Undertaking Love (2 page)

‘Hey, Rory.’ He slipped the key into the lock and turned it.

‘You there yet, little brother?’

At forty-five, Gabe’s eldest brother Rory’s voice sounded heart-wrenchingly similar to their Da’s. He’d appointed himself patriarch of the family after their father’s heart attack last summer – a role he took very seriously.

‘Sure am. Just arrived.’

Gabe cast a last glance up at his name as he passed underneath the sign and stepped inside.

‘And?’

He looked around at the haphazard clutter of stepladders and paint pots that littered the reception area.

‘And, yeah. It’s looking pretty good.’

‘Only Phil the Drill said it’s an almighty mess.’

Phil the Drill has a big mouth, Gabe thought, but refrained from saying it, because he knew that Rory meant well, and would no doubt relay everything he said back to their mother and three other brothers. He brushed off Rory’s concerns.

‘It’s nothing I can’t handle.’

Besides, it wasn’t a lie. He’d handle any amount of mess rather than go home and take his place in the family firm. He loved the bones of his family, but being back there had just been too hard on his heart since last summer. His dad was everywhere, and for Gabe, the only way to deal with his grief was to be somewhere else.

‘How’s Ma?’

Rory’s rich laugh rumbled down the line. ‘Same as ever. Bossy. Interfering. But she misses you, Gabriel.’

Guilt stabbed through him. ‘Tell her I’ll call her later.’

‘Don’t forget, okay?’

‘Course not.’

‘And Gabe …’

‘Yes?’

‘Good luck, little brother.’

Gabe clicked the phone shut and rested his helmet down by the door. He’d drifted from funeral home to funeral home since his father’s death, unable to settle but unwilling to go back to Ireland. His heart might belong in Dublin, but this was his home now.

It had all happened quite by accident really. He supposed some might have called it fate if they were given to believing in such things. Firstly, he’d turned thirty. His family had, of course, wanted to throw the customary huge bash at the club in Dublin, and Gabe had known perfectly well that once he was there they’d use every trick in the book to make him stay. He’d refused their pleas and opted to stay in England with his best mate Dan, making plans for a weekend where the sole intention was to drink until they couldn’t stand up anymore.

A weekend which, in turn, was, devastated beyond repair by the untimely death of Dan’s gregarious, life-loving grandmother. Gabe’s funeral-director instinct had kicked in hard as he’d leaned over to gently close Lizzie Robertson’s eyes for the last time. He’d poured out generous measures of Scotch for her family, and made the calls they were too shell shocked to handle themselves.

Much later, over midnight brandies, it had struck him exactly how far away the rural undertakers were. Dan’s family had waited a good few hours before anyone could reach them. Much longer than any family needed to wait at a time like that. And so the seed had been sown. A seed that grew with frightening speed, like a magic beanstalk leading Gabe towards his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But I can’t afford it
, he’d reasoned, and he’d smiled with relief that there was a bona fide reason to let himself wriggle off the hook. Which was all very well, until his brothers finally wised up to the fact that he really wasn’t coming home and bought him out of the family business as a birthday gift.

Still, he’d laughed when Dan shoved property details into his hands for some place that had just come back onto the market due to a deal falling through with a cupcake company.
Cupcakes?
How could a company hope to survive just selling cupcakes? No wonder the deal had fallen through, but he’d viewed the premises anyway to shut Dan up. It would be way too small. Cupcakes didn’t take up as much space as dead bodies.

Wrong again.

Gabe wasn’t much given to mystical flights of fancy, but had he been pushed, he’d probably have agreed that it seemed as if the planets had aligned obligingly just for him. He had the money. He had the experience. And now he had the perfect premises. ‘Go big or go home’ had been Dan’s sage advice over a pint in his prospective new local. And because going home wasn’t an option, Gabe had climbed the beanstalk and signed on the dotted line before he could let himself back out of it.

‘Time to grow up, Gabe.’

He picked his way between the stepladders and crisscross of extension cables and let himself through to the back. In the kitchen, his eyes fell on the bright yellow note gaffer taped to the bubble wrap around the newly delivered fridge.

‘The yank bird from across the way is on the warpath. Watch yer back, kid.’

He read it over twice more, still none the wiser about the note’s possible meaning.
What yank bird? And why the hell would she be on the warpath already?

He glanced out of the window, half-expecting to see someone storming his way, but no warring harridans appeared to be beating a path to his door at this early hour. No doubt all would become apparent when Phil the Drill arrived. Late, of course. But what Phil lacked in time keeping skills, he more than made up for in fitting skills. He’d worked for the family undertakers in Ireland for over twenty-five years and knew their business inside out. He’d been more than happy to bring his boys on a jolly across the Irish Sea on the promise of decent money, good digs and as much beer as they could drink.

Impatient for his first caffeine shot of the day, Gabe rummaged around and managed to unearth the kettle from behind a pile of half-eaten packets of biscuits.

A blur of red caught his eye outside as he sat down with the steaming mug cradled in his hands. He rocked back on his chair legs to watch the girl outside as she struggled to find something in the bottom of the huge bag she was balancing on her knee. Why did girls always carry such huge handbags? Her hair whipped around her cheeks, heavy red waves that irritated her enough to make her brush them roughly away from her mouth. She found what she was searching for, straightened up and disappeared around the back of the weird chapel place next door.

Interesting. He added ‘attractive redhead working next door’ to the growing file of positive aspects to his new venture. He grinned as the caffeine seeped steadily into his system. Phil the Drill was wrong. Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it in his bones.

Crap, crap and triple crap. Gabriel Ryan was divine. ‘Are you selling lucky heather?’

Marla knew she sounded surly, but come on. Really?

What else could he expect when he turned up on her doorstep uninvited, all rumpled with come-to-bed eyes? The man might hold the future of her business in the palm of his hand, but right at that very moment the only question on Marla’s mind was how on earth the sexiest man on the planet could
possibly
be an undertaker.

His gypsy-black hair would probably be given to curls if he let it grow, but as it was it had just reached that optimum run-your-fingers-through sexy length without veering too far into goth territory. 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 there was to this? That she was simply being
squeamish
? Unfortunately for Marla, he chose that moment to smile at her again and temporarily robbed her of the ability to speak.

‘Look. I promise you won’t be suddenly seeing dead bodies all the time or anything. Scout’s honour.’

He was trying to make light of it.
The need to clarify the situation burned in Marla’s gut until she finally regained power over her vocal chords.

‘Gabe, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.
This
,’ she spread her hands to encompass the building around them. ‘
This
is a wedding chapel. It’s a
happy
place.’

Trouble seeped slowly into his dark eyes, but he held his tongue and let her speak.

‘It’s a place where people come to celebrate love, and life, and to enjoy the best day of their lives, you understand?’

He nodded, and for a second he looked as if he really might. Maybe there was hope, after all. Marla crossed her fingers underneath the table and waited.

‘Okay.’

Okay?
Even in her wildest dreams, Marla hadn’t expected him to give in
that
easily.

‘Okay. I can see that our businesses
are
very different, but I’m also pretty sure we can work something out. A little give and take, you know?’

Damn it
. Either he hadn’t listened, or he was being deliberately evasive.

‘Give and take? Give and take?’ She couldn’t hold her voice steady as it helter-skeltered up several octaves. ‘Gabe, people won’t book to get married here if they see a dirty great hearse parked up in the street or a wailing family outside.’

His brows knitted together at her harsh words. Gabe, in turn, watched pink spots burn on Marla’s cheeks.

‘Look, that probably sounded heartless, and honestly, I’m
really
not, but I … I just won’t let this happen.’

His expression was unreadable as he stared at her across the table. She went for broke.

‘The bottom line, Gabe, is this. Your business will kill my business.’

Gabe steepled his fingers in front of him, and any trace of merriment had died in his eyes when he looked up.

‘Then we have ourselves a problem.’

Marla’s stomach flipped over.

‘Because here’s the thing, Marla.’

His voice was soft enough for her to have to lean in close in order to hear him.

‘People come to me to celebrate love too, it’s just at the other end of life’s spectrum. It might not be
happy
, or
frothy
, but my services are just as important as yours. More so, probably.’