Hello all! Hope this finds you well! Thank you for the overwhelming response to this story! I hope you all like this update! if you have a chance leave a review please!

They took their time preparing their teas. Each mulling over what to say to the other, each a little lost as to how they felt in this situation.

"You look well, Elsie." Charles said quietly, breaking the stifling silence.

"As do you Charlie, as do you."

"You're daughter is as brilliant as you are. I wasn't aware you had married, though I'm not surprised you kept your name." Charles rambled.

"Charles, I never married. Never found someone that measured up, so I raised Isla on my own, building my business on my own. My mam came down and helped of course, but she was in Scotland helping with Becky's children most of the time. But Isla and I, we did fine on our own."

"So Isla's father isn't in the picture at all?"

"It would be strange if he were considering I didn't tell him about her." Elsie said with a bite in her tone.

Charles leaned back and studied her, " I never pegged you for keeping that kind of secret from a man."

"By the time I knew I was pregnant, he was getting married and his fiancé was pregnant, too."

Charles face twisted in confusion. He was trying to put things together when Elsie interrupted him.

"Anyway, the past is the past, no sense in mulling it over. Now, normally I wouldn't let my daughter work with an author from another publishing firm, but since it will help her career, I suppose it would be best." Elsie said with an air of finality.

"I thank you for that. Isla is smart as a whip. She knows what I want and gets it done the first time around, much like I recall her mother did." He said with a sparkle in his eye.

"How's Alice?" Elsie blurted out.

"We got divorced about two years ago, just before William started uni at Sunderland, of all places. Any way, he stayed with me when Alice moved to Spain." Charles explained heavily.

"Ahh. Well I'm very sorry."

"I'm not, not really, I let the wrong girl go all those years ago for a woman who has cheated on me constantly for the last 16 years of our marriage." Charles said laying his hand over Elsie's.

"Charles, we can't."

"Why ever not?"

"Because there are things you don't know, things I'm afraid you would never forgive."

"Elsie, it should be me asking you for forgiveness! You've done nothing wrong. It was me who broke our relationship."

She closed her eyes, willing the tears away. This wasn't how she had planned on telling him, but he was forcing her hand. "Charles, I...Isla is your daughter."

His head started to spin, mind racing of lost time and anger and other emotions...

Elsie panicked at the look on his face, "I wanted to contact you, I phoned Robert to get in touch but he told me you had gotten married! And that you had had a little boy, and were happy. I didn't want to make you choose."

He spluttered, face turning red, thinking about how hateful Alice had been to him. How the blues had gotten a hold of her, and how much he had missed in not having Isla in his life. He clutched his chest, and fell to the floor unconscious. Elsie fell to his side, dialing an ambulance. She held his hand while speaking to the operator. The tears in her eyes fell as she willed him to be okay. She needed to apologize, she needed to fix things. She needed him. And more importantly,her daughter needed the time with her father.

Thanks for reading! Also this was unbeta'd so an and all mistakes are my own