Right now, her hands were propped on her hips and she was frowning at Ollie.

Cam and the rest of the guys suspected Piper had feelings for Ollie that went beyond employer-employee, but their friend was oblivious. Even while Ollie found himself jealous over Piper at times. For instance, he really didn’t like Drew Ryan, the alpaca farmer. And everyone liked Drew. But Drew flirted unabashedly with Piper, in front of Ollie, and that apparently rubbed the genius the wrong way. He just wasn’t genius enough to figure out why.

Ollie sighed. “I guess I’m making these bars,” he said dryly. “Though calling them stupid probably doesn’t help from a marketing perspective.”

The crowd laughed.

Piper’s eye roll was big enough to be seen from several feet away.

Ollie took his pan, dumped the contents into the sink, and sighed loudly into his mic. He turned back to the crowd and put on a truly excellent “sweet puppy” expression. “I will remake the bars, but I’m just going to warn whoever bids on me… you might have to do the baking. I, however, can bring plenty of other… talents… to our time together.”

There was a collective oooh from the front row and Cam shook his head with a grin. Ollie could bring the flirty-sexy when he had to. Nice.

Ollie went back to the top of his recipe and Cam and Max continued to banter as they finished theirs. But Cam couldn’t stop looking in Whitney’s direction.

She had now moved down the fence and was talking to another alpaca. No one was that into alpacas. She was plainly avoiding. He just didn’t know if it was the entire spectacle over here—which had all been her idea to start with—or him in particular.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a timer on this event so he couldn’t stomp over to the alpaca pen and demand to know what Whitney was thinking.

The no-time-limit thing was good for Ollie though, who was mixing and muttering into his mic. Whenever they were all finished, the auction would commence, and then Didi Lancaster would sample each dessert and determine the winner. Then they’d meet up with their date for the evening and head to their preselected location.

Max was going to take his date—who would certainly be Elliot—to the picnic area on the other side of the park.

Ollie was going to be bid on by Paige Asher and Cam wasn’t even sure if they were actually going to go on their “date.” Paige was a set up so that Ollie didn’t have to deal with an actual date. The guy got plenty of women, but most of them were hot, fun, very short-term hookups. He didn’t really do relationships. Mostly because Ollie sucked at things like remembering birthdays, or even showing up for dinner sometimes. Ollie was a great guy and a good friend, but he was also fortunate that he’d met the four men that were his best friends and partners. None of them ever took it personally that he forgot things like one of them having their appendix removed or one of their birthday parties.

Women, on the other hand, would get tired quickly of having their birthdays forgotten or him not showing up at the hospital. In his defense, he never would have been offended if they’d blown off his birthday or hadn’t brought him balloons to the hospital either.

Last year, Piper had reminded Ollie it was his birthday, in fact.

So it was better that he hang out with women who wanted to talk about Warriors of Easton—yes, their fanbase included women—and were happy with a one-night stand with one of the creators.

Their groupies were kind of like the girls who wanted to hook up with a member of their favorite rock band just to say they’d done it. The Warriors of Easton groupies just happened to often dress up as elves and stuff.

Cam had decided to take his date to Buttered Up. Well, outside of Buttered Up. His sister’s bakery had little tables set up in front of the huge windows in a sidewalk-café style. The dessert they’d be eating wasn’t from Buttered Up, but he’d get coffee from inside and he wanted the people who would be following the date on social media to remember that he was a McCaffery and that Buttered Up was his family’s business.

He would have taken his date inside but Zoe had forbidden it. Even after he’d pointed out what great publicity this would be showing how the McCafferys were now heading up all of the major dessert making in Appleby and that the two businesses, that were long-time rivals, were now coming together.

She’d said that if he brought a Hot Cakes product, even a future one, into her store, she’d cut him off from all Buttered Up desserts for six months.

The whole we’re-not-rivals-anymore thing was a work in progress.

Cam also suspected that Aiden had brought Hot Cakes products into her bakery on at least a couple of occasions, but also figured they had been used in ways that Cam didn’t want to associate with his sister and best friend, so he hadn’t pointed that out.

Aiden could likely get away with a lot of things Cam couldn’t.

That was probably as it should be.

When you fell in love with someone, you gave them more slack.

Again, he glanced over at Whitney. Her back was to the entire baking-show-slash-auction setup. If she was avoiding him, why? Because he’d made her uncomfortable last night? Or because she couldn’t stop thinking about last night? Or because she wanted everything he’d offered last night but she really did think it was a bad idea and avoiding him was easier than facing it?

He hadn’t made her uncomfortable. He knew her. She had been surprised, and turned on—which also might have surprised her—but she hadn’t been upset or nervous.

He liked the idea that she had been thinking about it nonstop. He certainly had. He also liked the idea that she wanted it, but thought she shouldn’t, and the only way to avoid giving in to everything was to avoid him.

She couldn’t avoid him indefinitely.

And they were going to figure this out.

Their history and their feelings for one another now was a huge-assed elephant in the room any time they were, well, in a room together. If she wasn’t on board with outright dating and figuring it out, there were other ways for him to spend time with her, get to know her again, see how she reacted to him. They saw each other every day at work. Obviously, he could find some alone time with her.

And he already liked the reaction from her to that alone time.

Seeing her outside of the office might take some doing. Apparently, her high school friends had moved away and she wasn’t very social now. This came from Jane and Piper. Yes, he’d asked. He had no qualms about getting his friends and coworkers involved in this.

She lived with her grandmother, Didi, now, so he couldn’t just show up at her house and say, “Hey, I want to date your granddaughter again. But it’s okay because it probably won’t work out.”

Because, one, Didi hated his family and had likely been a part of Whitney breaking up with him before. And two, because he wasn’t so sure it wouldn’t work out.

That’s what he needed to find out.

He needed to know if they were going to be friends or more. At this point, those two things were the only options. He didn’t hate her. The past ten years might have been easier on him if he had. He could have just moved on. But he hadn’t. And he thought he might still be in love with her.

The only way to get over that was to get to know her.

He was in love with the Whitney from ten years ago. He needed to know this Whitney to figure out how he felt. And she needed to know him.