“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 grouped 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.