She’d have to call Alanda and cancel the release party. Cancel her opening. She’d need to post the changes on her website and social media sites. There would be no way to reach everyone, not with all the fliers and all the people who’d seen the newspaper article. The author would be upset—not to mention Rosewood Press. They’d never trust her with another book signing.

She had so much to do. She pushed back from Aiden. “I need to call Alanda.”

“Hold up, not so fast. Don’t give up just yet. Let’s see if we can figure this out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out, Aiden. I have a—” She looked over his shoulder and back at him. “Situation. A very expensive situation, and I have no money to fix it. And even if I put it on a credit card or something . . . I’m out of time. We can’t get all this done by Tuesday.” The very idea was absurd. “We were cutting it tight as it was.”

He squeezed her arms. “I have money, Sophie. We can hire people to do the work. Brandon, from the hardware store, remember? He’ll know what to do, and he’ll know the people who can get it done. I’ll call him, and we’ll get the ball rolling, okay?”

“I can’t take your money, Aiden.”

He framed her face and brushed a tear away with his thumb. “Yes, you can. I have that prize money, remember? And I have a little set back besides. That should be enough to—”

“That award money is for you to use on your invention. I’m not taking that away from you.”

“You can pay me back when you get your insurance check.”

The door to the shop opened, sending Pippa on a rampage. Sophie grabbed the dog and soothed her as Haley appeared.

The young woman gaped at the sight of the tree. “Holy mackerel. Sophie, are you all right?”

Sophie wiped her face. “I’m fine. We both are. But my roof . . .”

“I heard the noise all the way from the coffee shop, but I couldn’t figure out what it was or where it came from. Holy mackerel.” Her gaze shot to Sophie. “Your grand opening!”

“I was telling Sophie we could get a crew in here and get this cleaned up.”

Sophie shook her head. “Give it up, Aiden. I appreciate it, I really do, but I’m not taking your money, and there’s no way we can fix this in time.”

“My dad has a chainsaw,” Haley said. “I’ll call him and ask him to come down and help. And I just got off work. We’ll have this mess hauled out of here before you know it.”

The door opened again, and the owners of the deli stepped inside. “Are you guys all right?” Anna asked.

“We saw the tree go down,” her husband, Dave, said.