Aiden didn’t know Jane well enough to know everything about her personal life to know what all she was talking about, but he knew she had at least one younger sibling and that her father was sick with one of those horrible, progressive neurological diseases—he couldn’t remember which one at the moment, and he made a note to ask Zoe about it.
Her job would still be stable though. It would be an even better job than it had been before. He’d be sure of it.
And that was the moment it really hit Aiden—he was going to be Jane’s boss.
She was going to be working for him.
Well, that was… awkward.
Now when she bitched to her friends about work and her boss—because everyone bitched about work and their boss—it would be his company and him.
Hot Cakes had nearly three hundred employees. He’d briefly thought about the fact he would personally know many of those employees. That was one of the driving factors for him wanting to buy the damned company in the first place. To save those jobs.
But sitting across Maggie’s dining room table and eating fettuccine with one of them while she worried about her job to her best friends was not something he’d thought through.
If she got pissed off at something at the factory, would she bring it up over dinner with Maggie and Zoe? Maybe. What about the other people at the factory? If they got ticked off, he’d probably hear about it at the post office and the diner and the corner of Depot and Main and probably in the bakery. Of course, that was assuming Zoe didn’t ban him from Buttered Up for the rest of his life.
That was actually kind of how the town worked now. Among those who had deep roots in Appleby, the town was strictly divided, between those loyal to the Lancasters and those loyal to the McCafferys. The Lancasters had a larger number of employees and also a bigger network of people who wanted to be nice to them because of their wealth. Like the bank, the medical clinic they donated to, the various community groups they supported, the mayor whose campaign they’d contributed to.
But the McCafferys had what they called true friends because their allegiances weren’t dependent on employment or donations. There were people who truly thought what Didi Lancaster had done to Letty had been a terrible betrayal and who distrusted the Lancasters’ money and influence. It was also a fact that Didi’s husband Dean and their son, Eric, didn’t have a lot of actual friends. At least not the “regular people” of Appleby. Dean had always given off very elitist airs, and Eric had been an asshole as long as Aiden had known him. Aiden’s dad had never liked Eric and had stories from high school of Eric thinking he was better than everyone else and getting away with a lot because of his daddy’s penchant for getting out his checkbook whenever Eric got into trouble.
There was also a well-known policy at Hot Cakes that no employee there could do business with Buttered Up. It was ridiculous, of course, but no one had ever had the spine to challenge it. That meant all three hundred employees, plus their families, got their birthday and wedding cakes, muffins, cookies and so on from the bakery in the next town. Never from Letty, Maggie, and Zoe. It was why Jane’s sneaking up to the back door of the bakery was a big deal. It was part of the Code of Conduct and was a fireable offense.
It would, of course, be the first thing Aiden changed at the company, but for now, it was one of the biggest things that kept the bitterness between the families alive and well. Just like the fact that none of the McCafferys’ friends or family members bought or ate Hot Cakes products. The convenience store on this side of town didn’t even carry the snack cakes.
It was all ridiculous. The companies were not actual competitors. A prepackaged snack cake someone stuck in their lunch box or grabbed during a road trip was hardly the same thing as a made-from-scratch and custom-decorated cake for a special occasion. There was room in people’s lives for both.
Just not in Appleby.
“You do like your job there though?” Aiden asked.
He had to be careful pressing for information. He couldn’t act too interested. But Jane was a friend. A friend of a friend, at least. And they were on the subject, so surely he could get away with a few questions without it seeming suspect.
“I do,” she said. “Mostly.”
“Except when they’re making you do mandatory overtime,” Josie said.
“Well, right,” Jane said.
“And not when they’re offering people early retirement and then not replacing them,” Zoe said.
“Right.” Jane sighed.
“And not when they’re taking away the childcare center,” Josie said.
Jane held up her hands and gave Aiden a weak smile. “I said mostly, right?”
He was frowning and worked on not acting completely pissed off about the things Josie and Zoe had revealed. “All that has happened?”
“It has.” She shrugged. “Cutbacks.”
“Why all the cutbacks?” he asked. “They netted five million last year. That’s down a little over the past three years but it’s still profitable.”
They all stared at him.
Right. Why would he know that? Shit. “I was curious when they went up for sale,” he explained. Which was true. He’d wondered if they’d been losing money or if someone had been embezzling or just what the hell was going on.
Jane leaned in. “Eric was hanging on, doing the bare minimum, until his dad died. Then he just let it go. Didn’t invest, did as much cutting as he could. It’s clear he’s completely over it. Everyone was sure he was just going to close it up.”
Aiden knew all about Eric’s attitude. But he hadn’t known about the cuts and early retirements. Because he hadn’t asked.
He realized he’d come in here thinking he’d be the big hero, but just keeping the factory open was not the whole story. There was a lot more that needed to be done to make Hot Cakes a great place to work.
He was going to do it. He had to. Not just because this was his hometown and people he knew, but because how could he not? How did someone pocket five million dollars while their employees, the people actually doing the work, worked mandatory overtime and lost their childcare?
“I know you’re worried,” Zoe said to Jane. “But just know my offer stands.”
“And I love you for it, and if these new people are horrible, I might be begging on your doorstep,” Jane said with a smile. “But I’m hopeful it will be okay.”
“You can’t employ them all,” Aiden said. Without really thinking. But even as Zoe frowned at him, he didn’t regret it. He lifted his eyebrows. “You can’t absorb the entire Hot Cakes workforce, so that’s not really a solution to this problem, is it?”
“So?” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.
“That’s a lot of people out of work if this new buyer hadn’t come along.”
“Not really my problem,” she said. “They all chose to work there. People think a big company is going to take care of them, but sometimes they learn the hard way.” She glanced at Jane. “Sorry, babe. But you know I’m right. Big companies are less intimate. They care less about individual people. There’s less loyalty. It’s about the bottom line.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Aiden protested.
“I suppose it doesn’t,” she allowed. “If rich people weren’t assholes who only think of themselves.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Referring to anyone in particular?”
“You and Cam are pretty generous,” she said. “But tell me, Aiden, do you like being rich?”
She was such a brat. “I do. Because then I can give it away.”
“Sure. But you still make more than fifty grand a year, right? And you don’t worry about things like your farmland flooding or your kid getting a basketball scholarship because that’s the only way you can afford college, or you being off work because of a horrible case of pneumonia and using up your sick days.” She leaned in, pinning him with a serious look. “Your money doesn’t just give you money, Aiden. It gives you privilege. Privilege to not wo
rry. To not be scared. To not lie awake at night and wonder what you’re going to do. To not be at someone else’s mercy. You work your ass off and you’re rewarded for it. You don’t have to sit around and wait for someone else to notice you’re working your ass off and feel generous toward you.”
Her eyes were glittering and her cheeks were pink. She looked a lot like she had after he’d kissed the hell out of her against the fridge. Or when she’d been pissed at him for telling her they should get married.
But this was even hotter in a way. Because now she was riled up on someone else’s behalf.
“You’re right.”
Her eyes flickered with surprise at his response.
But she was right. “You’re absolutely right.” He looked at Jane. “The first thing you need to do when new people take over is make an appointment to talk to the CEO. You’ve been there a long time. You know all the people who work there. You know the place inside and out. Tell him you have some ideas and demands. Tell him you can be a resource. And tell him there needs to be some changes.”
Jane’s eyes had gotten progressively wider as he spoke. Then she laughed. “Sure. Okay, Aiden, I’ll do that.”
“Trust me. Someone needs to speak up for the employees.” He frowned.
“I told her she should be the union leader,” Josie said.
Jane gave Josie an eye roll. “Yeah. I don’t want that at all.”
“Why not?” Aiden asked.
“I take care of and worry about a lot of people outside of work,” she said. “I don’t want to be in charge of worrying or taking care of people at work too.”
“You already do,” Josie pointed out with an affectionate smile.
Jane sighed. “I just want to go to work, get paid, and go home.”
“But you can’t, because you’re strong and smart and loving,” Zoe said. “You care about the work conditions and how people are treated and if they’re happy. You can’t help it. You might as well be in a position to do something about it.”
Aiden nodded. “You really need to at least get your current union leader to meet with the new management.”
With him. Aiden realized it was strange he was giving her this advice. Eventually, she would find out it was him he was encouraging her to meet with. But he really did want to hear this. He wouldn’t be waltzing into a company that was perfect and running smoothly, obviously. But if he knew the problems, he could fix them. Hopefully.
“We don’t have a union leader right now,” Jane said.
“Then you need to do it,” Aiden told her. Jane was perfect for it. She was smart and dedicated and no-nonsense. She knew the factory inside and out. If Aiden wanted to know what was really going on, Jane was exactly who he should be talking to. “As a guy in management, I can tell you people like you are invaluable to us.”
“I’m not some geeky computer programmer who knows all about dragons and trolls.” She gave Henry a wink. “I’m just a girl who knows how to push buttons and pull levers.”
Aiden dropped it. For now. His pushing was going to seem suspicious. But he needed to get into the factory, see how it worked, figure some things out, dive into the employee benefits. And more. There was a lot. He was going to need his partners.
They could look at benefits, even talk to employees. Cam would review the contracts, of course. Grant could help look at new benefit plans and do some cost analysis. The Fluke team could definitely make this happen.
“Well, Letty is probably frowning down from heaven, convinced Didi waited to sell until Letty was dead,” Steve said with a little chuckle. Clearly, he was trying to lighten things up and divert the conversation from all of Jane’s worries.
Maggie shook her head. “Didi probably did.”
“Oh, come on,” Steve said.
“You come on,” Maggie told him. “You always said there were two sides to the story, but she named it Hot Cakes. You know that made Letty almost crazier than anything.”
Aiden looked from Steve to Maggie and then back. “What do you mean? What about the name made Letty crazy?”
He’d heard some of the stories about Charlotte “Letty” McCaffery and Dorothy “Didi” Lancaster, best friends growing up, who started the bakery together—and then Didi’s betrayal—but it was very possible there were family stories he didn’t know. Now, more than ever, he was curious about the feud.
“Once it was doing well and she was getting ready to incorporate and make it an official business, Didi went to Mom and asked if she’d be her partner,” Steve said. Letty was his mother, but he’d had no interest in the bakery as a full-time job. Fortunately, his young wife had jumped at the chance to work with Letty and had eventually taken it over.
“Wait, Didi asked Letty to be her partner in Hot Cakes?” Aiden asked. He’d definitely never heard that part of the story.
Steve nodded. “Yep. They hadn’t spoken in months, but Didi credited her success to Mom’s recipe and told her, ‘They’re selling like hotcakes, Letty. Come on, let’s do this together.’” He shook his head. “Mom told her she could shove her hot cakes straight up her ass. So Didi went on and filed her official paperwork, including trademarking the original recipe, and the name Hot Cakes. When they first painted that on the side of their factory, I thought Mom was going to have a stroke.”
Aiden’s eyes were wide, he knew. Everyone around the table was listening raptly. “I have never heard this part of the story,” Aiden said.
He glanced at Zoe. She shook her head. Josie and Jane looked just as surprised.
“What I’ve heard is that the most popular cake among the men who would stop in before their work shifts was the butter cake,” Aiden said. “One day, one of the men asked Didi and Letty if they could wrap up several pieces and bring them out to the factory—when the farm implement factory was still here.”
Steve nodded. “He said if they could bring them out there, right to the men, they could sell a lot more. Mom, of course, said no. That would mean one of them needing to leave the bakery, and she had no way of knowing how much more to make and a dozen other excuses.”
“So Didi did it on her own. Just to see what would happen,” Aiden said. “She made extra cakes the night before at home, wrapped up individual pieces, and took them out there.”
“And sold out,” Steve said.
“But she couldn’t tell Letty because Letty would have been upset with her,” Aiden went on with the story he knew. “And she wanted to be sure it wasn’t just a one-time stroke of luck. She did it again. But word had spread and she ran out. Men promised to buy them if she’d bring extra the next day. She did. She made a couple of other kinds of cake too. Everything sold out. Then people would stop her and ask if she could come by their place of work to sell them some. It was the convenience of it that they liked. Pretty soon, she was doing it every morning before work. It went on for over a month before she told Letty about it. She was sure Letty would be excited because it was new business—people who didn’t have time to stop by or a way to get to the bakery before work but who wanted the cakes for lunch or snacks.”
“And Letty was absolutely not excited. She was furious. They had a huge fight about Didi going behind her back and using her recipes,” Steve said. “But Didi knew it was a great business plan.”
“So she kept doing it. With Letty’s butter cake recipe,” Maggie said.
Steve nodded. “She used other recipes for the other cakes, but that was the most popular one and the one people asked for when she tried to leave it off her menu. She adapted it a bit, but everyone—including Letty—knew it was essentially Letty’s recipe and the whole reason things took off for Didi.”
Aiden sat back in his chair. “But she offered Letty a chance to go into business with her and Letty turned her down.”
“She couldn’t have said yes to that,” Zoe said from across the table. “Didi took her recipe and then kept selling the cakes even after she knew Letty was upset. Didi chose making money over their friendship.”
<
br /> “Or was she just embarrassed Didi’s idea was better than her own?” Aiden asked.
“Better?” Zoe asked with a frown. “We make cakes that mean something. We make birthdays special. We’re a part of celebrations like weddings and graduations and retirements. People come to us for special occasions. Not just a wrapped-up snack cake people don’t think twice about when they wolf it down at lunch.”
Aiden took a deep breath. She was right. He wasn’t wrong. Didi hadn’t been wrong. But Letty hadn’t been wrong either.
“But Letty was too proud to expand her business and save her friendship,” Aiden said, his eyes on Zoe.
Zoe met his gaze. “Or was she brave enough to realize maybe that friendship wasn’t what she thought it was and to let it go in order to keep doing what she believed in?”
Okay, that was another way of looking at it.
He turned to Steve. “Was that why Letty never changed anything at the bakery? Because she was proving what she’d been doing from day one was right just as it was?”
“You’ve got it,” Steve said with a nod. “She wouldn’t even want to add a new pie after that because people might not like it. And that would be like admitting Didi had been right in thinking the bakery wasn’t already everything it could be.”
“Wow.” Aiden shook his head. Then looked at Zoe again. Surely, she could see that that level of stubbornness was too much.
Zoe just looked back at him, leaning on her forearms on the tabletop.
“Grandma told me if someone makes fun of you, you have to act like you love whatever they’re making fun of.”
Everyone looked at Henry as he scooped the last of his noodles into his mouth.
He had been, for the most part, ignoring everything they were talking about. Or at least, he’d seemed to be. Henry’s future plans had nothing to do with the bakery. He fully intended to come work for Cam and Aiden and one day take over their company. Probably by the time he was twenty-five, if they were all being honest.
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