Page 28 of Wedding Crasher

‘Hey there, big guy. Aren’t you just the most beautiful thing?’

Bluey padded across and rested his huge chin on Gabe’s knee, his half-eaten dog chew still wedged in his jowls. Gabe laughed and fussed the dog’s velvet head with both hands.

Great. Another traitor. That was the last treat Bluey was going to get out of her this week.

She frowned at Gabe across the expanse of her walnut desk.

‘Just so you’re clear, all this blarney won’t work on me. You can’t charm your way around me the way you have every other man, woman and dog in Beckleberry.’ On cue, Bluey fell to the floor at Gabe’s feet.

‘I wouldn’t insult you by thinking that I could, Marla.’

‘And there you go, you’re doing it again.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I didn’t do anything.’

Marla dismissed his protestation of innocence with an acid laugh and pushed a sheet of paper across the desk.

‘This is a list of all of the weddings we have booked in for the next two months.’

His eyes scanned down the list. ‘And you’re telling me this because?’

‘Are you being deliberately obtuse?’

‘Are you?’

The challenge in his dark eyes scorched her throat sandpaper dry.

‘You sat downstairs in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago and promised to at least cooperate with us, Gabe.’

‘Yeah. That would have been before you called a public meeting to make our neighbours hate me.’

‘Our neighbours?Ourneighbours? Oh, please. You don’t know these people from Adam. They’remyneighbours, andmyfriends, and they would support me over you any day.’

A tiny tap on the door disturbed them, and a second or so later Dora appeared with a tray laden with teacups and a plate stacked with Jammie Dodgers.

Gabe grinned and cast a look of lazy triumph across the desk at Marla. Hot fury bubbled in her stomach, and as soon as Dora left the room she reached for the plate and upended it into the wastepaper basket. She regretted it the instant he laughed at her.

‘Now that wasn’t very nice, was it?’

Bluey loped over to recover a stray biscuit that had rolled towards the skirting board and disappeared after Dora in search of more. Marla got up to close the door behind him, sucking in a deep breath to calm herself down. She hated the fact that Gabe had her on the ropes already. She forced a placid smile onto her face as she sat back down behind the desk; she badly needed to get this meeting back on track.

‘Look. Let’s just both say what we need to, and then you can leave.’

As placatory statements went, that one wasn’t going to win any awards, but it was as close to civil as she could muster.

‘Go on then, you first. This should be good.’

Marla was struggling. He’d discarded the jacket she’d spotted him in earlier and turned up for their meeting in rolled-back shirtsleeves, his tie loosened a little to accommodate his undone top button. It was incredibly difficult to stay professional, given the fact that she wanted to rip both his head and his shirt off at the same time.

He looks like a gigolo, Marla thought sourly.

It pained her greatly that she understood his catnip effect on women. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, and she certainly wasn’t going to let her head be turned by it, but Gabriel was on a scale all of his own when it came to beauty. No doubt he was accustomed to using it to get his own way, but he was about to get a lesson from a woman who well and truly had his number.

‘I’d appreciate it if you could schedule those dates into your diary.’

‘Why? Do you need a date?’

Gah! He was seriously pissing her off.

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