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Smiling warmly, she sipped her coffee. “You’re fixing something I love. Or, at least, attempting to fix it. Henley is more than just a distillery to me. It’s my namesake, and my husband worked very hard to make it what it is today.”

Oh.

Because I was working for the distillery. Not because of the ridiculous infatuation with her son she wanted to quell, or that I yelled at him a few days ago? Not because of the dressing-down I’d given her husband in front of a room full of his peers when I was just a teenager?

She continued before I could reply, “I feel I should thank you for at least attempting to undo the damage done by that deranged woman.”

“Deranged?”

A cross expression marred her features for a single moment before it smoothed out again. “I try to be understanding of the women my son shows interest in. Attraction is inexplicable, after all. But I’m sure Ivy has not been shy in her tales of my son’s last paramour, and the foolishness that nearly destroyed my company.”

I chuckled over a sip of coffee. “Ivy says she tried to stop it.”

“Yes, well.” Nessa tilted her chin up. “No one bothered to ask my opinion.”

“A tragic oversight.”

“Indeed. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have a pair of capable women to balance all those men.”

Warmth spread through my body that had nothing to do with the coffee, and a sense of pride lifted my shoulders. “Thank you.”

She skillfully turned the conversation toward my time at Vanderbilt, then my job with the yoga studio.

“It was a good job,” I said, “but it wasn’t what I had envisioned for my life.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh? And what had you envisioned?”

“My undergrad studies were primarily focused on business and sociology, then I did my graduate work in gender studies. I’d hoped to use them to work for a non-profit, doing something that benefitted the less fortunate. Housing, food, helping families stay together, women in need. That sort of thing.”

Her gaze wandered over my face. “My, that’s quite noble.”

I busied my hands refilling both our cups. “I remember how it was when I was little. Sometimes we only had enough for me to eat, and not for my mom. I remember sleeping beside her in a coat under a pile of blankets because we couldn’t afford heat. Things got better as I aged, but those aren’t the sorts of experiences you forget.”

“I had no idea it was so bad for you as a child,” she said, accepting her filled cup.

Heat stung my cheeks. “Not at all. I didn’t mean for it to sound like misery. We were happy. There were some hard times is all.”

“Hard times make for a hardy individual. You should be proud of where you are. You’re a remarkable woman.”

But why? I had done nothing particularly noteworthy. Perhaps it was simply the flaw of the rich, that the hardest thing they could imagine suffering was being poor.

“Thank you, Mrs. Shepherd.”

“Nessa, dear.” Her warm smile reappeared. “So after Henley, what are your plans?”

“Well, I applied for a city job before starting at Henley—something with community housing—but they’re so slow. Still haven’t heard from them.”

She chuckled. “Dear girl, if you’re wanting to do good in the world, you don’t want a government job. What you want is a leadership position at a charitable organization. Why, you could even start your own foundation.”

I laughed at the sheer unreality of that. “Wouldn’t I need, like, an endowment to start a foundation?”

“Well, yes,” she said, as if this were both easy and obvious.

“I don’t really think that’s in the cards for me, Mrs. Shepherd.”

“Nessa.” She leveled her gaze at me.

“Sorry. Nessa.”