Page 46 of Wedding Crasher

‘Fireworks first. I think it’s dark enough now,’ she declared as she fished around in the box for the lighting rod. As a child back home in the States they’d have rowed out on the lake near her mother’s Florida holiday house to watch the July 4th fireworks with blankets around their shoulders, but in its own unexpected way, this was just as exciting.

She banged the stake into the lawn and nodded towards the box.

‘Choose one.’

Rupert studied the contents and picked out a small fountain.

‘A rather reserved choice, sir.’ Marla laughed as the swish of flame shot along the fuse, sending a spray of gold shimmers up into the dwindling light.

‘What shall we have next?’

She rummaged in the box like a kid in a sweetshop and came out with a huge rocket in her outstretched hands.

Rupert took it from her with a look of barely disguised alarm on his face and pranced around with stiff arms as if she’d given him a live grenade with the pin pulled out.

‘It’s not even lit yet, you idiot!’ Marla giggled.

He somehow managed to get it onto the spike, still as skittish as a pony as he flicked the lighter ineffectively towards it.

‘Move over, Guy Fawkes. Let me.’

Marla took the lighter, igniting the fuse like a pro, and they stepped back hand in hand to watch the rocket fizz into life. It hissed and sizzled for an uncertain second, before whooshing up into the darkening sky in a glittering cascade of scarlet stars.

Marla clapped with delight and set up the next one straight afterwards, this time a spangle of blue stars. A ball of homesickness lodged in her throat as she imagined the beautiful rainbow skies over America tonight. In that moment she forgave Rupert for his reticence to light the fireworks. He’d given her this wonderful surprise; she should cherish his kindness far more than she did.

She wrapped her arms around him and tilted her chin up with a smile.

‘Rupert, thank you. I love that you did this for me.’

He smiled and lowered his mouth to hers, thanking his lucky stars that he’d been the one to give her the fireworks. ‘I love you too, Marla.’

Despite the fact that he’d read far too much into her remark, she didn’t correct him because his arms felt a lot like those warm July 4th blankets from her childhood.

She let herself melt against him as he kissed her long and slow, and for the first time in a while, he was the only man on her mind.

Less than a mile away, an increasingly desperate Melanie stamped her foot down on the accelerator, desperation clouding her usual careful judgment. The lanes were thankfully quiet as she hurtled towards the village centre, her heart banging out of her chest. She’d never so much as broken the speed limit before, let alone pushed the Mini as hard as it could go, but needs must. She had to get that note.Was that fireworks?Her concentration thoroughly broken, she took her eyes off the road and raised them to the skies.

Gabe heard the bang in the sky as he searched for the key to the front door of the funeral parlour in his pockets. Being the boss meant that he was never off duty, even on days like today when he’d already put in fifteen hours at the convention. He’d just called by to make sure all was well, and that Melanie had remembered to deliver the parcel to Marla. Not that he really needed to go inside for confirmation, given the blaze of tiny blue stars in the sky. He grinned, glad that she’d obviously accepted the fireworks in the spirit they were given.

The sound of her laughter drifted across to him from the back garden of the chapel. Was she having a party? Her laughter pulled him across the space between their properties like a shard of metal to the Hadron Collider. He was powerless to resist. He didn’t actually try all that hard, to be honest. He hoped he would be a welcome visitor at her door tonight.

He pushed the side gate open a little and stopped short. If it was a party, it was a damn exclusive one. A party for two. Just Marla and Rupert, wrapped in each other’s arms, the glow of a couple of candles on the table casting a gold gleam over Marla’s hair.

She looked more relaxed than he could ever remember seeing her. Her laughter carried towards him on the breeze, along with her words as she thanked Rupert for bringing her fireworks.

Rupert?

And then she kissed him. How the hell had that sly gobshite managed to pass off Gabe’s gift as his own? He wanted to march right on in there and set the record straight so much that his feet hurt with the effort of keeping them rooted to the spot. How dare he? But as much as he wanted to steam in and show Rupert up for the liar he was, he couldn’t bring himself to smash Marla’s fragile happiness for his own gratification. She looked incredible. So beautiful and content, he couldn’t do it. What the hell did she see in Rupert frackin’ Dean? In his head he’d managed to convince himself that the thing going on between Marla and Rupert wasn’t serious. How had he got it so wrong? GotMarlaso wrong? He backed out of the gate, his ears ringing with the sentimental exchange he’d overheard.Love. How could the woman he loved love someone else? It didn’t make any sense.

Utterly dejected, he made his way around the front of the chapel and back towards the funeral parlour, just as an ear-splittingly loud rocket exploded in the skies above them and a familiar green Mini came hurtling down the road towards him at breakneck speed.

Rupert caught sight of Gabe’s receding back over Marla’s shoulder. He wanted to laugh out loud with triumph and punch the air. Marla had said she loved him, and all in clear earshot of Ryan. He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried. Jesus. Marla was setting up yet another bloody rocket. Would she never get bored? He hated fireworks with a passion, and fond as he was of Marla, Rupert was dangerously close to his limit of fakeoohsandaaahs. This called for something stronger than champagne. He let himself into the side door of the chapel in search of Dora’s whisky.

From that moment on, things seemed to happen in slow motion, and yet at breakneck speed too. Marla’s earlier instruction not to open the kitchen door because of Bluey had gone in one ear and out the other. As he opened the door the loud crack of the rocket rendered through the quiet night like a gunshot and startled the slumbering dog into wide-eyed panic.

The big hound almost mowed Rupert down as he bolted straight across the lawn, not even registering his mistress desperately lunging for his collar, who ended up instead holding the ridiculous fluffy headphones she’d slid over Bluey’s ears as he slept. He cleared the side fence in one easy leap, and escaped out onto the High Street beyond. The squeal of tyres and the sickening thud of metal preceded Marla’s scream by mere seconds.

About to call it a night, Gabe sat astride his bike and saw it all happen, so fast that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

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