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  FROSTED WITH REVENGE

  by

  CATHERINE BRUNS

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  Copyright © 2017 by Catherine Bruns

  Cover design by Yocla Designs

  Gemma Halliday Publishing

  http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special accolades to retired Troy Police Captain Terrance Buchanan, who is always available with the answers I need. Thank you to Judy Melinek M.D., Forensic Pathologist, for her assistance in the medical field. I am grateful to my wonderful beta readers Constance Atwater and Kathy Kennedy who never fail to come through for me and my husband, Frank, for his infinite patience. As always, thank you to publisher Gemma Halliday and her fabulous editorial staff, especially Danielle Kuhns and Wendi Baker, who always take such good care of Sally and her family.

  Profound thanks to Frank and Patti Ricupero and Amy Reger for sharing their delicious family recipes. Special love goes out to my cousin Betty Ann Stavola for providing me with Aunt Selma's treasured recipe for maamoul cookies, an ancestral family favorite that I am excited to share with my readers.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  "Hi, sweetheart," my mother purred into the phone. "Have you seen today's paper yet?"

  I stared at the phone in disbelief. It was a midafternoon in July, and the air conditioning in my cookie shop, Sally's Samples, had suddenly stopped working. There was a line of people out the front door, and my mother wanted to know if I'd had time to read the paper yet.

  The only reason I'd even bothered to answer my cell was because it was the third time she'd called in the last ten minutes, and I thought someone must have died. If there hadn't been customers watching me, I might have been tempted to bang my head against the wall.

  "Mom, we're swamped here," I protested. "Can we talk about this later?"

  It was Saturday, our busiest day of the week, and we had only reopened yesterday. There had been a devastating fire at my former location last month. For the past several days my best friend, Josie Sullivan, and I had been forced to temporarily relocate the bakery to my parents' home. Talk about your crazy carnival rides. Between my mother parading around the house in bikinis for an upcoming beauty contest and my father keeping a coffin in the living room to help with the "studying" process for his new career, I was afraid that when we did finally move into our new location the bakery would suffer. Or perhaps even go belly up and out of business completely. Given the crowd today though, it seemed that our hungry customers had forgiven us for our brief lack of judgment.

  "Sal," Josie yelled from behind the display case, where she was busy scooping raspberry cheesecake cookies into one of our little pink boxes. "Get those fortune cookies out of the oven now, or they'll burn."

  I wiped away the sweat gathering on my forehead with my arm and ran into the back room where the ovens were. "Mom, I have to go."

  "All right, dear. But I wanted to tell you that your engagement photo is in the paper today. It came out beautiful! And don't forget about the cake testing in an hour."

  I removed the fortune cookies from the oven and placed the tray on the wooden block table. "Mom! I thought you canceled that. There's no way that I can go. Plus, Mike's working too."

  "Nonsense," my mother scoffed. "Your sister is on her way over to relieve you. Since she has today off, she said she'd be glad to help out in the shop for a while."

  My wedding was exactly one week from today. The specialty bakery shop that my mother had hired months ago to make the cake had gone bankrupt and closed its doors suddenly last week. Talk about bad timing. Panicked, my mother had quickly found another bakery that agreed to take on the cake at the very last minute. In fact, DeAngelo's Bakery was a very elite shop that specialized in creating the perfect wedding cake. I had seen the invoice that Pepe, the owner, sent my mother and had cringed at the price. Since I was in the business myself, I knew she was getting ripped off, but she had accepted the price without argument or comment.

  "Mike won't be able to make it," I argued. "He's doing a basement job. Can't we do this some other time?"

  "Sally Isabella Muccio," my mother hissed into the phone.

  That was all she said, but it was enough. Using my full given name—which my mother hadn't done since I was a child—meant that she was rapidly growing annoyed with me. This was unusual behavior for Maria Muccio who always looked at life through rose-colored glasses.

  "Your father and I paid a lot of money for that cake," she said crisply, further riddling me with guilt. "We need to make sure it's perfect and exactly what you want."

  At this particular moment I didn't care if we ended up eating trail mix. I hadn't wanted a big wedding in the first place, having traveled that road before. But as usual, my mother had won out.

  I reached for the bucket of fortune cookie messages on the shelf in front of me and strategically folded them into the center of each piece of cooked dough. This had to be done immediately after taking the cookies out of the oven or else the dough would harden, and the message could not be placed inside properly.

  "I'm sure it will taste delicious." In truth, the cake bothered me but not for the reason my mother thought. Josie had offered to make me one, but my mother had gone ahead with her plans without bothering to consult me or her. Mom had laid down a hefty deposit with each bakery before I even knew what she'd been planning, and now I was stuck trying to put all the pieces back together. I knew it had hurt my best friend, and that was the last thing I ever wanted to do. Josie was my head baker—okay, my only baker—but she had a knack with desserts unlike many others. Without her talent, I would not have a bakery. She had gone to culinary school right after high school but decided to leave when she had unintentionally gotten pregnant with her first child.

  Deep down, I knew Josie was upset by my mother's refusal, but she was too proud to say anything. We hadn't discussed the matter yet, but I sensed it might come to a head soon, for Josie had been acting a bit strange the last few days.

  "Why don't you go sample it instead, Mom? You have impeccable taste."

  "Sal," my mother huffed. "This is the most important day of your life. Don't you want to make sure that everything will be perfect?"

  "It will be, Mom." I folded the cookies while balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder as we chatted. "I'm marrying the man that I love, which is the only thing that matters."

  Mike Donovan had been my high school boyfriend and first love. Through a huge misunderstanding that occurred on senior prom night after I found him in a car with a girl dubbed Backseat Brenda, we'd broken up. I'd never given Mike a chance to explain back then a
bout what had really happened. On the rebound I'd gone on to date and marry my first husband, Colin Brown. That marriage came to a quick end when I walked in on Colin and my high school nemesis having sex. By a bizarre chain of events unrelated to the affair, both Colin and his mistress were dead now.

  "Sal!" Josie yelled. "Are those chocolate chips done?"

  I was starting to resemble the oven, baking from the inside out. I stopped for a moment to plug another table fan in. "I really have to go, Mom."

  "All right, dear. Are you and Mike coming for dinner tonight?"

  I blew out a long sigh and pulled the trays out of the oven. "Um, probably. I'm not sure how late he's working, so I have to check with him."

  "Good. We need to go over the seating arrangements one last time," my mother insisted. "I have to get the numbers to the country club by Wednesday. You aren't taking this seriously enough. And remember the baby shower for Betsy Taylor is tomorrow."

  The air grew tight around me, more from suffocation than actual heat. This was all getting to be too much. I needed to get away—now. Saturday couldn't get here fast enough. Immediately after the wedding, Mike and I would be leaving for a week in Hawaii—tropical paradise. No construction jobs, baking cookies, or crazy parents—only me and my husband for one entire week. At this point it still seemed like a dream.

  When we became engaged last January, we'd talked about flying off to Vegas and eloping. Somehow we'd been roped into this three-ring circus instead. I would have been happy with a simple ceremony at city hall and had hinted at that numerous times. But these were my parents, and nothing was ever simple with them. They were loud and proud and marched to the beat of their own drum.

  I mumbled a hasty good-bye to my mother and ran back to the fortune cookies. I pulled a message from the jar and placed it in the center of the cookie, but the dough had already hardened. Shoot. There were six other cookies that hadn't made the cut either. I scooped more dough onto the cookies sheets, spread them into thin circles with the spatula, and then hurriedly thrust the trays into the oven. The ones that were ready, I rushed out front to the waiting display case.

  Josie was counting change out to one customer while balancing an empty bakery box in the other hand, waiting for the next person to decide what they wanted. There wasn't a day I didn't wonder what I would do without her. When I glanced through the crowd waiting and saw a familiar face, I did a huge mental eye roll. My parents' next-door neighbor, Mrs. Gavelli.

  She thrust a stubby finger in my direction. "It too hot in here. What you do, turn off air to save some money?"

  Josie's face turned as red as her hair. "Listen, old lady. The air conditioner is broken. We didn't plan on it happening."

  "Who you call old lady? And as for you." She turned to address me. "You get that boyfriend of yours over to fix. Right now. And you give me fortune cookie in the case. No, not that one. The one in front of it." She rapped on the glass and pointed at her cookie of choice.

  The two young women behind Mrs. Gavelli exchanged a glance between them, but Josie and I were used to Nicoletta Gavelli's antics. She'd lived next to my parents since I was a baby and enjoyed making my life difficult whenever possible. Nicoletta had recently finished chemotherapy treatment for bone cancer, and despite her aggravating mannerisms, my heart went out to her. She'd been diagnosed last winter, but I had only found out a few weeks ago. Except for the green polka-dotted head wrap she wore, the rest of Mrs. Gavelli was the same as always, from her lined, leathery-looking face with a perpetual scowl to her outfit of a drab gray housecoat and black Birkenstocks, complete with knee-highs rolling down around her calves.

  I handed her the fortune cookie, and she cracked it open while the young woman behind her tried to step around her to place an order.

  Mrs. Gavelli grunted at the woman. "You wait. I not finished yet."

  Josie wrinkled her nose. "You're holding up the line."

  Mrs. Gavelli ignored her and read the message aloud. "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." Angrily, she threw the paper on the blue and white checkered vinyl floor. "Is no good. I tell you, no more silly fortunes. Now I tell your grandmamma on you." With that she turned and flounced out of the shop, the bells on the door jingling merrily with her departure.

  A little girl standing with her mother turned to watch Nicoletta leave. "Was that the Wicked Witch of the West?" she asked.

  Josie laughed out loud. "Pretty darn close."

  I smiled politely at the next woman in line. "Sorry for the holdup. What can I get you?"

  She pointed at the tray of fudgy delight cookies. "I'll take six of those yummy-looking cookies with the chocolate in the center."

  The bells on the door were set in motion again as my baby sister, Gianna, walked in and went immediately into the back room after a quick wave to us. She was getting ready to move into the apartment over my shop in the next couple of days and had just returned from a luncheon date with her boyfriend, Johnny, who also happened to be Mrs. Gavelli's grandson.

  Personally, if I'd ever thought that there was a chance of my ending up being related to Mrs. Gavelli, I might have been tempted to stab myself in the eye with a frosting knife. Lucky for Gianna, Nicoletta seemed to like her.

  Gianna was brilliant and beautiful with chestnut-colored hair that fell around her shoulders in perfect waves and large, soft-brown eyes. She'd recently been appointed as a public defender and after a bit of a rocky start, was enjoying her new career. People said we looked like twins, but I didn't see it myself. Her features were more delicate than mine. Plus my hair was darker and curlier and on days like this, perpetually frizzy.

  She came out of the back room with an apron on and shooed me away with her hand. "Go on. You'd better get out of here."

  "Where are you going?" Josie wanted to know.

  "Cake testing," I said. "But I have to call Mike first and have him pick me up since my car is in the shop today. While I'm waiting I'll go make up some more fortune cookies." Usually we were better prepared, but the demand for them had been great lately, with people even requesting orders for parties. Ugh.

  "You can take my car," Gianna volunteered.

  I shook my head. "It's easier this way. Plus I want him to look at the air conditioner while he's here." I longed to see my fiancé. We'd both been so buried with work the past few weeks that by the time we were together at night, it was all we could do to stay awake and have a normal conversation for five minutes. Last night we'd fallen asleep together in front of the television.

  I retrieved my iPhone from my pocket and pressed Mike's number, which I had on speed dial, hoping he'd pick up. Mike owned a one-person construction company, and during the nice weather, work was plentiful for him. He could barely keep up these days. I managed to scoop more batter onto the tray and pop it into the oven while waiting for him to answer. We could only bake a tray or two of the fortune cookies at a time because they hardened so fast.

  Mike's sexy voice came on the line, but he sounded harried. "Yeah, baby, what is it?"

  "Can you pick me up in twenty minutes?"

  There was a brief silence before he spoke again. "Is something wrong?"

  I knew Mike would have forgotten. "We have the wedding cake testing today, remember?"

  There was a mumble of frustration on the other end. "I thought your mother canceled that thing. I can't leave now. I'm in the middle of digging out a basement. Can't you go without me?"

  "It's your wedding too," I reminded him.

  He sighed. "I know. But this isn't a good time."

  "It's only for an hour," I pleaded. "It would be nice to see you for a little while."

  "Princess, you don't want to see me right now. I'm a walking disaster covered in dirt, mud, and sweat. Trust me. You're better off going by yourself."

  I hated to pull out the begging card, especially when I knew he was so busy, but went ahead anyway. Plus I knew he'd give in. "You could take a shower in Gianna's apartment. Please, sweetheart?"
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  Mike exhaled deeply. "Why can't I ever say no to you?"

  I grinned. "Because you love me."

  "Guilty as charged." He laughed. "All right. But that means I'll be even later getting home tonight, so no complaints. I promised Greg I'd have this job done before the wedding."

  Which can't come soon enough. "Do you think you can look at the air conditioner when you get here? It stopped working an hour ago, and it's hotter than an inferno in here. We had to stick all the cookies with icing in the fridge so they wouldn't melt."

  "I'll check it out. See you soon, baby."

  I clicked off and took the next tray of fortune cookies out of the oven.

  Josie came back to check on my progress. "We're caught up out front. How long will you be gone?"

  "It shouldn't be for more than an hour. The whole thing is a complete waste of time if you ask me." I began to fold the fortunes inside the cookies.

  Josie was at my side and started to assemble cookies as well. She bent her head down low and seemed to be concentrating unusually hard. "See, this all could have been avoided if I'd made the cake."

  Oh jeez. Here it comes. "Jos, I was fine with you making the cake. You know that. Please don't be angry. My mother made all the plans without even consulting me. When I confronted her she said she thought you had enough on your plate already."

  "You're my best friend," she said, her voice suddenly choked up. "It wasn't an inconvenience. I wanted to do this for you."

  Guilt overwhelmed me. "I'm sorry. I just can't seem to please anyone these days."

  She squeezed my arm. "No, I'm the one who's sorry. I'm acting like a baby. But I did want to do something special for you on your big day."

  "You're my matron of honor. I think that's pretty special."