Semi-Sweet On You (Hot Cakes #4) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,34
bakery. Stubbornly so, in fact. She’d never changed her menu in all the years she’d owned the place. All of the recipes were original and were as familiar to the people who bought them as the goods that came from their own grandmother’s kitchens. There were families in Appleby that had never had a pie or a cake that hadn’t come from Buttered Up.
But a lot of Letty’s emotion about the bakery after she and Didi had parted ways had been about proving that she was better than Didi and didn’t need Didi to be successful. He’d always had the impression that there was as much resentment there as there was love. It had always made him sad for his grandmother, actually, and he’d hated that she’d passed it on to his sister.
Thankfully, Zoe had changed her mind and was looking at it differently now that the guys had taken Hot Cakes over. Aiden had had his work cut out for him though. It had definitely helped that Zoe was in love with him before the guys had bought the business. Even if she hadn’t realized it.
“I was taught to do everything I do with an eye toward being the best,” he finally said.
That wasn’t saying that it wasn’t about love. He did love the company and product that he and the guys had created together, but he knew that it was more that he loved having created it with the four men who were like brothers to him. He wasn’t sure he was quite in love with Hot Cakes or those products. Yet. Maybe it would come.
His gaze found Whitney over Didi’s shoulder.
She loved the company.
That made him want to at least like it.
And he should probably examine that more closely later.
“You undoubtedly got that from your grandmother too,” Didi said. “She always wanted to be the best.”
He nodded. He was aware that a portion of the town that was here was witnessing this conversation. That could be important. Listening to Didi Lancaster, founder of Hot Cakes, say nice things about his family could show that things were good between their families and would make everyone feel more secure about him being one of the new owners.
He and Aiden felt strongly about keeping Hot Cakes open and solid because it did matter to their hometown. It was important the factory stay here.
But, yes, Cam wanted it to be even better than it had been under the Lancasters. Not just a bigger operation but a better place to work and with better products.
“It’s too bad she was a stubborn ass,” Didi finally said. “We could have made something great together.”
Cam huffed out a surprised laugh. It wasn’t often you heard women referring to other women as asses, and certainly not older women wearing pearls.
“She was a bit hard-headed,” he finally had to agree.
Didi nodded. “The Hot Cakes cakes could have been better with her on my team.”
He lifted a brow. It was probably not a great marketing move to have the original baker and founder of the company saying that their products weren’t the best they could have been. But he couldn’t help but love that she was complimenting his grandmother in front of the town they’d split with their feud.
“You think so?” he asked.
“No question. She was always the better baker of the two of us,” she said. “But Dean had the big business ideas.” She glanced at Ollie as she referred to her late husband, the man who had made Hot Cakes the huge multistate company that it was today. “It’s wonderful to have ideas. You just need to have the goods to back it up. Otherwise it’s just a lot of hot air, and sooner or later, people catch on.”
Cam looked over at Ollie. Didi seemed intent on teaching his friend some lesson. He wondered why, exactly, but if Didi saw something in Ollie that she wanted to nurture then…what the hell?
Ollie hadn’t had a lot of nurturing. He was an only child and his parents were similarly brilliant people who were pretty detached. It had taken years for him to get truly comfortable joking around with the guys. But he was still puzzled by things like family dinners at Cam’s mom’s house once a week that also included Zoe’s two best friends and now, their significant others. The idea of big family gatherings and friends-that-turned-into-family seemed foreign to Oliver, even after a decade of being close to the four men who were his business partners.