Page 67 of Wedding Crasher

Strictly between Marla and her coffee cup, the fact that she could never emotionally invest in him was one of his main attractions.Poor Rupert. Had she led him on? She’d tried hard to define the boundaries, but he wasn’t to know that the local wedding guru had an acute case of love-phobia, was he?

Marla flipped face down into the mattress and decided to stay in bed, because, for better or worse, she had an engagement to break off when she got up.

Gabe hit the accelerator, breaking the speed limit by a long way in an attempt to blow away his anger and frustration from the night before. What a fucking fiasco. Melanie had managed to royally screw up the arrangements for the work dinner to the extent that the rest of the staff had ended up in a completely different restaurant ten miles away. He’d been almost grateful for Marla’s pushy mother’s insistence that they gatecrash their party, right up to the point when Rupert-fuckwit-Dean had dropped down on one knee. Gabe stamped down hard on the accelerator and wished wholeheartedly that it was actually Rupert’s throat under his foot.

Why the hell had Marla agreed to marry that spineless excuse for a man?

The possibility that she might truly love Rupert bled into his consciousness and refused to go away, even at breakneck speed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Marla left the cottage before her mother and Brynn had a chance to surface on Monday morning. If she’d had to stomach any more wedding talk she’d have thrown up her muesli all over the kitchen table.

She stirred sugar into her coffee in the quiet chapel kitchen and wondered why Cecilia seemed to have completely forgotten about Marla’s profession as a wedding coordinator and insisted on taking over. But then, her mother did have far more personal experience in the matter than most women, Marla mused uncharitably as she made her way upstairs to her office.

Dresses. Bridesmaids. Cupcake tower or traditional wedding cake?

Marla couldn’t handle any more questions. She had ended up drinking too much red wine and lurking in her room like a teenager ignoring the numerous calls and texts from Rupert.

Not the most auspicious start to an engagement, she admitted to Jonny when he arrived half an hour later and listened to her grumble over tea and Hobnobs.

‘Marla, darling.’ He crossed his legs gracefully and screwed up his nose. ‘It sounds to me as if you don’t actually want to marry Henry.’

‘Rupert,’ Marla corrected with a frown.

‘Sorry. He’s Hooray Henry in my head.’ Jonny was completely unabashed by his mistake and fixed her with a beady glare. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You don’t want to marry him. I know you Marla Jacobs, and that is not the face of a happy bride-to-be.’

Marla rubbed her temples, half glad that Jonny knew her well enough to see the truth and half wishing that he wasn’t so perceptive.

‘Do you love him?’ he asked baldly, his eyebrows raised over eyes that told her he already knew her answer. ‘And don’t even bother trying to lie, because I already know the answer.’

Oh jeez, not the love question.She felt her muesli make a break for freedom.

‘Jonny, it’s way too early for a heart to heart. We’ll talk later, okay?’

‘Why? To give you a chance to work on your evasive answers some more?’ He arched his eyebrows and smirked as he headed out. ‘Pub after work. And no “buts”,’ he shouted ominously as he took the stairs two at a time.

Marla shook her head.

She had plenty of buts.

But I don’t want a big meringue dress.

But I don’t care whether the napkins match the seat covers.

But I’ve always hated red roses.

But I don’t want to get married.

Not to Rupert, nor to anyone else. Not now, not next month, not next year. Not ever.

Jonny would regret dragging her to the pub when she got started on that little lot.

She placed her empty mug down and spotted the corner of a little envelope hidden beneath her mouse mat. A little tug and a quick rack of her brains, and it came back to her. It was the note she’d taken from the funeral parlour the night that Bluey died, the one with her own name scrawled across the front. She’d stashed it beneath her mouse mat, unsure if it was right to open it or not, but as she turned it over in her fingers, she reached a decision.

It was her name written across the front of it. It was intended for her.

What harm could it do, really? She ripped the envelope across the top and eased the little card out.

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