Which meant he had to be persuasive. And he had to follow the plan he and Mrs Peterson had cooked up the night before.
1. Offer her more than she can get anywhere else
2. Make it completely conditional on her finishing the six weeks
3. Don’t mention the ghost
Easy.
‘Okay, Miss...’ he consulted the notes from his call with the agency ‘...Thomas. Here’s the deal. My niece and nephew need a reliable, effective and capable nanny for the next six weeks of the school holidays, until they leave for boarding school in England. Your agency says that you’re up to the job, and I have to believe them. So I’m going to make you an offer you won’t get anywhere else. If you stick out six weeks here at Castle Lengroth, and get the children prepared physically, mentally and emotionally for boarding school, I’ll pay you for a full year’s work at your agency base rate. But if you quit before the six weeks are up you get nothing.’
The redheaded nanny opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then she said, ‘I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding—’
Cal cut her off before she could get any further. That was another thing he and Mrs Peterson had agreed on—not giving her too much time to overthink things. He knew that the agency nannies talked to each other—they probably had their own message group on social media or something—so she almost certainly already knew the situation here.
The last nanny had quit before she’d even made it into the castle, when ten-year-old Daisy had thrown a bucket of soapy water over her from the nursery window above the front steps. Cal wasn’t risking losing this one before she even met the devil children.
‘I know what you must have heard from your predecessors, Miss Thomas,’ he said, smiling as charmingly as he could, given what was on the line here. ‘I can’t imagine it’s many families that go through eight nannies before they find the right one. But I have an excellent feeling about you,’ he lied.
‘Eight nannies?’ she echoed faintly, and Cal cursed himself for mentioning it. It sounded so much worse spelt out like that.
‘The children have been through a lot since their parents died nearly two months ago,’ he said, defensively. ‘It’s natural that they’re acting out a bit. And, in fairness, seven of the eight said it wasn’t the children that drove them away, it was the ghost.’
Dammit. I wasn’t supposed to mention the ghost.
In the doorway, Cal saw Mrs Peterson throw up her hands in despair and turn to leave, closing the door behind her. Obviously she knew a lost cause when she saw one.
But the new nanny didn’t even seem to register his mention of a supposed supernatural being haunting the castle. Probably because she was a sensible person who didn’t believe in ghosts and was going to accept his offer. He hoped.
‘Eight nannies in less than two months?’ she said incredulously.
Then her pale face turned somehow even whiter. Cal resisted the impulse to check over his shoulder for the ghost.
‘Wait, their parents...? The Earl of Lengroth, Ross Bryce, and his wife...?’
‘Yes. My brother, Ross, and my sister-in-law, Janey,’ Cal confirmed, confused.
She sank into the chair opposite him without being invited to do so. Since she looked as if she might fall over otherwise, Cal didn’t object. He probably should have asked her to sit before he’d hit her with the terms of the job, actually.
‘They died? When?’
She placed the rubber duck on the desk absently. Really—who brought a rubber duck to a job interview?
‘Almost two months ago,’ Cal repeated, since the information clearly wasn’t going in.
She couldn’t be a local girl if she didn’t know that already, although he’d guessed that from her accent anyway. It had been a mere blip of a mention in the national news—a blink-and-you’d-miss-it piece. But locally it had dominated the newspapers for weeks.
‘June,’ she said softly, and bit down on her lip. ‘It must have been just after I—’ She broke off and shook her head, copper curls rustling.
‘Miss Thomas. Tragic though my brother’s passing is...’ Cal swallowed hard at the memory, hearing Mrs Peterson’s panicked voice all over again ‘...I really think we should get back to the matter in hand. Your position as nanny to my niece and nephew.’
She looked up, her green eyes bright. ‘And I think, Mr Bryce, that we need to start over. You see, I’m not Miss Thomas from the agency, and I’m not here for the nanny position. I’m here about your brother.’
And suddenly Cal knew that his faith in his perfect older brother was about to take another hit.
One it might not be able to recover from.
THE YOUNGER, EVEN more handsome Bryce brother stared at her across the desk—some sort of family heirloom, Heather supposed, given the weight and colour of it. The rubber duck clashed horribly with the surroundings, bringing a sense of surrealism to the whole scene.
As if it wasn’t absurd enough already.
Don’t get distracted by the desk. Or the duck. Focus on what you’re here to do.
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...