He nodded. “Loud and clear, Belle. Loud and clear.”
Matthew was next, and his speech made my eyes water.
“I haven’t known the bride all that long, but I feel like she’s family to me, and I hope she feels the same way. I’ve known her good for nothing husband here for a long time. Y’all think he’s a good man, but you’re wrong.”
Dylan’s mouth opened, but not in fear, more in sarcasm.
“He’s a great man,” Matthew said. “And he loves that woman more than any of you know. I spent many a night in Atlanta listening to him talk about the girl back home, the one that stole his heart, and the one that he regretted letting go. When he finally decided to move back to Bramblett County to win her back, I worried he couldn’t do it, but now, watching them together after all this time, I know they were meant to be.”
I nudged my husband. “I never knew.”
He wrapped his arm around me. “My heart couldn’t let you go, and I knew I had to get you back.”
“I love you.”
“Love you more.”
The night went by in a flash, but not nearly as quickly as the wedding.
I wished I could savor every minute of it, and I tried, I did, but time sped up, and even though I appreciated the beautiful ceremony, it was just too darn quick.
One minute, Belle was fluffing my train before she walked the gorgeous white carpeted path from the stairs of the castle to the altar, and the next, Dylan was waking me up on our hotel bed, and I was still in my dress.
“How long have I been sleeping?”
“Three hours.”
“Wow.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “I can’t believe I crashed like that.”
“You’ve had a lot going on.”
“You did, too.”
He kissed my forehead. “You ready to finish the night, Mrs. Roberts?”
“I am, Mr. Sprayberry Roberts.”
“Cute, but that’s not on the marriage license.”
“Are you sure?” I tossed on a casual pink and white striped sundress and pulled my hair into a ponytail. “An easy fix if it’s not.”
We walked into the lobby of the hotel and greeted our guests. The reception had been small, with just close family and those surprise friends, but we did all the traditional things even though I had to be gently reminded of a few, like the violin playing the right song for our first dance.
“I can’t believe you didn’t recognize it,” Belle said. “It was clear as day.”
“I had a lot going on. You just wait. If you ever get married, you’ll understand.”
“If I ever get married? Oh, I’m getting married, we’ll just have to see who the lucky guy is.”
Matthew raised his hand. “Pick me.”
“Wait, is that a proposal?” Dylan asked. “Way to steal the spotlight.”
Matthew grabbed Belle and pulled her close. “Let’s just call it a bid for the job.”
“You’ve got a lot of courtin’ to do, big guy,” she said.
“I’ll give it my best shot.”
Momma rushed over, her mascara bleeding down just under her eyes. She’d cried through the whole wedding, and even the quick reception. I took a tissue from my small purse and wiped the marks away.
“Oh honey, you looked just beautiful up there,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head.”
“Well, just remember that when you hear something about me through the gossip train, okay?”
She laughed. “My momma always said a small-town’s gossip was better than the nightly news.”
Bonnie laughed. “Now we know how come Lilybit’s always talking about her momma. She gets it from her.”
“My momma always told me to keep my knees together and my mouth shut,” Henrietta said.
Belle snorted. “I bet she was a hoot.”
Henrietta shrugged. “Not as much as me.”
I pulled Belle aside, and we walked over to the café at the start of the hill to the castle. “By the way, how did you get them here? The flight was expensive. They don’t have that kind of money.”
A man in a fedora and a three-piece suit sat at the head table with a line of men and women leading to him. Each person took a turn kissing the man’s ring.
“What’s up with that?” Belle asked.
I shrugged.
“So yeah, Dylan paid for their flights and their hotel rooms. It was his idea. I just set everything up. Made sure they were packed, got them to the airport, that kind of thing.”
“Dylan paid for it?”
“Honey, looks like your husband’s got a stash of cash you don’t know about.”
The sun set, turning the ocean a deeper blue and the sky a range of lovely burnt orange to various shades of purple.
It was pure heaven, just like I’d imagined.
Dylan and Matthew walked up with the four musketeers, and Bonnie didn’t shy away from speaking her mind again. “What’s all the fuss about that man’s ring?” She wobbled over to him, and two large men in black suits immediately stood up and blocked her from even seeing the man at all. They said something in Italian, and a woman nearby grabbed a hold of Bonnie’s arm and led her back to us.
“That’s Raimondo Angelini. He’s the Don. You no walk up to him without waiting in line.” She shook her finger at Bonnie. “Is no good. Bad manners.”
“What’s a Don?” Bonnie asked.
Dylan pulled out the seat next to him. “Here. Sit.” He helped her push in the chair.
I thanked the woman for rescuing our friend.
“A Don is the head of the mafia here. He’s a big man in the community, and his position demands respect, even from tourists,” Dylan said.
“That man’s a criminal?” Billy Ray asked.
“Shh,” I said. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“Should have brought the clubs,” Old Man Goodson said.
“And the bats,” Henrietta added.
My mother had just walked up then. “What would you need a bat for?”
“Please, don’t,” I begged.
But it didn’t matter. Bonnie and the gang filled her in on their need to protect me, and Dylan and I spent an hour being lectured about my safety.
Momma even threatened to move back, and while I’d love to have my family around to visit more, I was excited to build my home with Bo and my husband.
Because that was exactly how things were meant to be.
To be notified of future releases and receive a free e-book, visit carolynridderaspenson.com
Follow Carolyn at
Carolynridderaspenson.com
Facebook
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Jen and my favorite proofreader JC Wing, and my friends and family who’ve supported me as I’ve traveled along this writing journey.
A special thank you and congratulations to Carole Craddock. Carole won the contest to be killed off in Realtor Rub Out, and because she has a cookie fetish (so I’m told) her character did, too. I have it on very good authority though, that Carole isn’t a business stealer. In fact, she’s not even a real estate agent, so there is that. Carole, watch those cookies!
Read on for a peek at Carolyn’s new paranormal cozy series, and the first book, Get Up and Ghost, A Chantilly Adair Psychic Medium Cozy Mystery Series available now.
Get Up and Ghost
About The Author
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson currently calls the Atlanta suburbs home, but can't rule out her other two homes, Indianapolis and somewhere in the Chicago suburbs.
She is old enough to share her empty nest with her husband, two dogs and two cats, all of which she strongly obsesses over repeatedly noted on her Facebook and Instagram accounts, and is working on forgiving her kids for growing up and leaving the nest. When she is not writing, editing, playing with her animals or contemplating forgiving her kids, she is sitting at Starbucks listening in on people's conversations and taking notes, because that stu
ff is great for book ideas.
On a more professional note, she is the bestselling author of the Angela Panther mystery series featuring several full-length novels and novellas as well as the Lily Sprayberry Realtor Cozy Mystery series, and a collection of romantic novellas.
Other Books By
Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
The Angela Panther Mystery Series
Unfinished Business
Unbreakable Bonds
Uncharted Territory
Unexpected Outcomes
Unbinding Love
The Christmas Elf
The Ghosts
Undetermined Events
The Event
The Inn at Laurel Creek Contemporary Romance Novella Series
The Inn at Laurel Creek
Zoe & Daniel’s Story
The Lily Sprayberry Realtor Cozy Mystery Series
Deal Gone Dead
Decluttered and Dead
The Scarecrow Snuff Out
Sleigh Bells & Sleuthing (A Holiday Author Novella Collection featuring Lily Sprayberry)
Signed, Sealed and Dead
Bidding War Break-In
Open House Heist
Realtor Rub Out
The Chantilly Adair Psychic Medium Cozy Mystery Series
Get Up and Ghost
Ghosts Are People Too
Author Shared Series
Mourning Crisis
The Funeral Fakers Series
Independent Novellas
Santa’s Gift A Cumming Christmas Novella
Authors Need Love!
If you enjoyed this book then I’d really appreciate it if you would post a short review on Amazon. Reviews help authors grow as writers and help readers find our books.
You can find the book listing here: Realtor Rub Out
Read on for a sneak peek into Get Up and Ghost A Chantilly Adair Psychic Medium Cozy Mystery, the first book in Carolyn’s new Chantilly Adair Psychic Medium Cozy Mystery series
Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll have a chance to win prizes and learn about other authors, at carolynridderaspenson.com
Get Up and Ghost
A Chantilly Adair Psychic Medium Cozy Mystery
Agnes Hamilton hanged herself from a ceiling rafter of the two-story foyer of her home wearing her wedding dress for a wedding that never happened. Lying on the ground below her was a letter from her fiancé, John Dilts suggesting he’d run off with another woman and planned to marry her.
Agnes was a tomboy of sorts and could lasso a bull better than half the men in town, so no one questioned how a twenty-year-old woman no more than five feet tall could get a rope all the way up to a rafter like that. Her pa, John Hamilton’s ladder leaned up against the wall, so the town knew she’d used that, and even though she’d killed herself, and it was tragic, there was awe in the talk of her lassoing and roping skills ever since that fateful day in 1872.
Her pa was the one that found her. He’d come in from a two day trip to South Carolina to her hanging there, all bloated and swollen-like. John Hamilton climbed up the ladder, reached for his little girl, and cut the rope. Rumor has it when she hit the ground, her arm came off.
I read the file for Hamilton House, a historic home turned restaurant in my home town, Castleberry Georgia. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what’s written for a historic home like this?”
Delphina Beauregard, or Del for short, the owner of Community Coffee, the best coffee shop this side of the Mason-Dixon Line, poured me a fresh cup of her most robust brew. “You talkin’ to yourself again, sugar pie?”
I stabbed my index finger onto the piece of paper repeatedly. “Look at this. Who writes this stuff, kids in elementary school?”
She gazed at the document and read it out loud. When she finished, she walked away saying, “You’re the gal with the big college diploma, you tell me.”
I threw a packet of sugar at her backside as she sashayed away. “You’re no help.”
She flipped around and winked at me. “I filled your cup mighty fine, didn’t I, sugar?”
“That you did Del, that you did.” I smelled alluring, smoky scent with a hint of hazelnut drink before taking another sip. I loved the aroma of freshly brewed, steaming hot coffee. I loved it more than the taste of the stuff itself. The scent was like a warm, cozy blanket wrapped around me on a cold winter’s night, and a refreshing reminder of the coming season during the never-ending boiling summers of northern Georgia. And that’s what we were in at the moment, a never-ending bout of humid heat with temperatures topping out at 98 degrees and higher every day for the past three weeks. August in Georgia was hotter than Hades.
Thelma Sayers scooted her chair across the floor to my table. “What’s that you’re working on now, Chantilly?”
Del hollered at her from behind the counter. “There you go again scratching up my floor. Why can’t you just sit in the chairs that go with the table?”
Thelma Sayers recently purchased a new pair of hearing aids, one of those fancy kind that probably cost more than they were worth. She adjusted the one in her right ear, the ear closest to the counter. “That’s better. Now I can’t hear that old bag yelling at me.”
“In her defense, you’re scratching her wood floor moving the chairs on it.”
She rolled her overly made up eyes. “Well, that’s her problem. She knows I got me a bad sciatica, and I can’t sit in those chairs without the cushions. If she got chairs to match this one, I wouldn’t have to ruin her floor.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. “I’m working on the new copy for the Hamilton House.” I tucked my pencil behind my ear. “Do you know who wrote this originally?”
She moved her large leopard print glasses, ones that went out of style in the 80s, to the tip of her nose and read the paper. “’Course I do. That’s Bubba Aldridge’s work. You remember him, don’t you?”
I grew up in Castleberry Georgia, a small town about sixty miles north of Atlanta, but I went to college in Alabama—Go Auburn—and hadn’t moved back until my divorce was finalized a month ago. Twenty-seven years away was a long time, but Castleberry hadn’t changed a bit. It lacked the most crucial part, of course, my parents, each having died within months of each other while my ex-husband and I battled out the fine print of our failed marriages demise. “I can’t say that I met him personally, but I certainly know him from the historical society.”
Available here.
Realtor Rub Out Page 13