“That’s why I have you,” Bianca said, as if it were that simple.

Angi looked away, out to the street where Emma and Mariella happened to be walking by. She was supposed to go to the inn later for another round of prepping the food for a Sunday baby shower. Emma had installed a small-scale gourmet kitchen in the cottage she’d renovated that sat on the edge of the inn’s property, and Angi had been sneaking over late at night to manage her culinary duties.

She didn’t want to keep Emma or her guests awake, but she also couldn’t use her mother’s kitchen to test recipes for the upcoming weddings she was catering. Two events, two weeks in a row. The first was the Saturday before Christmas and the second would take place the following weekend just before the new year.

Of course, Bianca thought Angi was leaving at night to visit Gabe. How much different it would be to spend her nights in a handsome man’s warm bed being creative in a totally different way than with food? She nearly sighed at the thought.

“Yes,” Angi said, because how else could she respond? “You have me.”

Her mother frowned and studied her again. Angi pasted on a bright smile. “I’m going to head over to In Bloom to check out Iris’s reaction to the shop.”

At the end of the night, Mayor Grimes would announce the winner of the voting for the best-decorated shop. That winner would receive special ad placement on the town’s main website and social media sites for the remainder of the holiday season.

“I’ll see you there,” her mother said, glancing over her shoulder. “I want to check in with Dominic.”

“Mom, you’re supposed to be enjoying this night, as well. Not trying to come back to work.”

“Dom has been with us for over a decade.” Her mother tsked softly. “He’s a friend as well as an employee. I’m going to visit with my friend.”

Angi walked out of the restaurant and took a deep breath of the cool December air. She could smell the popcorn from the machine the hardware store had set up just outside its entrance and saw a line already forming in front of Sunnyside, where she knew Mary Ellen would be serving her famous hot chocolate and s’mores cookies.

There was a cheer to the air, an excitement that made Angi almost want to turn and run the other way. She didn’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits, and it was getting harder to keep up her energy on all fronts. Every moment she spent at the restaurant felt heavy, like the checked tablecloths were going to suffocate her with the weight of responsibility.

She pulled her jacket more tightly around her and commanded herself to get it together. Since returning to Magnolia and returning to work at the restaurant, she’d felt the silent judgment of the people she knew who thought she’d shamed her family by getting pregnant and coming back to her hometown. But in the past few weeks, she’d been on the receiving end of a new kind of respect. Part of it came from how she was helping her mom, but it also resulted from her ideas and stepping in for the Christmas on the Coast festival.