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CHAPTER ONE
THEMOMENTHEstepped out of the soundproofed sanctuary of his office Zac was hit by the nerve-shredding racket; the small window of silence had lulled him into a false sense of security. ‘Theos!’ he gritted under his breath.
It was unrelenting. How could anything so small make this much noise? he wondered as the scene of the recent handover floated through his head. There had been no noise then, the silence broken only by the voice of the woman holding the impossibly small bundle. The woman from child services had offered the child to him and Zac, who relished challenges, had frozen, his arms at his sides—a challenge too far.
The nanny had stepped into the breach, and the moment had passed. He doubted if anyone had noticed, but he had, his first test and he had failed. All he had got was a view of a mop of dark hair against the blanket the baby was bundled up in. Did he resemble his father or mother...? Zac didn’t know. He hadn’t entered the nursery yet...delaying the inevitable, he knew, but his feelings, hisanger, were still raw, and what would his presence achieve?
He was determined the child, Declan, would lack nothing growing up, except of course a mother and father. Before it could settle over him he pushed the bleakness away. His energy was better spent on dealing with the present—which involved inconsolable crying and sleep deprivation. In retrospect the nanny’s advice to dispense with the services of the night nurse after two nights had been proved both optimistic and premature, given the fact the baby had not stopped crying since.
Despite her assurances that the infant was not ill and this situation wasnormal, Zac had opted for a second opinion. The paediatrician of worldwide renown recommended by Zac’s own physician had backed her up after his house call—turned out if there was enough cash involvedeverybodydid house calls.
The medic’s patronising attitude had set Zac’s teeth on edge, but then experts who dumbed down always irritated him. An irritation that faded into insignificance when compared with this constant racket.
If the last few days had taught him anything it was that any effort to tune out the auditory assault of a six-week-old child who, in truth, had every right to sound unhappy, given his start in life, was pointless.
Not running away, more walking calmly, he told himself as he strode towards the blonde wood door and his private lift that gave access to the top-floor penthouse he occupied when in London.
His route through the normally soothing open-plan shades of white gleaming space involved a few detours to avoid the signs of the extra member of the household. The live-in nanny had looked at him blankly when he had pointed out the overspill of items from the nursery, then laughed and said cheerfully, ‘Wait until he’s walking.’ As though she thought he was joking.
He hadn’t been, and to be fair she appeared to have made an effort, or one of the other staff had. Even so the overspill included a stack of freshly laundered baby clothes on his favourite leather swivel chair, and rings on the previously spotless surface of a low glass-topped table. He stepped over a damp towel on the floor and clenched his teeth while trying and failing to tune out the nails-digging-into-a-chalkboard wail that had stepped up another painful ear-shattering decibel.
Zac liked order in all things. His life was compartmentalised, business and private, there was no messy overspill between the two, which was one of the more minor reasons he had decided never to have children of his own. This had not changed despite the fact one of the guest suites had been turned into a nursery and an en suite room for a nanny. This child did not carry his flawed DNA so, even with him as a parent, he had a chance.
Zac liked space and, while the London penthouse did not compare in size to his other homes, the ten-thousand-plus square footage of the minimalist apartment at a prestigious address was large enough to accommodate this inconvenience—at least on paper.
It had quickly become obvious that the reality was very different. Reality was something he was struggling with at the moment.
He still hadn’t got his head around the fact that Liam and his young wife were gone. It seemed surreal, and he was too busy dealing with the practicalities of being a guardian to a newborn to even think about grieving. It was all he could do to keep his anger in check.
Such a bloody waste.
If Liam had known the unspeakable, utterly impossible would happen, that he and his sweet, bubbly wife Emma wouldn’t be around to care for their son, he might have made a less sentimental and more practical decision when choosing a guardian for their first and, as it turned out,onlychild, than his friend.
But Liam always had been ruled by his heart. The first time Zac had seen him, a student like himself, Liam had been emptying his pockets to fill the charity collection tin that other students entering the union bar were pretending not to notice. Zac had stepped in when he’d found Liam counting out coins and coming up short to pay for his beer—he’d grinned and toasted Zac, calling him his guardian angel.
They had still been students when Liam had become Zac’s very first employee after Zac had spotted a gap in the market and had bought his first property to lease out to well-heeled students with no cash-flow problems.
Later, when Liam had started his own IT firm, Zac had been his first customer, not because Zac was anyone’s guardian angel, but because Liam had been the best at what he did. Sentiment and business did not mix and if this pragmatic approach meant people called him ruthless, he could live with it. In fact his reputation for playing hard ball frequently worked in his favour.
There had certainly been no guardian angel watching over Liam and Emma when the driver of an articulated truck had had a heart attack and swerved across the central reservation.
The entire family gone...though actually not. Their premature baby had been deemed not ready to come home from the hospital with his mother, or he too would have been snuffed out.
Zac was feet away from escaping through the door, running through the pros and cons of moving into a hotel until the baby stopped crying and trying not to replay those grim words—Wait until he’s walking—when he caught the gaudy display in the periphery of his vision. He could ignore a lot, but there were limits!
He opened his mouth to call only to find the man who ran his domestic life and much else besides already standing at his elbow. If Zac had believed in such things, he would have said the guy was psychic, but what he did believe in was efficiency. And Arthur, ex-military, might have gained a few inches round the middle since he’d left the service, but he had not lost any of his military bearing or his unflappable problem-solving genius.
‘A moment, boss.’
Zac was distracted from his justifiable outrage when the older man proceeded to remove earplugs from his ears.
‘Now why didn’t I think of that? You’re a genius.’
The older man gave a modest smile that tugged at the scar on his cheek but looked less than his normal buoyant self once exposed to the noise. ‘A problem?’
‘What are these?’ Zac’s finger stabbing expressed his disgust.
‘Birthday cards. Many happy returns, boss.’
