LITMIR.BIZ

       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

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