THREE

      Ella held the plastic column, flipped the switch. Then yelped and dropped it when it shivered to life with a sibilant hum. She signed and flicked the switch back down to dump the vibrator back in its box.

      Damn, trying out the sex toy had seemed like such a good idea when she’d been with Cooper, while all her hormones were jumping and jigging under his smouldering stare.

      But after their awkward parting, she wasn’t feeling all that enthusiastic about discovering the joys of artificial stimulation any more.

      Plastic just didn’t have the allure of a flesh and blood man. Plus the way things had ended had flatlined all the jiggling. She just felt empty now, and a little foolish, for enjoying his company so much when it hadn’t meant anything. She racked her brains to figure out what had happened. Because one minute he’d been laid-back and charming, oozing sex appeal, and asking her if she wanted to ‘hang out’ later and the next he’d been cold and tense and dismissive.

      The phone rang, jolting her out of her dismay. She groped for the handset, grateful for the distraction, especially when her best friend’s voice greeted her.

      ‘Ella, hi, how’s things in paradise?’

      Ella smiled, happiness at the sound of Ruby’s voice tempered with a surge of homesickness. ‘Ruby, I’m so glad you called.’ She gripped the phone, suddenly wishing she could levitate down the phoneline.

      Other than this morning’s snorkelling trip of a lifetime with the gorgeous—and confusing—Captain Cooper, her trip to Bermuda had been a disaster. She wanted to go home now.

      ‘Is everything okay? You sound a little wobbly.’

      ‘No, everything’s good. I guess I’m just over paradise now.’

      Ruby laughed, that rich, throaty, naughty laugh that Ella missed so much. ‘Uh-oh, so I’m assuming you still haven’t met any buff guys in Bermuda shorts, then?’

      ‘Umm, well.’ The image of Cooper’s exceptionally fit body, his low-slung cut-offs clinging to muscular thighs, that mouth-watering chest gilded with seawater, and the devastating heat in his eyes, popped into Ella’s head and rendered her speechless.

      ‘You have met someone, haven’t you?’ Ruby said, her usual telepathy not dimmed by thousands of miles of ocean. ‘Fantastic! Auntie Ruby needs to know all the details.’

      ‘It’s nothing, really. He’s just a cute guy who was captaining the snorkel tour I went on this morning. We flirted a bit.’ At least, she thought they’d been flirting, but maybe she’d got that wrong too. ‘But he’s not my type at all. He’s far too sexy.’ She recalled his callused hands, massaging the thick suncream into her skin—and wondered if Ruby could sense her hot flush from the UK.

      Ruby snorted. ‘Are you on crack or something? There’s no such thing as too sexy. Ever. And clarify “a bit”—does that mean there might be an option for more?’

      ‘Well, he did sort of ask me out.’

      ‘That’s fantastic.’

      ‘But I don’t think I’ll follow it up.’

      Her mind snagged on their awkward parting. As flattering as Cooper’s undivided attention had been, and as exciting as she’d found snorkelling with him—cocooned together in the exhilarating cool of the ocean as he used sign language to point out the different colourful fish, the sunken wreck of an old schooner and the majestic coral—it hadn’t ended all that well.

      She pictured again the tight line of his jaw when she’d handed him the hefty tip, and winced at the memory of his curt goodbye.

      ‘Why not?’ Ruby asked. ‘I thought that was the whole point of this holiday. To have a wild, inappropriate fling and kick-start your sex life?’

      ‘What?’ Ella could feel the blush lighting her face like a Christmas tree. ‘Who told you that?’

      ‘You did. You said you needed to get away, and rethink your priorities. That you’d become too fixated on finding the right guy, when what you really needed was to find a guy,’ Ruby replied, quoting words back to Ella she couldn’t remember saying.

      She’d been in a fog at the time, probably even in a state of mild shock after visiting her local doctor. She’d booked the holiday at the last minute, packed and headed for the airport the very next day, partly because she hadn’t known how to tell Ruby her news. For the first time ever, she’d been unable to confide in her best friend, and that had been the scariest thing of all.

      ‘I thought that’s what you meant,’ Ruby finished, sounding thoroughly confused now. ‘That you were heading to Bermuda to get laid.’

      ‘Not precisely.’ Ella felt the weariness of keeping the secret start to overwhelm her.

      ‘So what did you mean?’ Ruby’s sharp mind lasered straight to the truth. ‘This has something to do with the doctor’s appointment you had the day before you left, doesn’t it? I knew something had freaked you out. What aren’t you telling me?’

      Ella could hear the urgency in Ruby’s voice and knew her friend’s natural tendency to create drama was about to conjure up a terminal illness.

      ‘Whatever it is, you have to tell me, Ell. We can sort it out. Together. We always have.’

      ‘Don’t worry, Rube.’ Ella began talking her friend down from the ledge. ‘It’s nothing terrible.’ Or not that terrible.

      ‘But it does have something to do with the appointment?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Which is?’ Ruby’s voice had taken on the stern fear-of-God tone she used with her three children, which instantly made them confess to any and all infractions.

      Ella knew she wouldn’t last two seconds under that kind of interrogation. Even from four thousand miles away. ‘Dr Patel took some tests. I’ll get the results on Monday.’ She blew out a breath, the hollow pressure that had dragged down her stomach a week ago feeling as if it had become a black hole. ‘But given my mum’s history and the fact that I haven’t had a period now in over three months, she thinks I might be going into premature menopause.’

      ‘Okay,’ Ruby said carefully. ‘But it’s just a possibility? Nothing’s certain yet?’

      Ella shook her head, the black hole starting to choke her. ‘I’m pretty certain.’

      She’d done something cowardly in her teens, that she’d always believed she would be punished for one day. And sitting in Myra Patel’s office, listening to her GP discuss the possible diagnoses, the prospect of a premature menopause had been both devastating, and yet somehow hideously fitting.

      She placed her hand on her abdomen to try and contain the hollowness in her womb, and stop it seeping out and invading her whole body. ‘I’ve left it too late, Ruby. I’m not going to be able to have children.’

      ‘You don’t know any such thing. Not until you get the tests back. And even if it is premature menopause, a couple of missed periods isn’t suddenly going to make you infertile.’

      She did know, she’d known ever since she was eighteen and she’d come round from the anaesthesia in the clinic to find Randall gone. She didn’t deserve to be a mother, because the one time she’d had the chance she’d given it up to please a guy who hadn’t given a hoot about her.

      ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said, humouring Ruby.

      ‘Of course I am. You’re not allowed to go the full drama until you get the results. Is that understood?’

      ‘Right.’ Her lips wrinkled, as she