Page 68 of Wedding Crasher

Dear Marla,

Something to help make your July 4th go with a bang, and to say I hope we can enjoy a less explosive friendship from here on in.

Yours,

Gabe

X

She frowned and read it twice over, still none the wiser. What did he mean, July 4th? Bang? She gasped out loud and clamped her fingers over her mouth, as the tinkling penny stopped spinning in the air and began to drop, flipping over several times in slow motion before it landed with a dull thud of realisation.

The fireworks.

But how could they have been from Gabe? Rupert had brought them over; she’d seen him with her own eyes. She tapped her nose as she mentally rewound back to when Rupert walked into the chapel on July 4th. It was a day she’d prefer to never think of again.

Yes. She was one hundred per cent certain that Rupert had expressly said that the fireworks were his gift to her.

Hadn’t he?

And if he hadn’tsaidit, he’d definitely encouraged her tothinkit.

How could she ever know for sure?

She could hardly come right out and ask Rupert, because the mere mention of Gabe’s name was enough to give him a coronary. And she couldn’t ask Gabe either because a) they weren’t on speaking terms, and b) even if they were, she’d sound a deranged fool.

‘Hey, Gabe. I stole this note from your desk, and now I need to know if my boyfriend-slash-unexpected-intended passed your gift off as his own.’

It sounded absurd, but what else could ‘something to help make your July 4th go with a bang’ possibly mean? Unless he’d sent a bomb, which would be more in keeping given the general state of affairs between them.

She frowned out of the window at the funeral parlour. The constant ‘push me, pull me’ nature of her relationship with Gabe was draining. Their basic chemical reaction to each other made everything more complicated than it needed to be. If only he were pig ugly, it would make it so much easier to hate him.

‘A bottle of red and three glasses, please, whenever you’re ready, Bill.’

Jonny winked at the landlord before gesturing Marla and Emily to a quiet table in the pub.

‘Make that two glasses. I’ll stick to OJ,’ Emily added, standing on tiptoes to lift her growing bump over the back of a chair.

They flopped down on the low sofas with a collective groan. It’d been a hectic day of preparations for a mid-week Las Vegas-style wedding, and the Elvis impersonator had dropped out at the eleventh hour, causing pandemonium. It was all sorted now, thanks to a desperate runner-up fromStars In Their Eyeswho still craved his five minutes in the spotlight. He was prepared to make the two-hundred-mile round trip in order to don his star-spangled spandex again.

‘Emily, do you think Marla should marry Henry?’ Jonny poured the wine and got stuck straight into his intended topic of conversation, no doubt deliberately using the wrong name to make his antipathy clear.

Marla spluttered as she unwound her Missoni scarf and placed it on the table. ‘Excuse me?’

Emily shifted cagily in her seat and turned anxious eyes on Marla. ‘Do you want to?’

‘I …’ Marla flailed around for the right words. Her sense of loyalty and fair play insisted that Rupert really ought to be first to hear that there wasn’t going to be a wedding.

‘See? Told you! She didn’t jump straight in there with a big fat “yes”, did she?’

Jonny wagged his finger, clearly something else he’d learned from his many hours watchingOprah. He stopped just short of adding ‘girrlfreeend’ on the end of his sentence, but then hewasstill warming up.

Marla fixed him with a measured stare.

‘Just quit it with the inquisition, will you? I’m fine.’

Jonny took a leisurely sip of his wine and ignored her plea. ‘I asked you a question this morning.’

Emily looked at Jonny, nonplussed, as Marla shrugged noncommittally.

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