Page 81 of A Wedding in a Week

“He’s climbing the fucking walls.” Marc grins. “Don’t tell him I said fuck.” His smile fades. “Mrs. Destiny’s already said yes. The only reason we’re still here is because it’s safer than home for him and a team has to meet to come to a decision.”

Those safeguarding wheels turn so slowly. Too slowly. “When did you say Rex is coming through? At the end of next week?”

Marc chews on his lip. “Maybe the week after.”

I know it isn’t certain, but I also know what it gives me—time to ask for a third and final favour before I get to see them, and you know what?

Threes have always been lucky for me.

28

Mum drives me to Penzance after a third week without Marc, talking a mile a minute until we pass the spot in the road still marked with blackened rubber. She murmurs, “Well done, love,” once it’s behind us, and it says everything about my mindset that I have no clue why.

We’ve driven past where I almost lost my life, but it’s also where it restarted, and that’s what I cling to once moorland turns to hotels and houses, and Mum pulls up in a quayside car park. Any life with Marc in it is better, even with uncertainty and distance. It sure beats ploughing the same old furrow.

I plough another new one today, walking up a street towards a bank hidden by granite pillars, but there’s nowhere to hide from Mum’s pep talk.

“You don’t take any nonsense from them, Stefan Luxton. You give them hell for leaving you hanging for this long, and you tell them that if they won’t give you the loan, we’ll take all our business to a different bank. Lukas and I are ready and willing to sign over some of the land as collateral to make Love-Land Weddings happen.”

“I don’t want either of you to risk—”

She stops beside a bench, pigeons watching her set down a box and then hold her arms out.

“Mum, what are you doing?”

“Giving you another dance lesson.” Her hands make grabby motions. “Come on.”

Tourists watch from other benches, their ice creams dripping.

“Mum, no.”

“Hmm.” She squints. “Maybe a waltz had the wrong beat to make the lesson stick.” She starts to boogie, and her version of Night Fever is the closest I’ve ever come to wanting the ground to open. I’ve never been closer to laughing either. Not outside a building that’s only ever left me feeling like a failure, but I can’t stop it from bubbling up when Mum strikes the same pose as a flamenco dancer.

“I know plenty of dances,” she warns me, one arm above her head, one foot stamping. “Sooner or later, I’ll find one that makes you remember.” She clacks her fingers together as if they’re castanets. Behind her, a little girl copies. Then Mum shouts, “Olé!” and pigeons scatter.

Christ.

“Okay, okay. What lesson?”

“Give and take,” she reminds me. She also drops her flamenco pose and bends over, her necklace glinting gold and swinging. “Lead and follow.”

“Please don’t twerk in public.”

She doesn’t, thank fuck, but she won’t be distracted. “You want this loan for the right reasons. For family ones. It’s seed money, but we’ll all reap the harvest because you’ll be happy.” She sits next to the box she set on the bench, but not before straightening the lapel of a vision in beige that Jack had dry-cleaned for me. “Take the lead, love. We both trust your vision.”

Maybe trust is all I’ve ever needed, only in myself, so I leave her waiting with the pigeons and go to kick up a fuss she would be proud of, only it turns out I needn’t have bothered.

A young clerk checks my records. “You should have had an email the same day you made your application.” She reads a note. “The manager wanted a few more figures. All you needed to do was reply with the information, then your application can be processed.”

I check my phone, and there is a request for that info, only it’s hidden in an email folder Marc set up to save my blood pressure from rising. I can’t believe I missed it, but to be fair, I was on my way to London, more important things on my mind, when that filter caught it. Perhaps I should be embarrassed. It’s the clerk who blushes after I give her the missing information and she reprints my loan application. “I recognise you from your presentation.”

“You saw it?”

She hands me a pen. “We all did, up in the break room while sharing the cream tea that came with your loan application. It was delicious, and your farm looks so romantic.”

“It really is.” Lord knows I fell head over heels for Marc there. “Can’t imagine a better place to celebrate a marriage than Kara-Tir.” I quickly translate. “It means Love-Land.” And I do love it. I do. I always have. A few bleak years hasn’t changed that. Of course I’ll fight for its future.

I get busy doing that by signing, and by hoping for a loan, but not feeling quite so desperate when the clerk asks a question. A diamond on her ring finger sparkles. “If your loan gets approved, could I bring my fiancé to visit? Maybe make a booking?”

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