caught her hand and held it by his face and slurred throatily, ‘What do you need, cara?’ His thumb stroked a line down her cheek as he bent in close and whispered, ‘Tell me …’
His gravelly accented drawl made her insides dissolve.
‘I’ve had a very bad day and I don’t want to think about it. I need …’ She paused. Life-changing revelations or not, twenty years of sensible caution did not give up without a fight. The man could be a homicidal maniac … he could … he could … he could …
Izzy closed her eyes and opened them again. She needed not to think, she needed to feel … his skin. Desire washed over her like a flash fire, dragging the breath from her lungs and making her skin prickle.
‘I think I need you.’ Is this really me saying that?
‘Think?’
‘I need you.’
It was definitely her leaving a bar with an enigmatic, beautiful stranger.
CHAPTER ONE
IZZY hurried up the aisle, her heels clicking on the marble floor as she went. She pretended to be unaware of the scattering of nudges and not so discreet whispered comments that followed her progress. She pretended extremely well—she’d had practice.
It would have been nice to think people were riveted by her stunning fashion sense, but the reality was that, while the misty blue silk chiffon dress did bring out the blue in her blue-grey eyes and made her rich chestnut hair look more auburn than brown, it was a little too snug across her post-baby bust. And besides, the church was filled with a lot of women who were better dressed and, in her opinion, better looking—short and skinny with freckles was an acquired taste.
But the attention she garnered had nothing to do with the way she looked and everything to do with her being there at all, because everyone there knew that Izzy was not a real Fitzgerald!
Two years ago when Izzy had first arrived in the small Cumbrian market town, her appearance had attracted much more attention, but happily she was yesterday’s news. The pregnant illegitimate daughter that Michael Fitzgerald had not known he had was a scandal still, but no longer one that was likely to steal the show. And things were improving.
Izzy’s expression softened as her thoughts caused her glance to drift to where her father sat talking to his brother, the father of the bride. The two men with their leonine heads of grey-streaked strawberry-blond hair were alike enough to have passed for twins, though Jake Fitzgerald was older by three years.
As if feeling her gaze Michael turned his head and winked at her and Izzy grinned back. Her father was a remarkable man. How many men receiving a letter telling them that they had a daughter from an affair twenty years ago would have reacted the way he had?
Not many, she suspected. But Michael hadn’t even wanted the DNA test! In fact the entire family had been great and instead of treating her like a cuckoo in the nest they had opened their collective arms and drawn her into the protective inner family circle.
She had been a stranger to these people, yet when she had been at her most vulnerable they had been there for her. After a lifetime of believing it was a weakness to rely on other people Izzy had initially found it difficult to accept their help, but their warmth had thawed her natural diffidence. Asking for help was still not her first instinct, in fact she hated it, but she was learning that sometimes there was no choice but to grit your teeth and swallow your pride. A lot of things changed when you had a baby.
Izzy’s attention suddenly turned to her auburn-headed young half-brother, handsome in his morning suit and deep in conversation with someone sitting next to the aisle in the row behind. He really needed to take his seat. ‘Rory, come on. She’s here.’
Rory straightened up with a grin. ‘Chill, Izzy. Anyone would think you were the one getting married.’
‘Cold day in hell,’ Izzy murmured without heat. Good luck to Rachel and her Ben, but, though having a baby had changed her view on some things, her certainty that marriage was not for her remained unshakeable. She had read the statistics and in her view you’d have to be a gambler or a hopeless romantic to take those sorts of risks and she wasn’t either.
It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in soul mates, but in her view if two people were meant to be together they shouldn’t need a piece of paper to keep them that way.
‘Don’t worry, your Prince Charming is out there somewhere, Izzy—always supposing you don’t take the treat-them-mean-keep-them-keen thing too far.’
‘I don’t!’
Unable to defend herself further because an expectant hush had fallen, Izzy slid into her own seat and waited as the other seated occupants passed her daughter along the row, like a smiling parcel. Lily landed in her lap happy and smiling.
Izzy glowed with pride as she received a gummy grin. Her daughter really was the most perfect baby.
Beside her, Rory’s mother, Michelle Fitzgerald, looked amused as Lily made a bid for the blue feather fascinator it had taken Izzy half an hour to attach attractively in the chestnut brown hair she had pinned up in a simple twist. But even with a dozen hairpins the artistic loose tendrils had been joined by numerous wispy strands despite a double dose of hairspray. Her hair just had a mind of its own.
‘Rory!’ Michelle snapped, turning her attention to her son, who had still not taken his seat.
‘All right, Ma,’ he soothed with an eye roll as he dropped down into the pew next to Izzy.
‘Rory, perhaps we should swap?’ Izzy suggested as she abandoned her attempt to secure her headgear to the slippery surface of her shiny hair. Instead she shoved it in her pocket and offered a toy duck to Lily to distract her. ‘In case Lily kicks off and I have to make a quick exit.’
She would have hated her small daughter to ruin the bride’s big moment and, though she was for the most part a sunny baby, Lily was capable of some seismic meltdowns when thwarted.
According to Michelle it was just a phase all babies went through, and as much as Izzy respected the older woman’s knowledge of all things baby she privately wondered if it was possible her daughter had inherited her volatile temperament from her father.
But that was one thing Izzy would never know, because although she knew every angle and shadow, every curve and plane of his face, as page after page in her sketchbooks filled with his likeness attested, Izzy didn’t know the name of the man who had fathered her child.
She had not thought seriously about the day when Lily asked about her father—nothing beyond its inevitability. Maybe she would get her sketchbooks out on that day and show her daughter. Would she say, ‘This is how he looked. He was possibly the most handsome man ever to draw breath … oh, and he smelt good too …’ Who knew? Since Lily’s birth Izzy had adopted a one-day-at-a-time approach to life.
In the meantime she viewed the sketches as a cathartic coping mechanism. Her sketches were her therapy and one day presumably she would draw him out of her system.
‘Sure, if you like.’ Rory stood up, ducking his head in an attempt to appear inconspicuous, hard when you were a lanky six four. ‘You two haven’t met, have you?’ he added, turning as he spoke to let Izzy shuffle along the wooden
