Mistresses: The Consequences Of Desire: Beach Bar Baby / Walk on the Wild Side / Claiming His Own

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?’