Page 61 of Wedding Crasher

‘If rather underdressed,’ he murmured, taking in their various outfits. Marla had opted for a denim and lace dress that somehow still looked classy, probably because of the woman wearing it. ‘Not to worry,’ he said, looking relieved. ‘I can’t stay, I’m just dropping Stuart over to shoot the wedding for the paper.’

Marla smiled warmly. Rupert really was doing his best to promote the chapel in the press, playing to his strengths to help their campaign. She was thankful for his help, and told him as much as she led him from the chapel and away from prying ears.

‘I’ll see you at the restaurant later,’ he murmured, running his hand possessively down her backside. ‘I might just have a surprise for you.’ The look in his eyes should have served as a warning, but she was too wrapped up in the wedding to let it permeate. She pecked him on the cheek and wriggled out of his reach.

‘Don’t be late. And don’t believe a word my mother tells you.’

She stood on the pavement to wave him off, and just as she went to turn back inside the chapel, Gabe appeared from his doorway with a box in his arms. Marla swallowed the usual knot of apprehension that accompanied an encounter with Gabe and raised a casual hand in greeting. Bluey’s funeral had proved to be something of a turning point; it was hard not to be civil to him after he’d been so kind and gentle with her fur-boy. She tried not to dwell on the fact that her heartbeat had picked up for the wrong man in the last two minutes.

‘These came for you just after you left yesterday,’ he said, drawing near enough for Marla to be able to see the collection of horseshoes inside the cardboard box.

‘Ah, thanks. I wondered where they’d got to.’ Emily had sourced them from a local farrier to wrap with ribbons and give to the wedding guests as keepsakes. She held her arms out to take the box from him.

‘I’ll bring them in,’ Gabe said. ‘It weighs a ton.’

Marla bit back the urge to refuse. ‘Thank you.’

She led him up the chapel path and paused by the door. ‘Just there’ll be fine,’ she said casually, not wanting him inside the chapel because Jonny and Emily would prolong his visit. The only way she could maintain their tenuous truce was to keep contact between them as brief as possible. As it was, she could already smell the scent of him as he straightened up beside her after depositing the box by the door.

She smiled brightly. Too brightly, and felt his soft laugh all the way to her bones.

‘You make a cute cowgirl,’ he said, and then touched his fingertips to his forehead and left her there sniffing the air to catch the last traces of him before she went back inside.

A couple of hours later and the country and western saloon bar wedding had turned into a full-scale hoedown. The guests sat on hay bales and upturned barrels, and Jonny stood proud and central at the lectern, the bride before him in white lace hotpants and the groom in a black velvet tux and silver wingtips. The chapel lent itself perfectly to the theme, transformed for the day into a hayloft dressed in rustic gingham and Ruth’s sunflowers and giant daisies.

Marla and Emily stood together at the back, arm in arm, best friends watching all of their hard work come to beautiful, unique fruition before their eyes. It might not be conventional romance, but the bride and groom’s love ran clear and beautiful through the proceedings and informed the whole wedding with its own uniquely intrinsic, magical element that made the wedding flow and work.

It was a thread common with the vast majority of the weddings that they organised at the chapel; they brought to life a vision that wouldn’t sit easily in your average church or wedding venue, but that was no less heartfelt or honest, in fact, in many cases it was more so.

‘Joey junior, do you take this little lady to be your wife?’ Jonny cried, his faux-Texan drawl bang on.

‘I do.’ Tears coursed down Joey junior’s cheeks. ‘I sure do, my darlin’,’ he said, his over-bright eyes fixed on his bride.

‘And you, sugar-buns?’ Jonny twirled his fake gun like a pro. ‘Do you take this sharp shootin’ outlaw to be your lawfully wedded husband?’

‘Aw, Joey, ma big daft cowboy,’ Joey junior’s bride said, her Liverpudlian accent clear behind her terrible deep-south drawl. ‘I most certainly do.’

The crowd yee-hawed as the bride and groom kissed, and Jonny threw his arms to the skies and praised the good Lord until silence reigned. All eyes on him, he broke into a full-bellowed rendition of ‘Stand by your Man’ to thunderous applause as Joey junior and his bride clung to each other for their first impromptu dance as husband and wife. Little by little the congregation moved into the aisle to dance; the jeans and leather vest-clad bridesmaid and the bandana’ed best man, the mother of the bride with the leather-trousered grandpa of the groom.

Marla clapped, happy tears on her cheeks. The chapel had woven its magic once again. For a little while she let herself forget all of her worries and enjoyed the moment of celebration. There would be plenty of time later to dwell on her problems. Her effervescent mother, her macabre new stepfather to be, her overcrowded cottage, her tangled emotions. Not to mention the small matter of dinner at Franco’s that evening, fraught with the potential for disaster.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Gabe ran the iron over his black shirt, his mobile phone cradled in the crook of his shoulder as he tried to call a cab at the same time. He wished he’d never mentioned the fact that they’d now been open for three months. Melanie had pounced on it like a vulture and insisted that the whole team should go out and celebrate. He’d humoured her, and left her in charge of organising something, and now here he was, heading into town to meet Melanie, Dan and the pallbearers for dinner at some fancy restaurant. She’d made the arrangements and invited everyone before he’d even got wind of it. He’d tried hard to hide his surprise; all he’d had in mind was a swift half down the pub, not a full-scale dinner. On the flip side, he was glad that Melanie enjoyed work enough to go to such trouble.

He put the iron down as the switchboard operator muttered an unintelligible greeting against his ear.

‘Hi. Taxi to Franco’s please. Soon as possible.’

Franco’s was one of thosechichirestaurants with glitzy chandeliers and mushroom suede banquettes, and on a different day in different company Marla would probably have loved it. But sitting around the table that evening, she felt uneasy. Their party had swollen to nine with the late addition of Dora and Ivan (Emily and Tom had threatened to drop out and Marla had become desperate). In the end they made it anyway, but hey ho: the more the merrier.

Brynn sidled up to Marla as they walked through the double glass front doors at Franco’s.

‘What a fabulous smell,’ he murmured, his mouth far too close to her ear for comfort.God, please let him mean the food and not me,Marla prayed silently.

And please don’t let him order a nice Chianti, either, or I’ll insist he sleeps somewhere other than my house tonight.

‘Jonny!’

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