Page 54 of A Wedding in a Week

“Of course it is.” He searches my faces again, no avoiding what he says next. “Because you won’t borrow against your biggest asset. Your land, Stef.”

“It isn’t only mine.”

“But you’re the one carrying the load. The strain every time they say no. Even getting just one small yes from the bank means it won’t get a chance to kill you too.”

Like Dad.

I have to sit then, or perch, and thank fuck this table’s sturdy. “There’s nothing wrong with my heart.”

“Yet.” His blinks are slow and steady, as deliberate as his promise. “You don’t need to have a heart defect.” He tells me what I’ve read a hundred times while committing symptoms to memory for my brother. “Stress is a fucking killer, Stef. You think I want that for you? Or that your mum does?” Now his expression does something complex, and I guess this is what love for my mother looks like on him. His brow creases, and he shakes his head, but he can’t repress a smile, not while admitting, “She came out fighting the moment she realised what that finance slide meant.”

I don’t know if I feel dread, exasperation, or love. They’re all my usual Mum emotions. “How?”

“By giving the business manager at the bank a piece of her mind.”

“There isn’t a business manager. All the lending is run by computer.”

“Not always. She rang the local branch and found out there’s one manager for the whole of the county who rotates around branches. He’s due in Penzance soon. That’s where she’s sent a challenge.”

“To?”

“To review your last loan application and to hear about your idea in person.” He tilts his head to a pile next to his laptop. “She’s taken him one of these.” He touches a stack of cards next to his laptop.

“What are they?”

“Wedding invitations that I mocked up to hand out at my presentation, only with a link leading to your website.”

“I’ve got a website?”

“Love-Land Weddings does.” He scans a link with his phone, and there’s that sea blue and moor green hemming his Love-Land Weddings logo. And me. For a second time today, I see myself laughing out of the screen with a lap full of lambs before the photo fades and another replaces it.

Kara-Tir is panoramic. Stunning. The perfect place to celebrate a wedding.

I look up to see a reappearance of that tooth digging into Marc’s lip. “I put it together. Emma added the finishing touches.”

I almost can’t make myself ask. “To the website?”

“No, not to the website. To the parcel she put together.” He glances down at that rose still between us. “She made two of these buttonholes. Popped one of them along with an invitation into one of her Cornish cream-by-post boxes. Only she didn’t put it in the post. She said she’d hand-deliver it to the bank for me.” He glances at the time on his phone before sliding it away. “She’ll have done it by now.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He frowns again. “Because she was headed into Penzance anyway to—”

“No. You just said she’d hand-deliver it for you. For you. Why?”

That must be easier to answer. He sounds as convinced now as while timing his presentation using that old egg timer. “So they could at least see what they were losing out on.” His voice roughens. “And because if I don’t get the spot tomorrow, I still want you to have options without—”

I can’t hear him tag the word me on to the end of that sentence. I also really don’t want to hear it or think about him heading back to London disappointed.

I only want to think of the version of Marc he’s just painted with vivid brushstrokes—solving problems, not resigned to a lifetime shuffling big-five numbers.

I also want to kiss him, only Marc moves faster, touching my jaw first, his fingers skimming what’s more a beard now than stubble. He breathes, “I hope they RSVP,” his lips brushing mine, and I get at least one thing I wished for.

We kiss. I have no idea how long for—I don’t look at the timer to count these minutes. Every egg in the world could boil hard for all I care as long as I get to show what his belief in me means. Not that he hasn’t said as much already this week. But showing me like this?

Fuck Lukas for being right. It means I’ll have to find a way to thank him for a showing-instead-of-telling lesson that keeps proving valid.

I’ll do that as soon as I run out of air, and so what if that teacup Marc still clutches digs into my sternum? This discomfort is minor. I can take far more for him.

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