Zelda hesitated, looking wrong-footed. ‘I’d have thought you’d be over the moon about the baby. But Pippa says you don’t want anything to do with it.’ Astonishment rang in her voice. ‘You’re rejecting your own child?’

His heart flinched at the accusation that he, who would have loved a baby, would ever do such a thing. ‘So, now I’ll tell you what’s shocking me – Pippa’s trying to palm a hook-up’s baby off as mine.’ Then, when Zelda’s brows shot up, he added, ‘I’m “defective”, remember. No swimmers. Firing blanks. Don’t let her drag you into her fantasy.’

Zelda turned white. ‘She said you got back together one night and a bit of a miracle happened.’ But her voice faltered and the expression in her eyes told him she’d realised she’d been had.

He snorted. ‘For a miracle to happen you’d at least have to have sex with each other, and that hasn’t happened. Pippa told me she’s pregnant and offered me the opportunity to take on the baby as my own, saying nobody need ever know I can’t father kids.’ He spread his hands. ‘I declined.’ He softened his voice. ‘I’m sorry she’s having difficulty facing your parents having to face the fact that their princess is fallible.’

Zelda crossed to the stool by the tool chest and sank down on it as if the strength had left her legs. ‘Shit,’ she murmured. ‘Sorry. Why did I fall for that guff? It’s not like I don’t know Pippa. But when she cries …’

He cast a jaundiced eye at the bonnet of the Olds and hoped he wouldn’t discover a run when he got back to his work. ‘It’s like trying to resist a cute puppy, isn’t it?’ He decided to reinforce what he’d told Pippa by telling her sister, too. ‘I’ve moved on, Zelda. I’m seeing someone. I don’t want to embarrass Pippa by refuting her story to the whole village, but I will if I have to. I can’t allow her to—’ he paused to summon the correct word ‘—appropriate me, as if I’m hers for the taking. I’m not an outfit she shoved to the back of her wardrobe and now realises could be useful. She put me out on the kerb for the bin men. We’re done.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘I’m sorry you’re going to be stuck with the situation, as you live together.’

Zelda jumped to her feet. ‘That isn’t why I came to see you,’ she flashed. ‘I love Pippa.’

Grady was unmoved. ‘Of course you do. Loving a sibling doesn’t mean you love everything they do though.’