Undertaking Love Page 0,39

fiasco onto her? Marla’s hands found their way onto her hips of their own accord as her blood cooked in her veins.

‘Not that I’m interested in an apology from you, anyway,’ Gabe muttered, almost as an afterthought.

‘Good. Because you’re not going to get one.’

Gabe snorted. ‘That figures. So why are you here?’

‘To tell you that your sordid little scheme was a low blow. To deliberately set out to ruin someone’s wedding day was … it was beyond cruel, Gabriel. Not to mention the mess you made of that funeral.’ She paused to draw breath and shook her head. ‘God knows why, but I actually thought better of you.’

She stood firm on her moral high ground and watched a sequence of expressions filter across his face like a silent movie. Did he flinch? She saw confusion, definitely, uncertainty, maybe, before he settled on cold disbelief.

‘You can stop right there, lady. Don’t storm in here and try to shove the blame onto my shoulders.’ He turned to Melanie with an incredulous shrug. ‘Can you believe you’re hearing this?’

Melanie gave a nervous little laugh as she shook her head and inched a closer to Gabe, subtly staking her claim.

‘Too right I’m blaming you, Mister,’ Marla blazed. ‘I know full well that Dora told you about the wedding today, and you never said a damn word about a funeral.’

‘Dora did no such bloody thing,’ he half-yelled, and turned towards his receptionist with that brief flicker of uncertainty again. ‘Did she?’

Melanie shook her head with wide regretful eyes.

‘No. I told her about Charlie’s funeral at least twice, Gabe, honestly. She definitely never mentioned a wedding or I’d have realised there was a problem,’ Melanie replied, her voice cracking and her finger tips dabbing at her eyes.

Gabe put his arm around Melanie’s shoulders and favoured her with a supportive smile. ‘Hey, it’s fine, Mel. No one’s blaming you.’ He shot a look of disgust at Marla. ‘Happy? Is your day complete now that you’ve managed to make another innocent person cry?’ He guided Melanie down into her chair and handed her a tissue from the customer box on the desk. ‘You’ve been baying for blood all day, you must have been gutted when there weren’t any fireworks at lunchtime.’

Marla’s fists balled up in frustration at the tiny glint of triumph she could see behind Melanie’s crocodile tears.

How had Gabe managed to cast her as Cruella de Vil? Staring at his hostile face, she realised she would gain nothing by staying any longer. He’d wiped the floor with her argument and made her feel a fool. He obviously had no interest in hearing her side of the story.

She’d lost this particular battle, but she was going to win this bloody war, or die trying. And the first and most satisfying bullet of all was going to wipe that smug look right off Melanie’s pretty face.

Gabe thumped his fist down onto the desk, torn between fury and frustration as he watched Marla stomp back to the chapel. On the one hand he wanted to believe the best of her, because the idea that she had engineered today’s events cast her in a distinctly unflattering light.

But if she hadn’t been behind it, then how the hell had things gone so wrong? Surely Dora wouldn’t have made such a disastrous mistake? She might be well into her eighties but she was as sharp as a pin.

Which left just one other person who could have influenced the day’s events.

Melanie.

He turned to look at her, with her pale mascara-streaked cheeks as she picked at the hem of her cardigan. She was on his side. Why on earth would she sabotage things? It didn’t make any sense, and the last thing he wanted to do was upset her more by expressing any doubts. He sighed and settled uneasily on the conclusion that it must have just slipped Dora’s mind.

Emily flushed the loo and sat down on the seat to get her breath back. Was it possible to actually die of morning sickness? She certainly felt like it at least five times a day. And it wasn’t just mornings either. It was morning, noon and night sickness. Was she being punished? If she wasn’t, she felt as if she should be. Tom had slipped straight into overprotective husband gear as soon as she’d told him about the baby. The kitchen cupboard brimmed with ginger biscuits, and he ran her a warm bath each evening with the lavender-scented oil he’d picked out especially to help