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Except mentally debating the provenance of furniture was far easier than telling the man sitting behind it that she’d had a one-night stand with his dead brother. Before he was dead. Obviously.
Oh, this was going to go badly.
‘You’re not from the agency?’ Mr Bryce repeated. ‘Then who exactly are you? And, more importantly, who were you to my brother?’
Did he already know? Maybe Ross had done this sort of thing all the time. Maybe she was just the latest in a line of women his brother had taken ‘meetings’ with over the last couple of months.
Heather took a deep breath, and began. ‘My name is Heather Reid,’ she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze. ‘About two months ago I met your brother, Ross, in a nightclub in London and spent the night with him. And now I’m pregnant with his child.’
A child who would never know their father. Heather clutched at the arm of the chair as reality hit home now the words were out in the open. Ross was dead. The vibrant, laughing, charming man she’d spent the night with was gone. More importantly, her child’s father was dead.
He might have been an adulterous liar, but she wouldn’t wish death on anybody. Especially since it meant she was all alone in this now.
Even if Ross had thrown her out of the castle she’d have always known that her child had a father he or she could go to later, if they needed to. That there was someone else in the world that they belonged to.
And now there was only her. And her baby’s uncle, sitting on the other side of that damn desk, staring at the rubber duck she’d placed between them.
His expression had hardly changed, she realised. Whatever he was feeling about her revelation, it wasn’t shock. Which told her a lot more about Ross’s general behaviour than she liked.
‘Mr Bryce?’ she said, when he didn’t answer.
‘Cal,’ he said tiredly, rubbing a hand over his forehead. ‘My name is Cal Bryce.’
‘Right. Um... Cal, then.’ She waited. Still no response. ‘Do you want to... I don’t know...see some ID or something?’
Cal’s eyebrows rose slowly as he turned his gaze back on her. ‘For you or for the baby?’
Heat flushed to her cheeks. ‘Right. Obviously you’ll want some sort of DNA test at some point—which is fine. I mean, for all you know I’m some random woman who read about your brother’s death and came here to try it on and get some money out of you. Except I’m not.’
Cal was looking at her as if that was exactly what he thought she was, now she came to mention it. Heather couldn’t really blame him. She was not good at this.
‘Oh! I have one thing that might help...’ She pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress and scrolled back through the photos to find the one she wanted before holding it out over the desk to show him.
His eyes darkened as he stared at the photo of her and Ross, surrounded by the dim lights and noise of that London bar, both grinning into the lens as he’d held the phone out to snap the picture. Something to remember him by, he’d said.
Turned out she really didn’t need the photo.
Cal sat back, looking up again, over her shoulder, and Heather took the phone back. This couldn’t be pleasant for him, either.
Although, he wasn’t the one who might throw up the sandwich she’d eaten on the train any second now, because of a load of stupid hormones, so her sympathy only went so far.
‘Do you believe me?’ she asked quietly, when he still said nothing.
‘Yes,’ Cal replied. ‘The lawyers will want the test, of course, but, yes. I believe you. I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.’
Heather gave him a small, lopsided smile. ‘You and me both.’
He wasn’t that much like Ross, now she’d got past the looks, Heather decided. Ross hadn’t stopped talking the whole time they were together—about himself, about her, about places he’d been or wanted to go—yet he still hadn’t managed to say any of the things that really mattered.
Cal, after his initial pitch for the nanny job, had been practically silent ever since she’d broken the news.
But he believed her. That was a big thing. She was clinging on to that.
