Undertaking Love Page 0,63

Jonny was completely unabashed by his mistake and fixed her with a beady glare. ‘Do you love him?’

Oh jeez, not the love question. She felt her muesli made a break for freedom.

‘Jonny, it’s way too early for a heart to heart. We’ll talk later, okay?’

‘Why? To give you a chance to work on your evasive answers some more?’ He arched his eyebrows and smirked as headed out. ‘Pub after work. And no “buts”,’ he shouted ominously as he took the stairs two at a time.

Marla shook her head.

She had plenty of buts.

But I don’t want a big meringue dress.

But I don’t care whether the napkins match the seat covers.

But I’ve always hated red roses.

But I don’t want to get married.

Not to Rupert, nor to anyone else.

Jonny would regret dragging her to the pub when she got started on that little lot.

She placed her empty mug down and spotted the corner of a little envelope hidden beneath her mouse mat. A little tug and a quick rack of her brains, and it came back to her. It was the note she’d taken from the funeral parlour the night that Bluey died, the one with her own name scrawled across the front. She’d stashed it beneath her mouse mat, unsure if it was right to open it or not, but as she turned it over in her fingers, she reached a decision.

It was her name written across the front of it. It was intended for her.

What harm could it do, really? It was just a scrap of paper that would probably be nothing. She ripped the envelope across the top and eased the little card out.

Dear Marla,

Something to help make your July 4th go with a bang, and to say I hope we can enjoy a less explosive friendship from here on in.

Yours,

Gabe

X

She frowned and read it twice over, still none the wiser. What did he mean, July 4th? Bang? She gasped out loud and clamped her fingers over her mouth as the tinkling penny stopped spinning in the air and began to drop, flipping over several times in slow motion before it landed with a dull thud of realisation.

The fireworks.

But how could they have been from Gabe? Rupert had brought them over; she’d seen him with her own eyes. She tapped her nose as she mentally rewound back to when Rupert walked into the chapel on July 4th. It was a day she’d prefer never to think of again.

Yes. She was one hundred per cent certain that Rupert had expressly said that the fireworks were his gift to her.

Hadn’t he?

And if he hadn’t said it, he’d definitely encouraged her to think it.

How could she ever know for sure?

She could hardly come right out and ask Rupert, because the mere mention of Gabe’s name was enough to give him a coronary. And she couldn’t ask Gabe either because a) they weren’t on speaking terms, and b) even if they were, she’d sound a deranged fool.

‘Hey, Gabe. I stole this note from your desk, and now I need to know if my boyfriend passed your gift off as his own.’

It sounded absurd and she knew it, but what else could ‘something to help make your July 4th go with a bang’ possibly mean? Unless he’d sent a bomb, which would be more in keeping given the general state of affairs between them.

She frowned out of the window at the funeral parlour. The constant ‘push me, pull me’ nature of her relationship with Gabe was draining. Their basic chemical reaction to each other made everything more complicated than it needed to be. If only he were pig ugly, it would make it so much easier to hate him.

‘A bottle of red and three glasses, please, whenever you’re ready, Bill.’

Jonny winked at the landlord before gesturing Marla and Emily to a quiet table in the pub.

‘Make that two glasses. I’ll stick to OJ,’ Emily added as she stood on tiptoes to lift her growing bump over the back of a chair.

They flopped down on the low sofas with a collective groan. It’d been a hectic day of preparations for a mid-week Las Vegas style wedding, and the Elvis impersonator had dropped out at the eleventh hour, causing pandemonium. It was all sorted now, thanks to a desperate runner up from Stars in their Eyes who still craved his five minutes in the spotlight. He was prepared to make the two-hundred-mile round trip in order to don his star-spangled spandex again.

‘Emily, do you think Marla should