Page 66 of The Cottage in the Highlands

I allowed this revelation to sink in. “And the son mentioned by your grandfather in the letter?”

“My father, Carl.”

I slotted and pieced together these fragments of information. I pinned him to his seat with a disapproving look. “You knew this the first time I told you about the letter. You realised it was your grandfather who wrote it. So why didn’t you say anything then? Why did you deny knowing him?”

Why had he just disappeared with these secrets?

Flynn’s jaw, dusted with a hint of dark stubble, tightened. “Well, I’m telling you now.”

I could feel my irritation burning. “You could have saved me time and hassle by being honest from the beginning.”

His level stare back made me prickle in my seat. “I’m not in the habit of speaking to journalists. Well, not anymore.”

I arched my brows. What did that mean?

“Anyway, that’s your job, isn’t it? To investigate and uncover things?” He raised one black brow at me and my cheeks flushed. Arrogant sod!

“It still would have been appreciated if you had told me this at the start.”

I thought back to our previous phone conversation. “So why now? You still haven’t explained. Why agree to talk to me?” A thought occurred to me. “It was when I told you about Lily’s heart condition, wasn’t it?”

His fingers twiddled with the cup of macchiato in front of him.

“Your conscience told you that you had to say something.”

His dark lashes dashed against his cheeks as he glanced away. He shrugged and tried to look indifferent. “I knew I wouldn’t get any peace if I didn’t speak to you. All those Facebook messages and the emails…”

I stared levelly across the table. “And that was the only reason?”

“Does the reason why matter?”

I eyed him. “Your grandfather wrote this letter to Lily in 1973.”

“While he was married to my grandmother, no less.” Flynn ground his white teeth.

“Is your grandfather still alive?”

Flynn surprised me by breaking into a dry laugh. “Oh yes. He’s still alive all right.”

I took a considered sip of my tea. “From what the letter says, he and your grandmother moved to Africa because of her charity work?”

Now it was Flynn’s turn to take a mouthful of his coffee. “That’s what I was told by my parents.”

I surveyed him and the tense angle of his shoulders.

“He’s not worth it,” ground out Flynn, slamming his cup down on its saucer, drawing a couple of curious glances from another occupied table.

I blinked at him in surprise. “What makes you say that?”

He gave me another level stare.

“So, you’re not close to your grandfather?”

Flynn’s generous mouth twisted up at one corner. “Not exactly. If you mean did he try and win me a goldfish at the fair or play model trains with me, then the answer is no.” Flynn gave me a dry smile. “My family are what you might call buttoned-up. They don’t go in for public displays of affection.”

From the little slivers of information Flynn was revealing, it sounded like he and his grandfather shared the same name but nothing else. They didn’t sound like the Waltons, put it that way.

“He keeps the rest of us at arm’s length,” he added with a bored air.