Matchmaking Can Be Murder Page 25

  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 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,” Juliet said. “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 showtime!”

  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 a much worse disaster for Juliet and Reverend Brook’s wedding yet to come.