Modern Romance August 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

was straining very slightly across the bust. A pulse hammered at his temple. ‘It’s not really very suitable for serving guests.’

      ‘But you never complained when I wore it in Dublin!’

      ‘In Dublin, you came over as someone mildly eccentric—while here you’re in danger of being classified as some kind of screwball.’

      ‘Some kind of screwball,’ she repeated, in a hollow voice. ‘Is that what you think?’

      He wasn’t surprised to see her face whiten but he was surprised how uncomfortable it made him feel. ‘No, it’s not what I think and it wasn’t meant to be an insult, Tara,’ he amended hastily. ‘Anyway, there’s a simple solution.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ she said moodily.

      ‘Sure. You can go shopping. Get yourself some new clothes. It’s fixable. I’m happy to pay for whatever it takes.’

      He thought that a man might reasonably expect to see a woman’s eyes light up at the prospect of a lavish buying expedition when someone else was paying. But Tara failed to oblige. He could see her biting her lip and for one awful moment he thought she was going to cry and that made him feel oddly uncomfortable. Her face screwed itself up into a fierce expression but when she spoke, her voice was quite steady.

      ‘Whatever it takes,’ she repeated. ‘You’re saying you want me to buy new clothes to make sure that I look the part—whatever the part is?’

      ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ He flicked her unruly curls a glance. ‘And maybe you could do something about your hair while you’re at it.’

      She drew herself up very straight. ‘So what you’re really saying is that you want to make me look nothing like myself?’

      ‘That’s a rather dramatic summary of what I just said, Tara. Think of it as making the best of yourself for once.’

      ‘You certainly seem to have been giving it some thought.’ Suddenly that fierce look was back. ‘Yet you didn’t even bother asking me what the doctor said when I went to see him yesterday, did you, Lucas?’

      Lucas met the accusation in her eyes, his body growing tense. He knew he was still in denial about impending fatherhood. That he was doing what he always did when confronted with something he didn’t want to deal with, or which caused him pain. He blocked it. Locked it away. Stored it in a dark place never to be examined again. But you couldn’t keep doing that when there was a baby involved. No matter how much he tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He kept thinking that one morning he was going to open his eyes and discover that he was the same Lucas as before, one with no ties or commitments.

       And that was never going to happen.

      And lately he’d been experiencing the occasional flicker of curiosity—uneasy little splinters of thought which spiked away at him at the dead of night when he lay in bed, aching for Tara. He kept remembering the final line of the letter written by the woman who had subjected him to a life of misery. His mother. Except that she was not his real mother, despite the fact that she had spent her life pretending to be. Surely no real mother would have treated their child with such disregard and cruelty. And surely no real mother would have tried to justify their behaviour with the flimsiest of excuses. His mouth hardened with contempt. She had done it because she was desperate for the love of a man who didn’t really want her. Because she had put her desire for Diego Gonzalez above everything else, hopelessly pursuing it with single-minded determination which had pushed her adopted son into the shadows. And that was what people did for love, he summarised bitterly as he processed the accusation Tara had just thrown at him. They manipulated and they lied.

      ‘Okay. Tell me. What did the doctor say?’ he said.

      But his dutiful question seemed to irritate her more than please her and she answered it like someone recounting the words by rote. She and the baby had been pronounced perfectly healthy, she told him tartly, and she had been booked in for a scan the following week. Her eyes had narrowed like a watchful cat. ‘Perhaps you’d like to accompany me, Lucas?’

      ‘We’ll see,’ he said, non-committally, pulling back the cuff of his shirt to glance at his watch. ‘I have a meeting scheduled, so I’d better run. And in the meantime, do you want to organise yourself a shopping trip?’

      Tara met the faintly impatient question in his eyes and tried to tell herself he wasn’t being unreasonable, though in her heart she wasn’t sure she believed it. But then, she was mixed up and confused and out of her depth in so many ways. Frightened about the future and unsure about the present. Every morning she awoke to a slew of different emotions but she’d refused to let them show, knowing that bravado was the only way of surviving this bizarre situation.

      Her feelings about Lucas didn’t help and she thought how much easier it would be if she didn’t want him so badly. If only she could blind herself to the certainty that he could break her heart. She sighed, because in many ways she couldn’t fault him. He had accepted her demand for no intimacy with composure and then hadn’t she driven herself half mad wishing he hadn’t accepted it quite so calmly? Perhaps she’d imagined he would come banging on her door at night, demanding she let him in. Or just walk in without asking, slide in between her sheets and take her into his arms. And wasn’t there a big part of her that wished he would adopt such a masterful role and take the decision right out of her hands?

      But no. He’d found this apartment within walking distance of Central Park—with the assistance of the intimidating Brandy—and had booked her in to see a wonderful obstetrician in Lexington, who had immediately made her feel at ease. In some ways their familiar working pattern had simply been transferred to a brand-new setting, except that here she had no bicycle because even she had to concede that in New York it was too dangerous.

      Yet despite their superficial compatibility, she recognised that he was still a stranger to her. Despite that one-off night of intimacy, she knew no more about Lucas Conway than when they’d been living in Dublin. Back then it hadn’t been relevant—but now she was carrying his baby and it was. Didn’t she have the right to know something about him?

      ‘If I agree to smarten up my appearance to fit in with your billionaire image...’ she hesitated, lifting her gaze to his ‘...will you agree to do something for me?’

      His green gaze was shot with cynicism. ‘Ah. This sounds like bargaining territory to me.’

      ‘Maybe it is—but that’s irrelevant. Because I know nothing about you. Do you realise that, Lucas? You’re the father of my baby and yet you’re practically a stranger to me...’ As her words tailed off she heard a trace of vulnerability in her own voice. Did he hear it too? Was that why his face darkened? But he relented, didn’t he? Even if he did clip out the words like bullets.

      ‘What do you want to know?’

      Everything. But Tara sensed that if she asked for too much, she would get nothing at all.

      ‘What was in that letter?’ she questioned suddenly.

      ‘The letter?’ he said, and she knew he was playing for time.

      ‘You know very well which letter. The one you received just before you came out here.’

       The one which made you act so strangely and look so haunted.

      She hesitated and said it exactly as it was. ‘Which made you look so angry. Who was it from, Lucas?’

      It was then that Lucas realised just how much Tara Fitzpatrick did know about him. Probably more than any other living person. His mouth hardened. But that was the thing about having a housekeeper. You thought they just existed in the shadows of your life. You thought they were there simply to enable things to run smoothly—but in reality they were watching you and listening to you. Absorbing all the comings and goings like a detached observer. And although her pregnancy meant Tara could no longer be described as detached—didn’t that make her entitled to know the truth?

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