* * *

I should’ve known Nathan’s mother would turn up eventually.

He’d been run out of town.

Not that I didn’t think that Rowan was a man of his word, I just didn’t think that Nathan was smart enough to stay away. To let Rowan keep him away. I made a mental note to talk to Rowan about that. We’d never really properly addressed what had happened and why he did it. We’d been busy.

But whatever Rowan’s threat had been, it had obviously stuck. From what I heard of town gossip, Nathan was in New York, working with some celebrity real estate firm.

I was sure most of that gossip came from the woman wearing the tailored pantsuit circa the Hilary Clinton presidential campaign. Ditto with the haircut.

She was doing damage control for her son. Saving face in front of the country club, making sure their precious reputation stayed intact. I knew how much those things meant to her because she’d reminded me. Reminded me that I came from nothing, of all the things that would be expected of me when I married her son. Namely giving up my business, my career, so I could get the hairstyle, the pearls, and start popping out babies.

I’d kindly told her that wasn’t going to happen.

When she found out that I was not only former trailer trash but former trailer trash that she couldn’t mold into something that would be palatable for her and her family, she began to actively dislike me. Of course, she never said anything outright, never did anything I could bring to Nathan. She was covert about her insults, about the ways she reminded me I was too big for the designer dresses everyone else was wearing, how my side of the church would be empty because I didn’t have a family. Nathan might’ve noticed if he’d tried to pay attention to me. But he didn’t. He let his mother treat me however she wished without stepping in or standing up for me.

And when she walked through the door of the bakery, nose turned up in distaste, I thought, not for the first time, how glad I was that I didn’t have to deal with that woman for the rest of my life.

I had a feeling that I’d have to deal with her at some point, though. Not because I’d called off the wedding—she’d already spat her venom at me about that—but because Nathan was no longer in town. No longer the big man in the small town. No longer the son she could brag about at her charity lunches.

And she was going to blame me. Because she could never see Nathan for what he was, and I was the easy scapegoat for anything and everything that happened in his life since he met me.

“Why don’t you go out back, babe?” Fiona asked me, her gaze on the woman in Chanel, clutching her purse to her body like she was walking through a bad neighborhood.