Undertaking Love (7 page)

Because my marriage is dead in the water?

‘Can we just not talk about it?’ she eventually managed.

‘Not talk about the serious stuff?’ Dan grinned. ‘You’re talking my language, lady.’ He turned INXS up loud on the stereo and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I can go in for you, if you like.’ He cast a pointed look at her pyjamas as he manoeuvred the hearse into a parking space. Emily grimaced. She really didn’t want to cruise the aisles of Sainsbury’s in pale pink fluffy trousers with love hearts on them, but then she didn’t especially want to be on her own in the hearse either.

‘What will I do?’

‘Stay here and creep out the locals.’ Dan jumped out and jogged across the car park without giving Emily a moment to protest. She sat for a few seconds and tried to be rational.
It is just a car.
An estate car, maybe, with lots of room in the back for shopping. She screwed up her courage and glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see a coffin, even though she’d double-checked it was empty before she got in.

Still empty.

When she looked forward again she spotted Kev, the chapel’s part-time Elvis impersonator heading out of the supermarket stuffing biscuits into his face. Did the man not know
anything
about tempting fate? He’d be keeling over on the toilet next if he wasn’t careful. She ducked as he passed her window so he wouldn’t spot her fraternizing with the enemy and mention it to Marla.

Or, God forbid, to Tom.

She breathed a sigh of relief when Dan slid back into the driving seat and passed her a bag clinking with bottles. ‘Red, white and sparkling. My treat.’

Emily laughed. ‘Now you’re talking
my
language.’

Dan winked and gunned the engine. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

His directness caught her off guard and the smile slipped from her face. He might have kept his tone deliberately light, but the subtext behind his question was clear. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘No.’

He nodded and turned out of the carpack in the opposite direction to the village.

They drove out into the countryside for a little while before Dan finally eased the hearse up a battered dirt track and came to rest in a sheltered copse. Beyond the trees Emily had a clear view of the full moon as it glittered over the placid waters of the River Severn.

‘This place is beautiful,’ she said softly, and wound down her window to drink in the night sounds and smells.

Dan nodded, his eyes on her profile instead of the view. ‘Beautiful.’

Emily fidgeted in her seat and the carrier bag tumbled over with a clink that reminded her of her need for wine.

‘I don’t suppose you happen to carry wine glasses in this thing, do you?’ She asked, glancing hopefully around the surprisingly plush interior of the hearse.

‘Sorry, Princess.’ Dan shook his head. ‘Although, hang on …’ he stretched an arm back between the two seats, fished around for a few seconds before coming up with a battered red KitKat mug.

‘I was working in the back this morning. Left this in there.’ Dan wiped the mug clean on the edge of his dark T-shirt.

Emily unscrewed the cap from the red wine and sloshed the mug half-full, then saluted him with it before taking a good long swig. It was a little cold, but she welcomed it all the same.

‘Better?’

‘A bit.’ She had another glug. ‘A lot.’ She grinned.

Dan laughed and refilled her mug.

Emily sighed heavily. ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow.’

‘No way! Let me guess …’ he turned her chin slightly towards him to study her face. ‘Twenty-four?’

‘I wish.’ Emily looked at her watch and groaned. ‘I’ve got exactly two hours left of my twenties.’

Dan whistled under his breath. ‘Well, here’s to you, Mrs Robinson.’

‘Don’t. You make me feel even older.’ She sipped her wine and idly wondered exactly how much younger than her he was. Couldn’t be much. A year. Two, maybe?

‘So … Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do before you hit the big 3-0?’

Emily shook her head, unwilling to allow herself to even think about the obvious baby-related answer to his question.

‘Skydive, maybe?’ he suggested. ‘Bungee jump?’

Emily wrinkled her nose with distaste at his daredevil suggestions. She preferred to get her kicks on terra firma; even domestic flights had her swigging rescue remedy in the airport loos.

‘How about wild sex in the back of a hearse?’ he added.

A charged silence crackled between them as his question hung in the air.

Emily had known where this was headed from the moment she’d got into the hearse back in the village. She hadn’t planned it, but then again, she hadn’t resisted it either.

And she didn’t resist now as Dan reached out to cradle her jaw, tracing her cheekbone with his thumb. She didn’t resist him because she
couldn’t
resist him. Instead, she turned her face into his hand and pressed her lips against his warm palm. A shiver of pleasure rocked through her at the intimacy of his unknown taste against her mouth, and she knew from the way his breath quickened that he’d felt the heat kick up a notch too. He took the mug from Emily’s fingers, slung it out of the open window, then promptly pulled her across onto his lap, leaving her in no doubt of exactly how much he wanted her.

He was different, he was exciting, and he made her feel like someone else. His kiss left her breathless, and Emily opened her mouth to let his tongue slide in.

Michael Hutchence had nothing on Dan when it came to sexy moans. Any last vestige of common sense followed the KitKat mug out of the window when his hands moved underneath her T-shirt to stroke her breasts through the lace of her bra.

She was lost in him. In how new and adored his hands made her feel. In how his ragged breathing gave away the extent of his arousal. In the erotic power of being wanted again.

Emily needed more. Right there and then she needed all of him, and she reached down to where he strained against the confines of the buttons of his jeans. He swore into her mouth, and in one swift move, he dropped the seat and hauled her over into the back of the hearse.

‘Dan! We can’t … not in here!’ she squeaked, and somewhere in her head, Emily actually meant it. It was scandalous on just about every level to steam up the windows of a hearse, but on the other hand, it
was
kind of perfectly proportioned for stretching out.

‘Oh yes we fucking can,’ he muttered, pulling her T-shirt over her head without breaking their kiss, like a magician pulling out the table cloth without upsetting any teacups. He unfastened her bra with the ease of a practised man, and Emily’s protests dissolved as his warm hands and wet mouth roamed over her body. He licked and sucked until she gasped and begged. Somehow, he managed to wriggle off both her trousers and his own in one go and settle back over her, warm skin against warm skin. He was hard and heavy between her legs, but it was Dan’s kiss that tipped Emily’s world upside down.

Slow, sweet and exquisite over her mouth.

Feather gentle over her squeezed shut eyelids when he pushed himself all the way inside her. Outside, the hearse creaked to the rhythm of INXS and Emily and Dan’s efforts.

Inside, she buried her tear damp face in his neck and clung to his broad shoulders for safe harbour while he rocked her to the moon and back.

Some time later, Emily opened her eyes as Dan’s mouth traced a lazy pattern on the sensitive hollow below her ear. She gazed out at the moonlit river, still and serene despite the fact that three lives had just changed forever on her banks.

‘Gerroffme …’

Marla grumbled at Bluey as he tried to nudge her awake with his huge head. She turned over and snuggled deeper into the crisp, white cotton duvet, desperatly trying to hang onto the coat tails of her delicious dream. She stuck her head under the pillow as the ever patient Bluey thumped his way around the bed to poke her again from the other side. She shot up with a guilty flush. She’d been dreaming about Gabe, who for some fathomless reason had been shirtless and fixing her wonky shower when it suddenly sprayed all over him. Jeez, he’d been very, very wet. She shook her head in an attempt to dislodge the disconcertingly sexy image.

Bluey stood by the door whining low in his throat with his head cocked to one side, and it finally dawned on Marla that there was someone knocking on the door. She scowled at the clock. It was just after eight on her first morning off for quite some time, so whoever the hell had decided to interrupt her much cherished lie-in had better have something vitally important to say.

She shrugged her white waffle dressing gown on over the top of her cotton slip and belted it tight. A peep through the white voile blind didn’t help, because whoever was at the door was too close to the cottage for her to see. She straightened the blind and pushed her toes into her white terry-towelling flip-flops. A gift from Dora – she’d snipped the little pink ribbons off the front before she’d worn them. Jonny had been appalled, and insisted that her obsession with white was a direct reflection of her uptight personality. Marla eschewed his attempts at pop psychology; her mother had analysed her to death over the years. White just made her feel clean, that was all. It helped her to breathe more deeply, to relax more easily. She shook her head at Bluey to warn him against climbing into her recently vacated warm spot on the bed, and ran her hand along the handrail as she picked her way down the steep cottage stairs to the front door.

Her attempts to peer through the bevelled glass pane in the old oak door proved fruitless; she couldn’t recognise the warped silhouette on the other side. It looked male though. She slid back the bolt and inched the door open. She was right in her assessment. Male. Very definitely male. Very definitely attractive, too. And naggingly familiar somehow, but without its first hit of caffeine her brain had some way to go to catch up with her feet.

His smile sailed through the Marla Jacobs teeth test, and his sparkling blue eyes melted her last vestiges of annoyance at being woken up. To his further credit, he rather heroically didn’t let his eyes wander down over her state of undress.

Belatedly, she noticed the newspaper in his hand.

‘Are you the oldest paperboy in the world?’

He laughed and ran a hand through his floppy hair. It was so Hugh Grant that she wondered if he’d actually cut a photo out of a magazine and taken it to the hairdressers. If he said the words crikey and gosh in the same sentence in the next few minutes she’d know for sure.

‘Marla, hi. You probably don’t remember me from the other night …’

He looked at her as if he fully expected that she might well recall his face. She shrugged, and shook her head with an apologetic smile to soften the blow. He was going to have to help her out a little more than that.

‘I’m Rupert Dean. I was at the public meeting last week. From
The
Shropshire Herald
?’

She took the newspaper he held out as her brain fog lifted.

That
was where she’d seen him before, and why she hadn’t recognised him right away. All her memories of that evening revolved around Gabriel Ryan turning up and completely derailing everything.

‘Yes, I remember now,’ Marla murmured, thoroughly distracted by the ‘Village Under Threat!’ headline splashed across the front of the newspaper next to a large colour image of the chapel. A smaller, grainy black and white image of a scowling Gabe also accompanied the piece – he looked positively demonic. Served him right. But then, a second, private image of him snuck back into her head too, of him half-naked and soaked through in her bathroom …

She looked up as she suddenly remembered that Rupert Dean was still standing on her doorstep. He nodded towards the paper with a grin.

‘Thought you might like to see it hot off the press, so to speak.’

Much as Marla was heartened that the paper had taken up their cause, she remained perplexed as to why Rupert had gone to the trouble of providing a personal delivery service.

‘Do you hand deliver copies to all your front page stars?’

Rupert scuffed his toe on the path like a bashful schoolboy.

‘Only the beautiful ones.’

Marla laughed and gathered her dressing gown a little tighter.

‘I was just about to put some coffee on. Would you like one?’ She opened the door wider and stepped aside.

‘I’d like that very much, actually.’

She left him in her cosy sitting room whilst she flew upstairs to fling some clothes on, and returned to find the coffee already made and Rupert leafing through her book collection. He had a classical profile, good bone structure and an aquiline nose. His hair flopped in that artful way that oozed Head Boy, but his eyes hinted at the the wicked thoughts going on inside his head.

‘For a woman who runs a wedding chapel, your collection seems remarkably light on romance novels.’ He slid the latest John Grisham back into its place on the shelf.

‘Oh, I have a special room upstairs just to house my Mills & Boon collection,’ she joked, unwilling to share her own very private views on romance with a stranger. She was used to people making the assumption that she must be a romance junkie to run a wedding chapel, and she was savvy enough not to disillusion them.

‘Interesting, Ms Jacobs. Are you trying to lure me upstairs to see your smut collection?’ he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively as she plunged the coffee with a laugh.

‘Would I make the front page again for seducing the paperboy?’ She laughed.

‘No publicity’s bad publicity, as they say.’

His words reminded her of Gabe’s parting shot at the meeting, dampening the flirty atmosphere in the room.

Rupert’s eyes lifted at the sound of movement upstairs.

‘Have you got a husband up there who’s about to come down here and lynch me?’

‘It’s just the dog,’ Marla said, as Bluey thumped down the stairs and pushed the sitting room door open with his huge head.

‘Fucking hell.’ Rupert gasped, his eyes like saucers at the sight of Marla’s gentle giant. ‘It’s a donkey. I’d have stood a better chance against a bloody husband.’