“You being nice makes me want to cry more,” Angi said with a watery laugh. “I must be pretty bad off if you’re not throwing verbal jabs.”

“What’s going on, Ang?” Emma came to stand next to Mariella. “Is it the workload between here and the restaurant? As much as we need you—”

“Drew got suspended today,” she said, the words sounding no less awful now than they had when she’d shared them with her mom earlier.

“Not your Drew.” Emma shook her head.

“No way,” Mariella agreed. “That kid is pure as the driven snow.”

“For fighting,” Angi said with a sigh.

Emma opened the wine fridge tucked under the counter on the edge of the island. “We need to sit down for this.”

A chime dinged as the innkeeper pulled out a bottle of pinot grigio. “Start without me. I think the rest of the guests are back from dinner in town. Let me just check on them.”

She handed the bottle to Angi and hurried from the room.

“Would it be bad if I started drinking straight from the bottle?” she asked Mariella.

“Been there done that,” Mariella answered, grabbing three wineglasses from a cabinet. “Definitely don’t recommend it.”

The bottle had a screw-on top, and Angi had to admit at that moment she appreciated not having to work for something. She poured the wine and carried two glasses to the kitchen table.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Mariella said with more emotion than she usually displayed. “I know what it’s like to have people kick you when you’re down.”

“Speaking of that...” Angi sipped the dry white. “Can’t you petition to have that video of you taken down or something? It doesn’t seem right to have one mistake haunt you.”

Mariella shrugged and brushed a lock of pale blond hair away from her face. “I don’t care at this point. Plus, it’s a good reminder of a person I don’t ever want to become again.”

“Do you watch it?”

“Oh, no. God, no.”

Before coming to Magnolia, Mariella Jacob had been one of the biggest names in the fashion world. She’d created a bridal empire and, from what Angi understood, was in the process of inking a deal to expand into ready-to-wear fashion. Then she’d discovered that her fiancé was having an affair with one of her clients. Mariella had shown up to the woman’s wedding and made a huge, destructive scene. One that had been recorded by several guests at the ceremony and quickly picked up by tabloids and uploaded to various sites online.

The wedding had been ruined, right along with Mariella’s reputation. The following day she’d been fired by the board of directors from the company she founded.

“What would have happened if you hadn’t left?” Angi asked the question she’d wondered about since hearing Mariella’s story. “What if you’d stayed and fought for your business?”

The blonde traced a finger along the rim of her wineglass without taking a drink. Angi had never seen Mariella finish a full drink.