Love Me Or Leave Me by Claudia Carroll Read Free Book Online Page A

related to have sucked you into some kind of religious cult! You’ll be shaving your head, wearing orange robes and dancing up and down Grafton Street next, you mark my words.’
    Love and forgive, Dawn had to work very hard at remembering, biting back the instinct to defend the man she’d once adored so much. She and Eva had always been close, in spite of a five-year age gap, even more so since their Dad had passed away years ago, when they were just kids. Eva had always been the perfect older sister, always watching out for her, always being there for her, no matter what. A thumbs up from her meant the world to Dawn.
    And yet here it was, the single biggest thing ever to happen in Dawn’s life and now all Eva could do was shake her head, wag her finger and tell her she was off her head insane. Hard to sit there and take it and pretend that it didn’t bloody well sting. Even if looking back now, all her dire predictions had all proved one hundred per cent on the money.
    Still though, in spite of all the many, many objections from far, far too many people to list, the whole wedding really had been magical from start to finish. At least, so Dawn had thought at the time.
    After the initial blessing ceremony, everyone sat in a ‘circle of harmony’, as the High Shaman referred to it, and an Apache tribal poem was read out, to much sniggering from Sheila and Amy, Dawn’s pals from the health food store where she worked. The pair of them kept nudging each other and loudly asking when someone would start playing a bit of Beyoncé, same as at any normal wedding. And whether or not there was a minibar anywhere close by?
    ‘Try the elderberry wine,’ Dawn had smiled encouragingly over at them. ‘Exact same effect, far less of a hangover!’
    ‘And for God’s sake,’ she remembered her mother audibly hissing, ‘why do we all have to sit cross-legged and barefoot on the floor for this nonsense, anyway? My outfit is getting completely ruined!’
    ‘Mine and all,’ grumbled her Mum’s best friend Maisie, who they’d had to invite too. ‘And when I think of all the trouble the pair of us went to, just to find shoes to match our outfits! Then they make you leave them at the door? Ridiculous carry on.’
    ‘Just chill out and try to enjoy it all,’ Dawn had told them both soothingly. ‘Here, try some organic papaya tea, you’ll like it.’
    ‘I’d give anything for a normal cup of tea, but I’ll pass on that green stuff thanks,’ her mother sniffed. ‘I’m not a huge fan of dishwater, as it happens.’
    Dawn wisely chose to let it go. Yet another life lesson she’d been conquering, thanks to how masterful a guide Kirk was. And God knows, she’d certainly had plenty of practice of banishing all negativity to the ether where it belonged, in the run up to that wedding.
    But however bad things got for her – and they only went from bad to worse – Kirk had always been there for her.
    ‘Remember it’s only because your mother loves you so much,’ he’d gently remind Dawn. ‘You’re her youngest child and she’s like a mother tiger protecting and defending you. Besides, in time, she’ll see that we’re doing the right thing. After all, there’s nothing wrong with meeting your soulmate young, now is there?’
    Kirk’s family, at least had been a little more on board about the whole thing, but then the Lennox-Coyninghams could be accused of being many things, but erring on the conservative side when it came to marriage would hardly be one of them. Kirk’s Dad, Dessie, who went around in Jesus sandals and flowing kaftans even in the depths of winter, was already on his fifth ‘life partner’, and had fathered no fewer than eleven children.
    An eccentric family, the Lennox-Coyninghams, to put it mildly.
    At the wedding, Dawn remembered the part she’d looked forward to most, when the High Shaman brought an end to all the bonding rituals and finally said Kirk ‘could now kiss his beautiful bride and life