Wedding Date with Mr Wrong. Nicola Marsh

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      CHAPTER THREE

      CALLIE strode towards Johnston Street and her favourite Spanish bar.

      Some girls headed home to a chick-flick and tub of ice-cream when they needed comfort. She headed for Rivera’s.

      ‘Hola, querida.’ Arturo Rivera blew her a kiss from behind the bar and she smiled in return, some of her tension instantly easing.

      Artie knew about her situation: the necessity for her business to thrive in order to buy the best care for her mum. He knew her fears, her insecurities. He’d been there from the start, this reserved gentleman in a porkpie hat who’d lost his wife to the disease that would eventually claim her mum.

      She hadn’t wanted to attend a support group, but her mum’s doc had insisted it would help in the disease’s management and ultimately help her mum.

      So she’d gone along, increasingly frustrated and helpless and angry, so damn angry, that her vibrant, fun-loving mother had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

      She’d known nothing about her mum’s symptoms until it had been too late. Nora had hidden them well: the stumbling due to weakness in her leg muscles, her difficulty holding objects due to weak hands, her swallowing difficulties and the occasional speech slur.

      The first Callie had learned of it was when her mum had invited her to accompany her to see a neurologist. Nora hated needles, and apparently having an electromyograph, where they stuck needles in her muscles to measure electrical activity, was worse to bear than the actual symptoms.

      The diagnosis had floored them both—especially the lack of a cure and mortality rates. Though in typical determined Nora fashion her mum had continued living independently until her symptoms had made it impossible to do so.

      Nora had refused to be a burden on her only daughter, so Callie had found the best care facility around—one with top neurologists, speech, occupational and physiotherapists, psychologists, nurses and palliative care, while trying not to acknowledge her mum’s steady deterioration.

      It was as if she could see the nerve cells failing, resulting in the progressive muscle weakness that would eventually kill her mum.

      So she focussed on the good news: Nora’s sight, smell, taste, sensation, intellect and memory wouldn’t be affected. Nora would always know her, even at the end, and that thought sustained her through many a crying jag late at night, when the pain of impending loss crowded in and strangled her forced bravery.

      To compound her stress she’d had to reluctantly face the fact she had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting it too. She hadn’t breathed all through the genetic testing consultation, when the doctors had explained that Nora’s motor neurone disease was caused by mutations in the SOD1 gene. That tiny superoxide dismutase one gene, located on chromosome twenty-one, controlled her fate.

      Insomnia had plagued her in the lead-up to her testing, and the doctor’s clinical facts had been terrifying as they echoed through her head: people with the faulty gene had a high chance of developing MND in later life, or could develop symptoms in their twenties.

      Like her.

      She’d worried herself sick for days after the test, and even though it had come back clear—she didn’t carry the mutated gene—she’d never fully shaken the feeling that she had a swinging axe grazing the back of her neck, despite the doc’s convincing argument that many people with the faulty gene didn’t go on to develop MND.

      Then the worry had given way to guilt. Guilt that she was the lucky one in her family.

      During this time the support group had been invaluable. Artie had been there, just as frustrated, just as angry. He’d lost his wife of forty years.

      They’d bonded over espresso and biscotti, gradually revealing their bone-deep resentment and helpless fury at a disease that had no cure. Those weekly meetings had led to an invitation to Rivera’s, a place that had instantly become home.

      She loved the worn, pockmarked wooden floor, the rich mahogany bar that ran the breadth of the back wall, the maroon velvet embossed wallpaper that created a cosy ambience beckoning patrons to linger over delicious tapas and decadent sangria.

      This was where she’d started to thaw, where the deliberate numbness enclosing her aching heart at the injustice of what her mum faced had melted.

      This was where she’d come to eat, to chat and to dance.

      She lived for the nights when Artie cleared the tables and chairs, cranked up the music, and taught Spanish dances to anyone eager to learn.

      Those nights were the best—when she could forget how her life had changed that momentous day when she’d learned of her mum’s diagnosis.

      She nodded at familiar faces as she weaved through tables towards the bar, her heart lightening with every step as Artie waved his hands in the air, gesturing at her usual spot.

      ‘You hungry, querida?’

      Considering the knot of nerves in her stomach, the last thing she felt like doing was eating, but if she didn’t Artie would know something was wrong.

      And she didn’t feel like talking about the cause of her angst. Not when she’d spent the fifteen-minute walk to the bar trying to obliterate Archer from her mind.

      ‘Maybe the daily special?’

      Artie winked. ‘Coming right up.’

      As he spooned marinated octopus, garlic olives, banderillas, calamares fritos and huevos relleños de gambas onto a terracotta platter, she mentally rummaged for a safe topic of conversation—one that wouldn’t involve blurting about the blackmailing guy who had once stolen her heart.

      He slid the plate in front of her, along with her usual espresso. ‘So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong before your coffee or after?’

      She opened her mouth to brush off his astute observation, but one glance at the shrewd gleam in his eyes stalled her. She knew that look. The look of a father figure who wouldn’t quit till he’d dragged the truth out of her.

      ‘It’s nothing, really—’

      He tut-tutted. ‘Querida, I’ve known you for more than seven years.’ He pointed to his bald pate and wrinkled forehead. ‘These may indicate the passage of time, but up here...?’ He tapped his temple. ‘As sharp as Banderas’s sword in Zorro.’

      She chuckled. If Artie had his way Antonio Banderas would be Spain’s president.

      He folded his arms and rested them on the bar. ‘You know I’m going to stay here until you tell me.’

      ‘What about your customers?’

      ‘That’s what I pay the staff for.’ He grinned. ‘Now, are you going to tell, or do I have to ply you with my finest sangria?’

      She held up her hands. ‘I’m starting work early tomorrow, so no sangria.’

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