Cam felt his eyes go wide. “Wow. Really. How did he know which ones were hers?”

Didi smiled at him. “Because she cooked for him all the time when they were dating.”

Cam stared at her for several seconds. She was a little confused, obviously, thinking Dean had died last week and that Letty was still alive. But this was interesting.

“They dated?” he asked. “I didn’t know that.”

In fact, he wondered who did know that. He wasn’t sure his mom and dad even knew that. If they did, it was a well-kept secret. The Lancasters and McCaffreys had hated each other Cam’s entire life. It had always been understood that it was because Didi stole Letty’s recipe for the now famous Butter Sticks that had launched Hot Cakes.

But damn, there might be even more scandal behind it all.

“Oh, yes.” Didi leaned back in her chair, folding her hands on her lap. “She turned down his proposal and he never got over it.”

Cam swallowed hard. “Dean Lancaster proposed to my grandmother?”

“Of course. She was a catch,” Didi said. “Beautiful, independent, smart, sassy.”

Yep, that was his grandmother.

“Why did she say no?”

“Because Dean was an ass.”

Again Cam was speechless for a moment. “But… you married him.”

Didi nodded. “Horrible mistake. Except, of course, I have Whitney because of him.”

Her granddaughter. Not her two sons, not her three grandsons. Didi only named Whitney.

And Cam had to agree that Dean had been an ass. Along with their son, Eric, and their grandsons, Whitney’s brothers Wes and Will and her cousin Brent.

Cam leaned in. Didi seemed in the mood to share and he was going to take advantage. Maybe she was always like this, but in case she wasn’t, he wanted as much of the story as he could get.

“So tell me what happened,” he said.

Didi shrugged. “He and Charlotte dated for a few months. He fell in love, she didn’t. He proposed, she said no. He never got over that. Though part of it was his ego and the fact that people didn’t say no to him. After Charlotte and I split up and I was on my own, Dean asked me out. He was very handsome and charming and I was feeling very alone. I said yes. He romanced me and I got pregnant.” Didi lifted a shoulder again. “And that’s that. He took over the business and made me a very rich woman.”

Cam was happy that Josie delivered the pie and coffee just then. He had to process all of that. There was nothing about the story that was familiar to him at all. Other than that part where she and Letty split up.

“Let me know what you think of the topping,” Josie told Didi, setting her plate down.

“Oh, it will be perfect,” Didi said, sitting forward and picking up a fork. She seemed genuinely eager. “Charlotte’s concoctions are always perfect.”

Again with the present tense reference to his grandmother. Cam and Josie shared another look. He didn’t know much about Alzheimer’s. Letty had been sharp until her very last day when her heart had given out. Should he correct Didi or let her go on thinking Letty was still around?

That was a good question for Whitney. He could text her.

Or he could wait and talk to her after he dropped Didi off at home.

He grinned, picking his fork up as well. That was a great reason to linger at Whitney’s after this date.

Josie went back to the kitchen and Cam and Didi ate without talking for a few minutes.

Didi seemed completely immersed in enjoying the pie.

Letty hadn’t made it but it was her recipe and the girls never strayed from Letty’s recipes by even a half a teaspoon. Letty’s desserts really were the best he’d ever tasted and as he’d traveled extensively over the past few years with Fluke, Inc. he’d made a point of trying various desserts in all the places he visited. He’d never found better than his grandmother’s.

It was a damned travesty that Didi had gone without Letty’s desserts for fifty-two years.

“How long were you and Dean married?” Cam asked after a few bites.

“Fifty-one years,” Didi replied after taking a sip of coffee.

“So you and Dean started dating shortly after you started Hot Cakes.”

She nodded. “It wasn’t even officially Hot Cakes then. Dean was the one who pushed to make it grow. I got to name it. That was about it.” She said it with a tone 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?”