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After all his hard work, Liam had been living the dream,hisdream, the IT business he’d built from scratch, the beautiful, sweet wife and the child he’d longed for, and it had all been snatched away.
And people still believed in happy endings? Continued to look for love when falling in love seemed to mean massive disillusionment or loss.
The last time he had spoken to Liam, his friend had been going to the hospital to pick up Emma.
‘I told you I’d marry her, didn’t I, Zac, when she walked into that bar?’
‘You did indeed, and I laughed.’ Because only fools and Liam believed in love at first sight.
‘Em laughed too. She thought I was insane...’ he had reminisced, his voice warm as he’d spoken of his wife. ‘Emma doesn’t want to come home without the baby, but they just need to keep your godson in a few more days. You will, won’t you, be godfather, Zac?’
A card, one of the garish home-made variety, fluttered to the floor. He bent and picked it up, crushing it in his hand as he did so, pushing away the sound of his friend’s voice and wondering if the time would come when he would be unable to recall it.
A bleakness settled over him as he shoved the crumpled card into his trouser pocket before gesturing to the rest. ‘Just bin them, will you?’
‘Certainly. The nanny...?’
‘Get in touch with the agency...no, I’ll do it.’ It would be some compensation to let them know how low his level of satisfaction with them was.
In the underground garage, Zac had just got behind the wheel of his sleek designer car when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen ID and switched the engine back off before putting the phone on speaker.
‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’
‘No, it’s fine, Marco.’ Liam had been his first employee and Marco had been his first well...verywell-heeled tenant back in their uni days, the only two friendships forged back then to survive the transition from student life to the real world.
‘Sorry I couldn’t get to the funeral. Kate—’
‘Liam would have understood,’ Zac cut in immediately.
Crown Prince Marco Zanetti got straight to the point, a characteristic that Zac had always approved of in the other man.
‘I need your help, Zac. I know you have a lot on your plate at the moment with the baby... How is it going?’
‘Work in progress.’
‘If you can’t or don’t feel able, just say.’
‘Don’t worry, I will,’ Zac promised drily, knowing full well that, had the situation been reversed, the Crown Prince of the island kingdom of Renzoi would do anything for him, no questions asked. Zac had few close friends, and now one less.
‘So how can I help?’
Marco told him and Zac heard him out before responding.
‘So Kate was adopted?’ An image of his friend’s beautiful new red-headed bride flashed into his head. ‘She never knew she had a twin?’ That must have been quite a discovery to make, he mused.
‘Identicaltwin. When the marriage broke up she stayed with the father and Kate went with her mother.’
‘What did they do, pull straws?’ He was no father, not in the real sense, but for Zac the idea of parents dividing up a family as though they were a record collection was incomprehensible.
‘I asked myself the same thing,’ Marco admitted, his voice hard as he added, ‘The records I have seen suggest the mother was desperate to keep both girls, but the father threatened a custody battle. The bastard admitted, boasted during our last conversation that he split them to punish their mother, told her he’d get both, prove her unfit.’
Zac swore, adding. ‘But surely he wouldn’t have stood a chance!’
‘Probably not but she knew how convincing he can be and could she risk losing both babies? Awful choice to make.’
‘She died?’
‘And he refused to take Kate back—seems she was always sniffing and crying—his words.’
