Holly & the Grand Opening: Holly Lewis Mystery Series (The Holly Lewis Mystery Series Book 10) by Dianne Harman

Author:Dianne Harman [Harman, Dianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2020-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Holly felt more and more panicked the longer she and Lydia stared at the empty storage unit, neither one of them saying anything. She felt her heart begin to tighten, which was the first sign that she either wasn’t breathing deep enough or she was beginning to have a full-blown panic attack like the ones she’d read about.

Holly was sure it was both.

She took a step forward, as if maybe the boxes were still there, thinking perhaps they’d somehow been moved further back into one of the shadowed corners. She stepped inside the room and felt for the light switch along the wall, flicking it on.

There were no boxes.

“Holly,” Lydia whispered. She didn’t say anything else. They turned to face each other, and Holly knew she was about two breaths away from crying.

“Fiona’s never going to trust me again,” she said, and then she turned the light off and walked out, waiting for Lydia to join her in the fresh blanket of snow that was growing deeper and deeper. She closed the door to the storage unit slowly, still mildly shocked, and locked it. Not that it mattered anymore.

Lydia and Holly got back in her car, neither of them speaking as Holly put the key in the ignition and drove back to the manager’s office. Holly, afraid of losing the spare key, kept it pressed between her hand and the steering wheel.

She supposed she should have anticipated something like this, because things had been going really great the whole time Fiona had been gone. There hadn’t been any problems. No bookshelves had collapsed, no books had been stolen, and they hadn’t even had any rude customers. Something had to go wrong, that’s just the way things went in the world. She knew life was not always a fairy tale with a happy ever after ending.

When Fiona called with the news about her travel delay, she thought that was the unpleasant twist she’d almost been expecting. She certainly hadn’t anticipated the shocking discovery that all the books needed to stock the shelves for the grand opening of the new addition had been stolen.

None of the shelves in the new addition had been filled with books yet. They’d been waiting until it got closer to the grand opening, so that way the books wouldn’t get dusty, and they wouldn’t risk someone sneaking in and stealing one. Now, it seemed they hadn’t stolen just one, they’d stolen them all.

Holly parked her car and climbed out, taking the key with her. She knocked on the office door again, but she just wanted to cry and get back to Read It Again. She didn’t bother waiting for a response as she hurried inside, snow stuck to the bottom of her thick fleece-lined boots. She slid the key back over the desk to where the manager was sitting.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, swallowing down the lump forming in her throat. “Our storage unit was robbed.”

He grunted. “Wouldn’t be our fault, Miss. Didn’t you lose your key?”

Slowly, Holly nodded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.