Undertaking Love Page 0,30

muttered darkly and waved to Bill for more beers.

Gabe was well aware that Marla was sitting across the room with the reporter from the meeting. That figured. They were probably hatching phase two of their hate campaign. He could see them reflected in the mirror behind the bar, and he flinched as the guy smoothed a stray lock of Marla’s hair back behind her ear.

This was the boyfriend she’d mentioned? The tosser from The Herald? Christ, he’d credited her with better taste. But then in light of events this afternoon, maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised.

He had to hand it to her. It had taken some balls to come over to the funeral parlour with her chequebook in hand ready to pay for a new window. He still couldn’t make up his mind whether he believed her pleas of innocence or not, but either way she’d proved that she had a brave streak a mile wide. Thinking back, he knew that he’d come down hard on her, but disappointment could do that to a man. Petty thuggery didn’t match up with the woman she’d become in his head, and she’d fallen off her pedestal with an even louder crash than the window.

He excused himself to the gents and found himself shoulder to shoulder at the urinal with Rupert, who’d followed him in.

‘Stay away from her.’ Rupert muttered, midstream.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me. Leave Marla alone, or I’ll smear your fucking name in so much shit that you’ll be hounded out of the country, let alone the village.’

Gabe zipped his fly and turned to Rupert, who did the same.

‘Are you actually trying to threaten me?’ Gabe couldn’t decide whether to laugh at him or knock him out.

Rupert shrugged and turned to the mirror over the washbasin to fiddle with his artfully arranged hair. ‘Call it what you like.’

Gabe was having a bad day, and Rupert’s glib smugness made his fists itch. He stepped in close behind him and met his eye in the mirror. ‘You’ve got that much right. I will call it whatever the hell I like, and I will do whatever the hell I want, with whoever the hell I want. Have you got that?’

‘Tosser.’

Gabe sensed the scared posh boy behind Rupert’s Boden-poster-boy demeanour. ‘What is it that really bugs you, paperboy? Don’t you trust me with her? Or is it that you don’t trust Marla around me?’

Back in the bar, Gabe glanced over at Marla as he sat back down and found her watching him. Her expression gave him little clue of what was going through her head. Something serious though, going by her frown. She was probably wondering if he’d just killed her fop of a boyfriend in the loos. Even from across the other side of the room, he could make out the dark circles underneath her eyes and, despite the events of the day, he still wished he could smooth them away.

Crazy.

Chapter Twelve

‘This has to be one of the weirdest weddings we’ve ever done.’

Emily glanced over at Jonny as she arranged the huge displays of dyed black and purple roses around the altar.

‘I love it. So dramatic …’ Jonny sighed as he wobbled around on the stepladders to adjust the fake cobwebs that shrouded the rafters.

‘Of course you do. It involves dressing up,’ Emily rolled her eyes and shuddered. ‘I’m not struck. It’s like a scene from Night of the Living Dead.’

It wasn’t Emily’s idea of romance, but then who was she to define love? She’d lost any authority on the subject the moment she’d allowed Dan anywhere near her. She admonished Bluey with a stern tut as he delicately pulled one of the black roses out of her artful display with his teeth.

Marla came through from the storeroom with her mouth full of hair grips and her arms full of heavy purple velvet, which they’d use to create the gothic aisle. Alaric and Gelvira weren’t your run-of-the-mill couple, but despite their ghoulish makeup and dark sense of fantasy, Marla had warmed to them straight away. They wanted a full-blown gothic extravaganza for their special day, and that was exactly what she intended to give them. The chapel looked resplendent in forbidding regalia, and Jonny was all too happy to conduct the ceremony decked out as the Grim Reaper.

‘How long have we got left?’ she yelled. It was tricky to make herself heard above the creepy organ music Jonny had stuck on the sound system.

Emily glanced at her watch. ‘Three hours or so? We’re