“Come on,” Whitney said to Piper. “Let’s go convince Henry and his friends to bid on Ollie before things get really going.”

They made their way toward Henry and his group.

“Hey, Henry,” Whitney greeted.

“Hi.”

Henry knew her. He had been born their senior year of high school. She hadn’t spent time with Cam’s family. Their romance had been a huge secret from everyone but Aiden. The McCafferys wouldn’t have been any happier about their relationship than the Lancasters had been when they found out. But Appleby was a small town and Henry at least knew who Whitney was.

“I have a treat for you,” she said.

Henry looked interested and his friends turned to pay attention as well.

“How would you all like to spend an hour tonight with Ollie Caprinelli?”

Henry’s jaw dropped open.

They of course knew who Ollie was. In their world, he was a god. And someone they watched on YouTube regularly. He and Dax were celebrities in Henry’s corner of the world.

“Really?” one of his friends, Hunter, asked. “We could do that?”

The truth was, Henry could get an hour with Ollie any time. His big brother and the man who was practically a brother were Ollie’s best friends. She was shocked Ollie hadn’t been invited over for dinner at the McCafferys’. Aiden had already been a regular guest, dating back to even before his mom had died and Maggie McCaffery had become his surrogate mother. Zoe’s two best friends were regulars around that table as well.

But Whitney wondered if maybe the McCafferys had told Henry that he couldn’t have his own friends over when the Warriors of Easton guys were there. That could have become chaotic.

This was a chance for Henry to be a big shot with his friends.

“Yep.” Whitney pointed at the stage. “He’s going to make one of the desserts and then people are going to bid on eating that dessert with him. You get a whole hour.”

“But it’s like a date, right?” Jack, another of Henry’s friends asked.

“Nope,” Whitney said. “It’s just an hour of time. With dessert. Anyone can bid and the highest bid is the winner.”

“But a bid takes money,” Henry said.

“Right.” Whitney had to swallow hard as she met Henry’s gaze.

He had Cam’s eyes.

Or they both had their mother or father’s eyes.

But she definitely saw Cam in Henry’s face and she was struck by a twinge of sadness that she hadn’t gotten to know Henry. She’d love to see Cam as a big brother. She’d never really seen him with any of his family except from a distance. When they’d been at school events or social events around town, she’d had to stay away and pretend they were nothing more than classmates. But it had been clear that the McCafferys were close and that Cam loved his family deeply. He’d been loyal to his family’s legacy with Buttered Up and had stubbornly believed every bit of the story about how Didi had stolen the first Hot Cakes recipe from Letty.

They’d argued about it only once. Then they’d agreed to not talk about it.

But the feud between their families had still kept them from being a couple in public. From spending Christmas together. From getting to know the people that were important in each other’s lives.

That’s why it had been such a big deal when he’d told her he was willing to stay home, skip college, and come to work for Hot Cakes so he could stay in Appleby with her.

And it had been one of the reasons she had pushed him away.

“We don’t have enough money,” Henry told her.

“I’ve got ten dollars,” Hunter said.

“I can ask my mom,” Jack added.

Whitney shook off the thoughts of young Cam and all the things they’d missed out on back then. And since.

She grinned. “That’s the even better news. I’ve got the money.”

Henry, Hunter, and Jack’s eyes all grew round.

“You would give us money to use?” Henry asked.

“Yep.” Whitney gestured to Piper. “This is Piper. She’s the only one that will take care of the money if you win.”

“So what do we do?” Hunter asked.

“You get up there toward the front, and when it’s Ollie’s turn, you raise your hand,” Whitney said. “You keep raising your hand until they say you won.”

Henry looked downright amazed. “Wow. That sounds easy.”

“Super easy,” Whitney agreed.

“I’ll even go up there with you,” Piper said. “To help you with what you should do.”

Whitney smiled at that. Piper was very used to herding and taking care of a group of guys. Honestly, these boys being eleven wouldn’t faze her a bit—the Hot Cakes guys were sometimes very much eleven-year-olds in their behaviors.

“I’m going to go… check on the llamas,” Whitney said.

She for sure couldn’t be right up front for this. Watching Cam baking would be hard enough, but no way was she going to watch him get auctioned off.

Piper gave her a knowing look.

“They’re actually alpacas,” Henry told her.

With a surprised laugh, Whitney nodded, “Right. Alpacas.”

“Let’s go, guys. You want to be right down front,” Piper said, nudging them in the direction of the stage.

Whitney watched them weave through the crowd and took a second to appreciate that there was a crowd.

Then her eyes wandered to where Cam was standing on stage. He was behind the middle cooking station. He was wearing a bright yellow apron over his fitted black t-shirt now—a not-really-that-subtle nod to his family’s bakery which was all yellow and white from their décor to their take-out boxes to, yes, their aprons—but his tattoos and muscles and the black stud earring he wore in his left ear and his this-is-gonna-be-fun grin were all still on full display.

His eyes met hers, and even from the distance she felt the jolt of awareness.

“When we decided to introduce a new product, for the first time in the company’s history, we knew it had to be something special,” Dax was saying, having just explained how the baking competition and auction were going to work. “We wanted to make a big deal out of it, because it is a big deal. The new product represents the new directions and plans that we have for Hot Cakes. But it has to fit in with the Hot Cakes history and story. And who knows that better than the people of this town who have been a part of it?”

Whitney felt her throat tighten unexpectedly. She hadn’t known what Dax was going to say but that was so… nice.

It was no small thing that her family had owned Hot Cakes for the past three generations. And that it was her father who hadn’t cared about the business and as soon as her grandfather passed away had been ready to let it fold.

Her family had almost caused three hundred and forty-seven people to have to find new jobs and, in most cases, uproot their families and move. Appleby was a very small town. There were only so many jobs. Those people would have all had to seek employment elsewhere. In some cases it would have meant taking their entire family away from Appleby. Many of those people had grown up here, had raised their families here. This was their home. Leaving because the factory closed would have been huge.