‘Heather, I really don’t have time—’
‘Then make time.’
Something in her voice obviously caught his attention because he looked up, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.
He looked exhausted, Heather realised. Not just tired, but worn thin and on the edge of everything. The fine lines around his eyes were suddenly more pronounced, and the shadows under them were grey and heavy.
‘Cal!’
Heather hopped up again and moved around to the other side of the desk, leaning against it so he had to sit back in his chair to look up at her.
Food could wait. This was more important.
‘Tell me. What’s going on?’
* * *
What was going on? Everything—all at the same time. And he couldn’t focus on any of it because he kept seeing the soft smile on Heather’s face as she’d looked at her scan picture in the car on the way home, or remembering the way she’d hugged him and whispered ‘thank you’ in his ear afterwards.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d started dreaming about her, too. And those dreams were far less chaste than his memories... Everything he wanted and couldn’t have.
‘Heather... I can’t talk about it.’
How could he tell her how much he wanted her now—when this damn reporter was arriving next week and his lawyer had told him there wasn’t a thing he could do about it unless he wanted to repay a hell of a lot of money and deal with articles in the magazine speculating on why the Bryce family were so secretive about what was going on at Lengroth Castle these days.
That would only lead them to reinvestigating the circumstances of Ross’s death, and Cal wasn’t sure any of them wanted to know what they might find out.
He definitely didn’t. Which was why he hadn’t asked any more questions before now.
Heather’s fingers smoothed across his forehead, cool to the touch and instantly calming. Cal took a deeper breath and found himself relaxing against all his instincts.
‘I think you need to talk about it,’ she said softly. ‘Because it’s eating you up. I think maybe we’ve both not talked about things for too long.’
Cal looked up and met her bright green gaze and knew she was right. Ignoring things hadn’t got either of them very far up until now.
Apparently she saw something in his expression that gave her encouragement, because she shifted closer—so near that if he just reached out and let go he would have her in his arms in a heartbeat.
‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ Heather whispered, and Cal felt something open up inside him.
Floodgates, perhaps. Or a door in the walls he’d built up to keep his family’s secrets inside. For a moment he felt again as if Heather was standing on those stupid seventeen steps up to the castle door, a rubber duck tucked under her arm, knocking on the ancient wood and asking to come inside.
And, just like last time, he let her in.
‘I’m thinking that my whole family is a curse.’ Seeing her look, he corrected himself. ‘Not the children—although who knows? Give them time... They probably don’t have any more chance of avoiding the family legacy of scandal than I do.’
‘I think you’re doing pretty well,’ Heather said.
Cal stared up at her incredulously. ‘Are you kidding? I’m sitting here trying to cover up all my brother’s misdeeds—just like all the Bryce men before me—and pretending they didn’t happen, that people weren’t hurt, and that we shouldn’t have to pay for our mistakes because we have a castle and some money.’
He looked up at her, flinching at the pity in her eyes. Didn’t she realise he was doing exactly the same thing to her?
‘Look at you,’ he murmured, taking her hand. ‘I’m hiding you away in this castle, pretending you’re not pregnant by my own brother, letting you help raise his orphaned kids and hiding from anyone who might figure out the truth.’
‘So this is about the guy you bumped into at the hospital?’
Harry and his gossipy grandmother. Did she honestly think that was all that was eating him alive from the inside?
Cal shook his head. ‘It’s not about Harry. It’s about this damn castle. It’s about Daisy and Ryan. And it’s about...’ He trailed off. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t put that on her. She had more than enough to deal with right now, without bringing his inability to control his libido into the mix.