Mistresses: The Consequences Of Desire

She folded the oven mitt she’d used into the drawer and slammed it shut.

Stop right there, you’re doing it again.

The hollow feeling of inadequacy opened up in her stomach, and the weary ache in her chest pinched her heart.

Maybe if she had left him a note...

She sighed and glanced up to see Ruby and Cal standing together on the pavement outside the shop—bidding each other goodbye as they did every morning before Cal headed for the tube station and his work as a top defence barrister in the City. The hollow weight became a gaping hole as she watched them.

Ruby threw her head back and laughed at something her husband had said. Callum said something else, that seemed to make her laugh more, but then he gripped the lapels of her coat and jerked her up onto her tiptoes, before silencing the laughter with a hungry kiss.

Ella felt the nasty dart of envy as Ruby’s arms wrapped around Cal’s neck to pull him closer. The kiss heated to scorching, Cal’s hands finding Ruby’s bottom beneath the hem of her coat. Anyone passing by would have mistaken them for newlyweds, instead of a couple who had recently celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary and had three very energetic children ranging in age from two to six.

Ella dropped her chin, and concentrated on rearranging the cookies on the display, feeling like a Peeping Tom as the nausea pitched and rolled in her belly. The doorbell tinkled, then the creak of the café door opened and slammed shut followed by the click of Ruby’s stilettos on the tiled floor.

‘Sorry I’m late. I’ll close up today to make up for it.’ Ruby’s voice sounded upbeat and pleasantly mellow, as it often did first thing in the morning. Ella frowned, dusting icing sugar over the tarts. Hard to remember now that her business partner had once been the biggest grump on the planet until she’d downed at least two cups of coffee in the morning, but that was before her fender bender with Callum Westmore nearly eight years ago.

‘That man sweet-talked me back into bed,’ Ruby added with a huff. ‘After Helga picked up the kids.’

‘Poor you,’ Ella muttered under her breath, then bit her lip to contain the sour note of sarcasm, and the bile rising up her throat.

What was the matter with her? She’d always been so happy for Ruby and Cal. It wasn’t as if their path to true love had exactly been smooth. And as for Max and Ally and Art, Ruby and Cal’s three irrepressible children, she adored them. And adored having a special place in their lives as their favourite ‘auntie’. That relationship would only become more treasured if the possibility of a childless future became a reality.

‘Ella, is everything okay?’

She put down the icing sugar to find Ruby watching her. Far too closely. Oh, no. Had she just heard that cutting remark? How was she supposed to explain it? ‘Yes, of course...’

‘Are you sure? You’re a rather strange colour.’

‘Really, I’m perfectly—’ The gag reflex struck without warning, punching Ella’s larynx and slamming her stomach into her throat. She slapped her hand over her mouth, and raced around the counter and into the restroom—getting there just in time to lose in the toilet the tea and dry toast she’d managed to force down that morning for breakfast.

* * *

‘Okay, deep breaths.’ Ruby rubbed Ella’s spine as the nausea retreated. The cool cloth felt glorious on the back of her neck as she dragged in several deep breaths.

‘How’s your stomach? All finished puking?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ Ella pressed her hand to her belly to double-check. But her stomach seemed to have settled after the retching, the strong scent of the disinfectant in the toilet nowhere near as abrasive as the brownie scent had been earlier.

Ruby flushed the toilet and anchored her arm around Ella’s waist. ‘Good, then let’s get you more comfortable.’

By the time they’d both settled in the two armchairs at the back of the café, Ruby’s careful scrutiny had Ella’s cheeks burning.

‘Any idea what caused it?’ Ruby asked.

Ella took a moment to examine the hands she had clasped in her lap.

‘From that delightful shade of rosé on your cheeks I’m guessing you do know.’ Ruby’s hand covered hers and squeezed. ‘But you don’t want to say.’

‘It’s silly.’ Ella shrugged, forced to face her friend. ‘I’m totally overreacting to a stupid holiday fling—which didn’t mean anything.’

‘Of course it meant something. You wouldn’t have slept with him if it didn’t. You’re not the casual-sex type.’

Ella breathed a heavy sigh. ‘Kind of annoying that I didn’t figure that out before I decided to jump into bed with him for a night of casual sex, isn’t it?’ The clutching sensation in her chest was back with a vengeance. ‘I miss him. I wish I’d hung around to tell him goodbye properly. Got closure. Then maybe I could stop giving myself an ulcer thinking about him constantly.’

Ruby nodded, her expression far too intuitive. ‘All excellent points. But can I suggest another possible explanation for the puking?’

Ella frowned. Why was Ruby looking at her like that? As if she was struggling to suppress a smile. ‘There is no other—’

‘Because you’re no more the highly strung, give-yourself-an-ulcer type than you are the casual-sex type.’

‘Your point?’ Ella replied a little sharply.

‘Look, you’ve been stressing about your holiday fling for weeks, I know that. But isn’t it at all possible—given the extremely hot description you gave me of your bedroom aerobics with Captain Studly—that what we just witnessed might be something more substantial than a nervous tummy?’

‘Such as?’

‘Morning sickness.’

Ella stiffened. ‘You know that’s not possible.’

‘According to Dr Patel it isn’t impossible.’

Ella’s frown became a scowl. ‘It’s only a very slight possibility. And we used condoms the whole time.’

‘As did Cal and I before we got pregnant with Arturo,’ Ruby shot straight back.

‘It’s not the same thing.’ The sour note was back. ‘You don’t have any fertility issues.’

‘I still think you should do a pregnancy test, just to be sure.’

Ella straightened in the chair. ‘I am sure.’ Sure what the result would be. And even surer that bringing back memories of another pregnancy test that she’d taken with Ruby years before would only make her current misery seem even more insurmountable.

‘Well, I’m not.’

Ella threw up her hands. ‘Yes, well, I don’t have a pregnancy test and I don’t have time to go and get one because we open in half an hour.’ Maybe if Ruby wouldn’t listen to her, at least she’d listen to reason.

‘That’s okay, because I do.’ Reaching into her handbag, Ruby produced a blue and white chemist bag from which she pulled out a telltale pink box.

‘Where did you get that?’ Ella stared, her hurt and astonishment turning to dismay.

‘Ella, you’ve been sick three times this week now.’ Grabbing Ella’s hand, Ruby slapped the box into her palm.

Ella wanted to refuse, but as she stared at the box she felt her will power crumbling in the face of Ruby’s determination.

‘Just go pee on the stick.’ Ruby closed Ella’s fingers around the box. ‘Don’t overthink this. Whatever the result is, we’ll handle it. But denial is not the answer. I’ll wait here.’

Ella stood up, her stomach folding in on itself, as the last of her will power ebbed away on a wave of exhaustion. ‘Okay, fine, but you may be waiting a long time.’ She frowned at her best friend. ‘I am so not in the mood to pee on demand right now.’

* * *

It took fifteen torturous minutes before she could get out of the toilet.

‘I left it on the vanity in there.’ She washed her hands in the shop’s sink and dosed them with anti-bacterial gel. ‘Don’t forget to dispose of it before we open,’ she added, brushing the stupid sting of tears off her cheek.

‘Ella, don’t cry. You need to know for sure.’

She didn’t dignify that with an answer, but simply set about filling the icing bag with cream-cheese frosting. She needed to be ready for the nine a.m. rush when they opened in fifteen minutes. She so did not have time for this rubbish.

She was still busy adding cream-cheese frosting in decorative swirls to the carrot cake when Ruby dashed back into the café a few minutes later. ‘I think you better look at this.’

‘Don’t bring it in here,’ she said crossly. ‘It’s covered in pee.’

‘I know that,’ Ruby replied. ‘But it’s not just any pee, it’s pregnant-lady pee.’

‘What?’ Frosting squirted across the counter as her fingers fisted on the bag involuntarily. And her heart jumped into her mouth.

‘You heard me.’ Ruby held the pee stick in front of Ella’s face like a talisman. ‘See that strong blue line? That means Ella’s going to be a mummy in exactly seven months’ time. You’re going to be ringing in the new year with your very own bundle of fun.’

She couldn’t focus, thanks to the sheen of shocked tears misting her vision. ‘But that’s not possible,’ she murmured, her voice hoarse.

Ruby laughed. ‘Um, well, clearly it is. Pregnancy tests don’t lie.’

Ella’s unfocused gaze raised to Ruby’s smiling face. ‘I should take another one. It might be wrong.’

‘Take as many as you like, but there’s no such thing as a false positive with these things. I took six tests with Art. And they all came out exactly the same. Assuming it was definitely you who peed on that stick, it’s definitely you who’s pregnant.’

Ella collapsed into the chair beside the cash register. Her knees trembling now almost as violently as her hands—which clutched the bag of frosting in a death grip as it dripped onto the floor.

‘I’m going to have a baby.’ The words sounded fragile and far away, as if they had been said by someone else, as if they could be extinguished if she said them too loudly.

Ruby stroked her back as she crouched beside her and wrapped her hand round Ella’s wrist. ‘Yes, you are.’

The tears welled and flowed, her whole body shaking now, at the memory of a similar test so long ago. The joy then had felt scary, terrifying, but so small and sweet. This time it didn’t feel small, it felt huge, like a living, breathing thing that couldn’t be contained within her skin, but so much more scary and terrifying too.

Dumping the pregnancy test in the bin, Ruby washed and dried her hands, then tugged a couple of wet wipes from the dispenser on the counter. ‘I take it those are happy tears?’ Ruby took the icing bag out of Ella’s numb fingers and began cleaning the mess of cream-cheese frosting with the wipes.

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

‘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.