God, it felt weird.
It was almost like going on another business trip. He had his sunglasses propped up on his hair, ready for several hours of driving straight at the sun. Two suits packed—the real deal and the just-in-case spare. He’d even had the car valeted so there’d not be any dust or muck that would get past the protective wrapping. And the fresh haircut still felt odd against the collar of his polo shirt.
Then there was Gabriel. Stood on the doorstep in his pyjamas and dressing gown like a 1960s housewife. All he was missing was the hair in rollers.
“Right,” Aled said. “Need anything else before I go?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, standing in his slippers with his arms folded and a smirk on his face. “You to go.”
Aled raised his eyebrows. “Tone like that, I might just shove you in the boot and take you with me.”
“Not all of us can get that much time off work,” Gabriel countered, then came down off the step for a kiss. “Anyway, I’m at work this afternoon, then Kevin’s told me to go round this evening. And apparently I’m staying the night.”
“Ooh, good luck with that,” Aled quipped. He squeezed Gabriel’s perfect bum, memorising it before Kevin tore it to shreds, then let go. “Okay, I better hit the road.”
“Text me when you get there.”
“Yup. Let me know what train you book so I can pick you up in St Ives.”
“I’ll stop off to see Chris on the way.”
“Okay, but don’t be late or Suze will send me to get you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Aled laughed as he threw himself in the car. Engine on, radio up, handbrake down, one last wave out of the open window and that was that. He peeled out into the street and set off south.
He’d used up the additional leave the firm had offered in the wake of his trip to the USA on going down to Cornwall early. Tom’s dad was putting up the wedding party in the same fancy hotel hosting the entire affair and Aled wasn’t going to say no to a free hotel room and Suze’s company for a while on the Cornish coast. Even if he suspected he’d be thoroughly busy with keeping her from murdering her mother-in-law.
Spring had finally put some effort into it, the sun warming the car nicely as he wound his way out of Wakefield. Flowers were bobbing their heads on the side of the slip road as he surged down onto the motorway, then he put the price tag on the car to good use and floored it.
He was in a good mood and feeling arrogantly happy about his lot in life. Designer sunglasses. Car effortlessly soaring down the fast lane past chavs in Corsas, grandmas in ancient Golfs and lardy blokes in lorries. Good tunes on his favourite radio station. His penguin suit swaying from the hook in the back seat, professionally dry-cleaned and still in its wrapper, ready for his best friend’s big day. A pleasant buzz from a goodbye blow job in the shower from his hotter-than-hell partner. What wasn’t to like?
It was a long drive from Wakefield to St Ives, but Aled broke it up with a couple of stops, a picturesque detour down the Welsh side of the border then back across the Severn, and a pub lunch in Devon, hiding in the shade to protect himself from the cheery sun. Suze would never forgive him if he got sunburn in time for her photos. He took a few selfies of his own, taunting both her and Gabriel with his journey, and felt so sunny that even the heavy traffic of tourists heading for the Cornish coast couldn’t upset him. Sheep in the road? Who cared. Roadworks? Necessary. Detour? All the more countryside to see. Nothing bothered him. Nothing mattered.
This was life, and Aled was loving it.
It was getting dark by the time he got to St Ives, the sky a stunning orange as he finally dropped down into the town. It worked in his favour. A small seaside town with a healthy supply of tourists, and Aled was going the opposite way to everyone else at dusk. It was busy enough to keep him paying attention, but not so busy that he felt pressured and anxious about not knowing his way. He’d never been before, but it looked nice enough. The sat nav knew its thing. And if Tom’s dad’s company owned a string of B&Bs and holiday cottages, then the hotel at St Ives was the jewel in their crown.
It didn’t look much from the outside. Redbrick building. Offensively small car park. Lavender bushes brimming over with bees, humming happily in the warm spring air. He managed to squeeze into a free spot in the far corner and surveyed it with an unimpressed eye as he fetched his bits and bobs.
But the moment he walked through the doors, it was like stepping into another world.
Specifically, one where everyone lived in their own personal Ritz hotel.
The lobby was gleaming marble under a bright chandelier. The receptionist wore a waistcoat. Everything smelled of fresh flowers and fancy perfumes. There was a bellboy summoned to take his bags, even though there were only four floors to the whole building. And his room—
Well, okay, the room wasn’t actually the most impressive one he’d ever seen—his firm used Hiltons when they sent their executive officers anywhere—but the minibar was generous and he had a nice view of the harbour. There was space. A deep carpet and mid-range art on the walls. He texted Gabriel a picture of the bed, took a quick shower to dust off a day’s driving then collapsed into the pillows wearing just his towel. It was sinfully comfortable, and sleep beckoned, but he figured that he ought to do his duty first.
So he rang Suze.
“Ooh, hello! What’s—”
“I’m here,” Aled said.
“What?”
“I’m here. In St Ives.”
She shrieked. He jerked the phone away, but far too late to save his eardrum.
“Oh my God! Tom! Tom! Aled’s already here! Are you at the hotel? Have you had dinner? Come and have dinner with me.” He heard something bang on her end and metal clinking. “We’ll go and get fish and chips—there’s a great place on the harbour—and I’ll show you the house we’ve put an offer on.”
Aled grinned. “Still naked here, Suze. Slow down.”
“Then put clothes on, you stupid git!” A door banged. “You have ten minutes. Five. Whatever. What room number are you in?”
“Seven thousand, two hundred and two,” he lied, still making no move to get up and get dressed.
“Be like that. Frank booked all the third floor for the wedding, so I’ll just keep ringing you until I find you.”
“It’s called ‘on silent.’”
“Stop being such a slag!”
He laughed and hung up on her, then switched his phone off to really hack her off. Then—because he had no doubt Suze would just knock on doors until she found him by process of elimination—he swung his legs down and headed for his bags to find some fresh underwear.
God, he was going to miss her once the wedding was over.
Seven minutes later, he heard footsteps and swearing in the hall. He shoved a polo shirt over his head before opening the door and was punched in the arm before getting his hug.
“Bastard.”
“Guilty.” He squeezed, swung her around, then shut the door. “Give me a second. Just need to get my wallet and a jumper.”
“I like the new haircut!”
“Gabriel bitched like you wouldn’t believe.”
“When he’s coming down?” she asked, collapsing onto the end of the bed while he fished a jumper out of the open bag.
“Night before. Be nice to have some peace and quiet.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah.”
“What about Nana?”
“She doesn’t think she’ll be up to it.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said, though there was a wistful expression on her face. “I’ll send her loads of pictures, though.”
“Yeah, you better.”
“Did you make up your mind in the end?” she asked, cocking her head.
“About what?”
“Proposing to Gabriel.”
Aled rolled his eyes. “Right, where’s these fish and chips, then?”
“Answer me!”
“No. Nosy cow.”
“No, you won’t answer me? No, you didn’t decide? No, you won’t?”
“I have decided, but I’m not going to answer you.”
“Oh my God, that’s a yes!”
“Lay off,” he grumbled as she catapulted up to hug him again. “I’m not giving you any more information than that.”
“That’s definitely a yes,” she said dreamily. “I get to be best woman.”
“You’re not the best woman at owt. Ow!”
“Deserved it. Twat.”
She sulked all the way out to the car, then brightened up after Aled forked out for the fish and chips and she drove them up to the outskirts of the town with a car stinking of grease and vinegar. In a little cul-de-sac just before the town turned into countryside, she pulled over and pointed at a low, whitewashed cottage with a dark, thatched roof, sulking beyond an unkempt hedge and overshadowed by an enormous oak.
“We put in an offer last night,” she said. “Three bedrooms. It’s a little bit cramped downstairs but the garden is huge out to the back. And we only want a couple of kids anyway.”
“Did Tom’s parents say that before they had seventeen?”
“If you ever imply I have anything in common with Brenda again, I will end you.”
Aled mimed zipping his lips.
“About kids…”
He eyed her, then—quite deliberately—eyed her stomach.
“Tom and I were talking names, but I wanted to run one by you first.”
“Isn’t names a bit premature? Or are they not, and that’s the point you’re getting at?”
“I’m not giving you any more information than that,” she said loftily.
“Well, if your conclusion is I’m proposing, then mine is you’re pregnant.”
She stuck her chin in the air and repeated herself.
“Fine, fine. What’s this name, then?”
“Euan.”
Aled paused.
Plastic fork halfway to his mouth, he just stopped. For a beat, there was nothing. Then he slowly put it down and cleared his throat.
“Euan.”
It sounded both familiar and foreign. He’d barely ever said it out loud, because why would he? There’d only been one Euan that Aled had ever known—and Aled had called him Dad.
Euan Evans. Soft Tenby accent. Terrible darts player. Keen cricketer. Had worn granddad jumpers since before he was even a dad. Used to build model ships, sitting hunched over the desk in the study with his glasses perched on the end of his nose and his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he tweaked a sail into place with a pair of tweezers. Aled still had that photo somewhere of Dad on the yacht, beaming after the sailing experience day that Mum had bought him for his fiftieth birthday.
He would have been only seventy-three now. She would have been only seventy. Another c-word, and one that Aled hated far more than the word cunt.
It was so stupid that it was over.
“I like it,” he croaked.
His hand was warm. Suze’s fingers were in his own. He blinked. A tear escaped, and she squeezed gently.
“He’d have been dead chuffed to be a granddad,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Suze said. “He’d have been so good at it too.”
“Well, he was a pretty decent dad.”
“I don’t know, he turned out you—”
“Hey!”
They laughed quietly in the dark bubble of the car, food forgotten. The shadow of loss retreated. Aled squeezed her hand in return and ducked his head to peer out at the cottage again.
“It’ll be too small,” he said. “I’ve seen you and babies before. It’ll be five kids before you know it and you’ll have to move again.”
“Like hell I’m pushing out five kids.”
“You say that now—”
“You can walk back to the hotel if that’s your line,” she threatened.
He grinned. “Idle threats.”
“Promises.”
“Whatever. What if you have a girl?”
“Oh, God. At least Tom’s idea for a boy was okay. I had to totally veto his idea for a girl.”
“What was it?”
“Naomi!”
“What’s wrong with Naomi?”
“Erm, hello? Little Miss Universe from accounting? I don’t think so!”
Aled agreed for the sake of keeping the peace. He honestly couldn’t put a face to whoever it was in accounting who’d tarnished the name so badly.
“If we have girls, they’ll be Amy and Isla and that’s it. No Naomis!”
“That’s only two options.”
“There’ll only be two kids!”
“Suuuure…”
Aled leaned his head back against the rest, smiling out at the lights from the nearby cottages. The For Sale sign creaked in the breeze. He could imagine it busier. Suze shrieking at her husband and twenty-five kids as they rampaged around. Tom being an even bigger kid than he was now. Weekends down on the Cornish coast, never having to assume responsibility for his nieces and nephews because he’d make Gabriel do it. Reminding said partner at every available opportunity about Aled’s lack of fertility in case he went getting any ideas.
“Dad would have been proud of the both of us,” he said.
Suze said nothing.
But she touched his wrist, and he turned his hand over to hold hers.
Chapter Nineteen
Gabriel had plans.
He didn’t have any interest in being dragged to all sorts of last-minute wedding bollocks, and big family affairs were the stuff of nightmares whether they were his family or not—so Gabriel had no intention of wasting his time off on being bored shitless by Suze’s mother-in-law.
But he had a few days beforehand to kill.
So he sent a text, bought a train ticket and put the bike back together from its maintenance in the muddy conservatory.
Chris didn’t live in Bristol itself, but a small village south of it called Nailsea. It was a long journey to Bristol Temple Meads, then a walk over a pretty bridge in the Victorian station to a shuttle train that made the frumpy Queen Victoria herself look hip and modern. It was empty when he got on, set off late with no reason why and shuddered, banged, groaned, wailed and squealed its way south through grubby suburbs, over a filthy river and into the charming hills of north Somerset, brooding darkly under a sulking sky.
It wasn’t quite what he’d imagined.
Nailsea stuck up out of the trees like a lost world. The only other passenger who had boarded at Bristol Temple Meads was sound asleep, and Gabriel stepped off alone onto a tiny slab of tarmac masquerading as a platform. The trainline was stuck up onto a manmade ridge above a background of fields and trees, houses nestled into the spare nooks and crannies. It was pretty, in an isolated sort of way. It screamed crime thriller. Maybe Midsomer Murders had a point.
With nobody there to meet him, and only one way out, Gabriel figured that it couldn’t hurt to get down. God only knew what a fast train through here might do. He hefted his bike down a steep flight of hard stairs to the road, intending to wait and watch the world go by—but was immediately met by a short, stocky ex-soldier with a shaven head.
Gabriel grinned.
The ex-soldier smiled shyly back.
“Hey,” Gabriel said. “So, your place or mine?”
The smile widened into a smirk. Chris pushed off from the wall he’d been lounging against as though there hadn’t been a few hundred miles between them, and as though he hadn’t been begging for Gabriel to come and visit for weeks. He just—smirked. Like they were old friends.
Gabriel’s skin tingled, and he scolded himself for the reaction.
“C’mon.”
There was no affection. Maybe it was too open for Chris’ comfort. Maybe Nailsea was a nest of bigots. Maybe the sky was just too damn threatening. Gabriel didn’t much care. There wouldn’t be far to go in a tiny place like this. He sat on the bike and pushed it along with one foot idly, keeping a slow pace with Chris a
nd not bothering with words until they turned into a street of shops and Chris fished keys from his pocket.
“C’mon,” he mumbled. “Erm. Hopefully Jack’s gone to work.”
The keys belonged to a metal fire escape that rose out of an alley of dustbins, wedged between a Chinese takeaway and a presumably competing fish and chip shop. They wrestled the bike up the stairs between them, and Gabriel admired the industrial chic style as Chris picked another key and had to bodyslam the wooden door to unstick it from the frame.
“Oh,” he said.
Jack hadn’t gone out. The wooden door popped open into a kitchen and they immediately ran into a blond bloke in his mid-twenties shovelling cereal down his neck and fighting his way into a hi-vis vest. The kitchen was a reasonable size but looked like a student flat. A bottle of green milk—not green top, but green—was festering in the sink. Dirty plates were stacked up in the window. The tiles were all different colours, though it didn’t look deliberate, and the wallpaper made the décor reminiscent of Aled’s nana’s flat before she’d moved into the care home.
Gabriel bit back a smirk and propped his bike up in a clean—ish—corner.
“Hey, man,” Jack said, chewing noisily. “We’re out of milk. Can you get some later? Oh, and Jim called about the rent. Can you make up mine this month? Cool. I gotta run. Hey, Chris’ girlfriend.”
“Boyfriend,” Gabriel said automatically.
“Hey, Chris’ boyfriend.”
Then the orange vest shot past the bike, bowl still in hand, and the stairs were thumping and rattling like they’d come away from the wall. Gabriel smothered a laugh as Chris slammed the door and shot him a smirk.
“Roommate?”
“Yeah.” Chris was a little pink. “Sorry about that. Um. And, you know. The state of this place.”
“S’fine.”
“I asked him to clean up his shit, but…yeah.”
“Hey, I said it’s fine. Not like I’m trying today.” Gabriel stepped closer and looped his arms around Chris’ neck. “So, you want to say hello, or you just going to grunt at me like a big dumb lout?”
Chris laughed. He ducked his head to do it, like he was shy. Gabriel’s heart clenched and something fluttered low in his stomach. Chris had dimples when he smiled, and they were…cute.
The Wedding (Starting Over Book 3) Page 14