Page 26 of A Wedding in a Week

It feels that way the moment his arms span me and Marc lets out a soft sound. A satisfied one. I don’t only hear it—something long depleted inside me recharges and it’s everything I’ve needed, a concept that runs through my mind on a loop. Marc doesn’t only fit me. He fills places I didn’t know he’d left empty.

Maybe I should be more aware that I’m having an epiphany while kissing a man somewhere we could be discovered at any moment. I don’t actually care if anyone follows in our footsteps and finds this hidden corner. Today’s all about happy couples, isn’t it? If anyone has a problem, I can….

I turn us then, slow and easy, doing what I last watched years ago in my kitchen when Dad waltzed Mum away from hazards while dancing in our kitchen. He’d steer her without pushing, and I would have paid more attention to how he did that if I’d known I’d get to lead the same way one day. Not by waltzing with Marc or by even slow dancing with him, but by making sure my back is to this alcove’s entrance, walling him off from the sight of strangers.

That’s what kissing Marc again feels like as I turn us. He’s been a wall to lean on while I fell apart here. I’ll be his wall now—would be that for him for even longer than a week if he scores his dream job and stays, because my dream job?

That’s keeping him in Cornwall.

But for now, here, where the sea is only a faint shush instead of the roar I’d replayed in the Land Rover, and where roses scent the air instead of my blood and brine, I make the most of getting to repay the favour, taking care of him the way he has done for me since he came back.

And that’s another loop my brain locks onto.

We complement each other.

It’s more than his mouth fitting against mine, his arms not only looping my neck but pulling like he doesn’t want any more distance between us—distance that was my fault in the first place, which is something else I let go of when his tongue finds mine and a hand cups my jaw. We’re here now, together, and the only thing I still hate about it is that I’m wearing a sling and can’t wrap both arms around him.

Or maybe wearing it like Lukas ordered, and Marc made happen this morning, isn’t entirely a bad thing. It doesn’t feel so when Marc lowers a hand to support my elbow like he’s supported me since returning.

He does that while bees buzz somewhere close by, and a blackbird sings while my heart finally steadies, no longer thundering like waves against a cliff face or stuttering to a stop like Dad’s. That means I hear what Marc breaks off to ask me.

He pulls away, but only slightly, and yes, I always knew his eyes were hazel, and of course I’ve seen them liquid once already, but this velvet softness?

It’s new.

Marc asks, “What would you have said?”

“When?”

“If you could have called me?” Then he shakes his head just as quickly. “No, don’t tell me.”

He meets my gaze, and for everything I’ve seen already, like hazel shades or velvet, now he shows me something steely.

“Just know I would have answered.”

10

We walk through the gardens, meandering between vendor stalls where Marc does all the talking, and I’m good with him taking the lead. I’m not tongue-tied because of crash-related reasons right now. I’m quiet because Marc keeps showing me brand-new facets. Like him being in his element here, proposing my business idea to multiple wedding-fair vendors.

He’s selling it, I realise. Setting out our proposal as if it’s a foregone conclusion, not a pipe dream of mine or a gateway to a job for him—a job I now want him to get so badly my throat clogs.

All I can do is nod and listen while he explains the benefits of our location to local wedding planners like we’re ready to host their clients. We’re a million miles from that, but Marc’s description of somewhere I’ve loved my whole life certainly sells it.

Planners ask for details. For availability dates. For a card with our business details.

Marc surprises me again by slipping some from his folder.

I ask him about them once he’s done talking. “Show me?”

He does, passing me a business card showing two linked gold bands sandwiched between waves of blue and green that are dotted with… I point out golden semicircles, and he proves that three has to be my lucky number. It must be because he’s surprised me twice already since we got here, but this third time comes with laughter. “Are those meant to be Cornish pasties?”

“Yeah,” he says, his turn to sound gravelly, and for all that I’ve had plenty of gritty moments of my own today, it sounds much better from him, the roughness suggesting that everything on this card means a lot to him. He goes ahead and tells me. “The blue is meant to be the sea and the green the moors. Everything between those sections kind of symbolise what the farm offers.” He doesn’t dig a tooth into his lip now. He almost mauls it.

He’s nervous.

He sounds it too. “I—” He clears his throat. “I, uh, I mocked these up really fast after breakfast. Used your printer while you were showering.” He eyes me as if I’m a bomb he expects to go off. “Hope that was okay?”

“Okay?” He doesn’t need to be nervous about using up my printer ink, not after doing this to help me make contacts. “They’re good, Marc.”

---