Sugar and Iced (Cupcake Bakery Mystery) Read Online Free

to Flagstaff tomorrow. Care to join us?”
    “I think that would make it infinitely less fun,” Mel said. “She’s still not speaking to me.”
    “Really?” he asked. “But it’s been months.”
    “Really,” Angie confirmed as she gave Charlie a hug.
    Tate stepped forward and shook Charlie’s hand and confirmed, “It’s bad.”
    “Really bad,” Oz agreed as he stepped forward and shook Charlie’s hand, too.
    “Maybe you should just marry the guy,” Charlie said to Mel. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and Mel could see their late father, Charlie Senior, who had gone on to the eternally open bar ten years before, in the gesture. It made her heart hurt.
    An awkward silence filled the room.
    “Or not,” Charlie added.
    “Can you guys run the show for a bit?” Mel asked Tate, Oz, and Angie. “I want to visit with Charlie for a while.”
    “Of course.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “On it.”
    Mel gestured for Charlie to follow her into the kitchen. There they ran into Marty, who was sitting at the big steel table in the center of the room fortifying himself with one of the Salted Caramels.
    “What? A man can’t even eat a cupcake without people spying on him?”
    “I am not spying on you, Marty,” Mel protested.
    “Oh, please, I know you and Angie want me to break up with Olivia, but I’m not going to, so you can just save all your hot air for arguing with Tate about the business. Hi, Charlie.”
    “Hi, Marty,” Charlie answered as Marty crammed the last bite of his cupcake into his mouth and pushed through the door back into the bakery.
    “Funny, I never think of a bakery as being a hotbed of drama until I come and visit you,” Charlie said.
    “We’re special like that,” Mel said. She loaded up a tray with a variety of cupcakes and led the way out the back door and up the stairs to her apartment.
    When she pushed the door open, Captain Jack, her adopted white cat with a black patch of fur over his right eye, launched himself at Charlie. Thankfully, Charlie had been by enough that he knew to brace himself for the incoming fur ball and he bent down and caught the cat around the middle, hoisting him up into his arms.
    “Hey, Jackster,” Charlie said. “How you doing?”
    “Mad at me,” Mel said. “Like Mom.”
    “Misses Joe, does he?” As if in answer to Charlie’s question, Jack went limp and hung over Charlie’s arm, as if the feline were dying of a broken heart.
    “Oh, quit it, you big faker,” Mel said. She put the tray down on her coffee table and reached over to scratch Captain Jack’s chin. “You just saw him the other day. It’s not like Joe is out of your life.”
    “But he doesn’t spend the night anymore, does he?” Charlie asked.
    Mel and Charlie were super close, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to have a candid convo about her love life with her brother. Besides, it was way more complicated than she could explain at this juncture.
    “I’m not having this talk,” she said.
    “Oh, come on,” he said. “Nancy will kill me if I don’t come home with details. Us married-with-children types are living vicariously through you now. You have to give me something.”
    “Watch cable television,” Mel said. “It’ll be more entertaining, I’m sure.”
    “What about the detective?” Charlie asked. “Is he still in the picture?”
    Mel felt her face get warm and she cursed her fair skin.
    “Oh, he is, is he?” Charlie asked. His eyebrows shot up behind his glasses. “How does Joe feel about that?”
    “Why don’t you ask him?” Mel asked.
    “You’re not going to play, are you?” He sighed and reached for a cupcake.
    “Nope,” she said. “You’ll have to get your thrills elsewhere.”
    “Listen, Sis, when you called me a few months ago and asked me to dinner, you told me that you didn’t know what you wanted. You said you were going to break the engagement with Joe and ask for more time. Now it’s been months and you seem to be in a holding