Miss Frost Says I Do: A Nocturne Falls Mystery (Jayne Frost Book 7) Read online

  MISS FROST

  SAYS I DO

  A Nocturne Falls Mystery

  Jayne Frost, book seven

  Kristen Painter

  Welcome to the North Pole, the town where Christmas is everyone’s job.

  Jayne Frost is a lot of things. Winter elf, Jack Frost’s daughter, Santa Claus’s niece, heir to the Winter Throne and soon to be newlywed.

  Now that she and fiancé Sinclair (and their cats, Spider and Sugar) have moved back to the North Pole, they’re firmly entrenched in planning their wedding. With Jayne’s royal heritage, it’s a major undertaking.

  And while Jayne is trying to organize the myriad details, Sinclair is taking the necessary classes to learn how to be a royal and adjust to his impending new life as Prince Consort. But with too much assistance from her well-meaning mother and aunt, Jayne quickly gets overwhelmed.

  Sinclair suggests calling a friend to help, the ever-resourceful Birdie Caruthers. Jayne does, and Birdie is thrilled to pitch in. Not long after she arrives, however, the trio discovers the most terrible thing in the wedding carriage.

  Will this dreadful discovery derail the wedding? Or can they solve the problem in time to make it to the altar unscathed? Make no bones about it, this is some serious trouble.

  MISS FROST SAYS I DO:

  A Nocturne Falls Mystery

  Jayne Frost, Book Seven

  Copyright © 2019 Kristen Painter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-941695-50-0

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  Table of Contents

  MISS FROST SAYS I DO

  About the Book

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About the Author

  Many Thanks

  Somewhere, somehow, in the communication process between me, my mother, my aunt, and LeRoy Bonfitte, the royal couturier who was my wedding dress designer, things had gone into a hard, sideways slide.

  I took another look in the mirror as best I could. Sideways might be a touch too kind. Completely downhill at breakneck speed was probably more appropriate.

  Not that I could really see myself in the mirror with the way the dress engulfed me. There was just so much of it. So much lace, so much tulle, so much ribbon, so much satin and beading and rhinestones and pearls and flowers and no.

  I tried to get a breath of air that didn’t taste like a wedding disaster and failed. Eyes closed for a moment, I did my best not to lose my cool entirely. If I’d been alone, the whole situation would have been a lot easier.

  But beyond the storm of satin swirling around me, my mother and aunt eagerly awaited my reaction. I had to tread carefully, but at the same time, how much could I sugarcoat this truth and still be true to myself? This was my wedding after all, and this dress was nothing like the picture in my head. Or what I thought I’d discussed with LeRoy. I took another breath. “This dress is…”

  “Divine?” My aunt’s voice piped up.

  I growled softly. “More like disastrous.”

  “Jayne!” I couldn’t see my mother past the enormous bow or rose or whatever was on my shoulder, but I obviously knew her voice.

  “Well, it is.” I tried to turn to see her, but the yards of fabric swamping me made that impossible. This dress defied description. It was as if every wedding dress in the history of wedding dresses had been sewn together into one monstrous Frankendress. Forget Bridezilla, this was Gownzilla.

  Something inside me snapped. “I am not wearing this down the aisle. Literally. Because that would be impossible. I can’t walk more than a few steps in this thing without getting tripped.”

  I could, however, probably crouch down inside it and disappear. The idea held more merit with each passing moment.

  “Jayne, honey, it’s a wedding dress. It’s supposed to be over-the-top,” Aunt Martha chimed in. “And you love over-the-top.” The tone of her voice told me she was probably wringing her hands.

  “It’s true. I am all about over-the-top. But this left the top behind fifteen yards of fabric ago.” I grabbed hold of the shoulder flounces and flattened them so I could see my family. Then I looked them squarely in the eyes. “This is not the dress I ordered.”

  Just then, LeRoy Bonfitte walked into the grand salon. His assistant, Charlotte, must have told him I was dressed in his creation and standing before the three-paneled mirror meant to show me just how amazing I looked.

  As if.

  “Princess Jayne.” He bowed with a flourish and a smile. “How marvelous to see you. And how marvelous you look. You are happy, no?”

  I smiled in an attempt to soften my response, because I knew he wasn’t solely responsible for this explosion of all things bridal. Also, he was a wonderful man and a talented designer, and I liked and needed him very much. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  His face fell. “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, to start with, LeRoy, this isn’t the dress we talked about.” The dress we’d talked about had probably been eaten by the dress I was wearing. “Secondly, does this dress really look like me?”

  He shot a quick glance at my mother and aunt, confirming my suspicions that they’d influenced him. But then, I already knew that based on all the extras that had been added to the gown.

  I let go of one of the bows to hold my hand up. “I don’t need an explanation. I just want something more like what we originally talked about. I don’t mind your creative interpretation of that, so long as you think it will suit me. I trust you.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  He left, head down, brow furrowed, and I knew he was blaming himself for letting my mom and aunt sway him. I felt awful.

  I put a hand to my head and sighed. “This wedding is going to kill me. I need to change out of this monstrosity and go apologize, then I’m going to disappear into a vat of sugar until I no longer feel like breaking something.”

  My aunt and my mother just stared at me with rounded eyes and slightly horrified expressions.

  My mother finally found her voice. “I think that’s a marvelous idea. You need to decompress. And I can talk to LeRoy for you.” She cleared her throat. “After all, it’s because of my and Martha’s suggestions that your dress looks the way it does, I�
��m afraid.”

  “I know.” I frowned at them. “I saw the way he looked at you. And I know you both mean well, but in all honesty, I’m kind of reaching a breaking point. This wedding is supposed to be a joyous day filled with love and happiness.”

  Aunt Martha nodded. “Yes, absolutely.”

  “But you know what I’m thinking about instead of a magical wedding day?” I leaned forward as far as the dress would allow and stressed the one word I knew would put fear into them. “Eloping.”

  My mother and Aunt Martha both pulled back, cringing at the word.

  “Please don’t do that,” my mother whispered.

  I just shrugged, letting the whole thing play out even though the big wedding was an inevitability. “Right now, it’s fifty-fifty.”

  Aunt Martha grabbed my mother’s arm. “We’ll go talk to LeRoy right now. We’ll make everything right, you’ll see.”

  “That’s a start.”

  They speed-walked off to find him.

  But all I could think was, Mission accomplished. The fear of my eloping should keep them on the straight and narrow. At least for today.

  That didn’t change the fact that I really was on the verge of losing it. There was so much going on I couldn’t keep it straight, so many decisions to make, and all of it falling on my shoulders. Clearly, it had to be that way, because if I let my mom and aunt do it, I was going to end up with some kind of bridal nightmare.

  And Sinclair, since he wasn’t royal or officially Prince Consort yet, could only help so much. Some things required my official seal of approval.

  On top of all that, everything had to be approved by the Royal Etiquette Committee. I’d dealt with them before in some very minor ways, but with this wedding, it felt like they were sitting on my shoulder, shaking their heads at everything I did.

  Being a princess had all kinds of strings attached. Not being able to have the final say on your wedding planning was one of them. Although, if they said no to something Sin and I really wanted, I was prepared to fight them.

  Look, I got that my wedding to Sinclair wasn’t just two people getting hitched. It was the future of the North Pole happening in real time. A celebration of Winter and Christmas royalty. It was also the event of the century. I wasn’t kidding. My parents had one child, one heir to the Winter Throne. Me.

  So yeah, this was a major deal.

  I understood every bit of that. Understood the significance of the marriage in the scheme of North Pole history and royal succession and so forth and so on. But at the moment, I was just a girl trying to marry the guy she loved. And I was just about over all the fuss and bother that being royal entailed.

  Not to mention, Sin and I were still working through the details of the renovation on the apartment that would be our home when this wedding was done with. That was a major undertaking in itself.

  Alone in the grand salon, I ducked down, found the floor and tunneled out of the dress. When I was free of it, I got to my feet, lifted my chin, and walked back to the dressing room in my bra and underwear with as much dignity as possible.

  What I needed was to see my guy and decompress a little, maybe hang out with just him and our cats, Spider and Sugar, but I wasn’t sure that could happen anytime soon. He was immersed in his own hectic schedule of classes, learning all kinds of things he’d need to know as Prince Consort. Things like our royal history, royal etiquette, how to address people, what his role would be once I became queen, and what charities there were for him to work with as Prince Consort. He’d also be hiring his new staff and having meetings with them about what he expected, what his needs would be, and probably a thousand other things that were already part of my daily life.

  Everything I’d grown up with and come to think of as just part of life was now being added to his.

  There was a good chance he was as overwhelmed as I was. That concerned me. I didn’t need my groom stressed out as much as I was. One of us had to stay sane.

  I put my jeans, sweater, and boots back on and was about to exit the dressing room just as my phone chimed. Since the tech teams had installed the new landlines that Ingvar, the new IT team leader had designed, local communication had vastly improved.

  Unless you didn’t like people being able to reach you. In that case, things had taken a turn for the worse.

  Or, in the case of my aunt and mother, who’d discovered all the wedding boards on Pinterest, things had gotten very…Pinteresty. Much to my detriment.

  I’d stopped trying to explain to both of them that in order for me to see something on Pinterest that they liked, they didn’t need to print out and messenger it to me, but the concept of emailing me a link never seemed to take hold.

  I checked the screen and saw a reminder that I was due at the Royal Transportation Division in thirty minutes to review the Crystal Carriage that would carry me from the palace, through the streets of the North Pole, then to the town square where an ice cathedral specifically constructed for the wedding would host the actual ceremony.

  After we said our vows, the carriage would then take Sin and me through the streets again and eventually return us to the palace for the reception. The ride through the city would be our first official duty as husband and wife. The first time for the citizens to see us as such. The carriage alone was something to behold, but with us inside it? Quite the spectacle. I couldn’t imagine the crowds.

  The carriage was used for three main royal events—funerals, naming ceremonies, and weddings. None of those things had happened in a long, long time.

  My guess was that the thing had a solid layer of dust or frost on it, depending on how well maintained the transportation hangar was.

  But today, I didn’t care if it was buried under fifty feet of polar bear poop. I’d had my fill of wedding planning and all things wedding related.

  I needed Sin, some downtime, hefty quantities of sugar, and a chatty little black cat on my lap.

  I sent a quick text to the Transportation Division to tell them today’s visit was off, and I would reschedule at my earliest convenience. It had been years since I’d seen the carriage in person, but it wasn’t a pressing issue.

  Next I texted Sin. Where are you and what are you doing?

  While I waited for him to answer, I grabbed my purse and headed for the crawler I’d driven here. As soon as I was behind the wheel, Sin’s reply came through.

  Meeting with the security team about the wedding, then supposed to go to a lesson on proper attire for official daytime functions.

  I cringed on his behalf. But you don’t really want to do that, do you?

  Not even remotely a little bit. What’s up?

  I need a break that includes you and some sugar. And no wedding talk.

  I’m in. Where?

  I gave that a moment of thought. As much as I wanted to see the cats, going back to the palace would make us too easy to find. I wasn’t ready to be tracked down just yet. How about a movie? We can be alone in the royal box. I don’t even care what’s showing.

  Me either. Pick me up at the south exit in ten?

  I smiled big. On my way.

  It actually took me nine minutes, and Sin didn’t make it out for two more after that, but then we were headed to the theater, and the wedding stuff was temporarily behind us.

  He sighed as he sat back. “It’s a good thing I love you.”

  “I know.” I shook my head. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But I knew what I was getting into. At least I thought I did. This might be more than my doughnut maker’s brain can take in.”

  “No way. You’re one of the smartest men I know.” I did my best to keep things positive. “But I get it. It’s overwhelming at the moment. Someday this will all be old hat.”

  “I’m sure, but right now, it’s making my head throb. I don’t know how you do it. Except that you were born into it.”

  “I know,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled at me. “Don’t apologize. It’s
all worth it to marry you. But let’s just say your timing on this little escape was perfect.”

  “I needed it, too, trust me.”

  “Dare I ask why?”

  “I’ll just say dress disaster and leave it at that.”

  He frowned. “I thought you had a designated designer.”

  “I do, and he’s wonderful, but my mother and Aunt Martha got a little too involved in the process, and it ended up looking more like an avalanche of satin than something anyone would want to wear down the aisle. It’s not LeRoy’s fault. How do you say no to the queen and Mrs. Kringle? But it’s all going to be fixed. I just had enough for the day, that’s all.”

  “I understand.” He deftly changed the subject. “What’s showing?”

  “I’m not sure, actually. I think there’s a rom-com and an action flick to pick from.”

  “Well, I’m up for anything.”

  “Good.” I pulled into the theater’s parking lot, found a space, and turned off the crawler’s engine. The marquee announced what was playing.

  I read the movie titles out loud. “Pirates of the Pacific. That’s that one with JLo and The Rock as pirates competing to find the treasure before the other one, but then they end up falling in love and joining forces against their mutual archnemesis.”

  Sin shrugged. “Sounds like mindless fun.”