So why, a little voice asked inside her, wasn’t she giving Miriam a chance to fight for them?

Cole scowled. “I just want to be doing something to take him down.”

“You are doing something, Cole,” Noelle said, patting his hand. “You’re doing whatever Miriam tells you to do.”

She felt good about the decision not to ruin Richard Blum’s life, until she found Miriam sitting on the floor in the library, curled up and crying. She knelt, and Miriam looked up at her with puffy eyes and mascara running down her cheeks.

“What happened?” she asked, unable to stifle her impulse to protect this woman, no matter what they were to each other right now. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I got an email from GoFundMe customer service,” Miriam said. “Someone reported us for fraud, and they are shutting us down while they investigate. We’ll get the money eventually,” she breathed raggedly, squeezing her eyes shut, “but not by the first. And we can’t raise any more while they investigate.”

“Richard?” Noelle asked, feeling her blood pressure skyrocket.

“Who else?”

Noelle took Miriam’s face in her hands, gasping at the skin contact.

Damn it. This wasn’t what she was here for. “Hey. Look at me. We still have the auction. Hannah was right that we needed a two-pronged plan. We are going to be okay. We just have to kick ass, which we are going to do.”

She stood up, flexing her fingers in a failed attempt to get her palms to stop tingling from the feel of Miriam’s cheek against them. Miriam fixed her ponytail, wiped her ruined mascara on her T-shirt, and nodded forcefully.

How was she even more beautiful like this?

Noelle stuffed her hands in her pockets and went to find Hannah.

Hannah was surrounded by Bloomers and, unexpectedly, Miriam’s Old Ladies. They’d known the Bloomers were coming, so Miriam had activities planned for them, but the Old Ladies were a surprise. Antique and junk dealers from all over the country had rolled in, suitcases full of small, strange gifts for Miriam.

A woman named Annie, who reminded Noelle of an aging sea witch who had mostly retired from evildoing, looked Noelle up and down and declared, “They don’t make women as hot now as they did in my day, but there are some lookers.”

When Noelle pulled Hannah aside to whisper the news about the GoFundMe, she let out a string of curse words that would make a sailor blush and went to try to fix it, after appointing Noelle the Old Lady wrangler.