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

‘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.