His lips curve with wicked intent, and my night suddenly looks far more promising than I could have predicted.
A man steps up to the counter, and Jasper does a double take in his direction. And just like that, his friendly demeanor does a rather abrupt disappearing act.
“Leo.” Jasper’s shoulders widen as if he were suddenly about to tackle the guy.
“Can I help you?” I look to the man. He’s tall, textbook handsome, dark wavy hair, and dark eyes that look as if they don’t give away his secrets.
Jasper glowers at the man. “Bizzy, this is Deputy Granger from down at the sheriff’s department. We were good friends up until recently.”
“Oh,” I tip my head back knowingly. This must be the guy that his ex took off with.
“Just Leo.” He holds out a hand my way, and I shake it. “My aunt was at the crafts fair at the cove the other night. She said she met with a woman who sold her a mosaic vase. She mentioned the woman lived on the premises. I’m hoping you can help me out. It’s pertinent that I speak with her.”
“Oh, that’s Georgie. She’s right over there in the kaftan.” I’m quick to point her out. “Let me guess. She sold the vase that she keeps her life savings in again?” I try to laugh it off in an effort to lighten the mood between them, but neither is budging.
He looks right at me, his dark eyes narrowing over mine. It’s not you, is it? He sweeps my features as if looking for a response, and I freeze. Rumor has it, someone here at the inn can read minds. His lips twitch with a smile. And I’m determined to find out exactly who it is. He looks my way. I just want you to know that if you can hear me—he bears hard into my eyes—I can hear you, too.
He takes a breath and nods at the two of us before taking off in Georgie’s direction.
“Oh my God,” I pant as I pick up a stale cup of coffee left on the counter and head that way myself. “Georgie? This kind man would like to speak with you!” I trip over my own feet, hoping that it looked like a genuine fumble, and spill the coffee along the front of her dress. “Oh goodness. If I had a dozen donuts every time I did that, I’d be happy.” I glance his way. “Just one moment. I’ll mop her up and bring her right back.” I drag Georgie off to the tiny office inside the kitchen and seal the door shut behind us.
“Are you crazy?” I hiss as she grabs an errant apron off the desk and begins mopping herself off.
“I believe that would be you, missy. And since when do you serve cold coffee? If you’re going to douse me, at least let me get a burn out of it so I can sue you properly.”
“Never mind that. Georgie, why did you tell someone at the crafts fair that I can read minds?”
Her mouth rounds out in a perfect O. “Well, I didn’t mean to. The woman practically dragged it out of me when she bragged that her nephew knows exactly what she’s thinking. We were talking about clothing, by the way, of which you just ruined mine.”
“That’s just great because her nephew is here, and it looks as if he’s trying to collect on some supernatural debt. Georgie, you can’t let him know that I can read minds. You have to tell him you were kidding. That it was some guest who has long since left the inn. No one can know of my ability. He’s a deputy. That’s just one degree of separation from some paranormal government sponsored agency.”
“Oh, I don’t think you qualify as paranormal. You just have a nifty little ability there.” She wiggles her fingers at me with a goofy grin on her face as if she were trying to amuse an infant. “But, of course, I’m not talking to a G-man or deputy or anyone from outer space for that matter. I’ll get this straightened out, Bizzy—just you wait and see. I’ll fix everything.”
And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
We head back out together, and Jasper is still there waiting for me. Emmie is manning the register, so I hop his way and we watch the fall-out together.
Georgie says a few seemingly innocent words to Leo, and he nods politely before heading back this way.
“Leo.” Jasper nods to him. “What’s going on?”
He looks to Jasper and shakes his head. “Just running an errand for my aunt. It looks like everything is squared away. She wasn’t sure if she paid for the piece she picked up and couldn’t sleep. I told her I’d check it out. Turns out, she did.”
I shake my head at him. Nice cover.
He turns my way. Thank you.
My eyes enlarge at his response. No matter how hard I try to control it, I’m physically stunned into submission.
Leo tips his head back my way, a smile twitching on his lips. It’s you, isn’t it? Bizzy, I’m here to help you. Trust me. I know the answers to the questions you have. I’ll be back. But, in the meantime, you know where to find me.
He nods to Jasper. “It was nice seeing you again.” He pats him on the back before looking my way. “And it was nice meeting you.”
He takes off, and I let out an enormous breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.
Jasper leans in until he hooks my attention. “Bizzy, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Everything is going to be just fine.” I force a smile because a part of me demands to believe it.
That night, Jasper and I eat takeout in my living room until we’re stuffed. We curl up next to a roaring fire and sip hot cider as we watch Sherlock and Fish bat at one another playfully until Fish curls against Sherlock’s belly and they both fall asleep.
I look up at Jasper and whisper, “They’re so sweet.”
“You know what else is sweet?” His bright eyes siren at me with the brilliance of twin moons. “You.”
Jasper lands a kiss to my lips that starts off achingly slow before morphing into something much more heated, something that I’ve been craving all day, for my entire life it seems.
This month has felt like a hurricane that nearly swept me out to sea, and in the midst of it, I found a treasure, a man with eyes as bright as diamonds named Jasper Wilder.
But somewhere out there is a man named Leo Granger, a man who was once Jasper’s best friend, a man who claims to share my strange ability. He says he has the answers I crave, and I wonder if that’s true.
Or perhaps more to the point, he’s a bounty hunter for some US agency that wants me in a cage for their own use.
If Jasper doesn’t trust him, why should I?
As wonderful as things are with Jasper at the moment, as they are in my life in general, I can’t help but think this is just the calm before the terrible storm.
Somebody is onto me, and they want answers.
Something tells me they won’t rest until they get them.
And I’m fairly certain I won’t be safe if they do.
*Need more of Cider Cove?
Pick up Dog Days of Murder (Country Cottage Mysteries 2) NOW!
Recipe
Country Cottage Café Apple Walnut Cinnamon Rolls
Hello! It’s me, Bizzy Baker. Confession: I burn everything I even think about baking. But the guests of the Country Cottage Inn are crazy about my best friend Emmie’s Apple Walnut Cinnamon Rolls.
Emmie is in charge of the Country Cottage Café and was blessed with more talent in the kitchen than one person should ever be allowed. Of course, I helped her hone the recipe through trial and error, and lots and lots of taste-testing. It’s a tough job but somebody had to do it. And lucky for me, Emmie makes the world’s best cinnamon rolls known to man.
Enjoy with a nice glass of milk or coffee.
Warning! These will go fast.
Sweet Dough
1 cup of warm milk (Room temperature, not hot. Preferably whole milk.)
2- ½ teaspoons or ¼ ounce (one package) Active Dry Yeast (preferably rapid rise)
4 tablespoons of granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg (gently whisked)
1/3 cup butter melted
4 cups all-purpose flour
In a small bowl dissolve yeast into warm milk (about 15 minutes until foamy.)
In a
stand mixer bowl, or another larger bowl, combine sugar, salt, egg, butter, and yeast and milk mixture. Combine in a stand mixer with a dough hook.
Slowly add in flour, one cup at a time, at about medium speed until dough forms and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Dough should be smooth, velvety and soft.
Put the dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray or butter. Cover with either plastic wrap or a damp towel and let sit in a warm place for 1 hour, until dough has doubled in size.
Punch down the dough and roll into a 20 x 12 rectangle
Cinnamon Filling
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/3 cup melted butter
Apple Walnut Filling
2 small to medium Golden Delicious apples or other apples that are known to be friendly for baking.
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
Peel, core and cut apples into rough slices. Boil until soft (about eight minutes). Mince or mash apples and mix in chopped walnuts.
Brush dough thoroughly with melted butter.
Combine ground cinnamon and brown sugar and sprinkle evenly over the dough.
With a spoon, dollop apple walnut mixture evenly over the dough.
Carefully roll the dough lengthwise, nice and tight. Trim edges and cut the roll into twelve even slices. (About one and a half inches each)
Place in a covered baking dish and let rise an additional 30 minutes (rolls should double in size).
While rolls are busy rising, pre-heat oven to 350°.
Once the rolls finish rising, you are finally ready to bake!
Place the rolls uncovered (either in an oven safe baking dish or a cookie sheet will work fine, too) in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned.
Icing
½ cup butter, softened
1/3 cup cream cheese, softened (about 4 oz.)
1 ½ cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract *Emmie uses 1 teaspoon because she likes the flavor!
2 tablespoons milk
In a medium bowl, mix butter, cream cheese, vanilla and milk, blending it well. Add powdered sugar a half a cup at a time, working it into the mixture until smooth. Pour over fresh baked cinnamon rolls.
Serve warm and enjoy!
Dog Days of Murder
Book Description
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.
A seminar on how to catch the perfect man is being held at the Country Cottage Inn, but with a killer on the loose, the only thing in store for the guests is a lesson on murder. Not only do I have another homicide on my hands, but Jasper’s ex is in town and she’s looking to take back what once belonged to her. It’s October in Cider Cove. There’s a fright around every corner and a killer closer than I’m willing to believe.
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.
Cider Cove, Maine is the premier destination for fun and relaxation. But when a body turns up, it’s the premier destination for murder.
The Country Cottage Inn is known for its hospitality. Leaving can be murder.
Pick up Dog Days of Murder (Country Cottage Mysteries 2) NOW!
Preview: Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies (Murder in the Mix)
Addison Moore
Love your books with humor, sass and murder? Love Janet Evanovich? You’ll devour the Murder in the Mix Series!
XO Enjoy!
My name is Lottie Lemon and I see dead people. Okay, so I rarely see dead people, mostly I see creatures of the dearly departed variety, aka dead pets. And for some reason those sweet, fluffy albeit paranormal cuties always seem to act as a not-so-great harbinger of deadly things to come for their previous owner. So when I saw that sweet orange tabby twirling around my landlord’s ankles, I figured Merilee was in for trouble. Personally, I was hoping for a skinned knee—what I got was a top spot in an open homicide investigation. Throw in a hot judge and an ornery detective that oozes testosterone and that pretty much sums up my life right about now. Have I mentioned how cute that detective is?
Lottie Lemon has a bakery to tend to, a budding romance with perhaps one too many suitors and she has the supernatural ability to see dead pets—which are always harbingers for ominous things to come. Throw in the occasional ghost of the human variety, a string of murders and her insatiable thirst for justice and you’ll have more chaos than you know what to do with.
Living in the small town of Honey Hollow can be murder.
Chapter 1
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.
Kittyzen's Arrest: Cozy Mystery (Country Cottage Mysteries Book 1) Page 18
