Page 84 of Someone to Love Tracy Corbett

The wind kicked up another notch, rattling the champagne flutes lined up on the trestle table decorated with flowers and confetti… which was currently blowing around the forecourt, making it look like it was snowing.

Beth glared at him. ‘Don’t just stand there, do something.’

‘What is it you want me to do? I have no control over the weather,’ he quipped, glaring at her. ‘This was your idea, remember? I told you it was too windy to set up outside, but you wouldn’t listen.’

‘It wasn’t this windy earlier.’

‘Well, it is now!’ The balloons fought to escape his grasp. ‘The forecast warned of high winds.’

She turned away from him. ‘No need to be so smug.’

‘I’m not being smug, I’m simply pointing out that we can’t control the weather, and we’d have been better off doing this inside.’

‘Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it? Megan and Zac will be arriving any moment, so how about you stop rubbing it in that I misjudged the weather and help me.’

He gritted his teeth. ‘Like I said before, what is it you want me to do?’

‘I don’t bloody know, do I!’

‘Fine.’ He stormed over to the hotel entrance and tied the bunches of balloons to the wooden porchway, ensuring they were firmly secured and wouldn’t fly off.

Still grumbling, he went over to the trestle table, picked up the tray of champagne flutes and placed them on the floor. He then lifted the table and shuffled it nearer to the hotel, hoping that repositioning it in front of the brickwork might protect it from the wind. Replacing the tray of champagne flutes on top, he moved the flower displays in front, so they acted as a barrier.

Finally, he joined Beth on the red carpet and helped secure the edges with stones.

‘Happy?’ he said. All semblance of relaxation had disappeared, and she was back to being buttoned-up and starched to within an inch of her life.

‘Oh, ecstatic,’ she replied sarcastically.

He bit his tongue – he was a whisker away from saying something they’d both regret. ‘This weekend is going to be painful enough without you bitching at me all the time.’

She straightened. ‘I am not bitching.’

‘You haven’t stopped bitching since we arrived this morning, and it’s totally unfair.’ He went in search of another stone.

‘Unfair?’ She ran after him, darting in front of him so he’d get the full impact of her hands-on-hips stance. ‘You mean like not telling me your father was in prison?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ he said, checking the forecourt was empty, but it appeared they were the only ones stupid enough to be outside on a day like that. ‘I don’t want the whole world to know. And why should I have told you? What business is it of yours?’

She visibly flinched. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the minor matter of him potentially being at the wedding?’

Matt stepped closer, stung by the unfairness. ‘Which he isn’t going to be, and never was going to be. It was wishful thinking on his part, so there was no need for me to bring it up.’

She held her ground. ‘Maybe not, but what about what was happening between us?’

Was she serious? He threw his hands in the air. ‘Are you for real? There wasn’t anything happening between us. Something you’d made perfectly clear.’ He took another step towards her. ‘Or at least you did, before you changed your mind, and then changed it back again. Talk about giving mixed messages.’

Her face flushed pink with indignation. ‘That’s because I didn’t know if I could trust you. Turns out I was right.’

‘Why? Because I failed to mention one tiny detail?’

She looked incredulous. ‘Hardly tiny – your father’s in bloody jail!’

‘And has been for the last ten years, so it’s old news. It’s also private and humiliating and painful. So, excuse me if I don’t blurt it out to every person I meet. Like you, I also have to trust a person before I share private information, and that is not something I’m about to apologise for.’

What she would have said next, he’ll never know.

A taxi pulled up and the rear door shot open.

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