Cassie Miles - Hook, Line and Shotgun Bride

Linda, the proprietor, stuck her head into the back room. “Hi, Angela. I’m busy out here. You go ahead and put on the gown. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

There was an informal sewing area in the corner with tables for cutting fabric, a couple of armless dress forms and a rack of clothes zipped into black garment bags with Linda’s logo emblazoned on the front. A hot pink label stuck to one of the bags had Angela’s name.

Since she hadn’t wanted a fancy gown for her second marriage, she’d picked out a strapless dress with a bit of lace and a matching jacket to cover her shoulders when it got colder at night.

Shane stood beside a sewing table. “This is strange.”

“What?”

“Right here, next to the scissors and spools, there’s a kitchen knife.”

When she took a closer look, anxiety shot through her. “It’s a boning knife. And it’s mine.”

“How do you know?”

“The red dot on the handle.” No one was allowed to touch her chef knives. When she wasn’t using them, she kept them tucked away in a locker in the restaurant office.

She unzipped the garment bag, pushed the plastic aside and stared in shock. Her wedding gown had been slashed to ribbons.

Unable to believe what she was seeing, Angela tugged the ragged edge of the ripped white fabric. The skirt had been sliced multiple times. Bits of lace hung like entrails around the bodice. The gown was ruined beyond repair.

Scared and confused, she turned away. On the table was the boning knife—her knife! Was it possible that she had done this? She couldn’t remember. Had she suffered a blackout?

The thought terrified her. True, she hadn’t been in her right mind lately. The lack of sleep and stress had taken their toll. Last night, she’d imagined headlights crashing through her kitchen window. But she hadn’t gone completely insane. Not yet, anyway.

Shane touched her shoulder. In a low voice, he asked, “What do you want to do?”

For one thing, she didn’t want Linda to see this disaster. The owner of the dress shop would have too many questions, and Angela didn’t have answers. “Get me out of here.”

“Done.”

He tossed the knife into the garment bag with the dress and zipped it up just as Linda bustled into the back room with her long, silk scarf flowing behind her.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “I had a mixup with the register. Thought I’d lost a hundred and fifty bucks. Then I remembered that I went to the bank last night.”

Linda was a lovable scatterbrain. But not crazy. Not like me. She thought of Neil’s diagnosis that she needed to see a psychologist. He might be right.

While Shane introduced himself, she gathered her wits, hoping to appear normal. Not that she needed to worry. When she was with Shane, other women hardly noticed her existence. Even without his hat, he was one hundred percent sexy cowboy.

He beamed a slow smile at Linda and said, “Angela is having second thoughts about the dress. She wants to take it home and decide if this is actually what she wants to wear.”

“Brides are all the same.” Linda grinned up at him. “Always fussing about the details. When I got married, I was as nervous as a squirrel on a highway, jumping from one median to another.”

When Angela forced herself to speak, her voice seemed to be detached from her body. “Remember that white suit I tried on before?”

“Indeed, I do. To tell the truth, I liked you better in that outfit than in the gown. The suit seemed more.” Linda flipped the end of her scarf and chuckled. “More suitable.”

“We’ll take both of them with us,” Shane said. “Then, Angela can make her decision later.”

“Fine with me,” Linda said. “But you still need alterations on the gown, Angela. You’ve been losing weight, and a strapless bodice needs to fit like a second skin.”

While Shane went to the front of the store with Linda to make arrangements, Angela let down her guard. She sank onto a stool beside the cutting table and stared, unfocused. What was wrong with her? The inside of her head whirled like a blender. The shelves and boxes in the storeroom seemed to be closing in on her. She was suffocating.

She didn’t remember taking the knife from the restaurant, and she sure as hell didn’t recall attacking her dress. Was she sleepwalking? Had she done this in a blackout? It didn’t happen. Dammit, I’m not crazy.

But if she hadn’t done this, that meant someone else had. Everybody who worked in this area knew that Linda often neglected to lock the back door, and Angela’s dress had been sitting here for several days, unguarded.

She stared at the garment bag. Who could have done this? Why did they want to sabotage her wedding?

SHANE ESCORTED HER through the alley. Though his hands were occupied with holding both dress bags, he was prepared to toss them aside if he saw an approaching threat. Last night, Angela had an intruder. This morning, her gown was attacked. Clearly, someone wanted to hurt her—or at the very least, terrorize her.

Adrenaline pumped through his veins, making him hypervigilant. Ironically, he realized that he was acting as her bodyguard. In a few weeks, that would be his regular job at PRESS—Premier Executive Security Systems. No longer a small-town deputy sheriff, he was already stepping into the world of big-city dangers.

When she clicked the lock to open her van, he placed the garment bags in the back and turned to her. “We can’t ignore what happened.”

“We can try.” Avoiding eye contact, she opened the driver’s-side door. “I still need to check with the florist and make sure the bouquets are—”

“The daisies will wait.” He caught hold of her arm, stopping her before she shot off in a different direction. “We need to figure out who did this.”

“How did you know about the daisies?”

“They’re your favorite flower. White daisies.” When she married Tom, it was winter and she settled for white roses. Now daisies were in season.

“I got my daisies,” she said, “even though Neil wanted orchids.”

That made sense. Orchids were hothouse flowers, expensive and delicate. Angela was a daisy person—cheerful and bright.

“You got me off the subject,” he said. “We need to investigate, starting here at Waffles.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not going to go marching into the restaurant and accuse my friends. These are people I work with, people I trust and care about.”

“They’re also the most likely suspects. They have access to your knives. They know—as you do—that it’s easy to slip in and out of the dress shop through the back entrance.”

She shook her head. “Nobody I know would be so mean.”

“Let’s think this through.” He gently took the car keys from her hand. “When was the last time you used your knives?”

When she shook her head, her high ponytail bounced. Sunlight picked out strands of gold in her soft brown hair. “I don’t remember.”

“Think about it. Were you at Waffles yesterday?”

“I came in early to help with the breakfast rush, but I didn’t unpack my knives. One of the waitresses was sick, and I filled in for her.”

“And the day before?”

He could see her calming down as she considered the facts. “I put in almost a full day, and I was in the kitchen. So I must have used my knives. Believe me, I would have noticed if one was missing. I’ve had that set for seven years.”

Seven years ago was before they met, before she’d married his cousin. He’d never really thought about that time in her life. Her youth. Her childhood. “How old were you?”

“Eighteen. I’d just graduated from the Cordon Bleu culinary school in London, and the knives were a present to myself—symbolic of my new career as a chef.”