Things are looking up for the owner of Coffee, Books, and More--Jill's finally getting her MBA, and though her wedding to police detective Greg is postponed a few months, she still has plenty to celebrate. A girls' weekend in Santa Barbara is just the ticket. But back in South Cove, someone else's big day has become a big problem. Antiques dealer Josh Thomas and Mandy Jensen were planning a small private ceremony under an olive tree on the historic Jensen farm--until Mandy went missing . . .

Is this a case of a runaway bride--or a guilty groom? Greg zeroes in on Josh but finds him so annoying that he quietly asks Jill's help in keeping his number-one suspect distracted. She knows that Josh is searching for something else besides his fiancée--a bank robber's buried gold bullion. And when the professor he'd been discussing it with turns up dead, she can't help wondering if what looked like cold feet was actually cold-blooded murder . . .