Page 17 of Wedding Crasher

She frowned. He’d batted it right back at her, and somehow he’d managed to make her sound churlish and uncooperative.

Fifteen all.

She stood tall next to him and lifted her chin.

‘Nice words, Gabriel. But nice words can’t change the fact that no bride wants to risk being confronted on her wedding day by a hearse and sobbing families. They’ll choose another venue just as soon as they see your sombre shop front, because they won’t want that as the backdrop to their picture-perfect day.’

Thirty: fifteen. He didn’t answer straight away and she pressed home her advantage.

‘We aren’t just a little bit incompatible, Gabriel. We are polar opposites, and we simply cannot exist as neighbours.’

Forty: fifteen.

It was pin-drop silent in the room as everyone awaited Gabe’s comeback.

‘You’re wrong, you know.’

Marla’s stomach flipped as his voice softened to a velvet boxing glove. ‘We’re not so different. I guess you could say that we’re both in the business of helping people move on to the next stage of their lives.’

Oh, oh. Danger. He was clever. She grudgingly conceded a point.

Forty: thirty.

‘“Till death do us part”, Marla … isn’t that what you’re so fond of saying over here? Well, when that sad day eventually comes, trust me, it won’t be you these people will turn to. It’ll be me.’

Deuce. And rather unsportingly, he didn’t give Marla a chance to get back into the game.

‘I’m not asking you to like me. But Iamasking that you pay me the common courtesy of being civil.’

Advantage Gabriel Ryan. Marla felt like she was five years old. She could feel him limbering up for match point and she couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to stop him.

The reporter, who had been madly scribbling notes, stood up and flashed his camera in Gabe’s direction. Jonny, clearly less enamoured of the reporter now that the meeting had gone awry, reached over and ripped the nearest page out of the journalist’s pad, balled it up and shoved it into his own mouth with a sarcastic smirk.

‘You know, it would have been so much simpler to have just allowed us to open here without the fanfare,’ Gabe said from the front. ‘As it is, you’ve created a media story that’s nothing but free advertising for me and bad publicity for you. Way to go, Marla. Way to go.’

Game, set and match, Mr Gabriel Ryan.

Jonny slumped back and stared with satisfaction at his computer screen. The brainwave had hit him last night as they’d sat picking through the bones of the disastrous meeting over too warm chardonnay.

They should use the chapel’s website to take their petition nationwide.

Up until now they’d only targeted the locals for support, but what of their actual customers? After all, the majority of the weddings they held at the chapel were for outsiders. Maybetheywere the people who could swell the petition numbers enough to make the local council sit up and take notice.

Cherry-red ‘Save our Chapel!’ and ‘Vote for Love!’ banners now covered the homepage. His next job was to drum up support on every wedding forum and celebrity wedding blog in the land. He’d set up an online petition for people to add their names to, and whilst he was on a roll he’d emailed several high-profile couples who’d been married at the chapel, hoping to rope them in.

After much deliberation, he’d decided not to mention his plan to Marla just yet. He felt shoddy about the way the meeting had ended last night; he’d let Gabe and Dan’s arrival throw him right off-kilter and he badly wanted to make amends. If he could pull this off and present it as afait accompli, then Marla would know for certain that she still had his unwavering support.

Besides … much as he adored her, Marla could be terribly straight sometimes, whereas he was more of a ‘whatever gets the job done’ type of person. If that meant delivering the occasional low blow, then so be it. She was too classy to resort to underhand tactics, but as her self-appointed big brother and protector, he certainly wasn’t.

He clicked his computer to sleep and headed for his leopardskin-covered bed, safe in the knowledge that by hook or by crook, he intended to claw back the upper hand from Gabriel Ryan.

CHAPTER FIVE

Gabe shuffled through the disappointingly thin pile of CVs on the reception desk with a heavy sigh. The job advert he’d placed inThe Heraldhad yielded eleven applications for the receptionist post, but on closer inspection only a clutch of them were even remotely suitable for interview. He’d briefly considered the interesting but wildly unsuitable Ms Scarlet Ribbons, a part-time stripper who’d handily enclosed an eye-catching photograph of herself rather than a CV. He could think of many things Ms Ribbons would no doubt excel at, but handling bereaved relatives wasn’t one of them.

In the end he’d whittled it down to the three most decent-sounding applicants and arranged the interviews over the course of this afternoon. A knot of pressure formed in his gut. He needed to get this right. Hiring and firing was yet another aspect of business that was a first for him, but he knew from experience that a great receptionist could be the lynchpin of such an organisation.

He glanced up as Dora appeared with a tray of tea and biscuits.

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