Modern Romance August 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

unspoken and sexual seemed to have flowered between them that night. Or would it simply seem deluded and possibly arrogant to imply that Dublin’s sexiest billionaire might be interested in someone like her?

      But something had changed. She wasn’t imagining it. The new awkwardness between them. The shadowed look around his eyes when she’d brought in his breakfast the morning after that crazy dinner, which had made her wonder if his night had been as sleepless as hers. The flickering glance he’d given her when she’d put the coffee pot down with trembling fingers before he’d announced that he was flying to Berlin later that morning and would be back in a couple of days—and could she possibly give him her answer about accompanying him to America by then?

      ‘Yes, of course,’ she’d answered stiffly, wondering why she was dragging her feet so much when she knew what she ought to say. She practised saying it over and over in her head.

       It’s a very kind offer, Lucas—but I’m going to have to say no.

       Why?

      Because... Because I’ve fallen in lust with you.

      How ridiculous would that sound, even if it weren’t coming from someone who could measure her sexual experience on the little finger of one hand?

      But it was easier to shelve the decision and even easier when he wasn’t around So Tara just carried on working and when she wasn’t working, she did the kind of things she always did when Lucas was away. She swam in his basement pool and began to tidy up the garden for winter. She made cupcakes for a local charity coffee morning and went to Phoenix Park with Stella and her young charges. She listened to Lucas’s voicemail telling her he’d be late back on Thursday night and not to bother making dinner for him.

      And still the wretched weather wouldn’t break. It was so heavy and sticky that you felt you couldn’t breathe properly. As if it was pressing against your throat like an invisible pair of hands. Sweat kept trickling down the back of her neck and despite piling her rampant curls on top of her head, nothing she did seemed to make her cool.

      On Thursday evening she washed her hair and went to bed, listening out for the sound of Lucas’s chauffeur, who had gone to collect him from the airport. It wasn’t even that late, but several days of accumulated sleeplessness demanded respite and Tara immediately fell into a deep sleep, from which she was woken by a sudden loud crack, followed by a booming bang. Sitting bolt upright in bed, she tried to orientate herself, before the monochrome firework display taking place outside her bedroom window began to make sense. Of course. It was the storm. The long-awaited storm which had been building for days. Thank heavens. At least now the atmosphere might get a bit lighter.

      Another flash of lightning illuminated her bedroom so that it looked like an old-fashioned horror film and almost immediately a clap of thunder echoed through the big house. The storm must be right overhead, she thought, just as heavy rain began to teem down outside the window. It sounded loud and rhythmical and oddly soothing and Tara sank back down onto the pillows and lay there with her eyes wide open, when she heard another crash. But this time it didn’t sound like thunder. Her body tensed. This time it sounded distinctly like the sound of breaking glass.

      Quickly, she got out of bed, her heart pounding and her bare toes gripping the floorboards. What if it was a burglar? This was a big house in a wealthy area and didn’t they say thieves always chose opportunistic moments to break in? What better time than amid the dramatic chaos of a wild thunderstorm?

      Pulling on her dressing gown, she knotted the belt tightly around her waist and wondered if she should go and wake Lucas. Of course she should—if he was back. Yet she was dreading knocking on his bedroom door in a way she would never have done before she’d agreed to have dinner with him. Back then—in that unenlightened and innocent time before she’d started to fantasise about him—she wouldn’t have been in an angsty state of excitement, wondering what she’d find. She knew he didn’t wear pyjamas because she did his laundry for him. And that was the trouble. She knew so much about him and yet not nearly enough.

      Quietly, she pushed open her bedroom door and crept along the corridor, her head buzzing. At least she’d made up her mind about how to deal with his job offer—because no way could she join Lucas in America now, not if she was harbouring stupid ideas about what it would be like to...to...

      She cocked her head and listened. Was that the creak of a footstep on the stairwell she could hear, or just the normal sounds of the big house settling down for the night? It was difficult to tell above the sound of the drumming rain. Peering over the bannister, she could see light streaming from Lucas’s room on the floor below and she crept downstairs towards it.

      She had just reached his door when a figure appeared at the top of the stairs and Tara nearly jumped out of her skin when she realised that Lucas was standing there wearing nothing but a pair of faded denims, which he had clearly just slung on, because the top button was undone. And his chest was bare. Gloriously and deliciously bare—his washboard abs as beautifully defined as the powerful curves of his forearms. Tara felt the sudden flip of her heart and was furious with herself—because wasn’t it shocking to be noticing something like that at a time like this? She was supposed to be investigating a night-time disturbance, not eying up her half-naked boss like some kind of man-hungry desperado.

      ‘Lucas!’ she breathed. ‘It’s you.’

      ‘Of course it’s me—who else did you think it would be? Father Christmas?’ he snapped. ‘And what the hell are you doing, creeping around the place like a damned wraith?’

      She was still flustered by the sight of him wearing so few clothes, and her reply came blurting out, the words tumbling over themselves in their eagerness to be said. ‘I... I heard a crash from downstairs and I thought it might be...’ she shrugged ‘...a burglar!’

      ‘And you thought the best way to deal with some potentially violent nutter was to confront him with nothing more effective than an indignant look in your eyes?’ His gaze bored into her. ‘Are you out of your mind, Tara?’

      Tara licked her bone-dry lips. Yes, that was a pretty accurate description of the way she was feeling right now. But she could hardly tell him the reason why, could she? She could hardly explain that her fixation about him had been so great that it hadn’t left room in her head for anything else, and certainly not common sense. ‘So what was the crash?’ she questioned. ‘Did you find out?’

      Lucas scowled, aware that his body was hardening in a way which was not what he wanted to happen. And the reason for his suddenly urgent desire was the most perplexing thing of all. Tara was standing there in some passion-killer of a dressing gown, which looked as if it had been made from an old bedspread, and yet a powerful sexual hunger was pumping through his veins. It defied all logic, he thought—just as his behaviour had done in the few days since they’d been apart. He’d been busy in Berlin, buying fleets of electric cars and planning to lease them out to businesses at a highly profitable rate. He’d had several high-powered meetings with the German transport minister and had been taken to an entrancing Schloss, situated outside the capital, where busty blondes had served them foaming tankards of beer. Yet all the time there had been a constant soundtrack playing in his mind as if it was on some infernal loop and giving him no peace. It had begun with Tara and ended with Tara and had involved plenty of X-rated images of how her pale and freckled body might look if it were naked in his bed.

       Why the hell was he thinking so graphically about a woman he’d never even given a second glance to before?

      Somehow he managed to drag his thoughts back to the present, realising that she was regarding him with a question in her eyes, and somehow he managed to dredge up a memory of what she’d asked him. ‘It was something breaking in the kitchen,’ he informed her tightly. ‘You’d left a window in the pantry open and the wind made some figurine fall.’

      ‘Oh, dear.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’d better go and tidy it up.’

      ‘No. Leave it until morning,’ he said firmly. ‘You shouldn’t be clearing up broken china at this time of night—though