Phantom Marriage

PROLOGUE

LAURENCE SHOOK HIS head as he read the investigator’s report for the second time. Frustration consumed him, along with dismay. He’d assumed his daughter would be married by now. Married with children. She was twenty-eight, after all. Twenty-eight and beautiful. Very beautiful.

His eyes moved over to the photo attached to the report, his heart filling with pride when he saw that his genes had produced a truly gorgeous creature. Gorgeous, but childless.

Such a waste!

Sighing, he returned to re-read the report.

Veronica had been engaged three years earlier to a doctor she’d met at the children’s hospital she worked in. She was a physiotherapist and her fiancé an orthopaedic surgeon. Tragically, he’d been killed in a motorcycle accident two weeks before their wedding. After that, there was no evidence of her ever dating anyone again. She didn’t even seem to have many friends. She’d become a loner, still living with her mother and not doing much of anything besides work, which she did from home now, rather than in hospitals.

Laurence understood grief. He’d been devastated when his wife of forty years had died several years ago, not of the cancer—which they’d both expected would take her, given she’d carried a dangerous cancer gene—but of a stroke. He’d retreated into himself after that, retiring permanently to the holiday home they’d bought together on the Isle of Capri, never looking at another woman, never wanting to move on, as the saying went. But he’d been seventy-two at the time of her death, not in his twenties. His daughter was still young, for pity’s sake.

But she wouldn’t stay young for ever. Men could father children for a long time, but women had a biological clock ticking away in their bodies.

As a geneticist, Laurence knew all about human bodies and human genes. His in-depth knowledge on the subject was the reason behind his having donated his sperm to Veronica’s mother in the first place. His gesture had been inspired more by hubris than caring, however. Male ego. He hadn’t wanted to go to his grave without passing on his oh-so-brilliant genes.

Laurence shook his head from side to side, remorse filling his soul, as well as guilt. He should have contacted his daughter after Ruth died. Then he would have been there for her when her fiancé had been killed.

But it was too late now, he accepted wretchedly.

He was dying himself—ironically, of cancer. Liver cancer. Too late to do anything, really. His prognosis was not good. Advanced liver cancer was not very forgiving, though he only had himself to blame. After Ruth had died, he’d drunk far too much for far too long.

‘I did knock,’ a male voice intruded. ‘But you didn’t answer.’

Laurence looked up and smiled.

‘Leonardo! How lovely to see you. What brings you home so soon after your last visit?’

‘It’s Papa’s seventy-fifth birthday tomorrow,’ Leonardo said as he walked along the terrace and sat down in the afternoon sunshine, sighing appreciatively as he gazed out at the sparkling blue Mediterranean. ‘Dio, Laurence. What a lucky man you are to have a view like this.’

Laurence glanced over at his visitor with admiring eyes. How well Leonardo looked. How handsome. And how full of life. Of course, Leonardo was only thirty-two, and a man of many talents—not least of which was everything women would find both fascinating and irresistible.

This last thought evoked a deep thoughtfulness.

‘Mamma said she invited you to the party but you declined. It seems you have to go back to England tomorrow to see your doctor.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Laurence agreed as he folded the report carefully so that Leonardo couldn’t see it. ‘My liver’s playing up.’

‘You do look a little jaundiced. Is it serious?’

&

nbsp; Laurence shrugged. ‘At my age, everything is serious. So, have you to come to play chess and listen to some decent music, or to try to buy my home again?’

Leonardo laughed. ‘Can I do all three?’

‘You can try. But my answer to selling this place will be no, as usual. When I’m dead and gone you can buy it.’

Leonardo looked startled, then uncharacteristically sombre. ‘I hope that won’t be for some years yet, my friend.’

‘That’s kind of you to say so. Now, do you want me to open a bottle of wine or not?’ he asked as he rose from his chair, carrying the report with him.

‘Are you sure that’s wise, under the circumstances?’

Laurence’s smile was wry. ‘I don’t think a glass or two is going to make much difference at this stage.’

CHAPTER ONE