Page 84 of Wedding Crasher

He’d learned the difference between sex and making love last night, and despite what she’d said to the contrary, he knew she’d felt it too.

He’d tasted it in her tears. He’d heard it in her moans.

She was lying to herself, and to him.

He shook his head as her words clanged around in there. Their knife-sharp edges took chunks out of him, new cuts over old.

He’d been her birthday treat to herself. That wasexactlyhow she’d put it.

He didn’t know whether to feel flattered or used.

A one-off indulgence, she’d said.

Fun, and now over, she’d said.

She was wrong.

They might technically be at war, but yesterday hadn’t been their Christmas Day truce, and one way or another, he was going to make her realise it.

Resolution made, he tipped his bitter black coffee onto the grass and grabbed his jacket to go and buy milk.

Marla dropped a bag of porridge oats into her basket as she trailed listlessly around the village store. Back at home her fridge was packed with delicious leftovers from yesterday’s picnic, but she needed bland, boring fare to mark her return to reality.

Purgatory food.

If there had been sackcloth and ashes in her wardrobe, she’d have donned them this morning rather than her jeans and black angora sweater. She stretched up on tiptoes for raisins to sweeten the porridge, then snatched her hand away as a particularly lurid image of Gabe holding her hands stretched above her head last night swam in front of her eyes.

God, she’d been so brazen.

No. No raisins. Far too frivolous.

‘Honey?’ a male voice suggested right behind her. A beautiful, Irish male voice.

‘No thank you,’ she replied on autopilot, and then froze.

‘Syrup, maybe?’

She could hear the smile in his voice, and turned to find her nose about six inches from Gabe’s chest. He had a milk carton in his hand, and the stubble and dark circles around his eyes testified to a sleepless night. She’d had matching circles herself in the mirror this morning, along with similar kiss-swollen lips and sex hair. She’d looked like a satisfied slut, but right now he looked like a rock star after a night on the tiles.

‘Let me pass please.’

She couldn’t meet his eyes. She just wanted to pay and get the hell out of there.

‘Marla, please. Can’t we at least talk?’

‘No! Please, just move out of my way.’

She glanced around him in desperation towards the teenager behind the counter at the far end of the shop, but the girl was too engrossed in her phone to notice.

‘Marla, come on. You can’t seriously expect …’

‘Stop it!’ she cut across him. ‘That’sexactlywhat I expect.’

She couldn’t listen to this, wouldn’t let him weaken her resolve. Daylight had brought with it the realisation that she’d just made the situation between the chapel and the funeral parlour a million times worse, and the only course of action available to her was to pretend it had never happened and stay as far away from Gabe as possible.

‘Read my lips, Gabe,’ she hissed. ‘It was a one-night stand.’

She pushed past him to the counter and shoved her basket at the vacant teenager with white earphones plugged into her phone. The girl flicked heavily kohled eyes over Marla’s shoulder towards Gabe, and then yanked the earphones out quick smart as a slow grin spread across her face.

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