On top of that, she couldn’t quite shake the idea that Cam had done it on purpose. Was he testing her? Maybe not to fire her. She believed his sincerity when he said he wanted her right there watching him and his friends make her family’s company into a huge success. But maybe he was testing to see just how not over him she was and if he could get her to admit that she’d been wrong to let him go.

Well, the thing about that was… she hadn’t been wrong.

He’d had an amazing college football career. He had a law degree. He’d met three of his four best friends who would be in his life forever. He was a freaking millionaire.

So, no, she hadn’t been wrong to “let him go”… or force him to go. However he wanted to look at it. It had been the right thing and she wasn’t sorry.

Did she miss him? Had she failed to find another guy who came even close to making her feel the way Cam had even as a teenager? Sure.

But she’d done the right thing for him.

“Do you believe me?”

She focused on Piper again. She’d forgotten the other woman. “Oh. Um...” She glanced around.

She was in the shade and still sweating as the aroma of alpacas—and a pot-bellied pig, a bunch of goats, and an emu—drifted over the crowd that had gathered. And an hour-long dessert date with her ex-boyfriend, who she was still at least semi in love with, was about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Nope. Not okay.

“I have alpacas at a baking event,” Whitney said.

Piper nodded. “Yeah, and I told you that it wasn’t Ollie’s fault. But I don’t think you heard me.”

“It’s not Ollie’s fault?” Whitney looked over at the petting zoo.

That was such an Oliver thing. It was his partners, and friends who honed Ollie’s ideas into manageable, doable proposals. For instance, Ollie would have said, Let’s have a petting zoo! and someone else would have said, Or we could have someone make balloon animals. Because balloons do go with cake. Whereas farm animals don’t so much. And that way we don’t have to deal with the smell.

“Then who’s fault is it?” Whitney asked as Piper chewed on her bottom lip.

“The alpacas are not a terrible idea,” Piper said instead of answering directly. “We wanted to make this an event that would encourage people to come and get involved. The more activities and the more fun for people of all ages, the better.”

Whitney regarded the other woman.

“So I have barnyard animals oinking and snorting in a pen fifty feet from the stage where we’re going to be producing what we hope to be the biggest Hot Cakes product ever because someone thought that would draw more people down here?” Whitney asked.

“Alpacas kind of make this purring sound, actually. It’s kind of like humming,” Piper said.

Whitney narrowed her eyes. “Piper.”

She’d really thought Piper was the one person immune to Ollie’s craziness.

In fairness, even Whitney had initially thought Ollie’s idea to literally turn this whole thing into a circus was funny and creative. But then she’d thought about how much liability insurance would cost for acrobats.

He’d been very disappointed, so she’d compromised by agreeing to a bounce house and food trucks—tacos, pizza, and pulled pork sandwiches—and a few carnival games. Snack cakes were, after all, fun. They were treats. Part of childhood. So associating them with fun and frivolity was okay, she supposed.

But she’d had to draw the line at knife throwers and people jumping through rings of fire.

And alpacas.

“Are you or are you not the reason I have alpacas stinking the place up as we speak?” Whitney asked Piper.

“Well…”

“Piper.”

“Drew Ryan is really cute.”

Whitney blinked at her. Drew Ryan was really cute.

Whitney crossed her arms. “Ollie has a thing for Drew?” she asked, knowing that was not the situation at all.

“Um…”

“Oh my God, Piper! Drew talked you into having a petting zoo?”

“The petting zoo was totally Ollie’s idea. At first,” Piper protested. “But… I went with him to talk to Drew.”

“And Ollie balked at the idea and you talked him into it?”

Piper winced. “Yeah.”

“You have a thing for Drew?” Whitney asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe I have a thing for Ollie being jealous of Drew,” Piper said with a shrug. “Anyway, somehow we ended up deciding that alpacas would be a great idea. And then Drew added the other animals for free.”

Whitney rubbed the middle of her forehead. She was paying for those alpacas.

“It’s great,” Piper reassured her, rubbing a hand up and down Whitney’s back, comfortingly. “You’re throwing the town a big party. It’s a way to show Appleby that we appreciate them. It’s just fun. It doesn’t have to make perfect sense.”

Whitney wasn’t so sure of that. She took a deep breath—tinged with the scent of alpacas—and said, “Be honest. Do you really think we’re pulling this off?”

Piper nodded. “Completely. You’ve done a fabulous job. I love how you organized this. Getting the Chamber of Commerce involved in narrowing down the top ten recipes was a great idea and having the town do the taste testing to choose the final three was brilliant.”

The people of Appleby had been invited to a huge taste-testing event last weekend where they had set up tents. Gauzy white tents with twinkle lights, white tablecloths, music, and a champagne fountain as a matter of fact. It had been more like a classy, outdoor wedding venue than a circus, thank you very much.

Whitney looked around. “It does seem like people are having fun with this today.”

Now those final three recipes were going to be baked live on stage by three hot, single, charming men with plenty of flirty baking innuendos and banter thrown around as they did it. Then the treats would be sampled by the Grand Dame of Hot Cakes herself, Didi Lancaster, and she would pick the winning recipe. As the company’s founder, it was perfect that she be the one choosing the new product.

Of course, Whitney would be a lot less nervous about that if she wasn’t Didi’s granddaughter and didn’t know Didi was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. At least no one else in town knew. No one.

Everyone thought Whitney was living with Didi simply because the older woman’s house was enormous and it was silly for them to both live alone. But truthfully, Didi couldn’t live by herself anymore. She wasn’t safe in the kitchen, she would get lost driving, and she wasn’t able to handle keeping track of her medications.

In another month, Didi would be moving into the gorgeous new wing of Sunny Orchard, the nursing home that Whitney’s friend Dax Marshall had recently purchased and revamped. Didi was excited to move in and be closer to some people she’d known her whole life, and Whitney was beyond relieved that her grandmother was good with the move. She really wanted to get her relocated before the dementia made it harder for her to adjust to new surroundings and routines.

So far today had been a good day, and if Didi could hang in there until the final judging, everything would be fine. All she had to do was taste three desserts and say which she liked best. Dessert tasting was as familiar to Didi as anything, and Whitney really thought they could make it through this one event without letting on there was anything unusual going on with Didi.