Cassidy turned his words over in her mind. She carried merchandised stock from several major designers, as well as her own creations. Although she’d been written up in several bridal magazines and had been steadily building her reputation since getting out of college, she hardly considered her store a mecca of high-value goods.
“A fair amount, I suppose, if you added up all my current stock. But it doesn’t make sense. If someone wanted the dresses, then why didn’t they take them? I’ll have to do inventory, but I don’t immediately see any that are obviously missing. And that one over there—” she pointed out one of the well-known designers “—is worth quite a bit and is untouched. Other than a heck of a lot of destruction I don’t see what they were after.”
Another round of anxiety coated her stomach in acid. She had several fittings this week and three bridesmaids were scheduled to pick up their gowns later that day. She raced toward the small area where she kept completed alterations, pleased to see the dresses were all there.
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.
