Semi-Sweet On You (Hot Cakes #4) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,40

that clearly said what she thought of that.

Cam knew the basic story. Letty and Didi had worked at Buttered Up together. Some of the local men wanted to take cake and pie in their lunches to the local factories and farms. Didi tried to talk Letty into individually packaging some of their best sellers. Letty had refused. Didi had done it on the side just so she could prove to Letty that it was a good idea. Letty had been furious. They’d broken up and Didi had gone on to open her own business individually packaging treats and selling them out of her house to start.

“Of course, the business was why he asked me out,” Didi said, taking another tiny bite of pie.

“What do you mean?”

“He saw the potential in what I was doing. He knew he could make it into something big. And he wanted to hurt Charlotte that way.” Didi met Cam’s gaze. “That’s why I had to stay away from Charlotte completely after Dean got involved. He said we couldn’t risk having a legal battle, but I know he knew that I would have kept asking Charlotte to be involved. He didn’t want the complication of working together with the woman he was in love with and the woman he’d married.”

Cam was almost speechless over this whole story. Almost. He really wanted to know more. “You think he was still in love with my grandma?”

“Oh yes. At least a little. And he wanted revenge. He wanted to show her that she’d made a mistake not marrying him.”

“That didn’t bother you?” Cam would have never imagined having this conversation with Didi Lancaster or pushing her for personal details about her marriage, but she seemed willing to talk. She could always tell him to fuck off. In a very sophisticated way, of course.

“Well, I was naïve for a long time and didn’t realize it,” she said. “And when I did, we’d been married for nearly eight years. We had children. We had a business. I would have had to let Dean have Hot Cakes and everything that went with it if I left him. He wasn’t a bad husband, he just wasn’t that good at it. And I did, of course, enjoy the privileges that went along with the money and status.” She looked sad for a moment. “I liked that too much for too long. That doesn’t last.” She looked up at Cam. “When I realized that Dean was preparing the boys to follow him into the business and to continue to push it and make it bigger, I started to have regrets.”

“Like what?”

“Charlotte,” Didi said, her voice softer. “And Dean making my sons selfish, shallow men motivated by money.”

Cam wasn’t sure what to say to that. She seemed truly sad and he wasn’t sure how to comfort her. Besides, he thought she probably should regret those things, at least a little.

“And, of course, what almost happened with you and Whitney.”

He jerked his head up and met Didi’s eyes. What had almost happened? “What do you mean?”

“I know Whitney felt she had to choose us or you.”

Cam swallowed hard. He hadn’t realized that anyone knew about that. He didn’t know how the conversation had gone with Whitney and her family. He didn’t know who she’d said what to. He didn’t know if she’d announced she was running off with him and they’d forbid it or if they’d somehow found out she’d been seeing him and they’d told her she had to break it off or if she’d asked for a job for him and they’d refused. All of those scenarios and a few others had gone through his mind over the years when he’d let himself think and wonder about it—usually after he’d been to Appleby for a visit and gotten incredibly drunk.

But mostly he’d told himself that it didn’t matter and he didn’t care.

It didn’t matter. The end result was the same no matter who had said what to who.

He still wondered.

“That was a long time ago,” he finally said.

“I’m so glad you stayed together anyway,” she said.

He blinked at her. “Um—”

“The company was so important to Whitney. But I’m just so, so glad that you stayed together even if you had to keep it a secret. Love—true love—is worth whatever it takes.” Didi was staring off into the distance. “You don’t want to get to be seventy-two years old and realize that you completely missed it.”

Cam felt his chest tighten. Didi hadn’t been in love with