Page 61 of Suddenly Desired
Ellie was so excited she almost started jumping up and down. Managing to contain herself, she took Blake’s arm and walked him through to the kitchen. The smell of fresh bread and cinnamon filled the air, making her feel truly at home.
“It’s amazing,” she said to Blake. “You have to try it.”
“And if you don’t like that, I whipped up a batch of brownies earlier,” Isla said. “And there’s banoffee pie too, Ellie’s favourite.”
Blake grinned. “Why do I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven?”
He pulled out a seat for Ellie and she took it. Then he unbuttoned his jacket and sat next to her.
“A true gentleman as well,” said Isla. “How refreshing.”
“Completely and utterly.” Ellie grinned at Blake, the sparkle in his eyes telling her he was also thinking about the journey here.
“Are you okay?” Blake took her hand and rubbed the inside of her wrist with his thumb. The touch sent a bolt of longing to the soft, warm places Ellie had been trying to ignore.
“I’m more than okay,” she said.
How had she got so lucky? Even the thought of it, that this might just be luck, made her panic.
Slow down, she told herself.You’re still cursed, Ellie Mae. Don’t let this fool you.
What if she was reading it wrong? What if Blake was just here because he felt sorry for her, or because he knew it was a good place to hide from the world? What if he didn’t care at all? A million doubts circled her mind like a cloud of squawking crows and she pulled her hand away, pretending to fiddle with her cutlery.
Isla served up French toast with crème brûlée and lashings of freshly whipped cream. She warmed the brownies in the oven before putting down a plate of them along with a cake stand replete with banoffee pie. Ellie realised that she was right — that Blake didn’t just have eyes for her, because he looked at the food like he was in love with it. He devoured two brownies, a slice of French toast, and a piece of pie in almost as many minutesbefore crashing back in his chair and putting a hand over his stomach.
“That was amazing,” he said. “But I think I might have overdone it.”
Isla laughed, fixing up coffee for her and Blake, and tea for Ellie. They chatted while they drank, Isla asking Blake a hundred and one questions, all of which he answered with candour and humour. He spoke about his own upbringing, about his father and mother running the restaurant. He spoke about how he hadn’t seen them in a while and Ellie could see the sadness wash over him. Isla laughed and nodded and gave her sad face in all the right places. Ellie could tell instantly how much her mum liked him. It made her relax a little, because her mum had always been a great judge of character.
It was only when Blake reached the end of his teenage years that Ellie started to worry.
“And what do you do now?” Isla asked, the question that Ellie had been dreading. But there was no escaping it. If she and Blake were going to be . . . whatever they were — friends? A couple? Ellie didn’t know, but either way her mum would find out the stories about him.
Ellie took her glasses off and cleaned them on her dress, replacing them with a sigh. She shared a look with Blake.
“I work in IT,” he said. “A company called Heartbook.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Isla said, nodding. “The social whatsit thing. Ellie tried to get me to create an account once, so we could Hearttime or whatever, but I could never get the hang of it. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned telephone?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Blake.
“What do you do for them?” Isla asked. “IT? Wasn’t there some kind of scandal yesterday? Some inappropriate comments or something? I saw it on the news. What was the guy’s name . . . uh . . . Burt, or Bryant, or . . .”
Ellie saw the moment it clicked. Her mum’s eyes widened and she looked at Blake, then at Ellie, then back at Blake.
“Or Blake,” Blake said, and the air seemed to deflate out of him. “Look, I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s not true.” Ellie grabbed his hand and pulled it on to her lap. “It’s all a lie. Blake didn’t say the things they accused him of.”
To her surprise, her mum reached over and took Blake’s other hand, holding it tight between her own. He looked at her, and for all his handsomeness and strength he looked nervous, as if her mum’s opinion really mattered.
“Blake, my Ellie Mae is one of the most decent and most wonderful human beings on this entire planet.”
“I know,” he said, but she hushed him.
“What I’m saying is that she sees people — she sees them for exactly who they are. Even with Josh, at heart she knew what kind of person he was. She just didn’t admit it to herself.”
Tears stung her eyes at her mum’s words. For so long, she’d carried the quiet fear that her mum had judged her for her disastrous choice in Josh. But hearing those words of pride now was like a balm to her soul, washing away the lingering doubts. Deep down, she’d known her mum believed in her — she just hadn’t been ready to trust it. And somehow, her mum had always understood that too.
