“S’mores bars, anyone?” She holds the platter our way and half of those yummy bars are scooped up in a flash.
Juni holds four.
Georgie snorts. “Now look what you did. I’ll be peeling her off the ceiling in less than an hour. The best thing I could do is find her a man to take her off my hands for the night. What do you think of Darby, Juni?” She links arms with her daughter’s.
Juni squints in his direction. “He’s looking pretty good now that I have my Shirley Temple goggles on.”
Emmie laughs. “What do you think about magicians, Juni? The inn is about to be infiltrated with them.” She bites down on a smile as she looks to Leo. Here’s hoping Leo will morph into a magician tonight and make my clothes disappear. And maybe while he’s at it, take our relationship to new heights all at the same time.
New heights? Exactly how high does she want Leo Granger to take her?
Leo growls out a laugh. “Have I ever told you that I once dabbled in magic? I’m an expert at making clothes disappear.”
I give a wry smile his way. Smooth, Granger.
He takes the platter from her and sets it on the table before pulling her close.
“In fact”—his lips curl as he looks right into my bestie’s eyes—“I think this fall might just take us to new heights. I’m betting we can track down a Ferris wheel at a harvest festival or two.”
She belts out a laugh. For a second there, I thought he was reading my mind.
I roll my eyes his way.
Jasper wraps his arms around me. “How about you, Bizzy? Are you looking for a man to take you to new heights?”
Georgie pokes her head in between us. “You chose a fine time for hanky-panky. You’ve got a month before the two of you get hitched and you haven’t ironed out a single detail. Where are you going to live once you bite the big one? Bizzy still needs a dress. I bet you don’t have a decent suit picked out. And the flowers need to be ordered, a cake designed, and don’t get me started on the honeymoon. Where’re we headed, anyway?”
My mouth falls open as I look from Georgie to Jasper.
“Where are we headed?” I ask. “And by the way, what’s your father’s name?”
“My father?” Jasper inches back, perplexed by the question.
I shrug. “There’s still so much I feel we need to know about one another. And the wedding—it’s coming up so fast.”
“Bizzy.” His brows flex in the middle. “Are you trying to tell me you want to postpone the wedding?”
“What? No! I just want a crash course in Jasper Wilder family history.” I pull him closer by way of his tie.
“Nothing a ride on a Ferris wheel can’t accomplish.” His lips curve in the right direction.
“I’m afraid of heights. And large bodies of water—heck, all bodies of water. And have I ever mentioned I’m not a fan of tight spaces?”
Georgie bumps her shoulder to mine. “That’s right, Biz. You keep vying for that walk-in closet. See about getting a mother-in-law quarters as well. If you leave the inn, I’m leaving with you. Word on the supernatural street is that place is haunted.”
“I’m pretty sure all the ghosts have cleared the premises now that the killer has been caught. And I’m pretty sure I’m not leaving the inn. I like walking to work.” I twist my lips at Jasper. “Does that work for you?”
“As long as I get to wake up next to you, I don’t care if we’re on Mars. The commute would be a killer, but you’re worth it.”
A laugh rumbles through me as I reach up and rake my fingers through his glossy, thick hair.
“Good luck trying to get out of bed once you start waking up next to me,” I purr.
“I take it we’re destined to have a good night?”
“And a good morning.”
Georgie claps her hands. “Now we’re talking. How about a little afternoon delight? I’ve got a kaftan you can borrow that will have him firing his weapon into the ceiling just for fun.”
Jasper shakes his head. “I’m not one to misfire.”
Georgie smacks me. “Hear that? You’ll be knocked up by Christmas.”
Emmie gasps as she pulls Leo in close. “You’re going to try for a baby? This is so exciting!”
Macy appears in our midst once again like the blonde and sassy apparition she is.
“You’re already knocked up?” she muses as she takes us in. “Nice to know you don’t waste any time. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Mom. But it would be fun to watch Dad clutch a shotgun at the wedding. And here I thought it would be me with a full uterus on my big day. Go figure.”
Leo chuckles as he looks to Jasper. “Congratulations, Dad. Let me know if you need help picking out a minivan. My cousin owns a used car lot.”
I look up at Jasper. “They’re hilarious.”
He nods as his searing gray eyes smolder into mine. “And I’m hilariously, deliriously in love with you.” He lands a simple kiss over my lips and through his mind a thousand thoughts sail—a place to live, wedding cake, flowers, a suit, a honeymoon, a minivan, a baby, and finally the two of us snuggled up before a roaring fire with Fish and Sherlock Bones seated on either side of a bassinet.
I pull back and bite down on my lower lip.
“It’s happening,” he whispers right over my lips. “And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Georgie leans in. “Not even for a two-seater Dodge Viper and a club full of naked women?” She shrugs up at him. “Just thought I’d ask.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve got a truck I like and a woman I love.” He dips his lips directly over my ear. “How about we blow this joint, pick up some dinner, and find other ways to entertain ourselves?”
“We could always practice for the honeymoon.”
A wicked grin rises on his lips as we quickly say goodnight and make a break for the door.
He leans in. “We’re not really taking Georgie on our honeymoon, are we?”
“God, I hope not. But, stranger things have happened.”
He chuckles. “I call a moratorium on all things strange.”
“And just when I was going to show you a few stealth moves behind closed doors.”
Jasper picks me up once we hit the balmy night air and races me to his truck.
If history proves anything, strange things are bound to happen to us.
And for once, it doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.
*Thank you so much for reading! We hope you had a blast with Bizzy and her friends. Need more Cider Cove? Be sure to pick up Just Buried (Country Cottage Mysteries 9) coming up NEXT! Bizzy is getting married and someone is getting buried.
An innkeeper who reads minds. An ornery detective. And a trail of bodies. Cider Cove is the premiere destination for murder.
***Includes RECIPE
My name is Bizzy Baker, and I can read minds—not every mind, not every time but most of the time and believe me when I say it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s September and that means two things: Fall is descending on Cider Cove, and my wedding day is almost at hand. And as if preparing for my wedding wasn’t enough, there’s another wedding at the inn that I have to tend to. An old friend from college is getting married right here at the inn. Add a pushy mother-in-law to be, and a wedding party at war—and it's enough to make me want to elope. But when someone in the wedding party ends up dead, it puts a damper on the festivities all the way around.
Bizzy Baker runs the Country Cottage Inn, has the ability to pry into the darkest recesses of both the human and animal mind, and has just stumbled upon a body. With the help of her kitten, Fish, a mutt named Sherlock Bones and an ornery yet dangerously good looking homicide detective, Bizzy is determined to find the killer.
The Country Cottage Inn is known for its hospitality. Leaving can be murder.
Be sure to pick up Just Buried (Country Cottage Mysteries 9) coming up NEXT! Bizzy is getting married and someone is getting buried.
Love your books with humor, sass
and murder? You’ll devour the Murder in the Mix Series!
Start at the beginning! Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies (Murder in the Mix 1)
Enjoy this preview. Happy reading!
I see dead people.
Okay, so I don’t see dead people—at least not on the regular—I see dead pets. Yes, pets. At first, I had no idea what these hologram-like beasts were up to until after an unfortunate run of something akin to trial and error that I concluded each dead pet was some sort of a harbinger for its previous owner, a very, very bad omen if you will. Sometimes I see them floating around willy-nilly in a crowd and it’s hard to decipher exactly who the bad luck is coming for. But on occasion, I see them attached firmly to the side of whomever the incoming disaster is set to strike. I’m not sure why this is my lot in life. In fact, my lot in life hasn’t been so stellar in general. My birth mother thought it was a brilliant idea to leave me on the floor of a firehouse, and that’s where a brave and thankfully curious firefighter spotted me, swaddled up and squirming. It just so happens that I was adopted by that sweet man, Joseph Lemon, and his wife, Miranda, and gifted a book-loving big sister, Lainey, currently Honey Hollow’s lead librarian, as well as a feisty and shenanigan-prone younger sister, Meg, who is also known as Madge the Badge on the Las Vegas female wrestling circuit. And being that Las Vegas and all of its glittery wrestling venues are a good distance from Honey Hollow, Vermont, we don’t see her very often.
But back to that strange gift of mine, or curse as it more often than not feels—I have zero clue where it came from or why, or even the major significance of it. A part of me has always believed that something alarmingly supernatural occurred around the time of my birth, and that’s exactly why my birth mama decided she so desperately needed to offload a seven-pound chunk of bad luck.
The very first time I put the furry-dearly-departed and outright chaos together was when I was seven and I saw the flicker of a barely-there turtle swimming next to Otis Fisher’s ear. Later that day, Otis fell from a tree and broke his arm. At the time, I wasn’t too sorry about it either. That boy had a mad hankering for pulling on my pigtails. And as fate would have it, the boy who lived to tease me, one day admitted to having a mad crush on yours truly. And post that amorous admission we dated on and off for about three years. If I thought that boy was annoying in elementary school, he outdid himself in high school. In fact, Otis—or Bear as he’s affectionately known around these parts for having once chased off a black bear before it could invade and devour an entire herd of innocent tourists who were on a leaf peeping tour—is one of the reasons I left Honey Hollow to begin with. No sooner did my high school diploma cool off than I hightailed it to New York—Columbia University to be exact—where I’ve had the displeasure to ogle other people’s dead pets.
I’m quick to push what I’ve affectionately dubbed the New York Disaster out of my mind as I take a step outside of my apartment. It’s a duplex, actually, and my landlords, the Simonson sisters, live upstairs. They’re the primary reason I’m headed out on this unforgivably crisp September morning wearing my Sunday best, even though it’s smack in the middle of the week, Wednesday. Usually, I’d be happily snug in my favorite jeans, sporting my comfiest sweatshirt with my hair in a ponytail, and on my way to the Honey Pot Diner where I’m currently employed as the chief baker, not that there’s anyone baking underneath me but, hey, I like the title. Instead, I’m stuffed in a pencil skirt, two sizes too small, and a blouse that looks as if I swiped it off a mannequin at Goodwill, partially because I did. Okay, so I don’t own many Sunday clothes per se, but only because the local church is all about casual attire. They’re far more concerned with keeping your soul free from the flames than they are about your accruements, but I digress. I’m not headed to work or any holy house in the great state of Vermont. I’m headed to court—small claims court to be exact—all the way over in Ashford County.
Just as I’m about to head to my beat-up old hatchback, I spot both the aforementioned Simonson sisters at the foot of the driveway squabbling amongst themselves about who knows what—most likely me. It is me they’re hauling to court after all, and over something completely ridiculous.
It just so happens that last summer at the county fair my blueberry buckle pie won the coveted blue ribbon in its division, and it seemed as if all of Ashford County were thrilled for me, at least all of the townsfolk here in Honey Hollow. But the Simonson sisters were decidedly not enthused in the least. Sometime between the taste test and the judging, someone edited my entry to read Simple Simonson Pie and crossed out the all-important part about the blueberry buckle. Regretfully, a riot of laughter ensued, mostly from the fine, and, might I add, intuitive folk here in Honey Hollow, but I swear on all that is holy that good time only lasted about three thrilling minutes before I made the correction. Although, to hear Mora Anne and Merilee tell it, the aftermath not only bruised their egos and reputation but managed to cause a retail apocalypse down at the shop they own and run. It turns out, The Busy Bee Craft Shop was short on patrons and dollar bills alike and had a difficult time paying its rent last month, so the only logical solution they could come up with was to sue me for every last red cent.
Both sisters are dressed head to toe in long velvet coats with ruffled shirts peeking out from underneath like a couple of throwbacks from some long-forgotten steampunk era. It’s eerie the way they choose to dress alike each and every day despite the fact they’ve been on the planet for twenty-six long years—and twenty-seven respectively. I know this because I happen to be the exact same age as Merilee. We’ve all grown up together, but the way they treat me you’d think they were my bitter and scorned elders.
Merilee snarls as if she were rabid. “Well, look who’s here? If it isn’t Honey Hollow’s favorite jester who will soon be performing live in court.” Those narrow slits she calls eyes light up like cauldrons. The sisters have always held a witchy appeal to me, what with their long, dark, stringy hair and bony, long fingers. The fact they look as if they suck on lemons day and night doesn’t exactly help their plight. “Are you ready to have your bank account turned inside out?”
I scoff at the thought. If they think this is the day they hit a financial jackpot, they’d better think again. Working shifts at the Honey Pot Diner doesn’t afford me much of a bank account. The only thing in my savings at the moment is enough to cover my rent and Pancake’s Fancy Beast cat food. I’ve had Pancake now for over a year, and he officially qualifies as the greatest love of my life.
I glance over to the living room window where he’s currently monitoring the situation while licking his paw. Pancake is a butter yellow Himalayan with a rusty-tipped tail and dart of a line running between his eyes. He is a precious little angel now that he’s no longer using my leather ottoman as a scratching post and chewing down all the cables and cords he could get his hungry little paws on. The entire apartment has been cat-proofed, and Pancake hasn’t forgiven me yet.
An icy breeze picks up and the row of liquid ambers and maples that lines the street shed the first smattering of red and gold fall leaves. I steal a moment to take in the glory of nature on full display around the two wicked witches determined to make my life a living hell. Our little corner of Vermont has a habit of turning into a golden and ruby wonderland this time of year, so much so that the leaf peeping keeps the tourists coming in strong right up until winter.
Speaking of tourist traps, the Honey Hollow Apple Festival is coming up later this month, and I’ve been asked to supply the pies for the occasion. After my shift was over at the Honey Pot last night, I baked two dozen personal-sized caramel apple pies—cutie pies as I like to call them—and I need to deliver them straight to the orchard this afternoon because the owners requested a sample for their employees. My guess is they want to be sure my baking skills are up to snuff before they live to regret the decision come the day of the festival. But I guarantee they’ll far from regret it. In fact, the only thing they might regret is not ordering enough to keep up with
demand. It took me weeks to perfect the right combination of caramel and spices, and I even threw in a handful of crushed walnuts into each tiny pie to give it a little crunch. But it’s that buttery caramel that steals the limelight from those golden delicious apples. It’s so smooth and creamy, my best friend Keelie and I spent an hour last night licking the bowls clean ourselves.
I can’t help but sigh over at the two beady-eyed siblings who relish my financial undoing. “I won’t be having my bank account turned in any direction this morning because there isn’t a judge on this planet who would side with—” I’m about to lay into the Simonson sisters with every colorful word in my lexicon when something akin to a flame flickers around Merilee’s ankle. For a brief and fleeting moment, I think it’s simply a stray leaf, but suddenly that flicker materializes into the clear outline of a long-lost, dearly departed orange tabby that I’m guessing once belonged to one of the shrews before me.
“Ha!” Mora Anne scoffs as she takes a step in close. “She can’t finish the sentence because she knows she’s guilty. Just admit it and whip out your checkbook. Save us all the trouble of driving to Ashford. We’re meeting with Darlene Grand this afternoon to secure a booth for the festival. We don’t have a lot of time to dilly-dally with you over a handful of change. Hand it over right now and we can all get on with our day.”
I take a moment to scowl at the surly sisters. Since when is three thousand eight hundred dollars a handful of change? And if it’s so darn piddly, why bother to sue me to begin with?
The ghostly cat twirls around Merilee’s left foot before pausing to look up at me, and I would bet my life that feisty feline just smiled. The pets I see are never skeletal or gruesomely decomposing but clear as vellum versions of themselves in their plush and fluffy prime. On the rare occasion, I do see a once-upon-a-person, but neither the pets nor the people breathe a single word to me. I’m guessing the lack of vocal cords has something to do with it. And, believe you me, I am more than grateful.
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