Page 54 of Chase

“Ever wondered why Isobel is so fair and we’re so dark?” Ethan smirks, prompting me to frown over his words.

“Ethan! Enough!” Craig snaps angrily.

“What? What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that ever since Isobel turned up on our doorstep twenty-seven years ago, she has ripped this family apart,” he says with fury written across his features, “and that is why wehate her. She should never have been born.”

“I said enough!” Craig shouts at his son. Ethan eyes his father before begrudgingly returning to his seat.

“Are you trying to tell me Izzy isn’t yours?” I ask Craig but he simply shakes his head and looks away like the coward he is. “Ethan?”

“Fuck off, Theo, never darken my door again,” Ethan sighs before returning to whatever it was he was doing before I arrived. “You have five minutes to get out of the building before security comes up.”

I ball up my fist and punch the wall before I vacate the room with about a million questions chasing one another around my head.

Chapter 19

Izzy

The weekend was quiet. Really quiet. Theo’s been acting strangely so I found myself trying to stay out of his way. It was the last thing I wanted to do, given everything, but he kept staring at me with a pensive expression. After which, he’d take Stella for long walks, mumbling to himself as he did so. In fact, he would be out with her for so long, she’d come home absolutely exhausted. Her usual tail of mass destruction (four glasses, a vase, and an entire plate of dinner, to date) made nothing more than a slow and solitary thump whenever I went over to cuddle her.

“What have you done to my dog?” I giggle as I lie down beside her on the living room rug. “She’s lost her mojo!”

“Hmmm,” he says while continuing to stare at the TV in front of him.

I audibly sigh over his lack of response before getting to my feet to go and finish making dinner. I’m feeling better since my little freak-out on Friday, particularly as I now have a female bodyguard coming my way, someone to watch from a distance. Imet her yesterday and although she is built like a solid brick, she was extremely nice and easy to talk to. She was in the army for a while but is now on civvy street, managing a security company she owns with her brother. She only took this job with me because it will be very much temporary; a short-term fix for a problem Theo says he’s going to squash.

She’ll be coming with me tomorrow morning on my walk with Will, but I have stressed that she will need to be discreet and hang back while I talk with him. I don’t want her to frighten him off, particularly after he decided to confess all this weekend.

Theo walks in to join me after I call him in for dinner. For a first-time roast dinner chef, I’m quite proud of my efforts. It might well have created the biggest mountain of washing up known to man, but it still looks like the Sunday roast Nonna used to make. Theo casts a glance at the mess I’ve made and frowns for a moment or two before plastering on a big fake grin.

“This looks amazing,” he says when he sits down at the table, “well done, Iz.”

“Ah, he talks!” I tease before adding salt and pepper to the meal without even tasting it; Nonna would tut before telling me a chef should always taste her work, especially before adding extra seasoning. “Don’t get used to it; roast dinners are a pain in the bum. Have you seen all the washing up? And don’t even get me started on timing it all. I much prefer a bung-in-the-pan-altogether curry.”

“Yeah, I noticed the washing up,” he laughs, “but that will be my job so no need to fret about it.”

We tuck in but the atmosphere remains awkward. I try to think of something to say to break the silence that’s descended yet again, but in the end, I decide this is his issue, not mine. As muchas it pains me, I have to let him talk first.

“Iz, I’m sorry if I’ve been quiet,” he finally says, though he still refuses to look me in the eye. “I wasn’t sure how to take the message you sent me last week. I got the impression you wanted some…distance?”

I look at him in shock, hoping he had forgotten about the impersonal message I had sent when I was so suddenly full of anxiety, but here we are, having to face it and all the other unanswered questions. I chew my mouthful slowly before swallowing it down in a hard lump.

“To be honest, that’s kind of what I thought too,” I eventually admit. “I’ve been alone for over a decade and Penny saw me texting you and suggested I was developing feelings. It kind of scared the shit out of me.”

My admission has him looking at me so suddenly that a flutter of butterflies invades my chest and I feel slightly sick. After a few moments of this intense silence, he eventually swallows his mouthful and tries to compose himself.

“And now?” he whispers.

“I don’t know,” I tell him truthfully. “I don’t know anything; I’m always surprised when you think that I do.”

“Yeah, me too,” he says as we both continue to stare at one another, but then his words hit us both and we burst into laughter.

“I’m trying to be honest here, and you just use it as a way to have a pop at me,” I giggle, all the while shaking my head over his cheek. “You are such a jerk sometimes!”

“Ah, yes, but I’monlya jerk with you,” he says with a smile I used to dream about in the dead of night because I couldn’tactually bring myself to lie with a real man. “I’m a complete asshole to everyone else.”

We fall silent for a while, eating our dinner in the quiet while Stella sits beside us with bootlaces of slobber hanging from her mouth. I take pity on those Bambi eyes of hers and slip her the odd piece of meat or potato whenever I think Theo isn’t looking.

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