Page 104 of A Cold Hard Truth

“Sure, Sebastian. As I was saying, I fucked your cunt of an ex-wife so I could get into her apartment, into her phone, and delete the pictures she had of you gagging for a pretend cock. You’re welcome.” Rhys waved a flippant hand and scowled. “Now she’s telling Ashley she’s pregnant and we’re back at square one.”

Sebastian scrubbed his hands down his face and shoved his chair back from the table. He stood quickly, pacing to the other end of the dining room and staring up at the oil painting of his great-grandfather that hung high and centered on the wall.

“Did you find anything?” Sebastian asked.

“In your divorce paperwork?”

“Yes.” He sighed. “Is there anything we can do to make this all go away?”

“You can’t just make a baby go away, Sebastian.” Rhys chuckled. “Well, you can, but I think we’re past that now. Judging off the timing and all.”

“You told me before she’d implied it was mine, but hadn’t said as much.”

“There’s the fun part.”

Sebastian listened to the rubber soles of Rhys’s shoes squeak across the parquet floor as he approached. His older brother came to stand beside him, slightly taller, slightly more blond, thinner features, but better posture and far more elegant in his presentation than Sebastian ever would be.

“What does that mean?”

“You had no sense of self-preservation when you completed your divorce paperwork. But Howard had enough foresight to protect the family name if you refused to do anything about your own,” Rhys said.

“English, Rhys.”

“There’s not much we can do if she tells everyone it’s yours, but if she starts telling people it’s mine…”

“You said you can’t have kids.” Sebastian folded his arms across his chest and looked down at their feet.

“She doesn’t know that.”

“So I just need to call out her impossible timing?” he asked.

“It’s a delicate clause in the paperwork,” Rhys said. “She has to say something designed to draw the integrity of the St. George name into disrepute.”

“Is that literally what it says?” he balked.

“A paraphrase.”

Sebastian snorted a laugh and closed his eyes, dropping his hands and shoving them into his pockets. His fingers grazed over the beveled edge of his phone, and he wanted so much to hear Remington’s voice. But how could he explain this complicated disaster of his life to a man as simple and straightforward as Remington?

“There’s a little event tonight which I expect she’ll be at. It shouldn’t take more than a few drinks and the mere sight of you to get her going,” Rhys explained.

“I love being a pawn, Rhys.”

“You’re the most important piece of this puzzle.” Rhys bumped their shoulders together. “We’ll get what we need, take it to Howard first thing Wednesday morning, and you’ll be back to Myers Bluff before dinner. Less than a week away from home.”

“That seems to easy.”

“None of this has been easy,” Rhys said. “I don’t favor the fairer sex these days, Sebastian. You owe me a thank you.”

“Thank you for sleeping with my ex-wife,” he grumbled.

Rhys chuckled. “Now tell me about Remington.”

“I don’t want to do this with you.” Sebastian stepped away from his brother, returning to the table and pouring a glass of orange juice sans vodka.

“It was a sincere question.” Rhys lingered near the painting.

It wasn’t only that Sebastian didn’t want to talk about Remington. He didn’t know what to say. There was a part of him that worried Remington would be tainted from having his name in Rhys’s mouth, but he knew that wasn’t practical or even realistic. And Sebastian longed for a life where he could have those kinds of conversations with his brother, but that hadn’t been them for years.