It's a Boy!

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Her mother stood nearby watching. “Your grandfather doesn’t blame the Camdens the way I do.”

“He said it was his own fault for getting in deeper than he should have, for not anticipating that he would need to expand to meet demand.”

“And is he forgetting that when we asked for help expanding after the Camdens led us to believe they would give it, they ended up refusing and still took their business away and left us with nothing?”

Heddy had heard it all before and knew that her mother and her grandfather didn’t completely agree. But she chose not to argue. Instead, she laid out for her mother why she hoped this was a safer situation.

“The grant money and Lang Camden’s expertise will put me in a position to meet demand from the start,” she noted. “And if my cheesecakes aren’t a success at the Camden stores, I’ll still be the owner of the facility and the equipment, so I’ll have mass-production capabilities that I don’t have now. That will open other avenues I can pursue if I end up needing to.”

“Unless the Camdens blacklist you so no one else will ever touch your cheesecakes. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. I know how Camden men operate—they’re good-looking and they reek of charisma, and before you know what’s hit you, you’re sucked in and then left in their dust.”

“I know that’s what happened to you—”

“And why Mitchum Camden refused us any help to expand to meet the demands of his stores. When he was finished with me he wanted to forget I existed and the best way to do that was to take his business elsewhere. He didn’t care that he was taking away our livelihood.”

Heddy didn’t know if that was true or not but she did know that that was how her mother had always interpreted what had happened. And even though Heddy’s grandfather tried to take the blame for their business failure, he also never explicitly denied Kitty’s claims, which lent some credence to them.

Still …

“Grandpa said—and I agree—that I can learn from the past mistakes,” Heddy insisted. “And you’ve just made a good point. I’ll make sure that Clark puts some sort of contingency or gag order in the contract I sign with the Camdens so that they can’t blacklist me or bad-mouth me in any way if things don’t work out with them. And Lang Camden has already offered to help me branch into other areas if the cheesecakes don’t do well in his stores.”

“Don’t believe what they say,” her mother warned ominously. “Mitchum Camden made me plenty of promises that he didn’t keep. Like the engagement ring that ended up on someone else’s finger.”

“I know,” Heddy said sympathetically. “But for me this will be strictly business. I’ll make sure everything is on paper, that there aren’t any loopholes, and that I’m protected in every way possible. And you don’t need to worry about me getting personally involved because that’s not going to happen, not with a Camden or any other man. It can’t. One man, one marriage, that was it for me—you know that.”

“Oh, Heddy …” Her mother’s tone was so sad that Heddy knew she’d switched gears even before she said, “I don’t want you to go anywhere near a Camden, but I wish you would get involved with someone again. Five years is a long time—long enough to grieve. I don’t want to see you alone forever.”

“I’m okay,” Heddy assured her. “I’m not grieving anymore. Honestly. And I’m happy enough.” As happy as she could be now and could hope to be later. “But Daniel was my one-and-only and I can’t even imagine myself with anyone else. Or having any more kids—”

“You would have had at least one more baby if what happened hadn’t happened,” her mother pointed out.

“But now every kid makes me think of Tina—” Ache for Tina … “—and the only way to avoid that is to stay away from kids. Another baby would have been a brother or a sister for Tina. It would have made a full, complete family. Now having another child would be like I was trying to replace Tina somehow. As if that could ever be done. So no, the whole marriage and kids thing is just a part of life that’s over for me. And I’m okay with it. Daniel was my husband. Tina was my little girl. No one else can ever fill those slots.”

Not even the handsome, charming, sexy Lang Camden or the very cute Carter who both sprang to mind suddenly for no reason Heddy understood.

“Getting involved with someone is just not on the menu for me,” she concluded firmly. “So there’s no risk of that part of your history repeating itself. And I think I can protect myself from the rest of it happening again.”

“I still don’t like it,” Kitty said. “None of it. Your involvement with the Camdens and your refusal to go on living your life.”

“I’m living just fine,” Heddy said with a laugh at her mother’s dramatics.

“You’re not, Heddy. You’re not …”

“I’m going to be a big cheesecake mogul, Mom. That’s living, phase two—successful career woman.”

Her mother was standing beside her, near enough to pull her head to the side and kiss the top of it. “It’s not enough,” her mother whispered.

But Heddy insisted that it was.

And again shooed away the mental image of Lang Camden that almost seemed to make her mother’s case.

“What exactly is a start-up guy?” Heddy asked Lang that evening, hoping to find out more about what he did for Camden Incorporated.

He and Carter had arrived on time for the tasting but Carter had again been overly tired and cranky. Lang hadn’t come equipped with any diversions for the child, so Heddy stepped in and gave him pots and pans and wooden spoons to play with. But it had quickly become clear that the little boy was just too tired to be appeased.

So, at Heddy’s suggestion, they’d moved the tasting from the shop to her living area in the back where she’d persuaded Carter to lie on her comfy couch with a pillow and a fluffy blanket. She’d found a children’s station on television for him to watch, and he’d promptly fallen asleep.

She and Lang sat alone at her round pedestal kitchen table while he methodically sampled the array of cheesecake flavors she’d set out for him. Without the distraction of Carter, Heddy felt the need to make conversation. Lang’s comments about which of the cheesecakes he thought they should start with and which should be featured later weren’t enough.

Plus she was curious about him.

She hated that she was. But she was.

“The brandy mousse—wonderful but tastes seasonal. Let’s hold off and do that as a Christmas or New Year’s flavor,” he said, waiting for Heddy to make a note before he answered her question. “What do I do as the start-up guy? Well, when the decision gets made to open a new store or to branch out, the first thing I do is the research. If it’s a new store, I start by doing the demographics and scouting for the best location. From there I do all the groundwork, bid on the land, deal with zoning, apply for the permits, find contractors…. Things that set the wheels into motion.”

“And if it’s a new endeavor?”

“I do what I’ll be doing with you. If we want to add a department or to start selling something we haven’t sold before, I look for the best way to do that. Is it better to buy from someone else who produces what we want to sell? If so, under what terms, and can they supply to the extent we need? Or, is it better if we set up production ourselves? If it is, I look for facilities and for the best people to man the operation, and I get it going.”

“My situation is a combination of those. You’re doing what you’d ordinarily do to set up your own production, except that you’re doing it for me.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“And if you decide along the way that you’d be better off producing your own cheesecakes?” Heddy asked.

Things were more casual tonight. She was in jeans and a plain blouse she wore untucked. He was in tweed slacks and a sport shirt. And yet even sitting in her spotless white kitchen with its bright red and navy blue accents, separated from her cozy living room and Carter only by an island counter, it was still in the back of Heddy’s mind to find the pitfalls in this deal.

“Not going to happen,” he said without any indication that he’d taken offense at her suspicion. “You make the best cheesecakes and you have the recipes and the techniques. I already told you that I’m fine with you guarding those things. I’m not trying to wiggle my way in and steal your trade secrets so we can turn around and produce the cheesecakes ourselves.”

Heddy had no idea why the thought of him wiggling his way in to anything seemed a tad alluring but she ignored it and forced herself to focus on more important matters.

“But even as it is—just tonight—you’re learning things you could copy. Flavor combinations I put together. Brainstorms I’ve had for varieties no one else makes—”

“Anybody who walked into your shop and tasted something would have that same information, wouldn’t they?”

Heddy shrugged, conceding his point. She had been fairly revealing in telling him how she got certain degrees of flavor—for instance in her blackberry chocolate cheesecake—and now she wished she hadn’t.

“Think of the big picture, Heddy,” he advised. “With some things it’s to our advantage to go into production ourselves—to have our own factories—because it would cost us more to buy from someone else. But for this? For one item in a line of gourmet foods? That’s a niche. It’s more cost- and time-efficient to buy what you produce than to find and hire chefs to develop a recipe, to have to continue to operate production after it’s set up, to have the expense of employees, their benefits and what-have-you long-term. Just for cheesecakes. Can’t you see that it makes more sense to do it this way? We’re not conspiring against you. We’re just doing good business that will hopefully benefit us all.”