Reckless Night in Rio

She gave him a wan smile. “Robby will be glad whenever you choose to visit.”

He left the room. Went out the door. Walked past her mother, who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He went outside into the cold winter air to the limo waiting outside. Gabriel felt a sudden pain in his chest when he saw that someone—one of Laura’s friends, perhaps—had written Just Married across the back window in white shaving cream, and attached aluminum cans to the back bumper to drag noisily down the road.

His hands clenched as he flung himself heavily into the backseat of the limo. Carlos, who’d apparently been texting someone as he waited in the driver’s seat, jumped.

“Mr. Gabriel! What are you doing, so soon…? And where is Mrs. Laura?”

“She’s not coming,” he replied tightly. His throat hurt. “And she’s not Mrs.”

“But senhor… What happened?”

Gabriel looked bleakly out the window, at the beautiful fields of endless white. “Just go.”

Laura stood by the closed door until the sound of Gabriel’s footsteps faded away.

Sagging into a chair, she covered her face with her hands. She’d been happy to be a bride, a single mother no longer—so pleased to finally leave the scandal behind her. She thought of her baby, downstairs now with one of her cousins, and a sob came from her lips.

But she’d had no other honorable choice. If she’d been willing to accept a life without love forever, what would that have done to her soul? What would that have taught her son?

She’d done the right thing. So why did she feel so awful?

She heard the door squeak open and looked up with an intake of breath.

Her three sisters, all dressed in elegant bridesmaid gowns, stood in the open door with their mother. “Why did Gabriel storm off like that?” Ruth asked tremulously. Then she saw Laura’s tearful face. “Oh, sweetheart!”

A moment later, Laura was crying in their arms as they hugged her, and her scowling little sister Hattie was cursing and offering to go punch Gabriel in the face. That made Laura laugh, but the laughter turned to a sob. Wiping her eyes, she looked up at them.

“What do I do now?” she whispered.

Her mother searched her gaze. “The wedding is off? Is it for sure?”

Laura nodded with a lump in her throat. “He said he didn’t love me, that he would never love me. Or Robby, either.”

Her mother and sisters stared at her with a unified intake of breath. Then Ruth shook herself briskly.

“Well then. I’ll go downstairs, tell everyone to head home.”

Laura folded her arms, her belly sick with dread and grief. “It’ll cause such a scandal,” she whispered. She stared at the patterns on the carpet as the full horror built inside her. “Just when all the rumors were coming to an end.”

“Weddings get canceled all the time,” Becky said staunchly. “There’s nothing scandalous about it.”

“Zero scandal,” Hattie agreed quickly, pushing up her glasses. “It’s totally uninteresting.”

“Not even as interesting as when Mrs. Higgins’s cow knocked over the Tast-E Burger truck,” Margaret added.

“It’ll be all right, sweetheart,” her mother said, softly stroking Laura’s hair as she sat beside her. “Just stay here. I’ll handle everything.”

It was very tempting. But with a deep breath, Laura shook her head.

“I’ll ask your uncle, then,” Ruth said quickly. “He’s waiting to walk you down the aisle. He can simply make a little announcement and—”

“No,” Laura choked out. “I did this,” she whispered, rising to her feet. “I’ll end it.”

Climbing onto his private jet at the airport five miles away, Gabriel nearly bit the stewardess’s head off when she offered him champagne. As she scurried off to the back cabin, he grabbed the entire bottle of Scotch from the galley and gulped straight from the bottle, desperate to feel the burn. But when he pulled the bottle from his lips, he realized the pain in his chest had only gotten worse.

It was his heart. His heart hurt.

“Ready, sir?” the pilot said over the intercom.