Baby Bundt Cake Confusion (Murder in the Mix Book 31) by Unknown (reading eggs books .txt) 📗

Carlotta sighs. “Try not to find the body until I get a few numbers from some of these good-looking men. These people have deep pockets, Lot. If you play your cards right, you might just offload me by the end of the night.”

Considering the fact Carlotta has lived with me for the last couple of years, this would be a boon for me.

I take a step out toward the crowd and watch the unsuspecting masses.

That little supernatural cutie didn’t come back from the great beyond because it wanted a bite of my Bundt cake. It came back because there’s a killer on the loose.

And soon—we’ll have a murder on our hands.

Lottie

The Lux Plaza Hotel is teeming with the bold, the beautiful, and those constructed mostly of plastic parts.

The class reunion is in full swing. And just when I’m going to demand that Noah or Everett eats fried pickles with me, a disturbing force of nature unleashes in our direction—two of them to be exact.

“Big Boss!” Cormack Featherby wastes no time in climbing Noah like a pole.

Cormack Featherby is the exact reason why Noah and Everett held onto a rather bitter feud all these years, and although she might have started that bitter-fueled party, Noah and Everett have propagated it all on their own for the last few years. Some might say I’m partly responsible for the dissonance. They might be right.

Cormack is your run-of-the-mill blonde socialite who is as vapid as they come. She joined Club Essex ages ago, and then just when she and Everett were making it official, Noah swooped in and stole that featherhead for himself. That was back in high school, and let’s just say Judge Baxter’s ego was bruised back in the day. And even though he got over Cormack pretty quickly, he never got over the fact he couldn’t trust Noah.

“Essex”—Cressida, another vapid blonde with a face sculpted by a team of world-renown surgeons, steps up and runs her finger over his chest as if it belonged there—“why must you bring this engorged river rat wherever you go?” She slits a glance my way. “You do have a way of infuriating me by flaunting the fact you’re virile.”

Carlotta chuckles. “Good one, Cress. I haven’t heard anyone call Lot Lot a river rat in a good long while.”

“Carlotta,” I elbow her without hesitation, “no one has ever called me a river rat.”

“I don’t dis and tell, Lot. But if I were you, I’d spend less time with me and more time fighting off these women with a stick. Sure, your men are both currently unemployed and living off your earnings, but they come by their fall from grace honestly. I’m sure their mamas warned them about spending time with a girl like you, but they marched right into your bedroom and never looked back.”

“What are you talking about? A girl like me? A baker?”

“Pfft.” She rolls her eyes. “Face it, Lot Lot, you’re a ball of supernatural trouble. You’ve got a spook hanging off of you more often than not, you’re a magnet for murder, and you’ve landed yourself in the middle of both a curse and a hex.”

Sadly, I’m forced to nod into this lunacy.

“Technically, they were both curses,” I say.

It’s true. Last October I went messing with what I was told not to mess with—i.e., solving a murder that revolved around a notoriously cursed family, and once I did just that, both my house and Everett’s burned to the ground. After that, it was sort of hard to contest the fact the Hearst curse hadn’t landed square on my shoulders.

And the supposed hex, well, that came by way of Cormack and Cressida after they hired their old sorority sister, Serena Digby, to do the dirty work. Basically, it had something to do with the fact trouble would follow Noah, Everett, and me to the point where neither of them would ever be mine.

I give my belly a pat.

Ha. I showed them, didn’t I?

Speaking of the witchy woman, both Serena Digby and Noah’s look-alike brother, Alex, step into our midst just as I wrangle both Noah and Everett my way.

“Hey, buddy.” Noah nods to his baby brother by one year. Alex owns a brokerage company with my sister Meg’s plus one, Hook Redwood. “Glad you could make it. Serena, you too.” Noah offers them both a simple smile.

Alex looks dapper in a dark suit, a green tie to match his eyes, and those requisite Fox-issued dimples. And Serena is his equal in every way with her long, dark, wavy hair, her matching green eyes, and affable smile. She’s donned a silver little dress that sizzles, and her legs look as if they’ve been sculpted out of bronze.

“Great to see you both,” Everett says. “It’s nice that the reunion is open to everyone who went to FPA for a five-year span. It had such a small student body I was wondering how they’d fill the room.”

“Oh, honey”—Cressida slinks back his way and attempts to swipe her claw at the stubble on his cheek, but I boldly step in front of him—“there would have been enough people if it were just you and me.”

I scoff at the odd remark. “Cressida, you stalked me, you all but held Evie captive for the last fifteen years, and denied Everett the right to know his daughter, and you still think you’ve got a shot with him? Boy, it must be nice to live in such a delusional world.”

“Enough, Lolita,” Cormack barks. For some reason, neither Cormack nor Cressida can keep my name straight. “Or I’ll decrease your mother’s pay and make her the new scullery maid at our quaint little haunted B&B.”

I make a face. “It was quaint while my mother owned it.” A couple of months ago, Noah’s airheaded father talked my apparently airheaded mother into selling these two blonde bimbos my mother’s B&B. They’ve renamed and renovated it to the point where it’s wholly unrecognizable. True, it’s still haunted, but for how long only