Undertaking Love

Chapter Twenty-Nine




‘Gabriel, hello again!’

Cecilia sparkled at him as they collided in the flower shop doorway a couple of weeks after that dinner. He’d popped in to settle his monthly bill, and Ruth had been only too eager to fill him in on the scrap between Jonny and Rupert on the chapel lawns. She’d obviously hoped for further embellishments of the story from him, but as far as he was concerned it was all fresh news. And welcome, too, if it meant that Rupert was off the scene.

‘Cecilia, good to see you again.’

He smiled and dropped a kiss on the cheek she proffered, and then the other as she turned her head expectantly. He nodded at the huge armful of flowers she’d chosen from the buckets outside the door.

‘It’s a bad rap when a woman has to buy her own flowers. Where’s Brynn?’

‘Aw, he had to fly on to Hamburg.’ She rolled her eyes back in her head. ‘Don’t ask what for, darling, it’s too grisly to repeat.’

Gabe laughed at her pained expression.

‘These are for Marla, actually.’ She waved her spare hand towards the flowers. ‘It’s her birthday tomorrow.’

‘Her birthday? Wow.’

‘I know!" Cecilia gasped. "Can you believe I have a daughter who’s turning twenty-eight?’

‘You could be sisters,’ Gabe smiled, still turning over the nugget of information in his head. ‘So are you two painting the town red to celebrate?’

‘Gawd, no! Gabriel, the girl drives me nuts! She’s ditched that boyfriend of hers and won’t even let her friends take her out for her birthday. Just wants a quiet night in, apparently. Whoever heard of that at her age?’

Cecilia gawped and placed a conspiratorial hand on his arm.

‘I mean, when I was that age, I’d already got a wedding, a baby and a divorce under my belt!’

Gabe hadn’t heard a word Cecilia had said since her confirmation that Marla had kicked Rupert to the curb. He laughed vaguely and shook his head.

‘Tell her to have a drink for me, yeah?’

‘Hmmm. You could always tell her yourself.’

Cecilia twinkled up at him. ‘I’ve got plans this weekend so she’ll be home alone, probably eating pints of ice cream and feeling sorry for herself.’

She tapped the side of her nose and waggled her eyebrows at him as if she’d just passed him a secret code, leaving Gabe perplexed that she’d made other plans on her only daughter’s special day. It was probably the first time they’d been in the same country for her birthday in a number of years; surely it would have been a good chance to celebrate? But from the scraps of information that Marla had shared, he knew Cecilia was a woman who put her own happiness in front of everyone else’s. Including, it would seem, her own daughter’s. It was hard not to warm to Cecilia’s infectiously loud personality, but he could see the threads of steel that held her backbone ramrod straight, enabling her to glide through life – and husbands – unencumbered by baggage.

Out on the street, he hesitated for a moment or two and then reached for his mobile.

‘Melanie, hi. Can you hold the fort there this afternoon? Something’s come up that won’t wait.’