Ma?’
Rory’s rich laugh rumbled down the line. ‘Same as ever. Bossy. Interfering. But she misses you.’
Guilt stabbed through him. ‘Tell her I’ll call her later.’
‘Don’t forget, okay?’
‘Course not.’
‘And Gabe …’
‘Yes?’
‘Good luck, little brother.’
Gabe clicked the phone shut and rested his helmet down by the door. He’d drifted from funeral home to funeral home since his father’s death, unable to settle but unwilling to go back to Ireland. His heart might belong in Dublin, but he was going to make this place his home now.
It had all happened quite by accident really. He supposed some might have called it fate if they were given to believing in such things. Firstly, he’d turned thirty. His family had, of course, wanted to throw the customary huge bash at the club in Dublin, and Gabe had known perfectly well that once he was there they’d use every trick in the book to make him stay in Ireland and leave his days in England behind. He’d refused their pleas and opted to stay in Shropshire with his best mate Dan, making plans for a weekend where the sole intention was to drink until they couldn’t stand up anymore.
A weekend which, in turn, was devastated beyond repair by the untimely death of Dan’s gregarious, life-loving grandmother. Gabe’s funeral director instinct had kicked in hard as he’d leaned over to gently close Lizzie Robertson’s eyes for the last time. He’d poured out generous measures of scotch for her family, and made the calls they were too shell-shocked to handle themselves.
Much later, over midnight brandies, it had struck him exactly how far away the closest undertakers were. Dan’s family had waited a good few hours before anyone could reach them from Shrewsbury, the nearest market town to sleepy Beckleberry. Much longer than any family needed to wait at a time like that. And so the seed had been sown. A seed that grew with frightening speed, like a magic beanstalk leading Gabe towards his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
But I don’t have any premises, and I can’t afford it anyway, he’d reasoned, and he’d smiled with relief that there was a bona fide reason to let himself wriggle off the hook. Which was all very well, until his brothers finally wised-up to the fact that he really wasn’t coming home and bought him out of the family undertaking business as a birthday gift.
Still, he’d laughed when Dan shoved property details into his hands for some place that had just come back onto the market due to a deal falling through with a cupcake company. Cupcakes? How could a company hope to survive just selling cupcakes? No wonder the deal had fallen through. It would be way too small, but he’d viewed the premises anyway to shut Dan up. Cupcakes didn’t take up as much space as dead bodies.
Wrong again.
Gabe wasn’t much given to mystical flights of fancy, but had he been pushed, he’d probably have agreed that it seemed as if the planets had aligned obligingly just for him. He had the money. He had the experience. And now he had the perfect premises. ‘Go big or go home’ had been Dan’s sage advice over a pint in his prospective new local. And because going home wasn’t an option, Gabe had climbed the beanstalk and signed on the dotted line before he could let himself back out of it.
‘Time to grow up, Gabe.’
He picked his way between the stepladders and criss-crossed extension cables and let himself through to the back. In the kitchen, his eyes fell on the bright yellow note gaffer-taped to the bubble wrap around the newly delivered fridge.
‘The Yank bird from across the way is on the warpath. Watch yer back, kid.’
Gabe read it over twice more, still none the wiser about the note’s possible meaning. What Yank bird? And why the hell would she be on the warpath already?
He glanced out of the window, half expecting to see someone storming his way, but no warring harridans appeared to be beating a path to his door at this early hour. No doubt all would become apparent when Phil the Drill arrived. Late, of course. But what Phil lacked in time-keeping skills, he more than made up for in fitting skills. He’d worked for the family undertakers in Ireland for over twenty-five years and knew their business inside out. He’d been happy to bring his boys on a jolly across the Irish Sea on the promise of decent money, good digs and as much beer as they could drink.
Impatient for his first caffeine shot of the day, Gabe rummaged around and managed to unearth the kettle from behind a pile of half-eaten packets of biscuits.
A blur of red caught his eye outside as he sat down with the steaming mug cradled in his hands. He rocked back on his chair legs to watch the girl outside as she struggled to find something in the bottom of the huge bag she was balancing on her knee. Why did girls always carry such huge handbags? Her hair whipped around her cheeks, heavy red waves that irritated her enough to make her brush them roughly away from her mouth. She found what she was searching for, straightened up and disappeared around the back of the weird chapel place next door.
Interesting. He added ‘attractive redhead working next door’, to the growing file of positive aspects to his new venture. He grinned as the caffeine seeped steadily into his system. Phil the Drill was wrong. Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it in his bones.
Crap, crap and triple crap. Gabriel Ryan was divine. ‘Are you selling lucky heather?’
Marla knew she sounded surly, but come on. Really?
What else could he expect when he turned up on her doorstep uninvited, all rumpled with come-to-bed eyes? The man might hold the future of her business in the palm of his hand, but right at that very moment the only question on Marla’s mind was how on earth the sexiest man on the planet could possibly be an undertaker.
His gypsy-black hair would probably be given to curls if he let it grow, but as it was it had just reached that optimum run-your-fingers-through sexy length without veering too far into goth territory. Truth be told, there was something ever so slightly grungy about him. But cool, louche, stubbly grunge, rather than the patchouli-soaked rocker-in-need-of-a-bath kind.
He was smokin’ hot, and Marla didn’t have a fire extinguisher. Pity he was a funeral director. Eeew. Not to mention the fact that he was in danger of killing her business stone dead. The double reality check was enough to make his halo slip down to his throat, and Marla was only sad it wasn’t tight enough to pose a full-on choking hazard. Gabriel Ryan might be easy on the eye, but as far as she was concerned, he was trouble in all the wrong ways.
His face cracked open into a big, easy smile as he lounged against the doorframe and held out a chipped, empty mug.
‘Not heather, but any chance I could borrow a cup of sugar please?’
The ‘cup of sugar’ line again. He wasn’t even original. Marla leaned ever-so-slightly forward and gazed into the empty, chipped mug for a long moment before raising her eyes back up to his.
‘You must be Gabriel.’
He pushed his spare hand through his hair
