Note to Readers
THE PENTHOUSE IN the grand old Edinburgh hotel was the last room on Isla’s shift. The irony didn’t escape her that she was now cleaning penthouses rather than occupying them.
She knocked on the door and called out, ‘Housekeeping.’ When there was no answer she swiped her pass key, opened the door and brought her cleaning trolley inside.
It was like stepping into another world—a world she had once briefly visited and fooled herself she could belong to... Had it only been five months ago?
Isla placed a protective hand over the slight swell of her abdomen, where the soft flutter of tiny developing limbs moving in their sac of amniotic fluid reminded her that in another four months her life would change yet again.
For ever.
Isla closed the door of the suite, tried too to close the door on her thoughts, but they lingered, floating around her head like black crows circling above a carcass. The carcass of her short but passionate relationship with her baby’s father.
Rafe Angeliri, who didn’t even know he was going to be a father.
‘Relationship’ was probably too generous a word to describe what she had experienced with Rafe. A fling. An affair. Two months of madness. Magical, mind-altering, body-fizzing madness. Two months where she had forgotten who she was, where she came from, what she represented. They had met in a bar and in under an hour she had ended up in bed with him. Her first ever one-night stand—except it hadn’t been a one-night stand because Rafe had asked to see her again. And again. And again. And within a few days they were enmeshed in a passionate relationship she hadn’t wanted to end.
But it had.
She had made it end.
Isla swept her gaze over the plush furnishings of the suite. During her fling with Rafe, spending a night in a luxury room such as this had become the norm. Sleeping between one thousand thread Egyptian cotton sheets, sipping French champagne from sparkling crystal flutes, eating at Michelin starred restaurants, wearing designer clothes and shoes and glittering jewellery that cost more than a car. Going to charity balls and opera and theatre shows and premiere red carpet events dressed like a supermodel instead of a foster kid from the wrong side of the tracks.
Trailer trash, tarted up to look like royalty.
The penthouse had been slept in the night before—the bed was rumpled on one side, the covers thrown back over the mattress in a way that snagged on her memory like a rose thorn on silk. Even the air smelled faintly familiar—a subtle blend of bergamot and citrus that made the skin on Isla’s arms lift in a tide of goosebumps, the hairs on her scalp tightening, tingling, tensing at the roots. The room seemed to have a strange energy, as if the presence of a strong personality had recently disturbed the air particles and they hadn’t quite yet recovered.
Isla gave herself a concussion-inducing mental slap, strode to the bed and stripped the linen off like a magician ripping a tablecloth from under a full setting of crockery. She had work to do and she couldn’t allow her imagination to get the better of her. She had made her own metaphorical bed and she was happy to lie on it.
Alone.
Telling Rafe about her pregnancy had never been an option. How could it be? She couldn’t risk him pressuring her into a termination. Couldn’t risk him rejecting her and the baby. She had experienced repeated rejections throughout her childhood. Even her own father had sent her back to foster care for others to raise. How could she risk Rafe sending her away? She couldn’t risk him offering to marry her out of a sense of duty. She knew first-hand how duty-motivated marriages worked out—with unwanted, unloved, unnurtured kids ending up in long-term foster care.
Isla remade the bed with the fresh linen from the trolley, stretching it over the mattress and straightening it to perfection, plumping up the pillows and neatly arranging them, along with the navy-blue scatter cushions and throw rug for the end of the bed. She stepped back to admire her handiwork when the door of the suite opened behind her.
Isla turned to face the guest with her best apologetic housemaid smile in place. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not quite fin...’
Her smile faded along with her apology and her heart leapt like a ping-pong ball and lodged high and tight in her throat. She couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t stop her heart from thudding against her chest wall like it was trying to punch its way out. Bumph. Bumph. Bumph.
