Page 62 of Before You Say I Do
Damn it.
Before Jordan, Abby would have been so excited to get this email. Now, not so much. She’d have to see if Jordan could meet her in the evening instead. She missed her so much already.
A knock on her door made her jump.
When she opened it, her heart dropped. She was well aware that wasn’t meant to be her reaction to seeing her fiancé. Marcus’s head was barely visible behind the bouquet of red roses he held in one hand. He clutched a gift bag in the other. Abby’s heart slumped a little more. Shit, had he brought her a gift from his stag do? She’d brought him nothing apart from a truckload of guilt.
She was a terrible person.
Marcus stepped forward and hugged her, giving her the flowers with a kiss on the cheek. “Hello future Mrs Montgomery.” He grinned, walked past her and grabbed a vase from the kitchen counter. He filled it with water, then took the flowers from her to arrange. Marcus was the better flower arranger in the relationship. This had been established very early on. Hence Delta’s jibes about Marcus’s sexuality. He wasn’t gay, though. Just creative.
Abby, on the other hand…
“How was it? Isn’t the villa spectacular?”
Abby nodded, slapping on a fake smile. Flashes of kissing Jordan kept popping into her head, but she pushed them aside. She had to if she was going to survive. “It was amazing. Everyone had a great time, and Jordan made sure it went off without a hitch.” Very nearly true. She placed a hand on his arm as he began trimming the rose leaves and snipping the bottom of the stems.
Precise. That was Marcus.
“How about you? How was your weekend?”
Marcus shrugged, not quite looking her in the eye. “You know, the usual. Too much booze, and bawdy behaviour. And…” He paused, eyeing her, before dropping the flowers on the kitchen bench and taking a deep breath. “They got me a stripper, too. I told them not to, but you know what Philip’s like when he gets something in his head. Johnny, too. There were pictures taken, so just in case they surface, I wanted you to know. I feel terrible about it.” He stopped, and held out the gift bag. “I bought you a gift. It’s not a guilt offering. I was going to buy you one anyway.”
Abby swallowed, rooted to the spot. Marcus was worried about having a stripper?
She opened the gift box. Inside was a gorgeous silver bracelet with what looked like diamonds studded in the band. She didn’t deserve it, but she couldn’t let him see that.
She glanced up at his face. “It’s gorgeous, but you didn’t need to.” She was a very bad person.
“I know, but I wanted to. Even though I was on my stag do, I missed you. Is that corny?” He threw up his hands, and gave her a grin “I don’t care if it’s corny, it’s how I feel. Plus, if you can’t be corny when you’re just about to get married to your best friend, when can you be?”
Abby grinned despite the sinking feeling in her stomach. It was no easy task. Like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.
“The other reason I bought it, as well as to say I love you, was because I have a favour to ask. My parents want to have us over for dinner tomorrow night. No agenda, just a dinner to spend some time together, to get to know their future daughter-in-law. I’ve said yes already, because I assumed that a Tuesday would be okay for you. Is it okay?”
Her spirits dropped to a new low for the day. “Tomorrow night?” She’d hoped to see Jordan, but now she wasn’t free at lunch or in the evening.
She couldn’t say no to this, could she? Not when Marcus was looking at her like a puppydog. She sucked her top lip between her teeth. “Sure, tomorrow is fine.”
Marcus studied her face. “Good acting. You’re getting better at this.” He grinned. “Thank you.”
Her phone beeped, and she walked over to the couch, as Marcus resumed his flower arranging. It was a message from Jordan.
Abby gulped. Should she cover it with her hand, or take it in the bedroom?
She was being stupid. She clicked on it.
Hope you got home okay. We still on for lunch tomorrow? To talk about your speech and everything else?
She ground her teeth together. Jordan was going to think she was fobbing her off, but there was nothing she could do.
Really sorry, but something’s come up. I’ll text you in the week to rearrange.She studied the message. Did it sound cold? She deleted what she’d written, looked up at Marcus, then wrote it again. She didn’t have time to worry. She’d explain it to Jordan when she saw her. She clickedsend, a feeling of foreboding settling in her stomach. She’d just postponed seeing her, and now she was going to have to sit through a dinner with Marcus and his parents.
“Everything okay?” Marcus asked. He walked over and kissed her lips.
It took everything Abby had to hold it together in that moment. “Fine.”
But now she knew.
