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Zac had actually forgotten it was his birthday, and hadn’t celebrated one since he was eighteen, but his extended family refused to believe this and every year the envelopes continued to arrive. The surprise parties and dinner invitations, which usually involved balloons, drunken speeches and the inevitablesuitablewoman. Zac made a point of having a full diary the days either side of his birthday, or rather Arthur did.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘No, trying to make light of a tense situation,’ the other man responded, wincing slightly as another bellow permeated the room.
Zac shared his pain.
‘The maid is new. She thought she was showing initiative,’ he continued drily. ‘I have removed the banner from the library, and the balloons your sister...?’ He paused, brow crinkling.
‘It doesn’t matter which one,’ Zac cut back quickly. The list of possibilities was long.
Sometimes it seemed endless. He found himself comparing himself to Liam, who had had no living relatives. Zac had them in abundance, he didn’t lack sisters, and when you added the nieces and nephews, he sometimes struggled to match the child with the right parent. The entire tribe seemed to live in each other’s pockets, and tried to pull Zac into their social circle, which had got larger as the years progressed.
His youngest half-sister was ten and his oldest stepsister twenty-nine. The oldest and several in between had children of their own from within marriages and outside. There were the partners that brought their own offspring from previous relationships: they had one divorce, one remarriage and several reconciliations between them...also a handful of affairs.
Zac steered clear of the soap opera that was their lives, not because he did notcarefor his family—he did—but they were incapable of recognising boundaries any more than a puppy was. They shared everything and he, and his inability to reciprocate, hurt them. Both sides of the equation benefited from an emotional distance.
The idea of introducing any woman who shared his bed to his family was his nightmare scenario. Bed-sharing suited Zac very well. He’d tried to explain to his family that he had no desire for a partner to share his life with but they insisted that he’d change his mind once he found the right person.
His mother had found the right person in Kairos, his stepfather, and look how well that had ended. Too young to recall the details, he remembered the yelling and rows and then, worse somehow, the utter total silence as they had moved on to the indifference phase, not an experience he ever intended to enjoy. So, yes, he was looking out for the right person so that he could cross the street to avoid her.
He was willing to concede therewerehappy marriages, but it would seem getting to that point involved kissing a lot of frogs and paying divorce lawyers through the nose.
After his parents’ eventual amicable divorce after wedded disharmony, Zac’s stepfather, Kairos, went on to have what was, or at leastappearedto be, a very happy marriage and four children with his second wife. The way the volatile pair argued sometimes made him wonder if those children, who, unlike himself, were all biologically Kairos’s own, were the reason the marriage had lasted.
Not that Kairos had ever treated his cuckoo in the nest any differently, but Zac alwaysknewhe was different—the consciousness ofhowdifferent never left him. He had been taking a step back, keeping himself apart, all his life rather than maintain a pretence of being an integral part of this happy family.
It was an open secret, the world knew that Kairos was not his biological father, and occasionally the media speculation about who his actual father was would surface. Would some enterprising investigative journalist one day follow the breadcrumbs to the juicy truth?
He was prepared, but he knew that his mother was not. The face she presented to the world gave no hint of her vulnerability. Escaping his father to save him had been the actions of a brave woman, a proud woman. If the history became known people would see her as a victim and Zac knew that was her worst nightmare.
The full story was known only to Kairos, Zac and his mother, so no one outside realised just how generous Kairos had been in treating Zac as his own. To take on any man’s child was a big thing, but the child of a father like his...that took a great man, which his stepfather was.
The Greek shipping line billionaire had been even-handed with all his children, or, as his biological children put it, mean and miserly to the people he should care for most. That was their reaction to the news that their father’s intention was to leave his fortune to various charities. They would not starve but they would have to make their own way in the world as he had.
Zac took the view that it was Kairos’s money, and what he did with it was his business. In a way it had been a relief. He didn’t want to take any more from the generous man and no golden spoon meant no expectation, no restrictions. As there were no footsteps to follow, he could be himself, and, unlike his stepsiblings, Zac had a hunger for success.
Strictly speaking, Zac was meant to spend an equal time with both parents as he grew up, but in reality he hadn’t. His mother’s next three husbands had not considered his presence a plus, and Zac could see where they were coming from! Zac had hit six feet at thirteen and carried on growing. If you added his physical six feet of teenage angst to his fiercely protective attitude towards his mother, he could not have been a relaxing presence. The situation had meant he’d actually spent more time with Kairos, who moved between Greece, London and the Norwegian home that they euphemistically referred to as a cabin. The amount of time he spent with his mother and the children she had with each of her husbands was limited.
Seven half-and stepsiblings, the number of nephews and nieces growing yearly, and all of them, even those that could not write yet, sent him birthday and Christmas cards.
‘Sorry, this noise is—’ He took a deep breath. Even miracle-maker Arthur couldn’t make a baby stop crying—couldanyonestop this baby crying?
When the older man didn’t meet his eyes, and cleared his throat, Zac knew it could not be good news. ‘About the noise, boss...’
‘Yes, I know, I’ll speak to the nanny again...’
‘The nanny has handed in her notice, a family situation apparently.’
Zac closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten...a pointless exercise as ten thousand would not solve this problem. For the first time in his life Zac could not see beyond the problem or even a way around.
Liam was gone.
‘Sir?’
Zac shook his head to free himself of the statement that still didn’t make sense. The funeral hadn’t made it seem any more real, but it was real.
Zac had broken a leg once playing soccer and walked off the pitch. Pain was something to be conquered, but this pain was different, this pain was visceral.
