Undertaking Love Page 0,43
in her outstretched hands.
Rupert took it from her with a look of barely disguised alarm on his face and pranced around with stiff arms as if she’d given him a live grenade with the pin pulled out.
‘It’s not even lit yet, idiot!’ Marla giggled.
He somehow managed to get it onto the spike, still as skittish as a pony as he flicked the lighter ineffectively towards it.
‘Move over, Guy Fawkes. Let me.’
Marla took the lighter, igniting the fuse like a pro, and they stepped back hand in hand to watch the rocket fizz into life. It hissed and sizzled for an uncertain second, before whooshing up into the darkening sky in a glittering cascade of scarlet stars.
Marla clapped with delight and set up the next one straight afterwards, this time a spangle of blue stars. A ball of homesickness lodged in her throat as she imagined the beautiful rainbow skies over America tonight. In that moment she forgave Rupert for his reticence to light the fireworks. He’d given her this wonderful surprise; she should cherish his kindness far more than she did.
She wrapped her arms around him and tilted her chin up with a smile.
‘Rupert, thank you. I love you for this.’
‘I love you too, Marla.’
His arms felt a lot like those warm July Fourth blankets from her childhood.
She let herself melt against him as he kissed her long and slow, and for the first time in a while, he was the only man on her mind.
Gabe heard the bang in the sky as he searched for the key to the front door of the funeral parlour in his pockets. Being the boss meant that he was never off duty, even on days like today when he’d already put in fifteen hours at the convention. He’d just called by to make sure all was well, and that Melanie had remembered to deliver the parcel to Marla. Not that he really needed to go inside for confirmation, given the blaze of tiny blue stars in the sky. He grinned, glad that she’d obviously accepted the fireworks in the spirit they were given.
The sound of her laughter drifted across to him from the back garden of the chapel. Was she having a party? Her laughter pulled him across the space between their properties like a shard of metal to the Hadron Collider. He was powerless to resist. He didn’t actually try all that hard, to be honest. He hoped he would be a welcome visitor at her door tonight.
He pushed the side gate open a little and stopped short. If it was a party, it was an exclusive one. Just Marla and Rupert, wrapped in each other’s arms, the glow of a couple of candles on the table casting a gold gleam over Marla’s hair.
She looked more relaxed than he could ever remember seeing her as she smiled and thanked Rupert for bringing her fireworks.
Rupert?
Then she kissed him. How the hell had that sly gobshite managed to pass off Gabe’s gift as his own? But much as he wanted to steam in there and show Rupert up for the liar he was, he couldn’t bring himself to smash up her fragile happiness for his own gratification. He backed out of the gate, his ears ringing with the words of love he’d overheard.
Rupert caught sight of Gabe’s receding back over Marla’s shoulder. He wanted to laugh out loud with triumph and punch the air. Marla had said she loved him, and all in clear earshot of Ryan. He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried. Jesus. Marla was setting up yet another bloody rocket. Would she never get bored? He hated fireworks and was dangerously close to his limit of fake oohs and aaahs. This called for something stronger than champagne. He let himself into the side door of the chapel in search of Dora’s whisky.
After that moment, things seemed to happen in slow motion, and yet at breakneck speed too. Marla’s earlier instruction not to open the kitchen door because of Bluey had gone in one ear and out the other. As he opened the door the loud crack of the rocket rendered through the quiet night like a gunshot and startled the slumbering dog into a panic.
The big hound bolted straight past him across the lawn, not even registering his mistress as she lunged for his collar and ended up holding instead the ridiculous fluffy headphones she’d slid over his ears as he slept. He cleared the side fence in one