“Six-thirty,” she repeated in a voice softer than she wanted it to be.
“Right,” he confirmed. “Tomorrow night. See you then.”
Heddy merely nodded and watched Lang carry the sleeping child out to his SUV.
As she did, devouring the view, her gaze riveted to the man she was about to see much more of, she realized that somewhere deep down, on a level that was purely instinctive and primitive and absolutely out of her control, she might be experiencing an attraction to him.
An attraction she didn’t want to have.
An attraction she couldn’t have, especially not now that she was in the same position with him that her mother had been with his father once upon a time.
Then, as if to save her from herself, her mind flashed her a painful memory.
A memory of watching Daniel carry Tina the same way Lang Camden was carrying Carter.
That helped offset the attraction.
At least a little anyway.
Chapter Three
“Don’t do this, Heddy! You don’t know what you’re getting into. The Camdens will chew you up and spit you out, just like they did your grandfather and me. Especially me!”
“This ship is already down, Mom. I don’t have anything else to lose,” Heddy told her mother on Thursday afternoon. As expected, Kitty Hanrahan was horrified by the thought of the venture with the Camdens.
“I talked to Grandpa on the phone this morning and told him,” Heddy went on as she put together some of the cheesecakes she wanted Lang Camden to taste in flavors that she didn’t already have made or frozen.
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