Page 69 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Lily helped Mom with the difficult candle decision (it took twelve texts), then headed out.
‘Hey, Lily!’ called Jorge, who was out and about watering the endless assortment of planters and flower beds that gave the village loop its unending rainbow of colour. He’d even gifted Lily a pothos that she hadn’t managed to kill.
‘Got some bluebonnets for the gents today,’ said Jorge. ‘Send them my best wishes.’
Lily took the vibrant flowers, which Jorge had wrapped in a square of brown paper and tied with string. ‘Thank you, Jorge! You’re too kind. Will I see you at the cake tasting on Tuesday? I’ll have a new lemon one for you to try.’
Jorge lifted his trowel. ‘Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll come hungry.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything else.’
Waggling her fingers goodbye, Lily waltzed down the laneway to the parking area. She dug through her handbag to unlock Lucille, but the jangling of her keyring-laden keys was absent. Oh crap, she thought, peeking in the window, where a familiar disco ball keyring flashed and gleamed in the ignition.
‘You got locked out. Of this.’ Mort folded his arms, regarding the tiny car, which probably looked like a diecast Matchbox model from his great height.
‘I get locked out of all sorts of things,’ admitted Lily. ‘I’m like the anti-Houdini. I called the locksmith, but he’s run off his feet. Something about a swingers party and a bowl of keys that went missing. He has to rekey a whole subdivision.’
Mort grimaced. ‘I’m not sure I needed to know that. Although itdoesexplain the awkwardness at some of my recent funerals.It’s beyond frustrating having to call security every time I see more than two grieving spouses in the front pew.’
‘You said you were off today,’ said Lily pleadingly. ‘Can you drive me down to the barn?’
Mort shot her a wry look. ‘Will you reimburse me for the mileage?’
Lily huffed in exasperation. ‘I won’t even touch the radio. There’ll be plenty of old people there – you can hand out your business cards.’
‘Wow, callous. I didn’t know you had it in you.’ Mort shook his head. ‘All right, let’s do this.’
Lily jumped up and down in her gleaming boots. ‘Really?’
Before she realised what she was doing, she’d leapt in to give him a kiss on the cheek. Except Mort, famously not a fan of being tackled (tackling had a high mortality risk), turned his head just in time … so that their lips met. Lily’s cowboy hat tumbled to the moss-smothered cobblestones.
‘Oh, shit. I mean, not shit. I just …’ Lily gulped as all the tension from that fateful night a few days ago came roaring back.
Mort was silent, his dark eyes hooked into her own.
Once could be shrugged off as a mistake. Twice was … a pattern. A pattern that Lily desperately wanted to continue, but that Mort apparently did not.
‘You’ve got a little …’ She reached up to rub the hot pink lipstick from the side of his lip.
As she did, he caught her wrist, gently, holding it momentarily as though he deeply wanted to say something. As though he wanted to kiss all the way down the length of her arm.
But he didn’t. Instead he stooped to fetch her fallen cowboy hat, then unlocked the hearse.
‘I like the hat,’ he said. ‘Suits you.’
A unprompted compliment! Was Mort coming around to her wiles?
‘Good, because there are plenty extras at the barn,’ she teased. ‘And I just happen to have a spare one of these.’
She brandished a bolo tie.
‘Oh goodie.’ Mort looked as though she’d suggested brain surgery without anaesthesia.
‘You slip it over your neck and adjust it like this.’
She demonstrated, trying to ignore the thrum of Mort’s heart against her hand as she adjusted the tie.
‘How do I look?’ asked Mort drily.
