Page 2 of A Wedding in a Week

I can’t.

Fuck it, I still can’t.

“Tell me about your sensation levels.” Lukas meets my eye, daring me to lie. “What can you feel?”

“Tingling, sometimes.”

“Any numbness?”

My nod must be grudging because his pat is sympathetic. “Keep wearing your sling, and no heavy lifting for another week at least. The feeling will come back.” Then he explains why he’s leaving me with the one man I already feel too much for.

“That’s why I’ve asked Marc to stay here with you, so I can…” Lukas presses his lips together in another Dad-action replay, thinking for once before speaking. That hesitation is unusual enough that I prompt him.

“Go on. So you can what?”

He only presses his lips together harder before admitting, “Because I put off a date to come home and help out while you recovered.”

Of course, his reason for leaving the farm is sex related—my brother’s popular with the ladies for some reason. Maybe London is still smoggy like in the 1800s. It’s either that, or every woman who looks twice at Lukas must need their vision tested. “You’re telling me you’re leaving me with Marc because you have a date with—”

“Destiny.” Lukas laughs, only it comes out sounding strangled. “I’m just saying that it was very hard to get her to agree after I put it off once.”

“When?”

“When I got the call about your accident. Then I postponed again to help here with the first cut.”

He mentions a farm job I couldn’t have managed without him and Marc, not even a little. Cutting and baling on a hillside farm is hard, labour-intensive work that can’t be automated. I’m grateful he stayed to supervise when pain meds left me foggy, which means I owe it to him to listen.

Lukas cups my elbow, taking its weight like my sling would, which does make a difference to my pain level. He focusses on it as if he can see the ache I’ve learned to live with. “Now that chore’s almost finished, you don’t need me to stay.” He cites my farmhand for his decision. “John says one extra pair of hands to help him finish up is enough. Marc’s happy to do it, and this is my last chance to—”

“Date the lovely Destiny before coming home for the summer?” It’ll be nonstop for him when he starts his fourth year, no time for the rest I’m sure his heart needs. I can’t say I like the idea of him being so busy, or that the pressure won’t let up for him anytime soon in his studies. I am proud though. “Only seems like yesterday you were sweating over your application. Now you’re closer to the frontline work you said you wanted.”

He blinks, and I watch his sharp pixie features soften—he’s surprised that I’ve remembered, but just because I don’t say as much as him doesn’t mean I don’t listen. Now I can’t help sounding gruffer. “Go and have some fun, but come back as soon as you can, yeah? You need to take it easy.”

“I really don’t.” He touches his chest like I touched mine when he woke me. “But you could have some fun too, you know. That’s really why I’m leaving Marc here. He could always tune into your strong and silent wavelength. He’ll be good company, and”—this must be his real reason—“he’ll make sure you don’t roll the Land Rover again. With your luck, you’d go right over the cliff this time instead of only to its edge.”

“I didn’t roll it on purpose. I took evasive action.” I look over his shoulder out the window, the coast road a far-off ribbon weaving like the farm does between the moorland and the ocean. It glints next to cliffs that would surely have killed me if not for the barrier my vehicle rocked on like a seesaw. “I wouldn’t have crashed if tourists hadn’t been gawking at the view.”

Lukas snorts. “You sound just like Dad when you grumble.”

Maybe I do, but my brother’s next stare is much more like our mother’s, seeing right through me. “Listen, I’m not only leaving for”—he rolls his eyes—“a date. I’m doing it for Marc.”

“Why?” I pull away, wanting distance between me and a subject that reminds me of seesawing over that cliff edge all over again.

“Because he still describes you as his benchmark.”

That stops me dead. “Benchmark?”

Lukas nods, then shrugs. “Something like that anyway. Take your pick: bar, scale, benchmark. They all fit, because apparently you’re his measure.”

“No.” I can’t be, not when I can still see Marc’s disappointment as clearly now as when I first caused it.

Lukas holds his hands up, back to his usual laughing at me. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying what he let slip in not so many words when I told him you’d had a car crash.”

“Which was?” I flash back to something Lukas probably wouldn’t find half so funny. He has no idea that his best friend and I once almost had a moment. What he says next confirms it.

“He said that he missed you.”

Fuck.

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