Undertaking Love Page 0,65

‘Have you said anything to Rupert about this yet?’

Marla shook her head. ‘I only read it today.’

‘Good. Let me tell him. Or, better yet, let me smack his teeth down his throat for you.’

Marla covered Jonny’s tightly balled fist with her own hand, grateful to have him in her corner, even if he had temporarily morphed into Bruce Willis from the ‘Die Hard’ years.

‘I still don’t get it though …’ Emily muttered.

‘I don’t either, really,’ Marla said. ‘Rupert definitely gave me those fireworks himself. How did he get hold of them, if they were actually from Gabe?’

Emily shook her head with a perplexed look at Jonny. ‘Well, I know one thing for sure. Gabe wouldn’t have given them to Rupert to pass on, since they can’t stand the sight of each other.’

Marla nodded. She’d arrived at that same stumbling block herself.

Jonny, however, was streets ahead of both of them.

‘You’re right. Gabe wouldn’t give them to Rupert. But you can bet your sweet ass that Melanie would,’ he said, slowly. They lapsed into silence and stared at each other.

‘Bitch,’ Jonny spat eventually.

‘But why would she take Gabe’s note off first?’

Jonny looked at Emily as if she were the village idiot.

‘Durr! Because she’s got the hots for him herself of course! Haven’t you noticed the way she moons over him?’

‘But why would Rupert not mention that they weren’t from him?’ Emily asked, her eyes flicking between Marla and Jonny.

Marla was silent – still turning the idea over in her head.

‘Because he’s a thieving opportunist shitbag. Why else?’

Marla cringed at Jonny’s typically harsh words. ‘Go easy, Jonny. Maybe he intended to tell me they were from Gabe, but then felt awkward when I was so thrilled.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Jonny laughed sourly. ‘Why are you determined to see the best in him?’

Marla shrugged. ‘I just know him better than you do. And anyway, since when did you become a fully paid up member of the Gabriel Ryan fan club?’

‘I’m not. I just don’t like people lying to you.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Emily asked, her chocolate eyes soft with sympathy.

Marla rubbed a hand across her forehead, then knocked what was left in her wine glass back in one go.

‘I don’t know yet. But one thing’s for sure. I’m not marrying Rupert.’

Marriage was number one on her ‘things not to do before I die’ list, so how the hell had she ended up with a bona fide fiancé? Let alone one who was already lying through his teeth before he’d even got a ring on her finger?

Over at Emily’s cottage, Tom unzipped the suit carrier that hung on the back of the spare bedroom door and felt around inside the jacket pocket of his linen wedding suit. It was still there, folded in half, just as it had been that night on the mantelpiece.

He clutched the pale green note and stared at it as if it might explode in his fingers.

The night he’d found it, he’d so wanted to destroy it, but something had held him back. Was today the day he would actually read it?

Was any day the right day to find out the real reason your wife planned to leave you?

His fingers touched the cool cotton of his jacket. If he reached into the pocket of the trousers, he knew he’d find powder soft Antiguan sand from the beach they’d married on. He’d never got around to having the suit dry cleaned, for fear that it would wash away some of the magical memories of that day.

Emily, barefoot and beautiful, an exotic flower tucked behind her ear. Of how she’d laughed at the way the wedding celebrant pronounced his surname, and how thrilled she’d been to finally share that name with him.

Of the love they’d made on that very same beach to consummate their marriage, beneath a blanket of stars so bright you could almost reach up to take one home as a souvenir.

He flipped the letter over again. He’d told Emily that he’d thrown it in the fire that night without reading it. He wished he had.

Did her really want to know what had driven Emily to the point of leaving him?

Did he want to rake it all up again, now that she was finally having a baby and they’d stepped back from the brink of disaster?

The baby.

He closed his eyes and sighed hard, the letter suddenly as lead-heavy as his heart. Inevitability swamped him. He already knew.

He traced his own name with his fingertip, scrawled across the front of the paper