Page 1 of A Wedding in a Week

1

STEFAN

I jerk awake far too early on Monday morning. Not that I usually sleep in—my dad always said the dairy herd was as good as an alarm clock for us Luxtons, but now Kara-Tir farm is mine, its dairy days are almost over, so it isn’t our herd that wakes me.

It can’t be a lambing crisis either, now it’s May and we’re past that springtime bedlam. I can’t even blame this early wake-up on pain, which is a blessing four weeks after a car crash that I thought would end me. That leaves only one reason to jerk from a dead sleep with no warning.

Lukas.

My brother peers around my door, not even trying to whisper. “Stefan? You awake?”

For a split second, I think the worst has happened.

My heart stops and I sit bolt upright. “You okay?” I touch my chest, a kettle drum pounding under my palm, which is hardly reassuring when it’s his heart, not mine, that I don’t trust to keep ticking. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Before he can, I run through mental logistics. Should I try to drive him to the hospital while I still have one arm out of action? Or should I call an ambulance that could take hours now that Cornwall is clogged with tourists? My brother’s arteries might be clogged too if he’s woken me this early because his chest is hurting.

I’ve spent the last three years waiting for this moment.

Now it’s here, I’d do anything to swap hearts with him.

Or maybe I’m mistaken. I must be—Lukas bounces into my room like Tigger, then bounces on my bed a few times, energy crackling as though he doesn’t have a zip-like scar dividing his sternum.

He bounces a few more times, but that’s Lukas through and through—a menace who’s always acted like he’s superhuman instead of the little brother I need to keep alive and kicking, although I suppose little isn’t the right label for him these days. He’s twenty-two and easily as tall as me, if not quite as beefy, but that’s what years of farm work will do to a body compared to studying medicine at uni.

He’s another year closer to becoming a doctor. Who would have believed it?

Not me, especially on mornings like this, when my heart pounds at what could have happened to him or when he reverts to the teasing twat I grew up with. I sink back onto my pillows, pulling up the covers because it’s way too early to wake up to a grin that only ever spells trouble for me.

Lukas doesn’t agree. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” That’s what he always tells me, swearing he’s fully healed and intending to live forever. He immediately delivers different surprise news. “I’ve got to go back to London, so I’m leaving you with Marc.”

“What?” I blink at him, my brain lagging. “With Marc? Why?”

“Why?” He flutters eyelashes long enough to rival one of Dad’s old sweet-faced milkers. “So you can have some quality alone time with him, Stef.”

“No.” I lever myself upright. My elbow doesn’t scream like it did after the accident that brought Lukas hurrying home with his best friend to help me. That doesn’t stop my stomach from lurching at the thought of being left alone with someone I once had a near-miss kiss with.

A near-miss kiss?

Three years ago, I would have done a lot more than that with Marc if the odds hadn’t been stacked against us, and not only because he’s my brother’s bestie. The timing had been awful. As was how I’d told him no, but I’m not blessed with my brother’s gift of the gab. Even now, I verbally stumble. “No. I mean… Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Lukas tilts his head, his eyes narrowing.

“Don’t leave me with him. Not today.” I scramble for an excuse. “I’m working on my new business plan. I’m too busy.”

And here’s proof that something else Dad always said must have been right: there’s no way Lukas can be a full-blooded Luxton. He must have the blood of Cornish pixies running through his veins, he so loves to meddle. His current butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth expression barely hides it.

“Okay, okay, Stef. I won’t leave you alone with Marc today.” He slips off the edge of my bed and sidles away before making a full confession. “I’m actually leaving you alone with him for at least the next week. Maybe longer.”

He darts out of my room without offering more of an explanation, so I struggle out of bed and follow, soon involved in a game of chase across the top floor of the farmhouse we both grew up in. It’s a flashback to us as kids before I learned to worry. Lukas laughs the same way as when he was five and I was ten and I’d put him in a headlock. His cackle only cuts off when we end up back in my bedroom and I skid on the glossy cover of a magazine.

Lukas catches me, and forget what I said about him not being a born and bred Luxton. He stops me from breaking my fall with my injured arm, and I don’t see a teasing Cornish pixie or a fragile brother as he takes my weight. I see our dad, strong and sturdy, catching me like he did so often.

Lukas won’t let me fall either. “Steady,” he says in another echo of a man we both miss. Lukas picks up the Farmers Weekly that I slipped on, putting it on my bedside table for safety. Then he draws me to the window to study my arm, sober now as he checks me over, and for all that he’s the reason I’ll turn grey before I hit my thirties, he really will make a brilliant doctor.

I see it as he tests my range of motion, checking a joint that almost dislocated, and tracks the remains of scrapes and bruises. They’d been a deep red and purple when he’d arrived with a surprise volunteer to cover my farming workload. Now they’re fading, but he still warns me not to overdo it, which sounds bizarre from someone I’d wrap in cotton wool if he let me.

“You’re healing quickly on the surface, Stef, but nerve damage runs deeper and heals more slowly. Make a fist for me.”

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