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“I will always be perfectly straight with you,” he said as if he were making a vow. “Yes, this is the first time we’ve done a grant on this scale. But that doesn’t change the terms. A grant goes out free and clear to the recipient—in this case, to you. And I come with it.”
He added that with a smile that was so engaging it was hard for Heddy to maintain her grip on reality. “You come with it?” she said, hating whatever it was in her tone that almost sounded as though that made the offer more tempting. Which of course it didn’t.
“You’ll have my personal guidance as Camden Inc.’s start-up guy to establish and staff a commercial kitchen big enough to produce the supply we need. I’ll make sure that you grow to whatever extent is required to meet demand, and that you’re up and running effectively and efficiently before I leave you on your own so that history doesn’t repeat itself.”
Again, too good to be true.
“Where’s the catch?” Heddy asked.
“I guess if there’s any catch at all, it’s in the exclusivity. Camden Superstores will be the only place to get your cheesecakes. But other than that—”
“If they don’t sell, you won’t carry them and I’ll be through.”
“No-oo,” he assured her. “You’ll have a contract with us. If they don’t sell, we’ll nullify the contract and you’ll be free to sell somewhere else—grocery stores, restaurants, whatever. You’ll still have the capacity for mass production that you don’t have here, so you’ll still have the chance to keep going. But I can’t imagine why your cheesecakes wouldn’t sell through us. Especially since you’ll have our marketing and advertising division behind you, and cheesecakes in a worldwide chain of stores that are never hurting for sales.”
It still seemed too good to be true to Heddy but she couldn’t find the actual flaw so she merely shook her head in continuing disbelief.
“It will all be drawn up legally,” Lang Camden said then. “And you can have whatever lawyers or advisors you want to review the terms for anything that might cause you concern. But let’s face it …” He glanced around and, with a sympathetically wrinkled brow, said, “You gave a party here and no one came. What I’m offering you is a way to still do this but on a larger scale and at no cost to you except to throw in the towel on this place. And let it go back to just being your house.”
Still trying to figure out what the downside was in this, Heddy saw Carter stand on his chair again and lean onto the table to lick the second empty cheesecake plate. Only this time he was tipping the chair and instinct made Heddy jump to her feet and lunge to catch him.
Lang Camden’s reflex was to reach for the chair and steady it, and together they kept the child from falling.
“Carter …” Lang Camden groaned again.
“Good pie,” the toddler responded. “More!”
“I think you’ve had your limit. But we’ll buy one to take home,” the obviously inept caregiver promised.
“The ra’berry one,” Carter demanded enthusiastically.
The older of her two customers again sat the child in the chair. Then he used the wet towel in another attempt to clean him up.
“Wash lallow Zsorzse,” Carter instructed, holding out one arm where cheesecake smudged the face of his yellow wristwatch.
“‘Zsorzse’?” Heddy repeated.
“George. He’s obsessed with Curious George, but he pronounces g’s like … I don’t know, like the way you say Zsa Zsa Gabor.”
“And he tells so much time he needs two watches?” Heddy asked.
“He’s obsessed with watches, too. Don’t ask me why. And some kind of weird toy with a stuffed animal head and a body that’s just a small blanket. He calls that Baby and he has to have it somewhere near at all times. We left Baby in the car but at any minute the fact that it isn’t in here could become a crisis.”
“Baby’s nappin’,” Carter said as if the man was deluded. Then to Heddy, the child said, “More pie?”
“It’s cheesecake, Carter,” Lang Camden amended.
“Not cheese. Pie!” the two-and-a-half-year-old shouted.
Lang Camden sighed and gave up washing the cherubic face before getting it completely clean because Carter had wiggled out of his ineffective grasp.
Now that he was free, the little boy slid off the chair, went to Heddy’s display case and licked it the way he’d licked the cheesecake plates.
“Carter,” Lang Camden moaned in complaint. “Don’t do that!”
“Big food,” Carter said by way of explanation.
Lang Camden rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what goes through his head. He doesn’t usually go around licking everything. I guess he thinks the whole place tastes good.”
“It’s okay,” Heddy said. “I’m flattered that he likes the cheesecakes so much that he even wants to eat the display case.”
“Maybe we’ll use him as an endorsement—that is, if you’re interested in my proposition….”
Again, there was a slightly suggestive inflection but Heddy was reasonably sure he hadn’t intended it because he caught himself and added, “My business proposition.”
Once more Heddy shook her head. “I just don’t—”
“Tell me you aren’t going under here, Heddy,” he challenged. “I can see for myself that you are, and that’s basically what that article said. The cheesecakes are great but not enough people are buying them.”
“Still …”
“No, not ‘still.’ I came here today to make sure the product is worth selling. It is, and my family wants to help you sell it. I’m not talking about buying you out. It’ll continue to be your business and the worst thing that can happen is that you’ll bomb out at Camden Superstores but end up with the ability to sell on a large scale to any number of other places. Or you can sell the facility and equipment to bankroll something else. If you want, I’ll even have something written up that promises my guidance to get you started over in that something else. It’s a no-lose deal I’m offering you.”
“And why is that?” Heddy asked outright.
He sighed as if he had to say something he was hoping he wouldn’t have to say. “We know that years ago your family signed on to provide bread for the Camden stores that were around then. We know that your supply couldn’t keep up with our demand. We know that by the time everyone realized that, and my father and the rest of the family in charge back then decided to make other arrangements, your family had lost all of their other customers so they were left with no business at all.”
Not to mention the personal side of the situation that had taken its toll on her mother. Did he know about that, too?
Heddy reined in her wandering thoughts as he said, “We wouldn’t want to do business with you if your product wasn’t worth selling. But it is, so we do want to do business with you. We just want to make sure that the mistakes of the past aren’t repeated.”
“It just seems—”
“I know, you said it. Too good to be true. But that’s kind of how grants are, aren’t they? Money for free. You have a product we want. The grant will let you produce enough of that product to meet our needs and provide you with a better situation—you make more cheesecakes, we sell more of your cheesecakes, we both win. And one way or another, you don’t lose, which you’re on the verge of doing now.”
“Wan that big one!” Carter announced from the front of the display case.
Heddy used the interruption as an excuse to get up and go behind the counter while she continued to try to figure out what dangers and disadvantages there might be in this.
Lang got up and followed her, remaining on the customer’s side of the display case with Carter and agreeing to buy the largest cheesecake.
While Heddy boxed it for them, Lang said, “Sleep on it. If you have a business consultant, talk to your business consultant about it. If anything still bothers you, we can talk it over, do whatever it takes to make you feel comfortable doing business with us again. But we really want this to work.”
Because her cheesecakes were that good or because the Camdens had another motive that would benefit them and potentially harm her?
Heddy believed her cheesecakes were that good.
But she also knew better than most people how treacherous the Camdens had been in the past, and how easy it was to be caught under the wheels of Camden progress and turned into nothing but road kill.
“Just think it over,” Lang urged as he handed her his credit card.
Heddy made no promises as she ran the card and had him sign the slip.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said as he accepted the card and the receipt. “But you have my word and whatever guarantees you want that I can make this work for you. That I will make this work for you if you’ll let me.”
“I’ll think about it,” Heddy finally conceded. But that was all she was conceding because she was also beginning to think about what her mother’s reaction to this would be. It wouldn’t be good….
“Get your coat, Carter,” Lang told the toddler, and Heddy was surprised to see the child comply.
“Pie in car?” Carter asked as he let the older man put on his coat.
“No pie in the car. Tonight, if you eat your dinner, maybe you can have another piece then.”
“Pie in car,” Carter said as if that were far more reasonable.
“Looks like the cheesecake rides home in the trunk,” Lang confided in Heddy.
“Better the cheesecake than the child,” Heddy said with some humor.
“Are you sure?” Lang joked in return.
“Reasonably …”
He laughed and palmed the top of Carter’s head like a basketball with his left hand, which Heddy just happened to notice sported no wedding ring.
Not that that mattered to her either.
“Come on, Carter man, let’s get you home,” Lang said, guiding the child to the door. Just before he went out, the tall man glanced at Heddy over his shoulder and repeated, “I’ll be in touch.”
Heddy merely nodded, watching him clumsily put the cheesecake in the rear compartment of a large SUV and then get Carter settled in his car seat in the row ahead of that.
As she looked on, she thought about what Lang Camden had just offered her and wondered if this was an answer to her prayers, or if the devil in a business suit had just placed the same temptation in front of her that had sunk her family once before.
One thing was certain, though, she thought as she watched him get behind the wheel. Lang Camden was a handsome devil. A handsome, handsome devil.
And she was just glad that, unlike her mother, that couldn’t get to her. It couldn’t have any kind of real effect on her at all.
Because she was still Daniel’s wife and she would always be Daniel’s wife.
Even if there wasn’t a Daniel anymore….
Chapter Two
“Come on, Carter, let’s let GiGi and your dad talk. We can roll balls into the pockets on the pool table.”
“Poo-al,” Carter repeated before he jumped down from the seat of the enormous breakfast nook in Georgianna Camden’s kitchen. He left with Jonah Morrison, the elderly man who’d recently become the constant companion to the matriarch of the Camden family.
That left Lang alone with his grandmother.
“Dad! I don’t think I’ll ever get used to anyone calling me that,” Lang muttered.
GiGi laughed. “Oh, believe me, you will. There’ll come a day when someone in a crowd will yell ‘Dad’ and you’ll answer before you remember that you don’t even have Carter with you.”
“I think it’s more likely that I’ll be in a crowd and forget that I actually do have him with me,” Lang countered.
“He needs a bath and his hair washed,” GiGi decreed.
“Yeah, tonight.”
“That’s pie in his hair?”
“Cheesecake. From Heddy Hanrahan’s shop—we were there yesterday. Carter calls it pie. He got into the refrigerator when I was already late for work this morning, and went straight for the cheesecake with his bare hands. Some of it ended up in his hair. There was nothing I could do about it then. Heddy Hanrahan’s cheesecake gets a stamp of approval from us both, by the way—that’s what I came over to talk to you about. I made her the offer.”
GiGi ignored what Lang said and continued on the subject of Carter’s hygiene.
“That boy has been walking around all day long with cheesecake in his hair?” the older woman said disapprovingly.
“Hey, you and Jani and Lindie and Livi left me in the lurch, remember? No more help from you, no more help from cousin Jani, no more help from my two sisters. That means my hands are full.”
“So he went around all day today with cheesecake in his hair,” GiGi concluded.
“I could have brought him here. You could have given him a bath and washed his hair while I was at work, and then my day would have been a lot better and he’d be clean,” Lang pointed out, his frustration ringing in his voice. “But—”
“No,” GiGi said with a stubborn shake of her head.
“Couldn’t you and the girls take care of him the way you have been just until I can hire a nanny? Or two? He’s such a handful, he’ll probably need more than one.”
GiGi shook her head again and said another firm no. “Your sisters, your cousin and I have been the only ones taking care of him since he came to you three months ago, Lang. That was in January and now this is April. He’s your son. We’re all proud of you for stepping up and doing the right thing, but now you have to actually do it. You need time with that boy. You need to become more than just a biological father.”
“I know, I know,” Lang conceded, feeling guilty for how much he’d relied on his grandmother, his sisters and his cousin since taking Carter on. “But twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? I need some help and my secretary isn’t moving any too quickly in finding it for me.”
Lang had his suspicions that his family had gotten to his secretary and told her to drag her feet so that he was forced to care for Carter for a while. And because he now had constant child care and a job to do—and the deal with Heddy Hanrahan on top of it all—there was just no way he could beat the bushes for a nanny himself.
“You know that the Camden name can attract trouble,” his grandmother pointed out, running her hand through her salt-and-pepper hair. “Whoever gets hired as your nanny has to be above reproach for Carter’s safety and security. Even after your secretary finds likely candidates, they have to be put through a thorough background check and that takes time.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lang said with a sigh.
He was annoyed with the delay but he knew what his grandmother was saying was true. He couldn’t risk handing Carter over to just any child-care provider and getting back a ransom note. In their position there was always cause for caution. Money made them targets in many ways.
“But if you and Jonah and Margaret and Louie could just watch him on weekdays—” Lang persisted.
“No, Lang.” GiGi held the line.
Margaret and Louie were the house staff who had long ago become more like members of the family than employees. They were GiGi’s closest friends and had helped her raise all ten of her grandchildren after the plane crash that had killed their parents. They’d also provided more than their fair share of Carter’s care for the past three months.
“Carter is your child,” his grandmother went on. “But since taking him you’ve had less to do with him than anyone. It’s been just like everything else since Audrey left—you keep anyone new at arm’s length. But that boy is family. Your family, and you can’t stay closed off from him—it’ll be a disaster for you both.”
“If I had shut myself off and kept everybody since Audrey at arm’s length there wouldn’t be a Carter,” Lang pointed out.
