Truth be told, there was something ever so slightly grungy about him. But cool, louche, stubbly grunge, rather than the patchouli-soaked rocker-in-need-of-a-bath kind.
He was smokin’ hot, and Marla didn’t have a fire extinguisher. Pity he was a funeral director. Eeew. Not to mention the fact that he was in danger of killing her business stone dead. The double reality check was enough to make his halo slip down to his throat, and Marla was only sad it wasn’t tight enough to pose a full on choking hazard. Gabriel Ryan might be easy on the eye, but as far as she was concerned, he was trouble in all the wrong ways.
His face cracked open into a big, easy smile as he lounged against the door frame and held out a chipped, empty mug.
‘Not heather, but any chance I could borrow a cup of sugar please?’
The ‘cup of sugar’ line again. He wasn’t even original. Marla leaned ever so slightly forward and gazed into the empty, tea-stained mug for a long moment before raising her eyes back up to his.
‘You must be Gabriel.’
He pushed his spare hand through his hair and assaulted her with that slow smile again.
Jeez, he had perfect teeth.
Marla was American.
Teeth mattered.
‘Guilty as charged. But please, it’s just Gabe.’
‘Gabe.’
His name felt treacherously good on her lips. A shiver ran down her backbone as he held her gaze for a second longer than strictly necessary. Invisible to the naked eye, a gossamer spider web of attraction spun around them, and undetectable to the human ear, Mother Nature’s wicked laugh tinkled off the chapel’s stained glass windows.
Marla swallowed hard. It was her move, but somehow it didn’t feel safe to invite him over the threshold. He was like a vampire trying to glamour her into submission, and he was doing a pretty good job of it. She gave herself a mental slap and swung the door wide. ‘Come on through.’
He stepped past her into the chapel, and as she closed the door she couldn’t help but take a sly sniff of him.
Not a whiff of patchouli or dead bodies.
Phew.
In fact, he smelled really rather delicious, all lemony-spice shower gel and fresh coffee. And, as it happened, Marla loved coffee. And lemons.
She led him into the small back kitchen and gestured for him to take a seat at the buttercup-yellow formica table. As she flicked the kettle on, she turned to him sceptically. ‘Do you really need sugar?’
He grinned again. He needed to stop doing that. It was distracting.
‘Not especially. But I could murder a coffee.’
Marla made no move to take his bashed up mug from him, but instead took down two pretty duck-egg blue cups from the cupboard and heaped coffee into them. They needed to talk. It might as well be civilised, over coffee. And at least here she had the advantage of being on home turf.
‘Sugar?’ She held the jar up.
He shook his head and laughed. ‘Never touch the stuff.’
Why oh why did he have to have a beautiful voice to match his beautiful face? His soft Irish lilt was full of gravel, as if the man had actually swallowed a bucket full of blarney stones. She placed the cups down on the table before dropping into the seat opposite him.
‘I’m Marla.’
‘Marla. That’s unusual.’
Oh God. Her name sounded bone-meltingly good with his Irish lilt. He rolled the R in the middle, as if he were playing with it in his mouth, and deciding whether or not to let it escape.
He raised his cup in salute. ‘To new neighbours.’
And there it was.
The perfect inroad into the most delicate of conversations. Marla sipped her coffee and eyed him over the rim, suddenly unsure how to begin now show time had arrived.
He lowered his cup and watched her steadily. ‘So … a little bird told me you wanted to see me.’
Marla coughed at the description of Guinness Guts as a ‘little bird’, but at least he appeared to have passed on her message. It was no good; she couldn’t put it off any longer. ‘Look, this is awkward, so I’ll just come right out and say it. I’m afraid you can’t move in next door.’
She breathed out hard and registered the way his eyebrows inched upwards. He nodded and took a long, contemplative sip of his coffee. ‘I know my line of business sometimes makes people a bit squeamish, but honestly, there’s no need to worry. I’ll make sure we don’t cause you any bother.’
Did he really think that that was all