by Addison Fox
One or two might need pressing, but she didn’t have to brace herself for upset phone calls with stressed-out brides.
“A competitor, then? Someone who would want to see your business suffer.”
Cassidy pulled her attention from the rack of gowns, mentally cataloging the ones she’d press first. She knew his was a valid question—had already run through any number of similar thoughts—but it just didn’t play. Her showroom felt as if it had been searched, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on why she felt that way. “I can’t explain the instinct, but it seems like a long shot that someone would do this out of competitive spite. I haven’t even spoken to anyone in the business since a local bridal show in June. Two months is a long time to hold a grudge without any escalating behavior.”
“Anyone who would have the code to your alarm?” His voice was quiet—steady—and she appreciated he didn’t shy away from the difficult.
“No one beyond my partners and myself.”
He rubbed a hand over her shoulder, the small gesture as soothing as it was intoxicating. “I’ll call my buddy down. We’ll help you get everything cleaned up after the police go through here.”
“You don’t need to do that. Lilah and Violet can—”
His gaze narrowed, drinking her in, and she swallowed the last of her words.
“We’ll help.” A small smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “If you won’t allow me to get my white knight on, then consider it a matter of giving your landlady a thrill.”
A loud bark pulled her attention from the warmth of his touch, and she saw the flashing lights of the Dallas PD outside her front windows. “I’d better go get that.”
* * *
“I can’t believe the hottie down the lane is the one who came to your rescue,” Lilah Castle, baker extraordinaire and one of Cassidy’s two partners in Elegance and Lace, uttered for the third time from around her large latte.
“It must have been the tall one.” Violet Richardson, partner number two, had her own coffee and a speculative gaze as she stood with a notepad near a rack of ruined gowns.
“Define tall.” Lilah pushed a strand of cotton-candy pink behind her ear—her current color streak of choice amid a sea of blond—before letting out a rather lusty sigh. “Both owners I’ve seen are deliciously taller than average.”
Violet turned from her inspection, her eyes lighting up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “Let me amend my comment, then. Were you rescued by the long, rangy man with the sigh-worthy derriere and ugly dog?”
“Hey. Bailey was cute.” Although his mushed-in face with a steady line of drool earned the term “only a mother could love,” Cassidy had a soft spot for the boxer. “And I will be forever grateful for the sense of protection emanating from that large body.”
“The dog’s or the man’s?” Lilah’s smile was even faster than her retort.
Cassidy reluctantly grabbed a small broom to start picking up scattered seed pearls. “You’re as bad as Mrs. Beauregard. She’s been going on and on about the men who moved in down the street and how we need to meet them.”
“I can only hope to be as spry as Mrs. B. when I’m eighty. She’s got a good eye and she can spot a douchebag loser at twenty paces.”
“Lilah has a point,” Violet pointed out. “Mrs. B. has impeccable taste and knows her hotties. And I’ve met the other owner, Max Baldwin.”
“Oh. Oh!” Lilah broke in. “Is he the one with the tool belt?”
“I believe he’s a structural engineer.” Violet’s voice had gone prim, a distinct sign, Cassidy knew, that she’d noticed the tool belt.
“I bet Mrs. B. already has visions of matchmaking floating through her sweet little head.” Lilah downed another slug from her ever-present coffee cup.
“I suspect it’s more than matchmaking.” Violet brightened. “Rumor has it she had a wild affair with Max’s grandfather years ago. Maybe she sees it as renewing the sexy for another generation.”
“Where do you get this stuff?” Cassidy knew she should be surprised, but her friend had more information in her head—and significantly better connections—than half the data streams on Facebook.
Violet’s cat-’n’-cream smile matched her equally catlike green eyes. “I’m a pillar of the community and our business representative to the neighborhood. I hear things.”
“If ‘pillar of the community’ is code for ‘wicked gossip’ then I concur.” Lilah righted a fallen mannequin before dropping cross-legged to the floor next to it.
“None of it changes the fact that I’ve not yet met Cassidy’s rescuer, which, if his promise to return is kept, will be remedied soon.”
“I’m not a damn damsel in distress.” Cassidy reached for a small band in her pocket and dragged her hair into a thick ponytail.
“No, but you did have a scare.” Lilah’s normally quick grin had faded. “I’m really glad he was here when you needed him. And I’m baking an entire tray of cupcakes for you to take there as a thank-you gift.”
Cassidy couldn’t hold back the smile. Or the blessed feeling of normalcy that her friends could impart with a few teasing words.
Where would she be without the two of them?
She’d met Lilah Castle and Violet Richardson on their first day of their freshman year of college and they’d been a trio ever since. These women knew her. Got her.
And they always had her back.
“I bet it’s Anastasia Monroe. She’s been jealous of your latest line for the past three months.”
Cassidy couldn’t quite hold back the shocked look at Lilah’s words as she rekeyed in to the conversation. “One, it’s not nice to go around accusing people. And two, I hardly have a line.”
“Lilah sort of has a point. You did have three designs featured in the Brides of Dallas magazine.” Violet held the dressmakers’ dummy in place while Lilah made quick work repairing the base with a small handheld screwdriver.
“Let go, Vi, and let’s see if it’s sturdy.” Lilah sat back on her heels and pressed a hand to the base. With a satisfied nod, she stood after it held firm. “Better than before. Which is more than I can say for this place.”
Cassidy glanced around at Lilah’s words, their truth more than evident. The police had come and gone, leaving behind a couple of business cards and paperwork for her to fill out if there was anything missing. They had perked up when she’d mentioned the alarm and promised to look into the situation with the shop’s security provider, confirming if she’d forgotten to set it or if it had been turned off at some point. Beyond adding it to their investigation and promising a report she could turn into her insurance agent, there was little else the police could do.
All in all, relatively small comfort or help now that she was staring at two thousand square feet of destruction.
Tucker had left after the police departed and Lilah had arrived, but he’d promised to return with coffee and his partner, Max. Her friends’ continuous glances toward the front door weren’t lost on her.
Violet held up a delicate veil, a large rip evident in the center of the lace. The simple veil was one of Cassidy’s favorites and—unbidden—a well of tears filled her eyes before cascading over her cheeks.
“Why would someone do this?” Cassidy knew full well the tears were useless, but suddenly, the knowledge her sanctuary had been violated crashed over her in a wave. On a hard sob, she dropped the contents of her dustpan into a garbage can Violet had dragged to the middle of the room, then sat on one of several couches strategically positioned through the shop.
“Oh, Cass!” Lilah moved first, her thick Crocs thwapping on the floor as she crossed the room. “It’s all right.”
“No...no—” Another hard sob gripped her throat at the comforting arms that wrapped around her. “What if they come back? They know the alarm codes.”<
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The thought had slithered through her mind, taking root as she’d begun the slow slog of cleaning up the mess left by their intruder.
Or intruders.
The thought of more than one criminal traipsing through the store only brought another hard knot in her throat and another hot wave of tears.
“What if we’d been here? What were they after? And the destruction—” She broke off, struggled to catch her breath. “It’s mean. Vindictive. Evil.”
Lilah and Violet stayed by her side, flanking her both physically and emotionally, as the tears fell. And as the moments ticked past, the adrenaline fading along with her sobs, Cassidy knew another emotion.
Anger.
Raw and white-hot, its steady drumbeat filled her as she slowly dried her tears.
Someone had done this to her work. To the business she shared with her friends. To the neighborhood that had scratched and clawed its way from obscurity into a glittering jewel of commerce within the city she loved and called her home.
The light tinkle of shop bells rang out, dragging their collective attention toward the door. Tucker stepped through first, followed by another man Cassidy assumed was his partner, Max.
She took in their intimidating size, both large and impressively built, and could only feel their arrival somehow punctuated the moment.
“Looks like the cavalry just arrived.”
Violet’s voice was low, but Lilah managed to keep hers even lower, tinged with a breathless edge. “You know that saying. About cowboys. I think I finally understand it.”
“What saying?” Cassidy turned toward Lilah and brushed at her cheeks, dashing off the last few lingering tears.
“I could definitely save a few horses and be more than happy to ride those cowboys.”
Chapter 2
Tucker took note of Cassidy’s red-rimmed eyes and the supportive stance of her friends and knew her adrenaline rush had faded in full. Something primitive tugged at him, tightening his hands around the toolbox and drill he carried.
She could have been hurt. Worse, had she walked into her shop at the wrong moment, while someone was bent on destruction, she could have been killed.
Collateral damage to whatever else had taken place.
The Design District was an up-and-coming neighborhood but it still had some dodgy edges. Although any number of apartments and restaurants had sprung up around those edges in the past few years, slowly reclaiming the area as a trendy spot for work and play, the warehouses themselves could be prime picking for thieves. On their walk from their own offices, he and Max had thrown out various ideas as to who might benefit from robbing a store focused on weddings.
And when they came to the humbling realization that they knew next to nothing about weddings, Tucker knew they’d be a far better resource as a repair crew than as detectives.
That still hadn’t stopped him from placing a gun in the bottom of his toolbox for extra protection.
Tucker gestured his buddy through the door for introductions, and Max settled the large ladder they’d carried between them before turning to the women. He’d met Lilah earlier and had pinned her as the lighthearted one of the group, with her pink streak of hair, baker’s uniform and ready smile. She didn’t disappoint in that respect, that quick smile reappearing immediately along with a promise to provide goodies before she disappeared through the door that led to her half of the shop.
The other woman—Violet, with her long sweep of black hair and serious eyes—finished off the triumvirate, as he was quickly coming to think of them. She already knew Max from the neighborhood business meetings and Tucker finished off the introductions before setting his tools on the floor. “We came to help, so put us to work.”
“As far as we can tell, the main damage seems confined to up front in the showroom area.” Cassidy’s voice still held a slight quaver but he heard a note of steel clearly underneath. With each step and gesture toward destroyed merchandise or littered debris, the warrior goddess who had marched into her store this morning more fully reappeared.
Max followed Violet toward a heavy rack of dresses that needed righting, leaving Tucker a few moments with Cassidy. Her smile was warm and genuine and faded the last vestiges of her crying jag. “I can’t imagine Bailey was too happy to be left behind.”
“Since I left him with a rather large bone I suspect all’s right with his world.”
“Let him know a second one’s headed his way. A small token of my gratitude for the reassurance this morning.”
His gaze drifted toward a small corkscrew curl that had fallen out of her ponytail. The urge to reach out and tug that curl—as much to watch it spring back into place as to assuage his curiosity that her hair was as soft as he suspected—gripped him. With a step back, he let his gaze drift deliberately around the shop. “How long have you been in this space?”
“Almost three years now.”
“And you and your partners go to all those weddings?”
“Violet more than either Lilah or I. She’s a wedding planner so she’s much more involved in the actual event, as well as all the activity that leads up to it. Lilah mostly handles wedding cakes and I’ve got the bride’s dress and trousseau.”
Their business was pretty much what he expected, but it still didn’t explain why they’d been targeted for a robbery. Especially when it appeared as if the would-be thief was more hell-bent on destruction than any actual burglary. “I can’t imagine you make a lot of enemies in the wedding business.”
“You’d be surprised. It’s a competitive market.”
He heard the pride—and the unspoken words underneath the comment. “A lucrative one, as well?”
“It’s not nice to brag.”
“Facts are facts.” He shrugged it off but was curious about her response. With an attentive eye, he pushed past her beauty to focus on her more wholly.
There was an elegance to Cassidy Tate. A subtle grace that suggested good breeding and a veneer of class. Yet here she was, in one of Dallas’s up-and-coming neighborhoods, building a business with her friends.
He’d met more than his fair share of Dallas socialites, and while it wasn’t fair to paint them all with the same brush, his overall impression had been of money, polished beauty and the raw ambition to marry well. Beyond the polished beauty, he saw very little resemblance between that venomous set and the woman standing before him.
“Lilah thinks a competitor did this.” Cassidy fingered a length of lace in her hand. “I just don’t know if I agree.”
“The destruction suggests something personal.”
She shrugged. “Like the bragging, it’s not nice to go around accusing people of bad behavior.”
“And like I said, facts are facts.”
A loud shout from the back of the store had both of them rushing in the direction of Violet and Max. Tucker took off first, Cassidy in his wake, as they threaded their way through the destruction.
“What is it?”
“Look at this.” Max was on his knees in front of a small, squared-out area in the floor.
“A trapdoor?” Cassidy moved from her position behind him, and Tucker didn’t miss the way the casual brush of her arm lasered through him in a hot, heated rush.
“Have you ever seen this, Cass?” Violet stood on the other side of Max, pointing toward what appeared to be a filled-in hole.
Cassidy shook her head, confusion blooming in her eyes like a ripe flower. “No. Besides, I assumed this entire place sat on a slab of cement like all the other warehouses down here.”
Tucker had grown up in New York, so it had come as a surprise to him on one of his earliest architectural jobs that no one in Texas had basements. The region’s soil composition simply wasn’t conducive to a below-ground layer of structural support.
“It
is strange.” Violet shifted around the perimeter of the small square of concrete, her heels clicking on the exposed slab of floor where they had pulled away the rug.
Tucker held back a smile at the way Max’s gaze tracked over the woman’s long legs before Cassidy’s voice pulled him back to the situation at hand. “Mrs. B. already had the rug in here when we moved in. Remember?”
Violet tapped a lone high heel. “That’s right. One of her selling points for the lease. Fresh carpeting throughout the office areas.”
Tucker glanced at Max, well aware the man’s thoughts matched his own. “Why’d you think to pull it up?”
“The rug had a tear in it when I came back here to inspect the office,” Max said. “If I hadn’t been looking for anything out of place I’d likely have missed it.”
“We didn’t even see it until I noticed that my desk was out of place.” Violet pointed toward the floor, and Tucker could see the indentation of where the leg of the desk had left an outline in the carpet.
Cassidy dropped to her knees and ran her fingers over the handle built into the concrete. “You think this is what the burglar was really after?”
At her light frown, Tucker dropped to his haunches beside her. “It appears so. Do you have any idea what your landlady might be hiding?”
“No.” Cassidy’s gaze never left the handle, but he saw the moment her puzzlement shifted to something more. “But if this was what the burglar was looking for, that means his first trip was unsuccessful.”
* * *
“Mrs. Beauregard can’t be responsible.” Lilah stood over the sealed entrance, her hands on her hips and a stain of chocolate smeared across her white chef’s coat.
“And she’s certainly not the type to hide things,” Violet added.
“How do you know?” Max piped up from behind her. “She’s your landlady, not your grandmother.”
Lilah and Violet turned at the same time, their eyes flashing. Where Lilah’s gaze was purely defensive, Violet’s held something more. Challenge?
