“I have.” Cam gave him a challenging look. “My stuff is better than my mom’s.”

Dax’s eyes grew wide. “That better not be true, McCaffery.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because that means you’ve been depriving me of your goods for ten years? I might never forgive you.”

“I’ve been giving you plenty of my goods,” Cam told him. “Just not the baked kind.”

“You’re a bastard,” Dax said.

Cam grinned. “Wow, news flash.”

“I don’t know.” Aiden had come around the breakfast bar and was now lifting a cookie from the cooling rack. “Zoe thinks all of this”—he gestured, encompassing the kitchen and Didi and Henry and everything—“is really sweet.” He lifted the cookie to his mouth.

Cam plucked it from his fingers before he could bite into it. “It is really sweet,” he said, putting the cookie back with the rest.

“Hey.”

“What? You don’t need those cookies. You’re living with and practically married to someone who owns a bakery. Those are for Didi and Henry.”

“And Whitney?” Dax asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Cam grinned. Whitney never ate the desserts he made in front of him, but there were always at least a couple missing by the time he checked on them the next day. He already knew that she especially liked anything with chocolate and caramel. But he’d bet there would be some lemon cookies missing tomorrow too.

“Whitney too,” he said with a nod.

“And is the toilet bowl cleaner and dusting solution for Didi or Whitney?” Aiden asked. He swiped another cookie and quickly got it to his mouth before Cam could grab it back.

“Both,” Cam said. But then he shrugged. “Mostly Whit, I guess. I mean, she’d be the one doing it, or paying to have it done, if I didn’t.”

Aiden chewed and swallowed. “Damn, man, you are good at that.”

Cam smirked. Then tossed cookies to Dax and Grant too.

“So you’re seducing a woman by cleaning toilets,” Dax said. “I can totally relate to that.”

“I’m helping a friend out with some things,” Cam said.

But damn, he wanted to seduce this woman. Not with toilets. Or furniture polish for that matter.

But, yeah, maybe with cookies.

“About that,” Aiden said.

“It’s great,” Cam told him. “We’ve got a routine. Didi and I start our day after Whitney’s already left for work. We hang out. We go to Mom’s for dinner. I bring leftovers home for Whit. She works late, so we’re already upstairs by the time she gets home. She’s in bed by the time Didi is up to watch Magnum, P.I. We stay up with cookies and reruns until two or three and then sleep in. It’s working.”

For now.

He hated not seeing Whitney more. That part wasn’t really going according to plan. But he was fine keeping things running at home and, it was clearly allowing Whitney to do some pretty awesome things at Hot Cakes.

And he couldn’t get over the look on her face during that meeting.

She’d looked worried. Almost scared. As if she was suddenly realizing she was in over her head and was panicking a little.

It was true the guys were giving her full lead on… well, everything. And, from what he’d gleaned from both Whitney and Didi, she hadn’t had that before.

So he was doing what he could to make work all she needed to focus on.

Even if that meant there was no time or attention for him, either.

“Oh, hot damn!” Didi crowed from the room off the kitchen.

“You’re really good at this,” Henry said.

The men all laughed, assuming he was just trying to make her feel good.

“I was always a fast runner,” Didi said. “Way faster than your grandma. But she was a better climber.”

“He has to keep pausing it,” Cam told the others. “She wants to keep telling him stories about when she and Letty were kids. I just overheard about the first time they baked cookies for a tea party and burned them but were determined to make them seem delicious so their mothers wouldn’t tell them they couldn’t bake anymore so they ate them all anyway.”

Cam had felt a strange urge to yell into the living room to wait for him. He wanted to hear stories about his grandmother as a little girl.

“Like the other night at dinner,” Aiden said with a grin.

“I couldn’t believe when Jane and Josie and Zoe followed Didi and Henry into the living room after dinner instead of heading out to the patio,” Dax said, his smile affectionate.

Usually the girls went out to the back patio with spiked lemonade or wine while the guys cleaned up after dinner. Instead, Zoe, Josie, and Jane had followed Didi and Henry into the family room where they were going to resume the Warriors of Easton game they’d started before dinner.

Didi had talked almost nonstop through dinner, telling stories about her and Letty, stories about the early days in the bakery, and even stories about the origins of Hot Cakes. She’d laughed and smiled through it all, seeming lost in her memories and very nostalgic about Letty. Even the chicken had reminded her of her old friend.

It had instantly endeared her to all of the McCafferys and their friends, and within minutes any awkwardness was gone. And having the woman they’d all spent years believing was their family’s nemesis passing the chicken and potatoes around Maggie’s dining room table seemed completely normal.

“She reminds me so much of my grandma,” Cam agreed. He looked at Aiden. “Her sense of humor is almost identical. And she is a handful.”

Aiden nodded. Letty had been his adopted grandma just as Maggie and Steve had been fill-in parents after his mom had died and his dad had disappeared into his work and his bottle of liquor. He grinned. “She kept you on your toes today?”

She most certainly had. “The crash you heard on the phone earlier wasn’t her dropping anything,” Cam said. “It was her throwing stuff. She was trying to find something in the cupboards. She nearly gave me a heart attack when I walked into the kitchen and found her standing on the counter and rummaging through the cupboards. She was just tossing the pots and pans out of her way.” Cam paused in his dish rinsing. “Ask me what she was looking for.”

Aiden lifted both eyebrows. “What was she looking for?”

“Tequila.”

Aiden, Grant, and Dax all snorted.

“It was nine thirty a.m.,” Aiden said.

Cam nodded. He was aware. “She said it was time for margaritas.”

“What did you do?” Dax asked.

“Made her margaritas.”

They all looked surprised.

“Orange margaritas. With no tequila in them,” Cam clarified. He’d blended orange juice with ice and a bit of lime juice and poured it into a margarita glass and served it to her by the pool. “She said it was the most delicious margarita she’d ever had.”

“You lied to her,” Grant said.

“Yes, I did.” Cam didn’t feel even a flicker of guilt over that. “It made her happy and kept her safe.”

They all nodded. He hadn’t really expected any of them to give him a hard time.

“Were you able to get any work done today?” Dax asked, seeming amused.