Cake and Calamity: An Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance #3

About the Book

Organising a wedding is a piece of cake, to quote Abi Button. She could be right, because a local wedding shop provides the whole service: bridal gowns, venue, cake, food, cars ... everything that makes the perfect wedding. Apart from husbands!

Meanwhile, Melanie Upton ‒ Abi Button’s co-owner of Button Up coffee shop ‒ confides in Abi that romance is in the air with an Italian property investor called Romero Rocco. Can it be true?

Abi’s new friend is also getting married, having bought the house that Abi calls Creepy Castle. She tells Abi that getting a builder to restore the old house should also be a simple matter.

With a joint wedding planned for Abi and her new friend, Abi asks, What can possibly go wrong?

Cake and Calamity

An Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance #3

by

Lizzie Lewis ©2020

This eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-50-6

Also available as a paperback

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-56-8

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

wtpbristol@gmail.com

Full list of books and updates on

https://whitetreepublishing.com/

Cake and Calamity is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

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

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

More Abi Button Books

About White Tree Publishing

Chapter 1

The last few months have absolutely flown by, probably the fastest months in the history of the world. It’s a wonder it didn’t make the headlines in the papers and on the television news. Where did the time go? A few months ago Danny Wells proposed to me in the most unromantic setting imaginable, but all I saw was his shining eyes, and all I heard was him begging me to say yes. Well, I distinctly got the impression he was begging me, so of course I said yes.

We immediately decided on a joint wedding with our new friends Alice Newton and Rupert Forrester to take place six months after Danny and Rupert popped their respective questions. Six months sounded like a long time, so I knew Alice and I wouldn’t have to do anything in a rush to make the preparations. Then we would have loving partners for the rest of our lives.

Surely there wasn’t much involved in planning a wedding. Order our dresses, book a suitable caterer, venue, photographer, cars, and send out the invitations. Not forgetting to book the church and the pastor of course. Oh, and the honeymoon. Most important, that one.

Alice had recently purchased a dilapidated house at the far end of my road. It originally belonged to her crazy uncle who set a cryptic puzzle in his will for Alice, her two brothers and her sister to solve after he was dead. The first to crack the puzzle was entitled to some unspecified hidden wealth.

Danny, being a junior solicitor with Branks, Davis & Waters, had sorted out the administration of the will, and clever Alice turned out to be the winner. The amount of money wasn’t amazing, but it was enough for Alice to buy her siblings’ share in the house of horrors and organise a builder to sort it out.

Alice had no previous experience with builders, and thought the restoration would be a simple matter ‒ until she received the builder’s estimate.

Although Alice doesn’t say much about it, she was the youngest of four when their parents died, and she was virtually a slave to her sister and two brothers who expected her to look after the home and hand over her earnings from her job as a librarian. I’m not sure from what Alice tells me that she was much of an expert on housekeeping, because she was amazed by my rather modest efforts. One thing I noticed was that Alice was eating properly and looked more healthy than when we first met.

Alice moved here to Craidlea almost immediately after she won the money, and has been living with me in the house I had rattled around in since my parents moved permanently to Spain several years ago. It was good to have fun company again in the house. Of course, my parents came over from Spain immediately they heard about my engagement to Danny.

My mother approved of Danny. In fact, she approved of him so much that she said she was sorry for him to be marrying me. I found that strange, because my mother is not famous for her sense of humour.

Naturally, Danny used his skills in listening to clients to say just the right things to my parents. I also insisted I didn’t want them to pay for the wedding, because they had already given me the house. Even so, I suspected there might be surprise wedding present that would help meet the costs.

Alice said the first thing we had to do was send out the invitations, then choose our wedding dresses. I assured her we didn’t need to get going just yet. Perhaps she thought her fiancé Rupert would change his mind! No, that’s a joke. I’ve not seen two people so in love, apart from when I look in a mirror and see Danny standing by me. Ah, that’s so sweet!

One morning I sat up in bed with a jump. What were we thinking of? We had a wedding to prepare for! Help! I’d been bobbing along fairly happily for thirty-two years, never too short of male admirers ‒ but extremely short of suitable ones. I thought of it as kissing frogs to see if one of them happened to be a prince in disguise, but that’s all they were – frogs.

After a disastrous misunderstanding with one who seemed to be Mr Right, and was actually Mr Wrong, along came Danny Wells, a junior solicitor at Branks, Davis & Waters. Of course I wished I’d met him earlier, and then I would already be married. But I learnt a long time ago that you can’t have everything in life. That’s what my mother told me when I was small and wanted an expensive doll in the local toy shop. And although my mother never said it, I guess the same applies to wanting to be married.

I knew of a shop in the centre of town that catered for everything to do with weddings ‒ from bridal gowns, to men’s formal suit hire, to a full catering service. The lot.

No need to panic. Organising a wedding is a piece of cake, I said aloud to myself. "That place will do everything. All Alice and I have to do is say we want this, this, this and this ‒ and remember to turn up at the church on time."

The wedding shop was only a short walk from Button Up coffee shop where I work with Melanie Upton ‒ hence the ingenious name (!). Melanie and I are co-owners of the business which is doing quite well at the moment.

What’s up with you, girl? a voice said, as I sat staring into space at an empty table in Button Up. It was a quiet time of the afternoon, and I was leafing through a magazine showing an assortment of bridal gowns. Dresses. Whatever.

I looked over at Melanie and grinned, at the same time letting out a deep sigh. I don’t know whether to go for something plain or fancy.

My co-owner sat beside me. I felt embarrassed to be showing Melanie the wedding dresses. She’d been going nowhere with Steve Donavan for more than five years. Steve had suffered an unfortunate previous relationship which involved having a child and a straying partner. So he seemed unwilling to commit again, although several times I assured Steve that Melanie was Miss Reliability itself. And then I ordered him to get on and marry her immediately!

Of course, I’m pretty sure I didn’t add that last sentence. Anyway, it was no business of mine, although I did want to see Melanie married, because that was her wish too. At forty-two she was no spring chicken. That’s also something I hope I didn’t say. But she’s a jolly sort of person, short, more than slightly overweight and endowed with generous love handles. What’s not to like?

Pete Wilders, our nineteen-year-old lad who is working for us to pay for his evening college, came across and stared at the page of the magazine I had open. He pointed to a wedding dress that was so over-ornamental it was appalling. Frills and bows and lace ‒ and just about anything else made of white fabric that could be sewn on. I couldn’t imagine anyone anywhere wearing that.

I can see you in that one, Abi, he said. Definitely one for the older woman.

I grinned as I looked up at him, and noticed he looked serious. You don’t really think‒‒‒

Pete winked at me and skipped out of Melanie’s reach as she tried to flick him with the tea towel she was holding. From the look on Pete’s face I think he was joking. Well, I seriously hoped he was. He sometimes confides in me with his matters of the heart, and I like to think he does it as he would with an older sister, not with a mother figure. But I’ve never liked to enquire too closely in case I get the wrong answer.

Melanie gave me a nudge. It’s nice to see how the young ones see us, she said dryly.

Us? I’m halfway in age between Pete and Melanie, and in my mind I’m probably even younger than Pete. Somebody once told me my mental development stopped at the age of twelve. That’s clearly untrue. I must have reached the mental age of fifteen or I would never have been interested in boys. Anyway, the rest of me kept growing according to plan in an interesting, exciting and sometimes scary way.

Physically, I’m definitely a woman. Medium height, long, naturally blonde hair parted over my right eye and curling slightly at the ends. I have enough up front to pad out a sweatshirt, but not so much that it would be difficult to stand up straight after bending forwards. I have what’s called the perfect figure. Well, what’s called the perfect figure by me.

I’m slim. Definitely slim ‒ in spite of working surrounded by cakes and pastries throughout the day. I know my hips are a little bit wide, and fondly imagine Danny saw them for their childbearing possibilities ‒ as well as being attracted to me as a sensible, beautiful and romantic person. Well, perhaps it’s just as well I’m big boned around the hips, if that was the only reason for Danny being attracted to me. Definitely bone, because when I press, there’s absolutely no fat under the skin. Danny’s squeezed me a few times. I’m pleased to say he hasn’t called off the wedding.

The changes pregnancy will bring to my body are even more scary, assuming I’m able to conceive. It will be Danny’s child of course, but the thought of pregnancy fills me with a certain amount of ... well, a certain amount of something. But at least I’m told I possess the right sort of hips.

I looked at the large and expensive clock above the service counter, shaped like a coffee cup. Melanie and I bought it in a moment of weakness when we first opened the establishment just over five years ago. Melanie Upton was looking for a partner to help set up the business. It was when my parents decided to spend my father’s large early retirement lump sum in moving permanently to sunny Spain, to a villa my dad had renovated over the years.

We went there every year for our holidays when I was at school, and I loved it. My father was so generous that he actually passed the deeds of the house here in England over to me and helped fund my share of the café business.

So my new friend Alice Newton and I started making serious arrangements for the perfect joint wedding. Yes, it was going to be the perfect white wedding.

Hindsight is certainly a wonderful thing.

Chapter 2

Anxious to keep the costs down, Danny wondered if it would be possible to prepare the service sheets and invitation cards at home, and run them off on my printer.

I had to kick myself for not thinking of it before. I knew Danny was quite handy with laying out documents,