Undertaking Love (13 page)

The man had some nerve.

The bride’s chauffeur opened her door and helped her step out onto the pavement, a celebratory confection in white. Marla could hardly bear to watch as her expression slipped from joy, to confusion, to shock, before finally settling on horror as she stared at the floral ‘husband’ tribute that lay in the hearse next to Charlie’s coffin.

For a few seconds, everyone stood motionless, as if someone had turned off the music in a game of musical statues.

The sunbeams that bounced off the crystals on the bodice of the bride’s dress were reflected by the tears that shimmered on her cheeks as she met Eleanor’s eyes.

Charlie’s widow was the first to make a move. She braced her bird-slender shoulders in her neat black suit and walked slowly to stand in front of the bride. She unsnapped her handbag and pulled out a starched white handkerchief.

‘Dry your eyes, pet. You don’t want to greet your new husband like that.’

The bride took the handkerchief and dabbed her cheeks.

‘Thank you. I’m so sorry about … about your husband.’

Eleanor nodded, and reached out to touch the bride’s bouquet of blood-red roses.

‘Roses were Charlie’s favourite. He was never much of a gardener mind, but he loved roses.’

The bride eased a stem from the bouquet and held it out to Eleanor, who accepted it with far away eyes.

‘It rained on our wedding day, you know. Absolutely poured down. Charlie’s mother said it was a bad omen, but then she always was a sour old crow.’

The bride laughed gently through her tears.

‘She was wrong, though,’ Eleanor said. ‘The day I married Charlie he held an umbrella over my head to keep me safe, and he carried on doing that for sixty-two years.’

She reached out and placed her hands over the bride’s clasped ones.

‘Go on now pet, you’ve kept that young man of yours waiting long enough.’

Inside the chapel a little while later, the bride’s eyes shone with happier tears as she surprised her new husband with a new line in their chosen wedding vows.

‘I’ll always be your umbrella on the rainy days.’

Later that afternoon, Marla hoovered the aisle, aware that they’d avoided disaster only by the very thinnest skin of their teeth. It could very easily have gone differently, and ruined both the bride’s and the widow’s most important days. Gabe had obviously played it fast and loose on purpose to ram home his point. He held the cards. He could play God and rain havoc down on her head any time he chose, so if she had any sense she would shut up and put up.

The already spotless carpet bordered on baldness as she ruminated on what she
should
have done, what she
should
have said. Marla was an expert at creating the perfect put-down with the benefit of hindsight, but she wished she could wind back the clock and deliver the punch lines at the time. Her chest flamed with anger as she leaned on the vacuum cleaner and glared at the funeral parlour. Something inside her snapped, and she shoved the vacuum aside loudly enough to make Bluey open one eye and check on the situation. Maybe she couldn’t turn back time, but she
could
do the next best thing – she could go over there right now and deliver her thoughts in person.

Marla glanced through the window to check the funeral parlour was empty of customers and then flung the door open, heartened immeasurably by the look of undisguised horror on the receptionist’s face.

‘Gabriel. Now. And don’t try telling me he isn’t here, because I know damn well that he is.’

She stared pointedly at Melanie, who flushed a dull shade of puce and was clearly in the grip of a desperate desire to come up with an equally pithy reply. She was saved the bother by Gabe, who stalked into reception with a face like thunder.

‘I take it you’ve come to apologise.’ Icicles dripped from his every word. A tiny smug smile crept over Melanie’s lips, and Marla’s hand itched to wipe it off.

‘Excuse me?’

Was he seriously going to attempt to foist the blame for today’s 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 her sleep. His thoughtfulness only added to Emily’s burden of guilt as her salty tears slid into the lavender bath water each night. Theoretically, there was a slim chance that the baby could be Tom’s, but her mind wouldn’t permit that thought in amongst the self-flagellation and recriminations. She’d slept with another man. How dare she try and comfort herself with maybes?

She deserved to suffer daily for what she’d done, and what the hell was going to happen when Dan found out that she was pregnant? It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that it might be his baby. Would he tell Tom, come over all paternal and insist on blood tests and such like? Fresh waves of horror washed over her every time she thought about it. God, it would make perfect fodder for the Jeremy Kyle show.

How could she have been so stupid? She could see it now, Jeremy sitting on his top step and pouring scorn on her pitiful excuses as the entire audience bayed for her tainted, slattern blood.

God, she could kill for a glass of wine.

Melanie held the small envelope over the kettle and winced as the steam scalded her fingertips. It always looked easier than this in the movies, she thought, as she finally managed to open the damn thing and extract the note.

She stopped and sighed at the sight of Gabe’s bold, slanted handwriting, even though she already knew perfectly well that it was from him. But the dreamy smile slid from her face as she scanned the missive.

Dear Marla,

Something to help make your July 4
^th
go with a bang, and to say I hope we can enjoy a less explosive friendship from here on in.

Yours,

Gabe

X

Melanie read it twice more. Her heart thumped with adrenalin from her own audacious detective work as well as annoyance at Gabe’s blind determination to smooth things over with that woman.

Why couldn’t he just let it be? Dora had unknowingly become the fall guy for last weekend’s debacle, and Melanie had learned a valuable lesson. She needed to be less obvious with her meddling.

Gabe had gone off to some undertaking convention for the day and left her in charge, making her all glowy inside with the knowledge that he trusted her. She’d even managed a mechanical smile earlier when Gabe had asked her to run a package over to the chapel at some point during the day. She sat down again at reception and poked the offensive parcel with her toe, hard enough to put a little rip in the pretty paper Gabe had used to wrap it. Bad luck if Marla’s gift looked a little shabby and hastily put together by the time it arrived. A surreptitious glance under the ripped corner of paper revealed the contents of the box. Fireworks. Melanie all but growled with anger as she slid the little note back into its envelope, but didn’t re-attach it to the parcel. Instead she placed it on the desk in front of her, Tapping it with one finger and trying to decide if she had the guts to bin it.

A tiny scream of temper escaped as she recalled his sign off again.

Yours, Gabe. X

He wasn’t Marla’s.

He was
hers
. Or at least, he should be.

Bugger. She
really
didn’t want to deliver the parcel, which was why it was still sitting under her desk at gone half past four. She’d sort of intended to take it across at lunch time, but this and that had come up and it hadn’t taken much at all to prevent her from going over there.

Hope we can enjoy a less explosive friendship.

Pah. He wasn’t that witty with the notes he left for Melanie.

Do this please, Melanie
, or
ring so and so please, Melanie
, was about the sum of it. Although actually, a couple of weeks back he had left one note where he’d signed off with an x under his name, a much handled post-it note that now resided in her bedside table for nightly stroking purposes.

She scowled at the fireworks. It was great big box to lug about. What did he think she was, a packhorse? She wanted to be the one who received his thoughtful gifts and notes, not just the delivery girl to someone else who clearly didn’t want or deserve his attention.

Much as she’d like to go and fling the box in the nearest canal, there was no way out of the fact that she had to take them to the chapel. Gabe was sure to mention them to Marla, and then where would she be? She’d just have to tough it out, because, well, love was just like that sometimes.

Outside the window, the owner of a small open-top sports car revved his engine as he made a meal of parking. She recognised the driver and huffed again. Great. Another man hanging onto Marla’s irresistible coat tails. Melanie had originally been thrilled the feckless guy from the newspaper had arrived on the scene. Surely he would stamp on any buds of friendship between Marla and Gabe? She was doing everything she could at this end to subtly nurture the ‘us and them’ mentality between the funeral parlour and the chapel, but Rupert had so far proved himself too much of a fop to be much use as an accomplice.

She watched him unfurl his gangly limbs out of the car with a sour taste in her mouth. The man oozed wealth and self-satisfaction in his Ray-Bans and white Ralph Lauren jeans.

A zing of irritation flashed through her as he reached down into the back of the car and emerged with a bunch of flowers. Marla bloody Jacobs should just be done with it and erect a sign outside the chapel telling lovesick gift-givers to form an orderly queue. And then the brilliant idea struck her.

Quick as a flash, she hopped around the desk and flung the front door open just as Rupert rounded the bonnet of his car.

‘Excuse me!’

She called out, and added a loud cough for extra security. She didn’t want to risk him not hearing her now that she’d spotted her big chance.