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.”
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.”
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
