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aramedics, but it was too late.’
Ella pulled back, the tears soaking her lashes. ‘I’m so sorry that you found her like that.’ And that he’d had such a bleak childhood. No wonder he’d been so determined to protect himself—he’d suffered so much, at such a young age. ‘But surely you must see that you weren’t to blame. Whatever you said or didn’t say, it wouldn’t have made a difference.’
‘Hey, don’t cry.’ He scooped the tear off her lashes. ‘And I guess you’re right. But that’s not the reason I didn’t want to tell you about her.’
She swallowed down the tears. ‘So what is?’
‘I didn’t want you to know what a coward I am.’
‘A coward?’ She didn’t understand: he’d done his best; he’d stuck by his mother and tried so hard to make her life easier, better. ‘How can you say that when you did everything you could for her?’
‘Maybe I did. But I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about us.’ His lips tipped up in a wry smile. ‘The thing is, even though I loved my mom, and I was sad when she died...’ he gave his head a small shake ‘...you know what I felt most when I stood by her graveside?’
She shook her head, confused now. What was he trying to tell her?
‘Relief.’ The word came out on a huff of breath. ‘I was so damn glad I didn’t have to be responsible for her any more.’ He cupped her cheek, brushing the tears off her lashes. ‘For years after her death, I used to have this recurring nightmare that I was standing by her grave and her hand would come out and drag me in with her. Because that’s what it felt like when I was growing up, being trapped in this big dark hole that I could never get out of. So I ran and I kept on running. Once I landed here, I devoted myself to making money, until I had enough to make the nightmares go away. But I never realised until this moment that in a lot of ways I never stopped running.’ His hand stroked down to rest on her stomach.
‘I’m sorry that I didn’t tell everyone about you, and the baby. And that I’m not good with stuff like this. But if you’ll just give me another chance, I’ll try not to be such a damn coward again. Because I don’t want to keep running any more.’
She stared at him, her heart bursting with happiness and giddy relief. Maybe it wasn’t a declaration of undying and everlasting love. But she’d had one of those before and it had been a lie. Coop’s declaration meant so much more.
‘I think maybe we both need to stop being cowards,’ she said. ‘I should have had the guts to tell you straight away that my feelings were changing, that I wanted more, instead of panicking about how you would react.’
His hands framed her face, to pull her gaze back to his, and the approval she saw there was as intoxicating as the heat. ‘You were just scared. Believe me, I get that. Just so long as you’re not scared any more?’
She bobbed her head in answer to his question, far too emotional to speak.
‘Cool.’ He wrapped his arms round her waist, the solid feel of him making heat eddy up from her core to add to the joy.
She threaded her hands through the short hair above his ears, tugged his head down to hers and poured out everything she felt for him in a kiss full of happiness and desire and the rush of emotion that no longer had to be denied.
When they finally came up for air, he cradled her cheeks. ‘So will you cancel your flight? I know you’ve got to go home soon, but when you do I’d like to come too, until we figure out how we’re going to work this out. I’m not good at making promises. But I know I want to be with you, not just because of the baby, but because...’ He ducked his head, swore softly under his breath, the flags of embarrassed colour on his cheeks sweet and endearing and impossibly sexy. ‘Hell, I’m pretty damn sure I’m falling for you, too.’
She laughed, the sound rich and throaty and full of hope as she clung onto his neck. ‘All right, but only on one condition.’
The quick grin on his lips sparkled with a heady combination of tenderness and wickedness. ‘Seriously, you’ve got another condition? That’s pushing it.’
‘I’ll stay on the condition that I get to give you that just-screwed look I adore.’
He laughed. ‘Yup, definitely pushing it.’
He was still chuckling when he dumped her on the bed a few minutes later and got to work giving her what she wanted.
EPILOGUE
‘That water is so warm, it’s incredible,’ Ruby said as she reached for one of the beach towels and patted herself dry.
Ella shielded her eyes against the sun to smile at her friend from her spot on the lounger. ‘I know, but we should probably call the guys in soon, or we’re going to have some very cranky kids on our hands later.’
Ruby turned towards the sea, her smile crafty. ‘Yes, but they are going to sleep like the dead, once their fathers have put them to bed.’
Ella laughed, her gaze following Ruby’s out to the shallow surf, where Cooper and Ruby’s husband Callum were busy playing some kind of splashing war with their children. Cal ran forward, with his four-year-old Arturo clamped to his back like a limpet, while his daughter Ally shouted instructions and charged by his side. Her older brother Max seemed to be in cahoots with Cooper, who had their two-year-old son Jem slung on his hip, as he and Max launched a new offensive against the Westmore invaders. Jem’s delighted chuckles were matched by the manic pumping of his little legs as his Daddy scooped up a tidal wave of water with his free arm and drenched Ally, Cal and Arturo in one fell swoop.
Ella grinned at the comical scene as Max began to do a victory dance.
She loved having Ruby and Cal and their family visiting them in Bermuda for the summer—especially now that she and Cooper had made the decision to move here permanently and sell the flat Coop had bought in Camden just before Jem’s birth. It had been a major wrench finally agreeing to let that part of her life go, not least because she knew she would miss her best friend terribly, but as Jem got older they’d decided that jetting backwards and forwards between their two home bases was too confusing for him—and getting him over the jet lag every few months nothing short of a nightmare.
‘Do the daddies know they’re on bedtime duty?’ Ella asked as the splashing war went into a new phase, Ally, Cal and Arturo apparently refusing to concede defeat. She suspected both men were going to be even more exhausted than the kids come bedtime if the war carried on much longer.
