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nothing could alter the painful truth that the child he had cradled as a newborn baby in his arms had no biological connection to him.
Aboard his private jet, Leandro phoned Henry’s headmaster and was reassured by the news that an X-ray had shown that the boy did not have any broken bones. Arriving in Paris, he drove straight to the hospital and was escorted to the private room where Henry was lying in bed. He was deathly pale, but managed a grin when he saw Leandro.
‘Papa. My shoulder hurts.’
Leandro felt a knife blade twist in his heart. ‘We decided you would call me Leo instead of Papa,’ he reminded Henry gently. ‘I’ve spoken to the doctor and he said your collarbone isn’t broken, but you have sprained the ligaments in your shoulder. There is not a lot that can be done to treat the injury—you just have to rest it and give it time to heal. You can be discharged and I’ll take you back to the apartment for the rest of the weekend, if your mother agrees.’
‘Cool. Can we have pizza for dinner?’
‘I’m glad your appetite hasn’t been affected,’ Leandro said drily.
‘Maman is on holiday in Barbados, with my real father, so Monsieur Bergier phoned you. I knew you would come.’ Henry’s expression clouded. ‘I wish you were my papa, Leo.’
The knife in Leandro’s heart cut deeper. ‘We’ll always be best buddies. That will never change.’ He rearranged Henry’s pillows. ‘The painkillers the nurse gave you should start working soon, so try and sleep while I go and phone your mother. I expect she is worried about you.’
‘I don’t suppose she is,’ Henry said matter-of-factly. ‘She and Dominic will be having too much of a nice time on holiday to think about me.’
‘That’s not true.’ Leandro gritted his teeth and forced himself to go on. ‘Your mother and...and father care about you very much.’
He stepped out of the room and swore savagely beneath his breath. Nicole had told Henry six months ago that Dominic Chilton was his real father, but instead of choosing to spend time with the boy, as a family, she and her lover had gone on a month’s holiday to the Caribbean.
Leandro hated feeling helpless, but he could not protect Henry from his mother’s casual approach to parenting. He remembered how rejected he had felt when he was a boy and his mother had failed to turn up when she was supposed to visit him—either because she had forgotten or because she was too busy. Disappointment and hurt that neither of his parents had much time for him had been constant features of his childhood, and his concern that Henry felt the same sense of abandonment meant that Leandro had to bite back his anger when he spoke to his ex-wife.
‘There’s no reason for me to rush back to Paris if Henry’s injury is not serious,’ Nicole stated. ‘Dominic and I only arrived in St Lucia a few days ago, and it’s the first chance I’ve had to relax and enjoy a break.’
It was on the tip of Leandro’s tongue to ask Nicole what she needed a break from, when her life consisted of shopping and beauty salon appointments. But he was bitterly aware that he had no legal rights to Henry, and that if he antagonised Nicole she could prevent him from maintaining a relationship with the boy. She would not care that Henry had declared that he wanted to stay in regular contact with ‘Uncle Leandro’.
The hatred Leandro had felt for his ex-wife when he had discovered how she had deceived him had turned to contempt, and he only half listened to her whining that Dominic was facing demands for a huge divorce settlement from his wife. His thoughts strayed to Marnie, and he was struck by the contrasting characters of his ex-wife and his current mistress.
He had missed Marnie while he’d been in New York—and not only in bed, he admitted. Logically he knew he should not allow their affair to continue for much longer. A year was at least six months too long to keep a mistress. An alarm bell sounded in his mind as he acknowledged that he did not want to end the affair just yet, but he assured himself that it was because the sex was good.
Now that he was no longer so worried about Henry he was able to relax, and thinking of the passionate sex life he enjoyed with Marnie evoked an ache in his groin. He felt bad that he had hurt her feelings at the party. Would it compromise the rules he had set for their affair if he gave her a token to show that he valued her being his mistress? He frowned as he tried to think of a suitable gift. Jewellery was too emotive, and he did not want her to think that his emotions were at all involved, but flowers were too impersonal. And he usually sent flowers to his mistresses when he dumped them.
It would be useful if he knew of any hobby Marnie enjoyed, but he had no idea what she did in her spare time when she wasn’t working as a cocktail waitress. She was just there in the background of his life, always cheerful and smiling as she handed him a martini when he arrived home from work, and always as eager for sex as he was at any time of the day or night. She was the perfect mistress, Leandro acknowledged.
He recalled that earlier in the summer they had spent a week cruising the French Riviera on his yacht, and one starlit night after they had made love outside on the deck Marnie had said that she liked looking at the stars. Problem solved—he would buy her a book about stargazing. A book was the sort of gift that showed he had thought about her, but not too much.
Satisfied with his reasoning, Leandro zoned back to his ex-wife’s conversation. He was instantly bored but, although it irked him, he had to be diplomatic with Nicole, and it was a few more minutes before he was able to end the call and return to Henry’s bedside.
‘IT’S SUCH A shame Leandro couldn’t come to the wedding. Your uncle and I were looking forward to meeting him.’ Marnie’s aunt, Susan, who was her mother’s sister, smiled at her across the buffet table at the wedding reception. ‘You said he had to dash off to Paris unexpectedly?’
‘Yes, his friend was hurt in an accident but I don’t know any more details,’ Marnie murmured. She had hoped that Leandro would phone her, but she hadn’t heard from him since he left London two days ago.
‘Perhaps you and Leandro will visit when he has a free weekend?’ Aunt Susan suggested. ‘I’m serious about wanting to meet him. You are my sister’s only daughter, and for Sheena’s sake I’d like to be sure that you’ve met a decent man who will look after you.’
‘I don’t need anyone to look after me. I had to take care of myself after Dad left, and Mum was...’ Marnie grimaced. ‘Well, you know how she was. Sometimes her depression was so bad that she didn’t get out of bed for days on end.’
Her aunt sighed. ‘I wish I’d known the extent of Sheena’s mental health problems. I think she must have been devastated when she found out your father was having an affair.’
‘Mum warned the twins and me that Social Services would take us into care if we told anyone about her depression.’
‘Things must have been worse for Sheena after the accident. Poor Luke...twenty was far too young to die,’ Aunt Susan murmured. ‘Have you heard from Jake?’
Marnie shook her head. ‘I last saw him about five years ago. He admitted he was taking drugs because he couldn’t cope with losing Luke. He asked me for money but I didn’t have any. It was a struggle to manage on Mum’s welfare allowance and the small amount I earned from my part-time job while I studied for my A levels.’
Thinking about her brothers was painful, and tears stung Marnie’s eyes. Growing up, she had adored the twins, who were two years older than her. They had been a happy family—especially when her father had been at home from his job as a long-distance lorry driver. But he had struggled to cope with her mother’s depressive illness, and when Marnie was eleven her dad had abandoned his wife and children and stopped paying the mortgage on the family’s comfortable house.
With their mother unable to work because of her depression, she, Marnie and her brothers had been moved to the estate and the twins