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Ella nodded, the lump in her throat too solid and overwhelming to talk around.
‘Am I allowed to say I told you so, then?’
Ella’s eyes focused at last, and she swept her arms round her friend’s shoulders and clung on tight, too overwhelmed to care about the smug smile on Ruby’s face.
‘I don’t deserve this chance.’ She sobbed as Ruby hugged her.
Ruby moved back, and held her arms. ‘Don’t say that.’ She gave her a slight shake. ‘What you did then, you did for the right reasons.’
Ella folded her arms over her stomach, as if to protect the precious life within and stop the guilt from consuming the joy. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
Ruby tugged a tissue out of her pocket, to dab at Ella’s eyes. ‘You were eighteen years old Ella, you had your whole life ahead of you, and it was a mistake. You made the only choice you could in the circumstances.’ She placed the damp tissue in the palm of Ella’s hand, rolled her fist over it, and held on. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time to forgive yourself?’
She would never be able to forgive herself, not completely, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t protect this child with every fibre of her being. This time she wouldn’t mess it up. ‘I want to.’
Ruby’s lips quirked. ‘Okay, next question. Because I’m going to assume the “Do you want to have this baby?” question is a no-brainer.’
Ella bobbed her head as the small smile spread. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Brilliant. So next question, how do we contact Captain Studly? Do you have like a card for his tour company or something?’
‘What? No.’ The joy cracked, like the crumbling top of a newly baked muffin, exposing the soft centre beneath. ‘We can’t tell him. He doesn’t need to know.’
‘Calm down.’ Ruby gripped her fingers tight. ‘There’s no need to panic. You don’t have to do anything yet.’
The memory of his voice, smooth, seductive, husky, and so sexy asking, ‘Are you on the pill?’ seemed to float in the air around the café, mocking her.
What happened if she told him and he reacted the same way Randall had? He was still in his twenties; he lived in a beach hut; he picked up women in bars. He was exciting, reckless, charming, sexier than any one she’d ever met, and probably the least likely guy on the planet to welcome news like this.
‘And he’s not necessarily going to freak out the way Randall did,’ Ruby said, doing her mind-reading thing.
Oh, yes, he will.
‘I don’t want to risk it.’ She tugged her hands out of Ruby’s. ‘Why do I have to tell him?’
‘Because it’s his baby, and he has a right to know,’ Ruby said, in that patient I-know-what’s-best voice that she’d acquired ever since having kids. Ella had always thought it was so sweet. Now she was finding it more than a little patronising.
‘But suppose he’d rather not know?’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ Ruby replied.
She opened her mouth to tell Ruby how he’d asked her if she was on the pill and how the correct answer had somehow got lost in the heat of the moment. But then shut it again. She didn’t want Ruby to think she’d deliberately tricked him, because she hadn’t. But even thinking about that conversation now made her feel as if she had, which would only tarnish the perfection of this moment.
‘He lives in Bermuda. I don’t need his support.’ Especially as he didn’t have any money. ‘I’m more than solvent on my own and—’
‘That’s not the point. He’s the baby’s father. By not telling him you’re not giving him the choice, or the baby the choice to know him when it gets older. Think of how much it screwed up Nick when he found out our dad wasn’t his biological father,’ she said, reminding Ella of her brother Nick, who had run away from home in his teens when he’d discovered the truth about his parentage and had only recently come back into Ruby’s life.
‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ Ella protested. It wasn’t as if she planned never to tell her child who its father was; she just didn’t see why she had to tell the father right this second.
‘I know it’s not, but what I’m trying to say is you can’t keep those kinds of secrets. It’s not fair on either one of them.’
Ella wanted to say life wasn’t fair. But the truth was she’d never believed that. Life could be fair, if you made the effort to make it so.
She wanted to deny he had any right to know. This was her child. Her responsibility. And she didn’t want to consider his rights, his reaction. But even as the panic sat under her breastbone, ready to leap up her throat and cut off her air supply, she pictured Coop’s face, the genuine smile, those emerald eyes twinkling with humour, and knew that not telling him would be taking the coward’s way out.
While she never would have planned to have a child alone, that was what she’d be doing—because fate had handed her this incredible gift. And while it was very likely that Coop wouldn’t want to know about this baby, she had to at least give him the option of saying no. Because she had to give her child the chance to know its father. However slim that chance might be.
Ruby patted her hand. ‘How about we leave this discussion for another day? You really don’t have to do this yet.’
A loud tapping had them both turning to see the whole of the Hampstead Heath Mother and Baby Stroller Work-Out Class crowded around the door, looking sweaty and dishevelled and in desperate need of light refreshments.
Jumping up, Ella headed round the counter, to flip the sign on the door to open and welcome them in. As they smiled and wheeled their babies proudly into the café, chatting about the Hitler who ran the class, Ella smiled back, amazed to realise the lethagy that had dragged her down for days had vanished.
‘Wait, Ella, are you sure you don’t want to go home and rest? I can handle the Yummies,’ Ruby offered as she joined her behind the counter.
Ella grinned back at her, the ball of panic lifting too.
She had time to think about how to tell Cooper; how to break the news to him without making him feel responsible. And really, while the thought of what she had to tell him wasn’t easy, the fact that she had a reason to speak to him again felt surprisingly good. ‘No need. I feel great.’
Ruby laughed back, her own face beaming with pleasure. ‘Just wait till tomorrow morning when you’re crouched over the toilet bowl again. Actually, we better get some buckets for the duration.’
Ella spent the morning chatting to the mums, serving tea and freshly baked cakes and cookies, whipping up a succession of speciality coffees, while she admired their children, and struggled to contain the silly grin at how totally amazing her life suddenly was.
She’d speak to Cooper soon. Ruby was right: it would be wrong not to. But it had been an accident. And really, she didn’t need to think about all the particulars just yet. Right now, all she really had to do was bask in the miracle occurring inside her. And focus on making sure she gave her baby the best possible chance to thrive. And if that meant eventually finding the courage to tell its father about their happy accident, she’d do it, somehow.
SEVEN (#uc7b533c5-be73-5780-b283-1d1b0d6cff9e)
‘Ouch. Damn it!’ Coop yanked his hand out of the casing, and threw the wrench down on the deck. Blood seeped from the shallow gash at the base of his thumb, through the thick black smear of engine grease. He sucked on it, getting a mouthful of grit to go with the metallic taste of his own blood.
‘What’s all the cussing for?’ Sonny’s head peered out from the captain’s cabin.
‘That damn propeller just took a chunk out of my hand,’ he snarled. ‘Cussing’s required.’ He boosted himself onto the deck. Tying the rag he’d been using to clean off the drive shaft around the injury, he sent his friend an angry glare. ‘That lug nut won’t budge—probably because it’s been rusted on for thirty years.’ With his hand now pounding in unison with his head, after one too many drinks last night at The Rum Runner, he was not in the mood to be dicking around with Sonny’s ancient outboard motor.
Sonny tilted his head to one side, sending him a calm, searching look. ‘Someone sure got out of bed the wrong way again this morning.’
Coop ignored the jibe. So what if he hadn’t been on top form lately? Ever since a certain English girl had left him high and dry, her lush body and eager smile had got lodged in his frontal lobe and it had been interfering with his sleep patterns.
Going back to The Rum Runner last night for the first time since Ella had run out on him had been a mistake. Henry had started jerking his chain about ‘his pretty lady’, and he’d somehow ended up challenging the guy to a drinking contest. Staggering home at three a.m., and being violently ill in his bathroom had only added injury to the insult of too many tequila slammers and too many nights without enough sleep.
No wonder he wasn’t at his sunniest.
‘Isn’t it about time you got rid of this bucket?’ he said, letting out a little of his frustration on Sonny’s boat.
Sonny stroked the console with the affection most men reserved for a lover. ‘My Jezebel’s got plenty good years in her yet. And with Josie’s wedding to pay for, she’s going to have to make them count.’
Coop knotted the rag with his teeth, his temper kicking in. They both knew The Jezebel hadn’t seen a good year since Bill Clinton had been in the White House. And that he’d offered to bankroll Josie’s wedding a million times and Sonny had stubbornly refused to accept the money. But after a morning spent with a raging hangover trying to fix the unfixable when he should have been going over his business manager’s projections for the new franchise in Acapulco, he wasn’t in the mood to keep his reservations about Josie’s nuptials to himself any longer either.
‘What is Josie getting hitched for anyway? She’s only twenty and they’re both still in college. What are they going to live on?’
‘Love will find a way,’ Sonny replied with that proud paternal grin that had been rubbing Coop the wrong way for weeks. Hadn’t the old guy figured out yet he was shelling out a king’s ransom to kick-start a marriage that probably wouldn’t last out the year?
‘Will it?’ he asked, the edge in his voice going razor sharp.
Sonny nodded, the probing look sending prickles of unease up Coop’s spine and making his thumb throb. ‘You know, you’ve been mighty bitchy for months now. Wanna tell me what’s going on?’
Months? No way had it been months since his night with Ella. Had it? ‘This isn’t about me, Sonny,’ he said, struggling to deflect the conversation back where it needed to be. ‘This is about Josie doing something dumb and you not lifting a finger to stop her.’
‘Josie’s known her own mind since she was three years old,’ Sonny said without any heat. ‘Nothing I could say would stop her even if I wanted to.’
Coop opened his mouth to protest, but Sonny simply lifted up a silencing finger.
‘But I don’t want to stop them. Taylor’s a good kid and she loves him. And it’s not them I’m worried about.’ Sonny rested his heavy frame on the bench next to Coop, his steady gaze making the prickles on Coop’s spine feel as if he’d been rolling in poison ivy. ‘You’re the one hasn’t been right ever since the night you picked up that tourist girl in the Runner.’
‘What the...?’ Coop’s jaw went slack. How did Sonny know about Ella? The old guy was always butting into his personal life, because he was a romantic and he thought he had a right to. But he’d never spoken about Ella to anyone. Did Sonny have X-ray vision or something?
‘Josie says you seemed real taken with her the next morning. But she’d run off? Is that the thing? You miss her?’
Damn Josie—so she was his source.
‘It’s not what you think.’ Coop scowled, trying to cut the old guy off at the pass before this conversation got totally out of hand.
He didn’t miss Ella, and he wasn’t ‘taken with her’. Whatever the heck that meant. It was nothing like that. She’d just got under his skin, somehow. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He could wait it out. Give it a couple more weeks and surely the almost nightly dreams he had, about those bright blue eyes wide with enthusiasm, that sunny smile, that lush butt in the itsy-bitsy purple bikini...
He thrust his fingers through his hair, annoyed by the low-level heat humming in his crotch as the erotic memories spun gleefully back—and the weird knot under his breastbone twisted.
‘It was a one-night hook-up,’ he continued, trying to convince himself now as much as Sonny. ‘We hit it off. But only...you know.’
Just shoot me now.
He shrugged. He wasn’t about to get into a discussion about his sex life with Sonny. The old guy had given him chapter and verse as a teenager about respecting women, and he didn’t need that lecture again. One thing was certain, though: Josie was dead meat next time he saw her for putting him in this position. Whether she had a ten-grand wedding to attend in five weeks or not.
‘I don’t think Ella and I are going to be declaring any vows,’ he said, going on the defensive when Sonny gave him that look that always made him feel as if he had a case to answer.
He did respect women. He respected them a lot. Sonny just had a quaint, old-fashioned idea that sex always had to mean something. When sometimes all it meant was you needed to get laid.
‘She lives thousands of miles away, we only spent one night together and she wasn’t looking for anything more than I was. Plus she was the one who ran out on me.’
Sonny’s eyebrow winged up, and Coop knew he’d said too much.
‘I see. So you’re the boy that can have any woman he wants. And she’s the girl that didn’t want you? Is that what’s got you so upset?’
‘I’m not upset.’ Coop flexed his fist, his hand hurting like a son of a bitch. ‘And thanks a bunch for making me sound like an arrogant jackass.’
Sonny smiled, but didn’t deny it, and Coop felt the flicker of hurt. ‘You’re a good-looking boy with more money than you need and a charming way about you that draws women like bees to a honeypot. You’ve got a right to be arrogant, I guess.’
‘Thanks,’ Coop said wryly. He didn’t kid himself, Sonny hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
Money wasn’t something that floated Sonny’s boat; it was the one thing they still argued about. Because as far as Coop was concerned, money mattered, more than pretty much everything else. It made everything easier, oiled every cog, gave you options, and that all-important safety net that he’d lacked as a kid. He’d craved it for the first twenty years of his life. But now he had it, it meant more to him than just the luxuries, or the good times he could buy with it. It meant respect. Status. It showed people that he wasn’t the worthless little trailer-trash nobody he’d once been. But best of all it meant he didn’t have to rely on anyone but himself.
He liked Sonny, respected the guy more than any other guy he had ever known, but, the way he saw it, Sonny had way too many responsibilities in his life—to his five kids, his three grandkids, all his friends and acquaintances, not to mention Rhona, the wife he’d had by his side for over thirty years. Maybe that worked for Sonny, he certainly didn’t seem to mind it, but, as far as Coop was concerned, that wasn’t something he was looking for. A man could be an island—if he worked hard enough and had enough money to make it happen—and life was a lot easier that way.
‘Aren’t you headed to Europe next week?’ Sonny pushed on, not taking the hint. ‘Why not look this girl up and see how she’s doing?’
Coop stared blankly at his friend. He’d thought about it; of course he had. He had a meeting with some financiers in St Tropez who wanted to talk about franchising options for Dive Guys in the Med. It was only a short hop from there to London, where Ella lived. But...
‘I don’t know. if I went all the way out to London just to hook up, she might get the wrong idea.’ He sure as hell didn’t want Ella thinking this was more than it was.
‘Why would that be bad?’ Sonny’s rueful smile made Coop feel about as smart as the lug nut he’d been trying to shift all morning. ‘If she’s the woman of your dreams.’
‘Damn, Sonny, Ella is not the woman of my dreams,’ he shot back, getting exasperated.
What was with Sonny? Was all this wedding garbage messing with his head and making him even more of a romantic than usual?
He hardly knew Ella. And he didn’t have dreams about women. Well, not apart from R-rated ones. For the simple reason that he was more than happy being an island.
‘If you say so.’ Sonny shrugged, undaunted. ‘But my point is you need to go get your sunshine back.’ Sonny jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the glimmering turquoise water that stretched towards the horizon. ‘And if it’s across that ocean that’s where you oughta be.’ His smile thinned. ‘Because until you do, you’re not a heck of a lot fun for anyone to be around.’
Coop frowned as he finally got the message. So that was it. Sonny wanted him out of the way while him and his family geared up for Josie’s big day.
He felt the sharp stab of hurt. But guessed the old guy had a point. He had been pretty grouchy the last couple of months. Sleepless nights and sexual frustration could do that to a guy. And whatever was going on between him and Ella, it didn’t seem to be getting any better. ‘Have I really been that bad?’ he asked.
Resting a solid hand on his shoulder, Sonny gave it a fatherly pat. ‘Boy, you’ve been bitchier than when you were working all hours to set up your business.’
‘Sorry.’
Sonny squeezed his shoulder. ‘Don’t be sorry, man, go do something about it.’
Coop nodded. What the hell? Trying to talk some sense into Josie and her folks about the wedding was a lost cause. And he could do with more than the two-day break he’d planned for his trip to the Med. Why not book a flight that routed through London? Stop over for a few extra days, book a suite in a classy hotel, see the city, and if he happened to be in Ella’s neighbourhood at some point, why not look her up? If she wanted to throw some more sunshine his way—and maybe give him an explanation as to why she hadn’t stuck around to say goodbye—why should he object?
As Sonny had said, he’d never had a woman walk out on him before now. That was most probably all this was really about. And if that made him an arrogant jackass, so be it. He needed to do something to get himself the hell over this hump he seemed to have got hung up on. So he could come back to Bermuda ready to smile through his teeth during his best friend’s daughter’s wedding.
What was the worst that could happen?
* * *
‘Stop eating the merchandise! I don’t care if you’ve got a cookie craving.’
Ella hastily wiped the white chocolate and macadamia nut evidence off her mouth. ‘Sorry, I can’t help it.’
Ruby sent her a superior look from the cappuccino machine, where she was busy whipping up a storm of decaf lattes and skinny mochas for the tennis foursome who had just arrived after a grudge match at the heath.
‘You should be sorry. I’d love to know how you’ve barely gained an ounce.’ Her gaze dipped to Ella’s cleavage, displayed in the new D half-cup bra she’d splashed out on the previous week. ‘Except on the bust.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Despite having consumed your own weight in confectionery in the last week.’
Ella grinned as she arranged the freshly baked passionfruit florentines on the ‘treat of the day’ display. ‘I’m simply making up for lost time. I could barely keep anything down for three solid weeks.’
Ella stroked the compact bulge that made the waistband of her hip-hugger jeans dig into her tummy. Even though she could not have been more ecstatic about the pregnancy, revelling in every change it brought to her body, puking her guts up every morning had got old fairly fast. And running a cake shop, where the cloying aroma of sweetness and the bitter chicory scent of coffee had been hell on her hypersensitive sense of smell, had been a particular brand of torture she had been more than happy to see the back of. Now she could simply enjoy all the other changes—well, all except one.
Her sex drive seemed to have mushroomed at the same pace as her bosom—if the lurid dreams she had most nights, in which a certain Cooper Delaney was a key player, were anything to go by.
