How To Marry Your Husband by Anne Brooke Page B

the treatment and the products – which are far beyond what she usually pays for shampoo and even a hair cut, but not as crippling as she’s feared, thank goodness. She would have paid four times as much to grab a decent chance not to look like a drowned rat at her wedding. Maybe even five times …
    From that time onwards, Olivia uses the salon shampoo and prays her hair will be up to the job come September. She hopes her prayers will be answered.

Chapter Seven: The Problem of Presents
    Not long after the engagement, Olivia and Kieran discover the problem of presents is far more challenging than they imagine. Not that they’ve imagined very much, as it isn’t high on their list of things which are important. They are more focused on where to get married, who to invite and what to wear to give more than a passing thought to what guests may like to give them.
    Olivia isn’t convinced it matters. “Surely we have more than enough of everything?” she says idly to Kieran when she comes off the phone to her mother for the third time that evening. “Why do we have to expect anyone to bring gifts anyway?”
    Kieran looks up from his book about American warfare and gives her a quizzical glance. “Did I miss the start of this conversation or were you just speaking very, very quietly?”
    Olivia raises her eyebrows. “No, just thinking aloud. Mum keeps asking about gifts and what the family should buy us, but I’ve not paid it much attention. Maybe we should be super-good and ask them to give something to charity? A goat, or even a cow? We have all the stuff we need.”
    Kieran purses his lips and puts down his book. Heavens, Olivia thinks, it must be serious. He’s obviously thinking about his response, which may – or may not – bode well.
    “Wouldn’t that be cheating a bit?” he asks after a couple of moments.
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, people like to give an actual gift when they come to a wedding, don’t they?” Kieran replies. “They can do good at any time, but we’re only going to get married once.”
    Olivia can only agree. It’s no to the goats and cows then.
    “So what do you suggest?” she asks him. “I don’t want to faff around with wedding lists in shops – they’re all the same as everyone else’s lists and anyway I hate posh shops. They’re full of blonde women at least twenty years younger than I am, who stare at me as if I don’t belong in their silly shops.”
    “That would make them less than ten years old,” Kieran says, with unquestionable logic. “Which would be illegal in this country, and should be illegal everywhere else too. Anyway, those blonde women are only jealous of that curvy redhead they’ve just met and that’s why they’re staring.”
    With that, he lunges at her, and Olivia giggles as she pretends to fight him off. The discussion is shelved for the moment.
    A few days later, she judges it the right time to raise it again. Kieran is halfway through his bottle of beer and they are idly watching television – some wildlife programme though neither of them is particularly keen on nature. Olivia is a country girl and hasn’t much truck for animals, having had her fill of them in her girlhood, and Kieran feels the same, though his reasons as a townie are lack of familiarity.
    “So,” Olivia says, tickling Kieran’s leg with her bare foot. “Wedding lists, what do you think?”
    He glances at her, before taking another sip of his beer. “Any chance of distracting you somehow?”
    She shakes her head and laughs. “Sorry, no. We need to talk about gift lists so I can cross it off my Things To Do sheet.”
    “You mean: cross the lists off your list?”
    “Something like that. According to Mum, people are starting to ask so we might as well give them something to go on.”
    Kieran sighs and then sits up and grabs a sheet of paper and a pen from the coffee table drawer. “Okay, but let’s offer cheap stuff, and not all the crazily expensive stuff you