Page 37 of Wedding Crasher

‘Thank you. I may want your business closed down, Gabe, but I’d never stoop that low.’

She turned from the counter and held out a glass towards him.

‘What’s this, an olive branch?’

Marla sank down into the chair opposite him and kicked off her heels with a heavy sigh. The cool stone of the kitchen floor felt fabulous against her tired feet. It had been a long, long day and she was done in.

‘Nothing’s changed, Gabe, but we don’t have to be archenemies either, do we? We can be grown up about our differences.’

He clinked his glass against hers. ‘I like the sound of being grown up.’

Marla suddenly felt bolt awake. She wound her fingers around her glass to stop them from shaking, and took a swig of wine for good measure. Gabe’s accent was enough to make a nun’s knicker elastic twang, so she could easily justify her own physical reaction to him. It didn’tmeananything. Besides, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The butterflies in her stomach had more to do with lack of calories than Gabe’s edibleness.

‘Have you lived in the UK for long?’

Marla cast her mind back, glad that he’d steered the conversation into more serene waters.

‘Fifteen years or so, I guess? My mother married a doctor and followed him here under the delusion of becoming lady of her very own English manor.’

‘I take it it didn’t work out then?’

‘It was never going to. My mother is Floridian through to her very bones,’ Marla answered. ‘Robert was husband number five. He’s lovely actually, I still meet up with him every now and then for coffee. He’s a specialist over at the General.’

She sighed. ‘It’s a shame Mom couldn’t settle here. She grew sick of the British weather and decamped back home to the States within four years.’

‘But you stayed?’

She nodded. ‘I was studying by then. And … other stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’

He didn’t actually, but he’d very much like to.

‘Do you miss it? The States?’

‘Sometimes. On the holidays, mostly. Halloween, Thanksgiving, that sort of thing.’

She swallowed a mouthful of wine and stared out of the window. ‘It’ll always feel like my home, but I’m pretty settled here now. The climate suits my skin. Unlike my mother’s.’

He looked at the luxurious red waves that fell around her shoulders and had to hold down the urge to wind them around his fingers.

‘I take it the red comes from your father’s side then?’

Marla smiled. ‘And the freckles.’

Gabe took her comment as an invitation to study her face, and this time he couldn’t hold back. He reached out and traced his fingertip lightly down the dusting of freckles on her nose. ‘I like your freckles.’ Marla swallowed, her throat suddenly parched as his gaze held hers. His touch had been so fleeting and yet so intimate. He glanced away, breaking the moment, and refilled their glasses to cover the loaded silence that followed. ‘Do you see much of your dad?’

Marla laughed, slightly hysterical with misplaced lust. ‘You’re kidding. He’s always off on another exotic honeymoon.’

‘I’m starting to see why you opened a wedding chapel.’

‘He’s in Bermuda with wife number six at the moment. Or it could be Hawaii with number seven … I’ve lost track.’

Gabe whistled. ‘That must have made for interesting Christmases.’

Marla rolled her eyes. ‘You have no idea.’

She picked at the edge of the wooden kitchen table and winced as a rough splinter caught the tender cut on her finger from the rose thorn. ‘And are you upholding the family tradition with a string of ex-husbands littering your past, too?’

She flinched. ‘No. I’m breaking the pattern and staying single.’ He nodded slowly and dropped his gaze to their hands on the table. ‘You’re bleeding again.’

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