Undertaking Love (9 page)

‘Tom …’

‘I can’t make it without you.’ His voice cracked. ‘A family, kids … all that stuff would be great, Em. But if we never get lucky enough, then it just means that I can be selfish and keep you to myself forever.’

He hauled her into his arms, not sure where her tears ended and his own began.

‘We aren’t defined by whether or not we have children, Emily. We are so much better than that. Aren’t we?’ He held her at arms length and studied her face. ‘We’ve let this … this
thing
push its way between us. It’s in our bedroom like an unwelcome mistress. I hate it.’

He touched his fingers against her wedding ring. ‘This means everything to me. Do you still love me?’

Emily nodded. ‘Of course I do. But I barely see you anymore
to
love you, Tom. You’d rather be at work, or away. Anywhere but here. And when you
are
here, it’s worse. I’m so lonely, even when we’re in the same room.’

Tom reached out and cradled her face in his hands, unsure how to pull their relationship back from the cliff edge it teetered on. ‘I don’t know what the future holds, Em. I just know I want to hold you in mine.’

He moulded her against him as she cried, the familiarity of her curves felt like home under his hands. Comfort slid sideways into raw desire, as instinctive as breathing.

He unbuttoned her blouse, desperate for the warmth of her skin against his own.

Clinging.

Remembering.

Longing.

Reawakening.

Soothing away the bruises from each other’s heart.

Sometime after midnight, Tom dropped a kiss on Emily’s warm shoulder and slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her. He sat in his battered La-Z-Boy for an age, then stepped out onto their front step, cigarette lighter in one hand, and Emily’s unopened letter from the mantelpiece in the other.

Marla used both hands to push Bluey’s huge backside out from underneath her desk in order to make more room for her knees then scowled at her watch. She’d told Gabe to come over after lunch. What time did the man eat lunch? By her calculations, he should have been here at least an hour ago. No doubt he was playing mind games, keeping her waiting as a casual demonstration of the fact that he held all the cards.

As if she wasn’t painfully aware of that already.

She could, of course, just storm over there and steal his thunder, but the idea of a rematch with Gabe’s guard-dog of a receptionist didn’t hold much appeal. Anyway, what would it show him, besides the fact that he’d got under her skin? The home turf advantage was worth waiting for. She reached into her bottom drawer and pulled out a doggy treat for Bluey to apologise for banishing him to the other side of the room.

Her head snapped up as her office door creaked open, then shot down again to hide her disappointment as Dora came in, a can of polish in her hand.

‘You look as if you’ve found a penny and lost a pound,’ she said as she tipped the contents of the waste paper basket into a black bin liner produced from the pocket of her pinny.

Marla conjured up a smile. Or bared her teeth, in any case.

‘I’m fine, Dora. Or else I would be, if that man over there could tell the time. He’s late.’

She jerked her head towards the street. Dora’s eyes followed and settled mistily on the funeral parlour.

‘Gabriel? Oh, but he’s ever so busy, chicken.’ The dreamy smile fell off her face. ‘Is he coming over here? You really should have said, I’d have bought some jammy dodgers. They’re his favourites, you know.’

She dropped the polish into the rubbish bag by mistake, and didn’t even notice when Marla crossed the room and fished it out again.

‘Maybe I should slip over to the shop to get some?’

Marla was irritated to hear the same proprietorial tone in Dora’s voice that she’d detected in Gabe’s snotty receptionist’s the day before. What was it about him that turned the women around him into territorial tigresses?

‘Only if you’ll lace them with cyanide when you get back. He’s not coming for a tea party Dora, he’s …’

‘He’s outside the door and can hear every word you’re saying.’

Dora ruffled up her feathers like a peahen. ‘Gabriel, sit down. I’ll just pop downstairs and put the kettle on.’

‘I’ll take mine without the cyanide, if you don’t mind.’ He winked at Dora, who laughed girlishly as she left the room.

‘She’s a one off, isn’t she?’ Gabe said, sitting down across the desk from Marla. ‘Reminds me of my gran.’

Bluey unfurled himself from beneath the window and looked Gabe square in the eye, and Marla crossed her fingers underneath the desk, hoping he’d be terrified of dogs.

‘Hey there, big guy. Aren’t you just the most beautiful thing?’

Bluey padded across and rested his huge chin on Gabe’s knee, his half-eaten dog chew still wedged in his jowls. Gabe laughed and fussed the dog’s floppy ears with both hands.

Great
. Another traitor. That was the last treat Bluey was going to get out of her this week.

She frowned at Gabe across the expanse of her walnut desk.

‘Just so you’re clear, all this blarney won’t work on me. You can’t charm your way around me the way you have every other man, woman and dog in Beckleberry.’ On cue, Bluey fell to the floor at Gabe’s feet.

‘I wouldn’t insult you by thinking that I could, Marla.’

‘And there you go, you’re doing it again.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I didn’t do anything.’

Marla dismissed his protestation of innocence with an acid laugh and pushed a sheet of paper across the desk.

‘This is a list of all of the weddings we have booked in for the next two months.’

His eyes scanned down the list. ‘And you’re telling me this because?’

‘Are you being deliberately obtuse?’

‘Are you?’

The challenge in his dark eyes scorched her throat sandpaper dry.

‘You sat downstairs in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago and promised to at least cooperate with us, Gabe.’

‘Yeah. That would have been before you called a public meeting to make our neighbours hate me.’

‘Our neighbours?
Our
neighbours? Oh, please. You don’t know these people from Adam. They’re
my
neighbours, and
my
friends, and they would support me over you any day.’

A tiny tap on the door disturbed them, and a second or so later Dora appeared with a tray laden with teacups and a plate stacked with jammy dodgers.

Gabe grinned and cast a look of lazy triumph across the desk at Marla. Hot fury bubbled in her stomach, and as soon as Dora left the room she reached for the plate and upended it into the waste paper basket. She regretted it the instant he laughed at her.

‘Now that wasn’t very nice, was it?’

Bluey loped over to recover a stray biscuit that had rolled towards the skirting board and disappeared after Dora in search of more. Marla got up to close the door behind him, sucking in a deep breath to calm herself down. She hated the fact that Gabe had her on the ropes already. She forced a placid smile onto her face as she sat back down behind the desk; she badly needed to get this meeting back on track.

‘Look. Let’s just both say what we need to, and then you can leave.’

As placatory statements went, that one wasn’t going to win any awards, but it was as close to civil as she could muster.

‘Go on then, you first. This should be good.’

Marla was struggling. It was incredibly difficult to stay professional, given the fact that she wanted to rip both his head and his shirt off at the same time. He’d discarded the jacket she’d spotted him in earlier and turned up for their meeting in rolled back shirt sleeves, his tie loosened a little to accommodate his undone top button.

He looks like a gigolo, Marla thought sourly.

It pained her greatly that she understood his catnip effect on women. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, and she certainly wasn’t going to let her head be turned by it, but Gabriel was on a scale all of his own when it came to beauty. No doubt he was accustomed to using it to get his own way, but he was about to get a lesson from a woman who well and truly had his number.

‘I’d appreciate it if you could schedule those dates into your diary.’

‘Why? Do you need a date?’

Gah!
He was seriously pissing her off.

‘It’s no joke, Gabe. Just make sure that filthy great hearse is out of sight and try not to wheel any dead bodies across the pavement when the bride’s outside, okay?’

He picked up the list again and whistled. ‘Business seems good. Maybe you could think about calling off your hate campaign after all.’

‘Those weddings were booked long before you arrived here. It’s next year’s bookings that will suffer. And the year after that. Assuming we’re still here by then, which I very much doubt.’

She couldn’t be sure, but he looked less comfortable than he had a moment ago. Maybe a drop of compassion lurked somewhere underneath all that hair and charm.

‘And for your information, there is no hate campaign.’ His words had hit a raw nerve. ‘You make it sound petty and personal, and it’s neither of those things. It’s business, pure and simple.’

Gabe studied her in silence and then slowly folded the list of wedding dates in half.

‘Sure. Leave it with me. I’ll take care of it.’

His abrupt gear change from teasing to deadly serious left her flailing for a suitable response.

‘Gabe …’ They were distracted by a sudden loud smash in the street below and sprang out of their seats. The front window of the funeral parlour lay shattered in a thousand pieces across the pavement, and as they watched, a visibly shaken Melanie emerged onto the street with what looked horribly like a house brick clutched in her hand.

‘What the …’ Gabe muttered as he flung Marla’s office window open. ‘Hang on, Mel! I’m coming,’ he yelled.

He turned to Marla. The incensed look of accusation in his eyes stole her breath away.

‘Not a hate campaign, eh? Well it fucking looks like one from where I’m standing.’

Marla gasped at the conclusion he’d leapt to.

‘Gabe, please! I swear, this has
nothing
to do with us. I would never …’ Marla couldn’t articulate past his automatic assumption of her guilt. Surely he could see that that mindless vandalism wasn’t her style? He had to understand that she’d never stoop so low.

He held a hand up to silence her, his usually Jaggeresque mouth twisted into a thin line of distaste. ‘Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.’

He ripped up the list she’d given him earlier and hurled the pieces across the office floor.

‘You’ve just picked yourself a fight with the wrong man, Marla Jacobs.’

He stalked out of the office.

Marla stood rooted to the spot in shock, both by the thuggish vandalism and Gabe’s instant assumption. Quite why Gabe’s opinion of her mattered so much wasn’t something she was prepared to give any headspace to. Sour fear unfurled slowly in her belly.
Did
this have anything to do with their campaign?
Had
she been the indirect cause of this? Jesus, she hoped not.

She watched Gabe run across the pavement to Melanie; unable to drag her eyes away as he eased the brick from her fingers and wrapped his arms around her slender body. Heavy footsteps echoed up the old wooden staircase towards the office. Marla shivered, and turned away from the window. Jonny appeared, his face a sickly shade of green beneath his usual tan.

‘Err, Marla? There’s something I really need to talk to you about.’

Marla’s horror spiralled as she listened to Jonny’s heartfelt explanation of how his well-intentioned online petition had grown to leviathan proportions. It had gone viral, and it now appeared that he’d lost any kind of control over it. His over-zealous pleas had been taken as a call to arms, and he’d been troubled over the last week by emails landing in their inbox threatening to ‘make sure that Gabriel Ryan never opened for business’. It was pretty obvious that the incident on the street this afternoon was linked, but what the hell were they going to do about it? And worse, what might come next? Sure, she wanted the funeral parlour gone. But not like this. Not because of a dirty hate campaign in her name. Her professional reputation would be in tatters if this got out, but it was the possibility that someone might get hurt that filled her with shame.

She wasn’t even aware that she was crying until Jonny put his mug down and handed her a tissue.

‘Two glasses of Shiraz please, Bill. Large as you can.’

‘I’ll bring them over for you, ladies.’

Emily smiled gratefully at the landlord and steered Marla across to a table in the corner of The Mermaid’s busy bar.

Bill followed with their glasses and a big smile, but made a hasty retreat after one look at Marla’s stricken face.

Marla picked up her glass, grateful for the wine’s warmth and spice after the strangeness of the day.

‘You can’t keep blaming yourself, Marla. You had no idea what was going on.’ They had talked of nothing else but the window incident since this afternoon, and despite searching relentlessly through the emails for clues, they were no closer to finding out who was behind it. Whoever had thrown that brick made sure they covered their tracks well.

‘What am I going to do, Em? This has all got badly out of hand.’

Emily nudged Marla’s glass closer. ‘Drink your medicine. It helps.’

Uncharacteristically, Marla did as she was told. She was tired. Exhausted, in fact. Going over to the funeral parlour this afternoon with her tail between her legs ranked up there amongst the most toe-curling moments of her life. She’d haltingly tried to explain to Gabe what she’d learned from Jonny, but it had been pretty clear from the arctic frost emanating from him that he hadn’t believed a single word she’d said. He’d decided she was complicit from the get-go, and no amount of assurances to the contrary had made any difference.

She could only thank her lucky stars that Gabe had decided against calling the police, even though he’d made it patently clear that his decision was for his own benefit rather than hers. Such drama was wholly inappropriate for a funeral parlour, and he just wanted it sorted out and forgotten as quickly as possible so that he could run his business without being on the front page of the newspaper for all of the wrong reasons again.