“I thought the same,” my father said. “But I’m glad that everything ended happily.”

  “We all are,” Maami said. “We will have to pray for Abigail’s Farm, and for Linda and Rusty as they travel the difficult road ahead.”

  No one said anything, but we all knew that she was thinking of my grandfather. I suspected we were all thinking about him.

  My mother cleared her throat. “Thank you for the brunch, Juliet. It looks lovely.”

  And it was. Juliet, who was a great cook, had gone all out. She served omelets, hash browns, fresh fruit, muffins, bagels, yogurt, coffee cake, and turkey bacon. There was never any real bacon in Juliet’s home, not with Jethro at the head of the table.

  “It was my pleasure. I’m just so happy that our families can spend this time together and really get to know each other. It’s important that we build a strong bond for Aiden and Bailey,” Juliet said.

  I suppressed the sigh that rose in my chest.

  “What will happen to the man who stole the money?” my father asked, and I was grateful to him for changing the subject.

  “Nothing,” Aiden answered. “Polly Anne decided not to press charges. There are other crimes we could have charged him with; he did waste a lot of the department’s time, but considering the situation with his wife, we decided to let it go.”

  “That was the right thing to do,” Maami said.

  “I let Deputy Little make the call. He did an admirable job solving this case. It gives me hope that he will be able to take on bigger cases alone in the future. I need more reliable deputies who can do that. Holmes County cannot say that we are isolated from urban problems any longer.”

  “We can see that,” my mother said. “We used to worry about Bailey living in the city, but it seems to me there are problems everywhere.”

  Aiden nodded. “There are, but there are good people too, and that’s what keeps me hopeful about the future.”

  “We are hopeful for the future too,” Juliet said with a sigh. “Someday, we will all be a family, and that’s something to hope for. I know I do.”

  “I do too,” my mother agreed.

  I shook my head, but when I looked up I found Aiden smiling at me. At that moment, the tiny flame of hope I had buried deep in my heart sparked a little bit brighter.

  Clara King’s Butterscotch Peanut Bars

  Ingredients

  1 ½ cups salted peanuts

  1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

  8 ounces of butterscotch chips

  ¾ cup of butter, softened

  ½ cup brown sugar

  ½ cup light molasses

  ¾ teaspoon salt

  Instructions

  Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line a 9x9-inch pan with aluminum foil.

  Make shortbread. In a mixing bowl, cream ½ cup of butter and brown sugar together.

  Add flour and salt. Mix.

  Press the dough into the 9x9 pan and prick pressed dough with a fork several times.

  Bake for twelve minutes, or until the dough is light brown.

  While the shortbread is baking, make the butterscotch topping. In a saucepan, combine the butterscotch chips, molasses, ¼ cup of butter, and the water.

  Stir over medium-low heat until the butterscotch mixture is smooth.

  Pour the butterscotch over the shortbread in the pan.

  Add the peanuts and press them into the butterscotch topping. Take care! The butterscotch is hot,

  Bake for 12 minutes.

  Cool.

  Cut into square bars and enjoy!

  About Amanda Flower

  USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning mystery author Amanda Flower started her writing career in elementary school when she read a story she wrote to her sixth grade class and had the class in stitches with her description of being stuck on the top of a Ferris wheel. She knew at that moment she’d found her calling of making people laugh with her words. She also writes mysteries as USA Today bestselling author Isabella Alan. Amanda lives in Northeast Ohio. Readers can visit her online at www.amandaflower.com.

  Marshmallow Malice

  Please read on for an excerpt from the next mystery in the Amish Candy Shop Mystery series, coming soon!

  Chapter One

  “This is supposed to be the best day of my life!” Juliet Brody wailed in the small library inside the large white church in Harvest, Ohio. She wore a pink and white polka dotted silk robe and hugged her comfort animal, a black and white polka dotted pig, Jethro, to her chest. Jethro, who was about the size of a toaster, stuck out his tongue, and his eyes rolled in their sockets as his mistress gave him another mighty squeeze.

  Carefully, I reached for Juliet’s arms and loosened her grip. The pig let out a gasp. I didn’t tell her that she’d almost squeezed Jethro to death. If I did, it would send her into another bout of hysterics, and that wasn’t something we needed when she was going to be walking down the aisle in an hour to marry Reverend Brook, the pastor of the church we were sitting in.

  She looked at me with watery eyes. “Oh Bailey, you are so kind to me, but what am I going to do looking like this?”

  “This” was a huge chuck of missing hair where her bangs should have been. The young hair stylist, Dylan Masters, stood a few feet away holding a curling iron in her hand with a chunk of Juliet’s blond hair hanging from it. The strands wrapped around the iron appeared to be a little crispy. The scent of burnt hair filled the room.

  “Dylan,” I said. “Can you unplug the curling iron?”

  “Oh right.” She yanked the cord out of the wall. “I’m so sorry,” Dylan said for the fourteenth time. “I didn’t expect Jethro to be there.”

  Dylan was in her late teens and a beauty school student who went to Reverend Brook’s church. To keep the church involved in the wedding, he and Juliet had decided to hire as many church members as they could to do all the various jobs that a wedding requires. I was willing to bet Juliet now wished that they’d picked someone other than Dylan to style her hair.

  Not that I completely blamed Dylan for what had happened. Jethro was equally to blame. Unbeknownst to Dylan, Jethro had been hiding under the end of Juliet’s robe and when Dylan came around the front to curl Juliet’s bangs, she stepped on his hoof. The pig squealed bloody murder and took off. In the process, he scared Dylan, who had Juliet’s bangs wrapped around her curling iron. Dylan screamed and jumped back, taking a big chunck of Juliet’s hair with her.

  Juliet sniffled. “It’s not your fault, Dylan. These things happen.”

  I smiled at Juliet. It was just like her to try to make the other person feel better even when she was so distraught. It was a gift that she had bestowed on her son, Deputy Sheriff Aiden Brody, as well. I was the maid of honor at Juliet’s wedding and Aiden was the best man. He also happened to be my boyfriend. As quirky and silly as his mother could be, I had to thank her for raising such a wonderful son.

  “We can handle this,” I told my best friend Cass, who was in Harvest by way of NYC for the wedding. Cass had proclaimed she wasn’t going to miss a wedding that had Amish ushers and a pig ring bearer for all the chocolate in Manhattan, which was actually saying quite a lot since she was the head chocolatier at JP Chocolates, the most famous chocolate shop in all five boroughs or at least that was what the founder, Jean Pierre, liked to say.

  Cass shook her head. “It’s not looking good. She has a bald spot on the front of her head.”

  “We have to do something,” I whispered back.

  Cass glanced at Dylan. “She’s not going to be any help. The poor girl looks like she’s afraid she’s going to get sued.”

  “If it was any other bride, she might be,” I whispered back. “She took out a lot of hair.”

  “You know, Juliet,” Cass said in a louder voice. “I was just thinking that your wedding dress with those glorious polka dots on it needs something other than a traditional veil. You need a hat!”

  Juliet dabbed at her eye with a tissue in her free hand. The other still had in a vise grip around Jethro’s middle. “A hat?”

  “Yes! This might be a blessing in disguise because it gives you an excuse to wear a hat,” Cass said.

  “You think I should wear a hat?” Juliet asked.

  “Of course! All the royals do it, and I have been seeing it more and more in NYC. It’s on trend.”

  “But we need a hat,” I said. I had no idea where we would find the perfect hat to match her dress in the next fifty minutes before she walked down the aisle… not that I was counting or anything.

  “I have a pink hat at home. It was my mother’s. It’s in a hat box in the closet. It has pearls and feathers on it. It has quite a broad brim.”

  “It sounds perfect!” Cass said. “A broad brim is just the thing, and who doesn’t want a little pink at a wedding?”

  I grabbed my phone from the librarian’s desk in the corner of the room. “I’m texting Aiden right now to ask him to grab it. What does the hat box look like?”

  “It’s a flowered round hat box in my master closet,” Juliet said. “It’s on the top shelf. He can’t miss it.”

  I relayed the information to Aiden, and he texted back right away that he was on it. I loved that guy.

  There was a knock on the library door. “Juliet?” Reverend Brook’s voice came through the wood. “Is everything all right? I thought I heard screaming.”

  “Don’t let him in!” Juliet cried. “It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding, and he can’t see me with my hair like this! He will think I’m hideous.”

  “No, he won’t. You know that’s not true. You could walk down the aisle with a patch over your left eye and a Mohawk. He wouldn’t care,” Cass said.

  I opened the door and peeked out.

  The reverend, who was already in his gray linen tuxedo, wrung his hands. “Is everything all right?”

  “Perfectly fine.” I smiled. “Why don’t you go check on everything for the ceremony?”

  “Right,” he said as if happy to have some sort of direction. “I’ll do that.”

  He wandered away. I glanced back at Juliet. As soon as the hair crisis was averted, I needed to hurry over to Swissmen Sweets, the Amish candy shop I owned with my Amish grandmother, Clara King. I was doing double duty today. I was the maid of honor and the wedding cake designer. Juliet had been very specific that she wanted two things on her cake: polka dots, her favorite pattern, and marshmallow icing. I wasn’t too worried about the polka dots, but that marshmallow icing had kept me up at night.

  The wedding reception was outside on the church lawn, and it was July. The temperature was already over eighty and it was eleven in the morning. I was afraid the cake’s icing would melt and the whole thing would slide off of the table in a mushy heap. If Juliet was this upset about her hair, I didn’t want to know what she would think about a giant wedding cake puddle. Thankfully, I had my grandmother and our two shop assistants, all of whom were Amish, working on the cake. The Amish were used to keeping things cool without the benefit of electricity. I hoped they’d come up with some good ideas while I was inside the church.

  Juliet calmed down and let Dylan do her makeup while Cass disposed of the piece of fried hair in the small bathroom off the library. While Dylan applied Juliet’s makeup, I thought it best that I hold on to Jethro to avoid any more mishaps. I had the pig under my arm when there was another knock at the door.

  I hurried to the door and opened it just a crack, which was just enough space for Jethro to stick his snout out.

  “Is the best man supposed to see the maid of honor before the wedding? Is that bad luck?” Aiden asked with twinkling dark brown eyes. Like Reverend Brook, he was wearing a tuxedo, but his was powder blue, and his blond hair was brushed back from his face. He was so handsome that it took my breath away for a moment.

  “Not as far as I know,” I said.

  “Good.” He held up the flowered hat box.

  I took it with my free hand. “Thank you for this. I hope the hat is as pretty as your mother described. I don’t think I can handle any more tears today.”

  He laughed. “If it’s the hat I remember, it’s quite pretty, and since it was my grandmother’s, it will work for something old, right?”

  I raised one brow. “I see you are up on your wedding traditions.”

  He grinned. “I want to make sure I’m ready when our wedding comes around.”

  I stared at him, unable to speak.

  “Bai!” Cass shouted from the room. “Kiss Hot Cop good-bye and get in here with that hat. We have thirty minutes until show time!”

  Aiden chuckled and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “Now, let’s get my mother married off, so we can enjoy some of the delicious marshmallow frosted cake you made, okay?”

  “Will do,” I said still reeling from his previous wedding statement. “At least we got the wedding disaster out of the way early,” I said and went back into the church library, not knowing there was much worse disaster for Juliet and Reverend Brook’s wedding yet to come.

 

 

  Amanda Flower, Botched Butterscotch

 

 

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