as well as an animal stuffer.
Marla steered the car through the busy airport traffic onto the motorway and attempted to get the conversation with Brynn back on track.
‘So. How long are you visiting for?’
‘Oh, not long for me, I’m afraid. I’m a key note speaker at the London taxidermy exhibition, and then it’s on to Russia.’
‘Another lecture?’
‘No. I’m collecting a dead zebra from Moscow Zoo.’
Marla met his gaze in the rear view mirror and couldn’t decide whether or not he was joking. Terrific. Trust her mother to bring Hannibal bloody Lecter to visit.
‘Please Jonny! You owe me.’
Jonny pouted as Marla clutched his shirtsleeve in desperation.
‘How many more times are you going to use that line before we’re done?’
‘Oh, a lot more yet. You nearly closed us down. It’s a big debt.’ She gestured with her hands to demonstrate the size. ‘Huge. So you’ll come, then?’
‘Go on then.’ Jonny grumbled. ‘But only because I don’t happen to have made other plans.’
He hummed the Star Trek theme as he spun on his block-heeled cowboy boots and sashayed off down the aisle. They’d been preparing the chapel for a big Trekkie wedding all day, and short of actually being beamed up, they were more or less ready.
Marla grinned at his retreating back. He was a true friend, and would have come on Saturday evening just because she needed him there, but she knew he was dying to meet her mother. Actually Brynn, to be precise. He’d howled with laughter when she’d relayed the conversation from the car, but all the same he couldn’t possibly have accepted her invitation outright. That would have been far too straightforward for Jonny.
Marla counted up the dinner guests in her head. Jonny, Emily and Tom, Rupert and herself, and of course her mother and Brynn. Seven ought to be enough to dilute the effect her mother had. Cecilia had insisted on a swish dinner at Franco’s, but the last thing Marla felt like was a cosy double date with her mother, Brynn and Rupert. The two men would have absolutely no common ground, and Lord knows Brynn could be relied on to stop a conversation in its tracks with a random comment about a female hippopotamus’s enormous lady bits. He appeared to specialise in huge animals, and after two days under the same roof, Marla knew far more than she ever wanted to about the anatomical complexities of lions and tigers and bears.
What was her mother thinking? There was every possibility that she would end her days stuffed, mounted and on display in Brynn’s travelling freak show, probably wedged somewhere between a giant panda and a Palomino.
Maybe he was rich. But then that wasn’t something that usually turned her mother’s head; Cecelia had enough independent wealth to not need to lean on anyone else.
Oh, God. A hideous thought crept into her mind.
Maybe he was awesome in the sack.
Marla fought to keep her lunch down at the idea and tried to banish it from her head. There had to be something, though, and she was going to make it her business to find out what it was.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gabe ran the iron over his black shirt. His mobile phone was cradled in the crook of his shoulder as he tried to call a cab at the same time. He wished he’d never mentioned the fact that they’d now been open for three months. Melanie had pounced on it like a vulture and insisted that the whole team should go out and celebrate. He’d humoured her, and left her in charge of organising something, and now here he was, heading into town to meet Melanie, Dan and the pallbearers for dinner at some fancy restaurant. She’d made the arrangements and invited everyone before he’d even got wind of it. He’d tried hard to hide his surprise; all he’d had in mind was a swift half down the pub, not a full-scale dinner. On the flip side, he was glad that Melanie enjoyed work enough to go to such trouble.
He put the iron down as the switchboard operator muttered an unintelligible greeting against his ear.
‘Hi. Taxi to Franco’s please. Soon as possible.’
Franco’s was one of those chichi restaurants with glitzy chandeliers and mushroom suede banquettes, and on a different day in different company Marla would probably have loved it. But sitting around the table that evening, she felt uneasy. Their party had swollen to nine with the late addition of Dora and Ivan; Emily and Tom had threatened to drop out and