everyone that cookie farts are all you’re really concerned about.”