knew that it was love.
At least on her side.
‘Gabi?’ Marianna frowned because it was clear their meeting was over yet Gabi had made no move to leave. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘I don’t think so.’
There could be no hope for them.
* * *
It was a very busy day spent liaising with the florists and soothing a temperamental head chef when she informed him that there had been some last-minute food preferences called in.
‘I already have the updated list,’ he told her.
‘No,’ Gabi said. ‘There are more.’
A lot more.
And the head chef was not happy, declaring, as if it were her fault, that the world had gone gluten-free.
The gowns and outfits arrived and it was for Gabi to organise that tomorrow they would be sent to the correct suites.
She spoke with the make-up artist and hairdressers too, ensuring that every detail for tomorrow was in place.
Oh, she was tired, and there was still so much to be done.
Gabi headed to the ballroom to check on the set-up.
‘There are some more changes to be made to the seating,’ Bernadetta said by way of greeting. ‘The ex-wife doesn’t want to be near the aunt...’
Gabi sighed; she had been working on the seating into the small hours of last night and the bride constantly rang in her changes.
‘I’ll leave you to take it from here,’ Bernadetta told Gabi. She didn’t even pretend now to be sick, or to be meeting with a client. She simply waltzed off and left it all to Gabi.
It was late Friday afternoon and most people were just finishing up for the weekend yet Gabi’s work had barely begun. Bernadetta would appear tomorrow, around eleven, just as the guests started to arrive.
One benefit of Bernadetta being gone, though, was that she could take off her shoes, which Gabi did; the high heels were not ideal and after a day of wearing them her back was starting to ache.
This weekend would be, Gabi was sure, her last real chance to tell Alim she was pregnant before the baby was born. Matrimoni di Bernadetta did not have another wedding at the Lucia for three months. She would have had her baby by then and the Grande Lucia could well be sold.
Gabi honestly did not know what to do.
His power scared her and, if she was honest, Alim’s cruel dismissal still angered her; furthermore, he had made it very clear that he did not want any consequence from that night.
A kick beneath her ribs made Gabi smile.
As tiny as her baby was, it certainly made itself known.
At her ultrasound, Gabi had chosen not to find out what she was having. Not because she wasn’t curious, more she did not want the baby’s sex to have any bearing on the conversation, if she told Alim.
If she told him.
She was still troubled and unsure as to what to do.
Gabi stood in the ballroom and looked at the shower of stars that the chandelier created and recalled the bliss of dancing right here, alone with Alim, and how deeply happy she had been that night.
It brought her such pleasure to recall it.
The photographer had not forgotten and indeed the image of the two of them that night now lived on her tablet. It had been her screensaver for a while but that had proved too painful, so she had taken it down and now Gabi barely looked at it.
It had always hurt too much to do so, but time perhaps was kind, because Gabi hadn’t really been able to recall, with clarity, the bliss of them together.
Until now.
But on this afternoon, with her baby wriggling inside her, she remembered how the shadows of the branches outside had crept across the walls, how Alim had, without a word, asked her to dance.
Yes, Gabi was a dreamer, but it was a memory that she was lost in now.
And that was how he found her.
* * *
It had been a busy day for Alim.
And a hellish few months.
His sister Yasmin had created her own share of scandal at the wedding all those months ago, and Alim had been trying his best to sort that out.
Also, he had known the moment that diktat had been invoked that it would be impossible to be around Gabi and not want her. He took the laws of his land seriously. Now he walked into the ballroom with the first of the potential buyers and there was Gabi, holding her shoes and gazing up.
It was safer, far safer that she be gone.
‘Is everything okay, Gabi?’ Alim asked her, and his words were a touch stern.
‘Oh!’
She turned and for the first time since that morning she saw him.
He was wearing a dark navy suit and looked stunning as usual; she had never felt more drab, standing barefoot in an ill-fitting suit.
He was with a man she recognised as Raul Di Savo.
Gabi pushed out a smile and tried to be polite but her heart was hammering.
‘Yes, everything is fine. I was just trying to work out the table plan for Saturday.’
‘We have a large wedding coming up,’ Alim explained to Raul.
‘And both sets of parents are twice divorced.’ Gabi gave a slight eye-roll, and then chatted away as she bent to put on her shoes, trying to keep things about work. ‘Trying to work out where everyone should be seated is proving—’
‘Gabi!’ Alim scolded, and then turned to Raul. ‘Gabi is not on my staff. They tend to be rather more discreet.’ He waved his hand in dismissal. ‘Excuse us, please.’
Just like that he dismissed her.
He knew that he had hurt her, for that morning she had left there had been so much promise between them and now she looked at him with funeral eyes. Alim could see the pain and bewildered confusion there.
He wanted to wave his hand to Raul and tell him to get the hell out of the ballroom. He wanted to take her to bed.
She did not leave quietly.
Gabi slammed the door on her way out and Alim and Raul stood in the ballroom with the lights dancing in the late afternoon sun.
‘What is the real reason you are selling?’ Raul asked him.
Raul knew the business was thriving and he wanted to know why Alim was letting it go. And Raul knew too that Alim could so easily outsource the management of the hotel as he moved his portfolio back to the Middle East.
Alim had brought him here to give the true answer, and now he tried to drag his mind back to the sale, yet Gabi’s fragrance hung in the air, along with the memory of their dance.
‘When I bought the hotel those had not been cleaned in years,’ Alim said, gesturing to the magnificent lights and remembering when the moon had lit them. ‘Now they are taken down regularly and cared for properly. It is a huge undertaking. The room has to be closed so no functions can be held, and it is all too easy to put it off.’
‘I leave all that to my managers to organise,’ Raul said.
Alim nodded. ‘Usually I do too, but when I took over the Grande Lucia there had been many cost-cutting measures. It was slowly turning into just another hotel. It is not just the lighting in the ballroom, of course. What I am trying to explain is that this hotel has become more than an investment to me. Once I return to my homeland I shall not be able to give it the attention it deserves.’