I think back to all the conversations I’ve had with Isla over the past few weeks. She’s told me things in confidence that I’d be hesitant to share under normal circumstances, but this situation is anything but normal. It’s the exact opposite of normal.
“She does worry,” I say, weighing my words carefully. “I obviously haven’t talked to her about all of this, but she told me before—back when Kinsley was first coming around—that she was worried about the two of you.”
“About Kinsley and me? She told you that?”
I can tell from his tone that he’s starting to get upset, but I’m not sure if it’s because of what I’m saying about Isla or because I didn’t tell him sooner.
“She didn’t want to upset you, so she made me promise I wouldn’t say anything. Of course I didn’t make that promise, though.”
“What did you say to her?”
“Just that I know you love her very much and that I was sure her mom felt the same way. Then I did my best to distract her with dance, with stargazing, with movies—anything I could think of to keep her mind off what was going on between you and Kinsley.”
The muscles in his jaw are clenched tightly and I’m afraid he’s going to start yelling, but he simply says, “I wish I would have known. I don’t want her to feel like she needs to keep secrets from me.”
“I told her that, too,” I offer. “That you haven’t ever punished her for sharing her feelings and that you wouldn’t be upset with her about something like that.”
Finally, his expression starts to soften. “Thank you for that. She obviously trusts you. I wish you would have come to me sooner, but… I can appreciate that you didn’t want to betray her confidence.”
Thank God.
There’s still a bit of hesitation in his voice that tells me he doesn’t fully appreciate how I handled the situation, but at least he doesn’t seem to be angry anymore.
“It wasn’t my intention to keep anything from you,” I say, just to be clear. “I also would never encourage her to keep her feelings bottled up inside. I promise I was trying to do what I thought was best and what I thought you would want me to do.”
“I understand. But don’t you think…” His voice trails off and he stiffens in his seat as he looks down at the sprawling, sandy beach below us. “Do you see that guy out there? Is he pointing a camera over here?”
It only takes a moment for me to find the guy he’s talking about. My heart stops beating and I feel a chill go down my spine even though the mid-morning sun is still shining down on us. “They found us,” I whisper.
“Just one guy for now,” he mutters, standing up and moving in front of me to block the guy’s view.
“More are coming. It’s only a matter of time.” My hand is trembling as I grab my own coffee mug and start walking back toward the house. “I guess we aren’t safe here after all.”
He doesn’t say anything else until we’re both inside again and the door is closed behind us. “Keep the curtains drawn tight and try to keep Isla from going outside.”
I just nod. We both know that’s going to be virtually impossible. She’s a little girl and we’re in paradise. There’s a pool and terraced gardens that lead all the way down to the beach and the sea beyond that. She isn’t going to understand why it’s too dangerous to play outside.
I’m too numb to argue right now, though. Too shaken to even think straight. “What are we going to do, Keir? Not just with Isla, but what are we going to do?”
He scrubs a hand down his face and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer for you this time. I thought we’d have a few more days before they caught up to us, but I guess I was wrong.”
He’s right. That isn’t a good answer. I know he’s doing the best he can—we both are, and he’s probably doing a better job than I am, all things considered—but I really need him to tell me everything is going to be okay right now, and he isn’t saying that at all.
I walk toward the window, then stop myself. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t. The press is going to keep us locked in here like prisoners, and they won’t rest until they’ve driven us completely insane.”
My voice is rising with every word, but I don’t realize it until I’m almost yelling. Even then, I’m not fully aware of my own volume until Keir bangs a fist on the dining room table. “What do you want me to do, Ella? There’s nothing I can say or do to make this better, so what do you want from me?” He stops and huffs out a short breath, then lowers his voice again. “This is what my life is like. Even before the tape, this is the kind of shit I had to deal with. It’s the kind of shit I’ve been dealing with for my entire life.”
“I haven’t.” I’m only standing a few feet away from him but it feels like we’re a whole world apart right now. “This isn’t the life I want. This isn’t what I signed up for.”
“None of us signed up for this shit. I didn’t. Isla didn’t. It just comes with the territory. If you can’t handle it now, as my nanny, then how the hell do you think you’d cope with it as my girlfriend or my wife? If we even hint that we might be in a relationship, they’ll start circling like vultures. It’ll be ten times worse than it is now—that much I can guarantee.”
Of all the times I’ve tried to imagine what life would be like as Keir’s girlfriend, I’ve never stopped to consider how much my everyday life would change.
He’s right, though. I know he is.
Being in a relationship with Lord Grayrose would instantly make me a public figure, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. Maybe he doesn’t realize how unsettling that is, since he’s lived his entire life in a fishbowl, but that isn’t normal. Normal, regular couples don’t have to deal with this madness.
“You’re right,” I say, echoing my own thoughts. “It would be a lot worse if we were in a relationship. And it’s hard enough to make a relationship work without all the added pressure of having the entire world scrutinizing every move we make.”
“Exactly. You always wonder why I’m so reluctant to jump into a new relationship? Well, here you go. This is why it’s better to keep things simple and low-key. We can spend time together. We can fuck. We can travel. But we’ve made the mistake of being too interesting. We’ve become a news item. A story.”
Every word is true, but that only makes it more difficult to hear. “Maybe we need to take a step back, then,” I say. My throat is so tight that I can barely speak, but I might not have the courage or the strength to say this later, and it needs to be said. “Maybe we should break up, or at least take a break.”
He doesn’t hesitate at all. “Fine.”
Why does that one word feel like such a slap in the face? We’re in agreement and I shouldn’t be angry about it, but I can’t help the way I feel.
And if I’m being perfectly honest? I guess maybe I was hoping he’d try to talk me out of it.
“So we’re done?” I ask, because apparently I have some kind of masochistic need to hear him say the words out loud.