knowing I can’t dispute that fact.
“You were making decisions a mother would make.”
“God,” I croak, my chin trembling with unexpected emotion at her very logical words.
“Sorry.” She laughs and pulls her hand back. “I wouldn’t speak like this to all my patients, but since you’re not my patient, I’m not afraid to tell you that I think you’d make an incredible mum.”
When Freya emerges from the bathroom, my eyes are overrun with tears. “Oh Christ, what’d I miss?” She glances back and forth between Belle and me. “Are you guys talking about Bridgerton without me?”
“I need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement I’ve just emailed you.” A woman by the name of Jane Williams says into the phone line at my office on a rather bleak Thursday evening.
It’s nearly five, and I want to go home, but this woman demanded I call her in a rather peculiar email I received moments ago.
“Why do I need to sign anything?” I ask, confused at why the fuck Zander Williams’ mother is asking me, the lawyer, to sign anything. It’s nearly eleven at night on the East Coast where she’s located in America. What the hell could be this important?
“Because I need to talk to someone, and I only trust a lawyer to actually follow the rules of an NDA. I’d rather not have to bother with suing someone who doesn’t take this seriously.”
I grip my tie curiously. “This is highly unlikely, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this.”
“You will be grateful you did it once I tell you what I’m about to tell you.”
Fuck me. This job is never-ending.
I sign the agreement in her official DocuSign site and send it back to her.
“Okay…got it. So, we’re in agreement?” she confirms.
“We’re in agreement,” I droll, expecting her to tell me that her son has impregnated twenty women, and I’m going to have to clean up that mess once he starts with us in January.
“I need you to kill the contract you have with Zander Williams.”
“Why?”
“Because Zander isn’t just a random footballer from America. His father is Vaughn Harris.”
I bark out a laugh, knowing full well the kind of entrapment situations footballers find themselves in all the time. Now, club managers usually don’t have these sorts of issues, especially if the children are grown…but…
“Listen, mate, my name is Jane Williams, and I was best friends with Vaughn’s wife, Vilma, since we were eighteen and were roommates at university. I was at the pub the night Vaughn met Vilma and swept her off her feet, I was at the Man U match he flew Vilma and a few of her friends out to on a private jet, and I was there at their wedding and her funeral. Make no mistake…this isn’t a prank call.”
The blood in my veins runs cold.
“I ran into Vaughn Harris six years after Vilma passed away, and he was just as miserable then as he was on the day he buried his wife. We were drunk, we were lonely, we were sad. We slept together, and a few weeks later, before I was due to move to America for work, I found out I was pregnant.”
“Why on earth didn’t you tell him? Or has he known this all along?” I ask, horrified equally by both thoughts.
“He has no idea, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Why?” I inquire, my jaw permanently dropped at this point.
“The whys aren’t your concern. But my son, Zander, cannot play for Vaughn’s club. He doesn’t know who his father is, but I can’t be sure that playing alongside his half-brothers won’t stir something up.”
“Christ.”
“Exactly. So…like I said…kill this contract. The Harris family needs no more headlines from what I see online.”
I frown at that, feeling defensive about a family I’ve grown to see as my own. “They’ve all settled down over the past several years.”
“You know as well as I do that this kind of news will blow all their lives up and the lives of those grandchildren they’re all popping out.”
I sigh heavily. “How the bloody hell did your son wind up being recruited by our club?”
“I don’t know, but you have to fix this. You’re the only one I can think of who can.”
When we hang up, I feel the weight of the world resting on my shoulders. Why the fuck did I sign that bloody NDA? That was fucking stupid, is what that was. Vaughn Harris has a son he doesn’t know about. A son who plays bloody football, of all