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She nodded, straightened her shoulders and got out of the car.
Cal sped off, risked parking his car somewhere it was almost certainly going to get scraped by passing traffic, because it was the only place left, then raced back to the hospital entrance, spinning through the revolving doors so fast he was half-afraid he’d end up going round twice.
‘Whoa!’ A man in a nurse’s uniform caught him by the shoulder as he stumbled out. ‘What’s the rush, mate? Cal?’
Cal took a hurried step back, scanning the man’s face as he tried to place him. ‘Harry?’
Harry Malcolm—a classmate from Lengroth Primary, before Cal’s father had pulled him out and sent him away to boarding school. His father was the postman in Lengroth, his grandmother the biggest gossip in the whole village. There wasn’t anything Enid Malcolm didn’t know about what went on in Lengroth.
Including, after this, the news that Cal Bryce had been seen at the hospital in Edinburgh with his nanny. Perfect.
Harry beamed. ‘That’s right! I wasn’t sure if you’d remember. My nan says you’re practically the Earl up at Lengroth these days. We were all surprised that you’d come back, last time I was down the pub with the old crowd.’
‘I’m not the Earl,’ Cal corrected him, scanning the lobby for any sign of Heather. Maybe she’d already gone through to wherever it was she was supposed to go. He’d have to ask. Ask anyone except Harry, that was. ‘Ryan is. I’m just his guardian.’
‘Yeah, but you’re responsible for everything that happens up there, right?’
‘Unfortunately.’ Suddenly Cal spotted a head of copper curls headed their way.
Heather. Damn. He’d never thought he’d be unhappy to see her.
He shot her a look across the lobby and she frowned. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he jerked his head away from Harry and hoped she’d got the message.
The last thing he needed to do right now was explain to Harry—and by extension to Harry’s grandmother and the rest of Lengroth—why he was visiting the maternity unit with his niece and nephew’s nanny.
‘Look—sorry, mate—but I’ve got to...’ Cal pointed vaguely in the direction of a corridor that he hoped didn’t lead to anything embarrassing.
‘Sure...right. Well, good to see you!’ Harry clapped Cal on the shoulder and wandered off—right past an annoyed-looking Heather.
‘Sorry about that.’ Cal hurried over to her the moment Harry was gone. ‘But, trust me, we did not want to be seen here together by him.’
‘Right. Whatever... Come on—we’re going to be late. It’s this way.’
Heather moved away with long strides down another corridor—one with paintings on the wall and motivational quotes in swirly fonts. Cal ignored them and kept his eyes on the copper hair in front of him and the swing of her hips.
She was angry. He could tell that much by the way her hair snaked from side to side as she walked and the force of her step. He could read her body so easily, considering he’d never even touched it.
What he couldn’t quite figure out, however, was why. Heather wanted to avoid a scandal as much as he did—so she couldn’t possibly object to him taking steps to do that, could she?
She’d tell him in her own time, he supposed. And in the meantime they had a scan to get to.
Cal quickened his step to catch her up.
* * *
She shouldn’t be annoyed. Heather knew she shouldn’t be annoyed.
But she was.
However unforeseen the circumstances, she was here for the first scan of her first child—maybe her only child. She was going to see her baby inside her. It was a special, momentous day.
Was it too much to ask for it just to be treated normally—not hidden away and treated as an embarrassment?
Apparently so.
Heather sighed. She knew what Cal had been trying to do. He’d explained about Harry and Harry’s grandmother once she’d checked in with Reception and they had been sent to sit in the waiting area. It all made perfect sense—after all, she didn’t want the whole of Lengroth talking about her and Cal, especially since there was no ‘her and Cal’.
