Page 52 of Craving

Then it was time to open the bakery, and she didn’t have time to worry about it anymore. Customers blew in through the door, stamping their feet against the cold and curling their fingers around warm drinks. She smiled and waved away questions about the Elite Security installers busy putting up cameras by the front door, using the window incident as explanation. It was just a precaution, she said, smiling through her lies.

She thought about Frankie’s eyes following her when she’d left his shop, about the thousand dollars she’d refused to give him, about his threats to tell the whole town about her debts. She wondered again if this was a message. Be careful, the destruction whispered. I can destroy your life.

When Scarlett came through the door with Lucy by her side, Camilla came around the counter and threw her arms around her friends. Once they had coffees in their hands, they huddled around a table in the corner and Camilla filled them in.

Wide-eyed, Lucy shook her head. “Why are they targeting you?”

Camilla hid her startled reaction with a frown. Did her friends suspect she was in trouble? “Who?”

“Whoever did this!” Lucy waved a hand at the window, then at the back of the bakery to indicate the office.

“We don’t know if it’s the same people,” Camilla hedged, but her thoughts turned back to that dark place. She’d goaded Frankie Smith, and now her office was trashed. The message was loud and clear.

“Of course it’s the same people.” Lucy’s brows drew low over her eyes. “I had a bunch of spammy negative reviews on my online store recently, and someone tried to steal parcels I had ready to ship out to customers right out of the back seat of my car. I think someone is trying to kill small business in this town.”

Camilla frowned. “Who left the reviews? Who stole from you?”

Lucy spread her hands. “No idea. But my back window got smashed, and the reviews all appeared overnight afterward. None of them were from real customers. I checked. I’ve been trying to get the reviews taken down, but they’re still up.”

“Sorry, Lucy,” Camilla said, stretching her hand to pat the back of Lucy’s.

Lucy shook her head. “This town is falling apart.”

“You sound like Mr. Petrovski,” Scarlett said, lips twitching.

“Well, maybe he’s right! His neighbor was involved in a ring of thieves, and she abandoned her cat!” Lucy huffed. “Only a heartless monster would abandon their cat.”

“Can’t disagree there,” Camilla mumbled, heart heavy.

Then it was time to get back to work, so she said goodbye to her friends and moved behind the counter again. Marlon was outside, frowning at one of his workers on a ladder, and she found herself unable to look away. He stood in the bitter cold, his breath coming out in puffs, pointing to something in the eaves of the building. The sun was weak, but it still cast his face in a warm glow.

Camilla poured black coffee into a couple of mugs and went outside.

“How long until you get it up and running?” Marlon asked when she opened the door and slipped outside.

“An hour or two,” the man replied, then smiled at Camilla. “So, this is the woman that finally melted the boss’s heart, is it?”

“Elton,” Marlon warned.

Camilla handed them both their coffees and lifted the cream and sugar she’d brought out in question. When Elton shook his head and took a sip of the coffee black, she smiled at him. “Thank you for coming out here so early,” she said, neatly avoiding any mention of Marlon’s heart. If they spoke about that, they might start talking about her own heart, and that was a topic that she’d prefer to keep off-limits.

“The boss snaps his fingers, and I say how high.”

“That’s not how that expression goes,” Marlon grumbled, then frowned at Elton. “You know what? Get back to work.”

Elton winked at Camilla and turned back to the wires sticking out of the wall beside him.

“We’ll have to turn the power off for a few minutes in an hour or so,” Marlon said to her. “Once we have everything installed, we need to turn the power off so we can connect the system up and start testing. Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes without power, and testing will take about an hour.”

Camilla took a deep breath. “Okay. Thank you.”

Marlon moved closer, his hand stroking her upper arm. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Camilla answered, surprised that it was the truth. She tried to imagine how this morning would have gone without Marlon—and shuddered.

She would’ve arrived at the bakery before four in the morning and been a ball of nerves. She would’ve struggled to clean up the mess, and then she would have spun out in her own mind about what to do next. Now, her office was tidy again, she’d have a security system by the end of the day, and she could smile at customers and assure them everything was fine.

All because of Marlon.

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