Modern Romance August 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

to find her sitting white-faced in the kitchen—that the whole horrible truth came tumbling out, though it still needed a little prompting.

      ‘So. Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Tara?’ her friend demanded. ‘About why you’re looking so awful and acting so distracted?’

      Licking her tongue over bone-dry lips, Tara prepared to say something she was glad her grandmother wasn’t alive to hear. Or her mother for that matter. ‘I’m...pregnant.’

      There were a few astounded seconds while Stella appeared to be having some difficulty digesting what she’d just been told. ‘I wasn’t aware you were seeing anyone,’ she said at last, carefully. ‘Have I missed something?’

      And here it was. The horrible reality. Did she try to dress it up into acceptable bite-sized chunks so that her friend might understand? Tara wondered desperately. No, there wasn’t a single chunk of this which could in any way be described as acceptable. In the end she managed to condense it down into a couple of bald sentences which she still found difficult to believe.

      ‘I had sex with Lucas,’ she said. ‘And I’m expecting his baby.’

       ‘You had sex with Lucas Conway?’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘You’re kidding me?’

      ‘I’m afraid I’m not.’

      Stella shook her head from side to side, her thick black hair gleaming in the autumn afternoon sunshine. ‘I wasn’t even aware you fancied him!’ she exclaimed, blinking at her in astonishment. ‘Or that you were his type!’

      ‘I didn’t. And I’m not.’

      ‘So what happened?’

      Tara shrugged and the bitter taste in the back of her throat only intensified. ‘I still can’t quite work it out.’

      ‘Well, try, Tara.’

      Tara worried her teeth into her bottom lip before meeting her friend’s incredulous gaze. ‘He said something pretty mean to me, which focussed me into thinking I should get a new job.’

      ‘Which I’ve been saying to you for ages,’ said Stella darkly.

      ‘He told me he didn’t want me to leave—’

      ‘Please don’t tell me he seduced you so you’d change your mind?’

      Tara shook her head. ‘Of course he didn’t. It wasn’t like that.’

      ‘Then just how was it, Tara?’

      How could you put into words something which had flared between the two of them over dinner that evening? Something which had changed the way they were with each other, so they’d suddenly gone from being boss and employee to a man and a woman who were achingly aware of the other? Even if you could, it wasn’t something you’d dare admit to a friend, for fear of coming over as slightly deranged—or even stupid. Both of which were probably true in her case. ‘It just happened,’ she said simply. ‘I can’t explain it.’

      There was a pause and Stella’s eyes bored into her. ‘So now what happens?’

      This was the question which really needed answering and Tara knew that there was no alternative than to face the thing she was dreading more than anything else.

      ‘I’m going to have to go to New York and tell him.’

       CHAPTER FIVE

      THE WORLD AS he knew it had just come to an end but Lucas kept his expression blank as he finished reading the letter the attorney had given him. It had shocked and sickened him—the final sentence dancing before his eyes—but somehow he kept it together. He could feel the punch of his heart and the faint clamminess at his brow, but his hands were steady as he folded the piece of paper carefully and slipped it back inside the envelope.

      ‘Do you have any queries, Mr Conway?’ the lawyer was asking him. ‘Anything you’d like to discuss with us, regarding the contents?’

      A million things, thought Lucas grimly—and then some. But they were the kind of questions which couldn’t be answered by some anonymous attorney he could see was burning up with curiosity. Not when he could manage to work out the most important bits for himself.

      And suddenly it was as if a heavy mist had lifted and everything which made up the sometimes confusing landscape of his past suddenly become clear. It explained so many important things. Why his ‘father’ had always been so cruel to him and why his mother...

      His mother.

      He felt a twist of something which felt more like anger than pain as finally he understood why he’d never felt as if he belonged anywhere. Because he didn’t. His parents were not his parents and he was not the man he’d thought himself to be. Everything had changed in the time it took to read that letter.

      And yet nothing had changed, he reminded himself grimly. Not really. He was still Lucas Conway, not Lucas Gonzalez. A pulse flickered at his temple. And no way was he ever going to call himself Lucas Sabato, his birth name. He shook his head. He was the man he had set out to be. A truly self-made man.

      ‘We had some difficulty tracking you down after your father’s death,’ the lawyer was saying smoothly. ‘Given that you’d changed your name and settled in Europe. And given, of course, that you were estranged from your family.’

      Behind his desk the man was looking at him with a hopeful expression, as if waiting for Lucas to put him out of his misery and reveal why he had been so keen to conceal his true identity for all these years. Lucas felt his mouth flatten.

      Because he had no intention of enlightening the lawyer.

      No intention of enlightening anyone.

      Why should he? His inner life had always been his and his alone—his thoughts too dark to share. And they had just got a whole shade darker, he realised bitterly, before pushing them away with an ease born of habit. Much simpler to adopt the slick and sophisticated image he presented to the world—the one which discouraged people to dig beneath the surface. Because who in their right mind wanted to explore certain and unremitting pain?

      Hadn’t that been one of the unexpected advantages to becoming a billionaire at such an early age—that people were so dazzled by his wealth, they didn’t stop to explore his past too deeply? Or rather, people became so obsequious when you were loaded, that you were able to control how you wanted conversations to play out. He was good at evasion and obfuscation. He didn’t even tell people where he’d been born—sidestepping curious questions with the same deft touch which had enabled him to become one of the youngest billionaires in all Ireland. His accent had helped to obscure his background, too. It had been difficult to place—his cultured New York drawl practically ironed out by years of multilingual schooling in Switzerland. And Ireland had provided the final confusing note—with the soft, lilting notes he had inevitably picked up along the way.

      ‘Thanks for all your help,’ he said smoothly as he rose to his feet, tucking the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket.

      He was barely aware of the lawyer shaking his hand or the secretary outside who stood up and smoothed her pencil skirt over her shapely bottom as he passed by, her hopeful smile fading as he failed to stop by her desk. Outside he was aware of the faint chill in the air. The reminder that fall was upon them. After a busy couple of weeks of business meetings, things had looked very different this morning when he’d lined up another apartment viewing, intending to stay in the city for a minimum of six months. Yet there was no reason to change that plan, he reminded himself. No reason at all. He hadn’t been back here in years because he hadn’t wanted to run into his father, but the man who had erroneously claimed that title was now dead and he wasn’t going to let that bastard reach out from beyond the grave and influence him any more.