Undertaking Love (22 page)

He glared at her, shaking his head slowly.

‘There’s a name for women like you,’ he said with a nasty laugh. He took a few steps closer.

‘What are you talking about?’ Marla whispered in shock, taking a few small steps away from him.

‘Women who lead men on.’ He moved closer still.

‘I didn’t lead you on Rupert, I never …’

She backed up again, now halfway up the aisle.

‘Prick tease.’

He made a lunge for her and she stumbled on her high heels.

‘Get your hands off me!’ she yelled, as his fingers gouged into her upper arms.

He made a noise in his throat that sounded horribly like a snarl as he yanked her hard against him. Panic kicked in hard when she felt his excitement bulge against her thigh, and she sent a chair flying as she tried to scrabble out of his grasp. The thud of footsteps echoed through the chapel as Jonny flew down the stairs and dragged Rupert off her.

He floored him with a hard left hook.

‘You’ve broken my nose!’ Rupert wailed as he struggled to stand up, blood all over the turned up collar of his pristine shirt.

‘And I’ll break your fucking neck if you come within fifty foot of Marla again!’ Jonny roared, dragging Rupert along the aisle by the scruff of the neck.

He karate kicked the front doors open and flung him unceremoniously out onto the path.

‘I’ll sue you for assault,’ Rupert squawked from his lowly position on his backside.

Jonny loomed over him menacingly. ‘Do you
want
me to kill you?’

‘And you can add threatening behaviour to the list!’ Rupert tried to get up but Jonny pushed him back down again with a size ten crocodile skin cowboy boot.

‘Just try it, twat-bag, and the police will be knocking on your door for sexual assault,’ Jonny glowered, aiming a sharp kick at Rupert’s ribs.

‘You okay, sweets?’ He shepherded Marla back inside, putting his hands on her shoulders and scrutinised her with concerned eyes.

‘God, I’m so glad you were here, Jonny,’ she said, her voice shaky with relief. ‘You are officially the most macho gay man in the world.’

He pulled her against his chest and laughed softly. ‘And you thought these guns were just for show.’

‘You’re my hero.’

‘Well, he certainly wasn’t, was he?’ Jonny said with a grim nod towards the door.

Marla shuddered in revulsion. She hadn’t expected Rupert to take it on the chin and shake hands, but she’d never have imagined he would turn on her like that. She’d glimpsed a darkness in him that he’d never let her see before, and she felt completely relieved to be free of him. A shaft of sunlight bounced through the window, and the glint of metal caught her eye. His keys. He’d left them on the chair. A quick double check outside confirmed that he was too scared of Jonny to come back in and retrieve them. He had scarpered without his car.

‘Leave it to me, sugar, I know the perfect place for that little beauty.’

Jonny grinned as he pocketed the keys, already thinking about the hot guy who worked at the local scrap yard. It was a warm sunny day. With any luck he’d be shirtless and oily.

Over at the funeral parlour, Melanie sat at her desk, watching the events unfold with interest. A knife had twisted in her gut when Rupert ignored her on the doorstep earlier, so to see him upended onto his backside a few minutes later brought a certain karmic pleasure. She’d been stewing over what to do about him for a while now. Hats off to him, it had been a bold move to propose to Marla right in front of her when she could so easily have spilled her guts about their affair. His physical ejection from the chapel just now, however, indicated that things were no longer rosy between Marla and Rupert, affording Melanie pleasure and pain in equal measure.

On the one hand, it served him right. May the pain of rejection hurt even more than his nose, which looked rather like it was broken. But on the other hand, Marla had better not look towards Gabe for a shoulder to cry on. Melanie stabbed her pencil repeatedly into the mouse mat until the nib snapped, leaving a latticework of holes across the sponge surface.

She’d seen Marla Jacobs off once, and she’d do it again in a New York minute.

Dora opened Ivan’s wardrobe, determined to fill the charity bag with clothes. His cupboard was stuffed to the gunnels with clothes than hadn’t seen the light of day for at least ten years. He wouldn’t even realise that she’d thinned it out.

Ivan’s distinct and comforting smell floated out as her fingers skimmed several immaculate suits from times long gone. She lingered as she recalled happy memories of carefree days. Of weddings and tea dances. She couldn’t toss those out.

Daunted, she moved onto the shelves. She could always come back to the suits again afterwards.

Up on the top shelf, she moved aside his gardening pullovers and threadbare checked shirts to feel around in the back. Belts and braces. A shaving brush. A chipped shoehorn.

Dora tutted. It was no wonder Ivan could barely close his cupboard doors. The ridiculous man hoarded everything.

A square edge bumped against her fingers, and she dragged the package forwards to get a better look. The sight of the yellowing bundle of envelopes held together with a frayed blue ribbon made her sigh. It had been a good many years since she’d last looked at these, and many more again since she’d written them.

She sank down on the edge of their neatly made bed and stroked the ribbon with her arthritis-riddled fingers. The liver spots and wrinkles that covered the back of her hands hadn’t been there when she’d penned the letters. She’d been young, and strong, and madly in love with her handsome soldier.

A faraway smile curved her lips as she touched the top envelope, date-stamped 1943. She could still picture her younger self so clearly, full of excitement about the dress her mum had given her as a seventeenth birthday gift. Sunshine yellow, a deft alteration of one of her mother’s favourite evening dresses. Dora had loved it with a passion, and had waited impatiently for Ivan to come back on shore leave to see her in twirl in it. She’d worn it the evening he proposed.

She still owned that dress. It was wrapped carefully in tissue paper in a box at the back of her own wardrobe, along with a very similar bundle of letters.

Her replies from Ivan, tied with an equally frayed yellow ribbon.

It had always been her favourite colour, and even now Ivan grew only yellow flowers in their front garden as an unspoken expression of his love. Daffodils in spring, and glorious huge double-headed roses throughout the summer months. Even in wintertime, the garden blossomed with the heavy scent of lemon winter sweet and fragile yellow hellebores. He wasn’t a man for overblown speeches or big romantic gestures, but from the moment they’d met, Dora had felt cherished and loved beyond measure.

He’d never wavered an inch.

She hauled herself onto her feet and tucked the letters back into their place at the back of the shelf without reading them. She knew them well enough anyway. Just holding them in her hands had been sufficient for today.

She closed the doors of Ivan’s wardrobe without throwing out a single thing.

He could keep every last moth-eaten shirt if it made him happy.

‘Gabriel, hello again!’

Cecilia sparkled at him as they collided in the flower shop doorway a couple of weeks after
that
dinner. He’d popped in to settle his monthly bill, and Ruth had been only too eager to fill him in on the scrap between Jonny and Rupert on the chapel lawns. She’d obviously hoped for further embellishments of the story from him, but as far as he was concerned it was all fresh news. And welcome, too, if it meant that Rupert was off the scene.

‘Cecilia, good to see you again.’

He smiled and dropped a kiss on the cheek she proffered, and then the other as she turned her head expectantly. He nodded at the huge armful of flowers she’d chosen from the buckets outside the door.

‘It’s a bad rap when a woman has to buy her own flowers. Where’s Brynn?’

‘Aw, he had to fly on to Hamburg.’ She rolled her eyes back in her head. ‘Don’t ask what for, darling, it’s too grisly to repeat.’

Gabe laughed at her pained expression.

‘These are for Marla, actually.’ She waved her spare hand towards the flowers. ‘It’s her birthday tomorrow.’

‘Her birthday? Wow.’

‘I know!" Cecilia gasped. "Can you believe I have a daughter who’s turning twenty-eight?’

‘You could be sisters,’ Gabe smiled, still turning over the nugget of information in his head. ‘So are you two painting the town red to celebrate?’

‘Gawd, no! Gabriel, the girl drives me nuts! She’s ditched that boyfriend of hers and won’t even let her friends take her out for her birthday. Just wants a quiet night in, apparently. Whoever heard of that at her age?’

Cecilia gawped and placed a conspiratorial hand on his arm.

‘I mean, when I was that age, I’d already got a wedding, a baby and a divorce under my belt!’

Gabe hadn’t heard a word Cecilia had said since her confirmation that Marla had kicked Rupert to the curb. He laughed vaguely and shook his head.

‘Tell her to have a drink for me, yeah?’

‘Hmmm. You could always tell her yourself.’

Cecilia twinkled up at him. ‘I’ve got plans this weekend so she’ll be home alone, probably eating pints of ice cream and feeling sorry for herself.’

She tapped the side of her nose and waggled her eyebrows at him as if she’d just passed him a secret code, leaving Gabe perplexed that she’d made other plans on her only daughter’s special day. It was probably the first time they’d been in the same country for her birthday in a number of years; surely it would have been a good chance to celebrate? But from the scraps of information that Marla had shared, he knew Cecilia was a woman who put her own happiness in front of everyone else’s. Including, it would seem, her own daughter’s. It was hard not to warm to Cecilia’s infectiously loud personality, but he could see the threads of steel that held her backbone ramrod straight, enabling her to glide through life – and husbands – unencumbered by baggage.

Out on the street, he hesitated for a moment or two and then reached for his mobile.

‘Melanie, hi. Can you hold the fort there this afternoon? Something’s come up that won’t wait.’

After waving her mother off from the step the following morning, Marla closed the door with a sigh of relief. She’d have indulged in a little jig around the living room if she hadn’t been concerned her mother might nip back and catch her in the act.

Admittedly, it had been easier to have Cecilia around since Brynn had gone off in search of his dead zebra, but, for Marla, having her home completely to herself for two days was a birthday gift in itself. Cecilia had gone to stay with a friend in London, leaving Marla gloriously free to kick her heels up – or, more accurately, to enjoy the haven of her own home for forty-eight hours. She didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that her mother had chosen her birthday weekend for the trip. They’d have plenty of opportunities to spend time together. It wasn’t as if her mother was going home to the States anytime soon – a couple of days ago she’d even muttered the idea of staying on for Christmas!

Marla turfed the scary prospect out of her head. Nothing was going to spoil her plans for a totally decadent weekend. It was a shame Emily had family commitments, but Marla didn’t mind. Spending time alone had never been a problem for her. And this weekend, even the chapel’s bookings had fallen neatly into place at the last moment, though not on an entirely positive note. A tearful bride had called two days ago to cancel their big day because she’d found her husband-to-be in bed with her best friend. Marla had winced with shock in all the right places, but couldn’t help the shiver of fear that it would be the first of a landslide of cancellations.

She banished that thought hastily.

If she let her mind wander down that path she’d spend the weekend curled up in a ball of panic.

Invigorated by the quietness of her cottage, she headed straight for the fridge. Smoked salmon and scrambled eggs beckoned, followed by a long soak in the bath with the new Jo Malone bath oil she’d treated herself to for her birthday. She hummed a jaunty rendition of ‘Happy birthday to me,’ under her breath as she cracked the eggs, and savoured the prospect of a whole weekend dedicated to Ben & Jerry’s, girly movies and bubble baths.

Bliss.

‘I could kiss you, Eve, this looks perfect,’ Gabe grinned as he strapped the wicker basket onto the back of his motorbike.

Eve Jones stood on the pavement outside her store and turned beetroot with pleasure. She found herself very much wishing that he
would
kiss her, but just managed to stop short of saying so.

‘Just try and keep it upright, okay?’ she flustered, eyeing the huge bike apprehensively.

Gabe winked and threw his leg over the saddle. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll drive carefully. Precious cargo and all that.’

He slid his helmet down over his head and blew her a kiss.

‘You’re a diamond, Eve, I owe you big time for this.’

He snapped his visor shut and the bike growled into life under his hands.

Eve watched him roar away with her arms folded across her chest. What was there not to love about a gorgeous man on a dirty great motorbike? Romantic too, if his gift choice was anything to judge him by.

There was one very lucky lady out there somewhere.

Marla combed her damp hair through with water-crinkled fingers. She’d soaked for far too long in the bath, but the heavenly scent of nectarine and honey had been too sublime for her to tear herself away.

Besides, there was no hurry. The day stretched out ahead of her like a sheet of silk, to be slowly luxuriated in and enjoyed.

She slid out of her robe and into the brand new La Perla white lace underwear she’d laid out on the bed. A birthday gift from her mother, although picked out by Marla, of course. Cecilia had never been one to give much thought to gifts. She preferred to wave her credit card around and for the magic to just happen. Not that Marla begrudged her on this occasion; one glance in her knicker drawer was enough to confirm her status as a class-A lingerie junkie, and these babies were a very welcome addition to her collection.