Finally, she sat forward in her chair and shook her head. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to be the person who says no or that we have to slow down or that he’s thinking too big. I—” She swallowed and then met Grant’s eyes. “That’s pretty much all I’ve heard from my family about any idea I’ve ever had here. I don’t want to do that to someone else.”
Grant nodded. He’d figured there was something like that going on. “That’s fine. We’re a team. The rest of us have your back. You keep right on brainstorming like crazy with him, and we’ll take care of making sure we don’t have elephants and people being shot out of cannons at our snack cake baking contest.”
Her expression was hard to read. After a moment she asked, “Will you all help keep my ideas in line too?”
“Do you mean will we let you throw out anything and everything and dream big and then make as much of it happen as we can and as makes sense, but will we also be honest with you about what won’t work and why?”
She nodded, her bottom lip between her teeth.
He smiled. “Yes. Absolutely.”
She let out a breath.
“Listen, without Ollie and Dax being big thinkers, none of us would be where we are today. I try to give them a long leash whenever I can. I like to think of myself as the guy who finds ways to let Ollie and Dax do their thing while keeping the company solvent and responsible.” He paused. “If you want to be one of the big thinkers, that’s awesome. The rest of us are here for… everything else. We’ll all make it happen together.”
She looked touched by that, and she gave him a huge smile.
That smile and the way she lit up made Grant think of Cam. His friend was still in love with this woman. He might not admit it, or hell, he might—he was Cam and was forever contrary and doing the opposite of what people expected—but it was true and Grant could see why in that moment.
Whitney was gorgeous, but there was more than her long dark hair and her eyes and lips and curves. There was an intelligence behind her beauty. She wasn’t as bold as Zoe or as down to earth as Jane or as sweet as Jocelyn. Whitney had a classy, sophisticated polish to her, but there seemed to be a lot of passion just underneath.
It was interesting that this was the woman who’d stolen Cam’s heart. Cam was a fighter. He liked to push buttons. He was downright crass when he wanted to be. He could read a room—not that it always meant he pulled punches—but polished and classy were not adjectives anyone would use for Camden McCaffery.
Maybe that was the draw. The opposites-attract thing, Grant mused. That seemed the case with him and Jocelyn to a degree. They had very different backgrounds and upbringings.
But he couldn’t shake the way she’d talked about his seminars. Even what he did for a living with the guys. He made it possible for them to shine. He helped other people recognize their potential and helped encourage them to see themselves as capable of more.
Jocelyn did that too. She made Buttered Up better than it would have been without her. She encouraged Zoe to try new things. He knew the recent addition of cake pops to the menu had been Jocelyn’s idea. That seemed small, but he knew that with Zoe it took a while to get new ideas through. Jocelyn had done that. The cobblers and cookies she did for the busy women of Appleby seemed like a small thing, but it was an important piece to a much bigger picture.
And Jocelyn was fine being behind the scenes and helping other people have those moments of happiness. The graduation cake for Mr. Milford had been important, even those pussy cupcakes. Those had all been her using her baking to make moments for other people.
Grant was starting to see that small, simple, sweet things could add up to big, important things. Literally and figuratively.
Damn, he was in love with her.
He was married to her.
He wanted to stay married to her.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Grant looked over his shoulder to find Cam striding into the room. Grant glanced back at Whitney.
She sat up straighter and gave Cam a little frown. “How can you be late to a meeting you weren’t invited to?”
“Interesting point. Guess I’m right on time,