Cameron chuckles, the rough sound sending goose bumps down my spine and breaking the tension. “Neither is mine.”
“Right,” I answer, not bothering to hide my disappointment. “So, in all fairness, to get the likeness right, Ihadto watch porn. I even paid for a fucking subscription to one of the for-women, by-women sites so I wouldn’t have to scar myself for life wading through videos.”
He grins, those green eyes brighter suddenly. “At least you can write off the expense.”
“My accountant is a huge stickler about what I can and cannot write off.” I sigh deeply. “Conversations about that and tax evasion always cause very big arguments.”
“Tax evasion?” he chokes out.
“In my humble opinion, the IRS has bigger issues to deal with than an undocumented sale of a birthday cake. But nope, my accountant’s too straitlaced to even consider the idea.”
“Probably because it’s illegal.”
With ahmph, I shrug. “So is jaywalking and not picking up after your dog.”
“You realize you just admitted to wanting to commit tax evasion in front of yourinvestor, right?” he asks with an indulgent grin.
I shake my head and wander to the kitchen, waving at him to follow. “Nope. I was telling my fake boyfriend, not my business investor. Separation of church and state and all that.”
“I don’t think that’s how that phrase works.” He sheds his jacket and hangs it on my coatrack. The tension from earlier has dissolved completely, the air no longer so thick.
“Well, it should be,” I say as he enters the kitchen.
I look out at the living room, doing a quick scan. By some miracle, my apartment isn’t too messy, other than in here.
“Besides, you can’t use fake-boyfriend intel in your investor capacity. That’s entrapment.”
His shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Also not how that works.”
“Considering I’m the one who went to law school, I trust my expertise.” I cock a brow, daring him to use my dropout status as an argument against me.
He doesn’t.
He only watches me, his expression even.
Satisfied, I nod to a nearby stool. “Make yourself at home. I need to take these out of the oven.”
He wanders over to the counter, where my calendar and notebook lie open. “This looks like a Candyland board game.”
I let out a loud laugh as I set the trays on top of the stove to cool.
“Seriously. I think I need 3D glasses to decode this thing.” He squints, leaning closer to the pages. With his lips pursed, he tilts his head one way, then the other, like he’s analyzing the page, trying to piece out how my brain works. “What are all of these notes for?”
“I’m doing a wedding in the spring and had a meeting with the party planner this morning.”
“Interesting,” he says, nodding.
I laugh, the ghost of a flush kissing my cheeks. “Is it?”
His green gaze captures mine, nothing but honesty there. “Yes.”
I turn away and busy myself finishing up the frosting so he doesn’t see the flush on my cheeks. While my friends and family enjoy my final products, I can’t say any of them are particularly interested in the process of creating them.
“This wedding seems like a lot of work,” he notes after a minute.
“It is,” I admit, setting down a piping bag. “The biggest cake I’ve baked and decorated was for a seventy-five-guest backyard wedding, and even that had me working sixteen-hour days in the week leading up to it. Four hundred guests is a completely different ballgame.”
“Worth it, though?”
