double take.
Yes, again she had him wondering.
‘Morning, Isla …’
It was incredibly nice to be woken with coffee and breakfast and Alessi’s smile, and she returned it but even as she stretched, doubts started piling in.
God, she’d told him she loved him.
Isla let out a breath.
Yes, he’d said he loved her but she was petrified of forcing his hand, thinking that Alessi might be simply making the best of a bad deal.
‘This looks lovely,’ she said, her hand shaking a touch as she took the coffee from the tray, unable to meet his eyes.
‘Is there something you need to tell me?’ Alessi said.
‘Isn’t what I told you last night enough to be going on with?’ Isla said. ‘I know it’s a shock. I know it’s too soon …’
‘It doesn’t feel too soon,’ he said. ‘We’re not teenagers, Isla.’
‘I know, but even so …’
‘It was a shock last night,’ Alessi admitted, ‘but it’s a nice surprise now. How do you feel about it?’
‘Nervous,’ Isla admitted. ‘I was terrified at first but now …’ she looked at him ‘… it’s starting to feel like a nice surprise, too, but I’m terrified of the pressure it might put on us.’
‘Like marriage?’
Isla nodded.
‘You don’t want to get married?’ Alessi asked. ‘Isla, help me here, because the last woman I asked to marry me …’ She could see him struggling. ‘I don’t want to put the same pressure on you. Looking back, I can see that we were far too young and not in love. You’ve heard the saying “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”. I’m quite sure now that that would have been Talia and I.’
‘I don’t want it to be us.’
‘It won’t be,’ Alessi assured her. ‘Just so long as we are always honest with each other.’
‘I feel like I’ve forced things …’
‘Isla, I was going to ask you to marry me on Valentine’s night. I had it all planned, right down to if you said yes, we were going to go the next day to the restaurant, upstairs this time, and tell my family …’ He could see the disbelief in her eyes. He rolled his eyes and then climbed out of bed and went to a drawer, and Isla watched as he took out a small box.
‘There.’ He handed it to her. ‘Do you believe me now?’
She looked up at him and then back to the ring.
It was white gold, with a pale sapphire. ‘It matches your eyes, almost exactly,’ Alessi said. ‘I wanted a diamond but when I saw this …’
Again he asked a question. ‘Is there something you need to tell me?’
‘Such as?’
Alessi took a breath. ‘Maybe there’s something I need to tell you. I’m sorry if it comes as a shock. Your ex-boyfriend just came out. It’s all over the news …’ He saw the tears in her eyes and misread them. ‘I’m sorry. Is this news to you?’
‘I’ve always known.’ Isla took a breath. ‘There’s never been anything sexual between us.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Alessi frowned. ‘Were you covering for him?’
‘Yes,’ Isla said, ‘but he was covering for me, too.’ It was the biggest confession of her life and far harder to admit than her pregnancy. ‘I’ve never had a sexual relationship with anyone. Till you.’
‘You’re telling me that our night together was your first?’ He shook his head, not so much in disbelief but that night he had felt her burn in his arms, the sex between them had been so good, so natural. ‘You should have told me,’ he said. ‘You must have been so nervous …’
‘No,’ she refuted. ‘I was always scared before, I wasn’t that night.’
‘Scared of what, Isla?’
‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted. ‘I thought I was scared of getting pregnant but I don’t feel scared. Something happened when I was twelve … She closed her eyes. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘I think you have to.’
‘I can’t tell you because it’s not my secret to share, it didn’t happen to me.’
‘Whatever happened affected you, though,’ Alessi said. ‘What would you tell one of your patients?’
‘To talk to someone.’
‘So talk to me.’
‘My sister.’ Isla gulped in a breath as panic hit. ‘Please, never say …’
‘I would never do that.’
That much she knew.
‘When I was twelve I heard her …’ Isla let out a breath. ‘She had a baby, I think it was about eighteen weeks …’
‘You think?’
‘I didn’t know at the time,’ Isla said. ‘I delivered him. Isabel begged me not to say anything but I got our housekeeper, Evie. She took us to a hospital … It was all dealt with, our parents never found out … I promised never to tell.’
‘You’re not telling me about Isabel,’ Alessi said. ‘I don’t need the details about her, I need to know what happened to you and what you went through.’
And so she told him, and Alessi watched as the supremely confident, always cool Isla simply collapsed in tears as she released the weight of her secret.
He held her as she spoke and then, as the tears subsided, Isla lay there and looked up at him and found out how it felt not to be alone.
‘No more secrets,’ Alessi said.
‘I know.’
‘You could have told me … And then he stopped. ‘I guess you had to trust me.’
‘I should have told you that night,’ Isla said, ‘because I trusted you then, Alessi, or I wouldn’t have slept with you …’ She looked at the smile on his face and frowned. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Not funny,’ Alessi said. ‘I guess that means that the baby’s mine.’
‘Of course—’ Isla started, and then halted. Of course he would have had doubts, he would have been doing the frantic maths. Not once had it entered her head that he might wonder if the baby was his, but of course it must have been there for him. ‘You loved me, even when you didn’t know that the baby was yours …’
‘Isla,
