Page 19 of A Wedding in a Week

Marc snorts, but he smiles too, so I feel smart instead of stupid. “No, I haven’t seen them yet. I mean your wedding plans. They’re really good. Robust like your forecasts. They were everything I needed to send in.”

“Yeah?” A wave of something I haven’t felt in forever soaks me. I can’t help glancing at Dad’s photo behind Marc. “You really think the figures stack up?”

“Yes, I do.” Marc looks about to say more when a car horn beeps. “That’s John.” He points to my laptop. “I have made some suggestions though. Identified a few gaps and emailed them to you. Take a look at them tonight and talk to me about them in the morning, yeah?”

“It’s a date.”

I’d regret choosing that phrase if my brother were here to listen. He’d only tease me forever. Or lose his cool at finding out that I’m the reason Marc stopped spending summers with us. Thank God his own date means he isn’t here to notice, but frankly it’s hard to care too much about Lukas getting hot and heavy with his Destiny now that Marc backs away looking so much happier than when he arrived this morning.

I can’t help following to see him get into John’s car.

I stand in the doorway with more than my arm aching after a day full of what Lukas probably wouldn’t describe as light duties either. My chest aches, too, because Marc waves before leaving, warm and friendly instead of distant like a stranger, and I can’t wait for tomorrow.

* * *

“Five days to go and still loads to do,” Marc says the next morning. Again, he doesn’t act like a stranger by knocking on the kitchen door as I plate my breakfast. He walks right in and takes the plate from me, setting it down by the stove with a clatter. He also pokes me right in the chest, each jab punctuating what he tells me. “But today you’re not doing any of my farm work for me.”

“Why?” It’s only fair after Marc’s made such a difference to my spreadsheets. I checked them over last night, and they’re a thing of Excel beauty. There are even colourful charts and projections that make my plan look professional instead of basic, and the suggestions he’s made will only make it even better. “Surely it’s better that I do the chores so you can get ahead on your presentation.”

“Not since I spoke to Lukas.”

“You did?” My mind races. “When? Oh, and how did his date go?”

“Ten minutes ago, and I have no idea.” He scans the room, searching for something, and it’s fair to say I didn’t sleep well last night, my brain spinning with wedding-venue potential, but I’m not so sleep-deprived that I can’t figure out what he finds and clutches. “No.” I shake my head and hold my hands up. “I don’t need the sling.”

He must have absorbed some of my brother’s stealth over the years. Marc takes advantage of my raised hands by looping them with the fabric, and if my brother tried the same move, I’d shake him off, no problem—use the sling to tie his own hands behind his back and then put him in the headlock that used to make him scream with laughter.

Marc though?

He adjusts the sling so my arm’s supported, and I don’t move a fucking muscle.

I can’t. Not while Marc takes his sweet time, looping his arms around my neck to secure the fastening, and not while he meets my eyes either. I can’t look away from his brand of care mixed with bluntness. “You told me Lukas cleared you to work.”

“Yeah. He did.”

“But only for light duties, Stef.” The fastening must give him some trouble. It takes an age before he lowers his hands. He still isn’t done though, smoothing the navy fabric that covers my arm and crosses my chest. He tugs it like it’s creased when I’m pretty sure we both know it isn’t. “Very light duties,” he says quietly.

I want to kiss him for caring.

I want to kiss him full stop.

I watch his lips purse, but that’s due to concern, not because he wants to kiss me as well. It must be because he cups my elbow, his touch slow and careful until his hold turns firmer. His gaze does too, and that’s how I know he hasn’t only absorbed persistence from my brother. Marc dismantles my I’m fine bullshit the same way as the man who used to sit at the head of my kitchen table.

“Very light duties, Stef, like bookkeeping,” he states. “Not shifting all of those feed bins by yourself. I just went to do it. They’re heavy. Too heavy. And ‘light duties’ doesn’t mean you climbing up into the hayloft either.”

“How did you—”

“Know that you must have a death wish?” Marc pulls an old paper tally from his back pocket. “Because you dropped something up there. What made you climb the ladder? You wanted to double-check the numbers? Why do you think I set up a new rotation spreadsheet for you in the first place?”

I shake my head.

“To make your life easier.” He crosses his arms and yet again I rethink my definition of beauty on this farm because Marc frowning shouldn’t make him more appealing, should it? It also shouldn’t make me want to touch that line bisecting his brow. Seeing it deepen climbs to the top of my beauty chart like it’s another hayloft ladder, even though it leaves him sterner than I’ve ever seen him. He’s also got hay in his hair, and I can’t stifle a smile at the contrast.

“It’s not funny,” he says but he smiles too, or he starts to at least, and here we are, standing close enough that I’m not sure if I’m warmed by the stove or by him admitting, “I don’t ever want you to get injured again.”

“Me neither.”

“So stop trying to do too much, too soon.” He huffs out a breath. “I can’t believe how much work you did. Your arm didn’t hurt at all?”

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