Page 88 of Wedding Crasher

‘You can if you like, but it won’t make any difference.’ Emily shrugged. ‘Coffee?’

Jonny put the ouzo down and stared from Marla to Emily.

‘Who died?’

Emily pushed the SundayHeraldacross the table, and his frown turned to a grin as he scanned the headlines.

‘Well, well, well!’ He let out a low whistle and laughed. ‘Who’s been a naughty undertaker, then?’ He skim-read the rest and then looked up, nonplussed. ‘Why the long faces? This is good news for us, surely?’

Emily placed a steaming mug down in front of him.

‘Except that everyone is going to think it’s part of our supposed hate campaign.’

‘So what?’ Jonny shrugged. ‘We’re completely innocent this time around, and by the looks of it, old Gabriel certainly isn’t.’ He winked and looked back at the paper with something akin to admiration. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

Shame slapped Marla’s cheeks scarlet as she turned away on the pretence of loading the dishwasher. Seconds before Jonny had walked in, she’d almost confided in Emily about her weekend with Gabe. Wow, she was glad now of the timely interruption. At least if no one else knew she’d been so weak, then she could try to forget it ever happened. Gabriel had better keep his mouth shut.

Oh God. Gabriel’s mouth.

Marla knew she was in real trouble, because the thought of the things he’d done to her with his mouth on Saturday still made her shiver with lust. She just had to face it. He must have had a good old laugh at her show of resistance, at her protestations that it had to be a one-night stand. She’d played right into his hands. Gabe must have thought it washisbirthday, not hers.

Of course, none of this should matter to her. She was the one who had insisted on a grown-up, civilised one-night stand, so why did this feel so much like a betrayal?

She slammed the dishwasher shut with a harder than necessary swish and threw her shoulders back. She needed to draw a line in the sand. Gabriel Ryan had turned her over once with his charm and flattery.

He wouldn’t get the chance to do it again.

Gabe opened the biscuit cupboard in the funeral parlour kitchen and sighed with resignation. Empty. Not a Jammie Dodger in the building.

It wasn’t his unsatisfied sweet tooth that bothered him, so much as tumbling so spectacularly from grace in Dora’s eyes. She’d never failed to see to it that his addiction was satiated. Her opinion mattered to him, and the fact that she’d so readily believed the rubbish being peddled by the local rag cut deep. Not that she was alone in her conclusions; the majority of the locals had been failing to quite meet his eye over the last couple of days, too. Gabe had no doubt at all that it would have a knock-on effect on his business. Reputation was everything in his line of work. Who was going to put their trust in the services of a disreputable, womanising young undertaker?

Rupert’s article had been a real hatchet job, a sensationalist exposé of a sleazy, sex-mad drug addict that Gabe would never recognise as himself.

Was that really what people around here saw when they looked at him?

He had no idea how the hell photos from the strip club had even come to exist, and they certainly didn’t paint a true picture of what had happened that evening.

But then, who cared about truth in all of this?

What did it matter that innocent people had been dragged into this mess?

Gabe hadn’t seen his ex-wife Simone since a rainy Friday morning on the steps of a Dublin divorce court more than ten years ago, and yet she’d ended up with her face splashed across a Sunday paper, right next to some stripper.

Bad news travelled fast.

He’d hadhismother,hermother, and two of her older brothers on the phone from Dublin over the last few days. His mother had tried to insist he come home, and Simone’s family had all warned him in no uncertain terms to stay the hell away.

Gabe banged the kitchen cupboard shut. Rupert had been out for his blood, and he’d managed to bury the axe right in the back of his head.

He heard the front door open and looked down the hall to see Melanie dash in from the rain, her sopping umbrella held out in front of her in distaste.

‘Morning,’ he called, and she glanced up with a frown on her face. Dark shadows ringed her eyes, but Gabe bit down on the urge to ask if she’d had a heavy weekend. He’d learned over the months that Melanie always sidestepped questions about her home life, and he respected her enough not to pry.

She peeled off her coat and hung it on the coat stand to dry, then headed through to the kitchen with a crammed carrier bag in her hand.

‘Morning.’ She finally favoured him with a smile, as she opened the biscuit cupboard.

‘No point. The cupboards are bare,’ Gabe muttered.

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