Page 11 of A Wedding in a Week

Perfect?

Like poor Destiny, my brother’s unlucky date, Mum must need her vision tested. My pasty is lumpy and disfigured. Objectively, it’s ugly even though I’ve put my heart and soul into its pastry crescent. Mum sets down the brush she’s used to paint both of them with egg-wash. “You’re getting so much better at that lately, Stef. Asking for help, I mean.” Then she does what Marc did, touching where bruising would be visible if I didn’t have my sling on. “Hell of a way to learn, love.”

Her eyes don’t brighten with laughter this time.

They swim for a moment, liquid like Marc’s had been for a moment out in the yard, and perhaps today is a day for gruff voices. “You know,” she says a touch thickly, “you’re allowed to keep asking for help once you’re all healed, don’t you? And I don’t mean only with your baking or your laundry.” She glances at my laptop, maybe remembering how I sweated over ways to diversify when the bottom fell out of dairy. “Anyone who loves you will want to help you, and there’s plenty of people who do, Stef.”

She knocks up several more pasties and carries the baking tray to the oven.

It’s easier to nod than answer as she continues.

“And you’re allowed to want good things for yourself, not only for me and your brother.” She slides the tray into the oven, and one pasty on it might be uglier than all of the others but her next guess is perfect. “Or for Marc.”

The afternoon slips into evening, the kitchen filled with a scent I hope will be a decent way to say thank you to him. It lingers long after Mum leaves and I lose myself in more spreadsheets.

I keep coming back to a business plan I’d shelved before the accident. Now it absorbs me, a brand-new furrow to plough instead of the same old, same old.

Not that I’m complaining, but there’s also no avoiding that farming is a treadmill with no off switch and no time to think about alternatives either. In contrast, this project could be a respite—a way to marry this land with making money that would free me up to…

“To what?” I say to no one but Jess, who wags her tail like she agrees with what I say next. “To have a life of my own?”

That’s the dangerous thing about this accident-induced time off—it’s felt an awful lot like freedom. Not that I want to escape Kara-Tir, but I’ve had three years of swimming in circles. The thought of striking out in a new direction sets my heart on an uptick similar to when Marc kissed me.

Uptick?

My heart races each time I remember, which maybe should have me worried, but apparently that’s what I want more of—more of this feeling alive instead of dormant. It also comes with an edge of panic at him getting me out of his system when he’s nowhere close to out of mine.

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimes a resonant reminder that Marc’s interview has to be long over by now, his dinner date getting started. Taking my mind off that is about as tough as making pasties one-handed was. Even my business plan feels like being back in the Land Rover on the coast road, the edge of the cliff on one side, the farm on my other, only now my head is too full of risk-versus-reward to pay attention to what I finally realise is a car pulling into the yard.

I get to my feet to see who parks.

Marc.

If I thought my heart hammered earlier, it was only getting started. He’s home way earlier than I expected and, like before, something inside me takes flight when he gets out and faces the farmhouse. Then it dives because Marc turns away and heads for John’s cottage, and fuck knows how any of those gulls make their constant swooping and soaring look like fun. It’s a roller coaster, hurling me upwards again as soon as Marc stops halfway across the yard.

He pauses, his back to the farmhouse, before he changes course one more time. Marc doubles back, only not to his car. He comes my way instead, walking fast and knocking on a door he used to open without hesitating. I’m on that cliff all over again as I unlatch it. What I blurt sounds as rough and rocky. “What are you doing here?”

He blinks, and I work to soften my tone.

“You didn’t go. Out to dinner, I mean.”

Marc rubs at the back of his neck. “The interview overran.” I catch a glimpse of humour in what he says next, and damn, I’ve missed his quiet way of joking. “Besides, I’m not sure I fancy dinner with someone who—”

“Likes their pasties wrapped in plastic?”

For once, I’ve said the right thing. I must have because even with his back to the lowering sun, Marc brightens. I get to watch a smile spread before he says, “Exactly.” His smile doesn’t exactly fade next, but he does dig a tooth into his lip. “I actually messaged him to postpone.” He continues before those gulls in my stomach get to do any more of their swooping or soaring. “Not sure I would have made a good first impression. Not tonight anyway.”

“Because?”

And here’s more of the fearlessness I remember. Marc makes eye contact that doesn’t drop, his stare as straight as his answer. “Because my head would have been somewhere else.”

Because we kissed? My lungs seize. Because he wants us to do it again?

Marc has a different reason. “Too much on my mind after the interview.”

“Oh. Right.” Of course. “How did it go?”

“Not sure.” He draws in the kind of long, slow inhale I remember. His exhale comes out with the same rush as his answer. “I really want it.” He still meets my eyes, so I can see how much he means that. “It would be perfect for me.” He scrubs at the back of his neck again as if saying this is awkward. “But the second interviews won’t be for a week, even if I make the cut.”

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