Where was Lucas? she thought, with a tinge of desperation as she sat down at a vacant table in the corner of the room and snuck a glance at her watch. And who was this woman called Brandy he’d been meeting when she’d telephoned him from the airport? She felt her self-esteem take another dramatic nose-dive as a familiar voice broke into her reverie.
‘Tara?’
Thank heavens. Her heart pounded with relief. It was Lucas and he must have entered the room without her noticing because he was standing right beside her. She could detect his subtle scent as his shadow enveloped her, making her acutely aware of his powerful body. As befitted the sophisticated environment, he was wearing a suit, a crisp shirt and a tie—but, despite the elegant exterior, Tara knew all too well what lay beneath the sophisticated city clothes.
And suddenly he was no longer her soon-to-be ex-boss who had migrated to the opposite side of the globe, but the man with whom she’d shared all kinds of intimacies. The man with whom she had lain naked—skin next to warm and quivering skin. Who had stroked her eager body with infinite precision and licked his tongue over her puckering nipples. Had she really lost her virginity to the man she’d worked for and never looked twice at for all those years? Had he really thrust deep inside her as he’d taken her innocence and introduced her to that terrible and exquisite joy? How did something like that even happen?
Her heart began to race even faster. It was one thing being in Dublin and deciding that telling him to his face was the only way to impart her unwanted news—but now she wondered if she had been too hasty. Should she have sent him an email, or a text, even though it would have been an extremely impersonal method of communicating that she was carrying his baby? Suddenly what she was about to tell him seemed unbelievable—especially here, in this setting. Because this was his world, not hers. It was quietly moneyed and privileged—and it was pretty obvious that she stuck out like some country hick with her home-knitted scarf and cheap jeans.
‘H-hello, Lucas,’ she said.
‘Tara.’
His voice was non-committal as he gave a brief nod of recognition, but as he turned to look at her properly Tara almost reeled back in shock because his face looked ravaged—there was no other word for it. The faint lines which edged his mouth seemed deeper—as if someone had coloured them in with a charcoal pencil. And despite the dim golden glow cast out by the tall light nearby, she could detect a bleak emptiness in his green eyes. As if the Lucas she knew had been replaced by someone else—a cool and indifferent stranger, but one who was radiating a quiet and impenetrable fury. Lucas was no even-tempered, angelic boss, but she’d never seen him looking like this before. What was responsible for such a radical change? Was he angry that she’d turned up without warning and was this to be her punishment—being given the ultimate cold shoulder for daring to confront him like this?
Well, his reaction was just too bad and she wasn’t going to let it get to her. She couldn’t afford to. She wasn’t some desperate ex-lover chasing him to the far ends of the earth because she couldn’t accept their relationship was over, but the woman who was carrying his baby. She needed to do this and she would do it with dignity.
‘I know this is unexpected.’
‘You can say that again.’ He sat down opposite her, loosening his tie as he did so, but his powerful body remained tense as he looked at her. ‘Have you ordered yourself a drink?’
Now was not the time to explain that she’d been too intimidated by the ambidextrous barman to dare to open her mouth, aligned with the very real fear that buying something here would eat dangerously into her limited budget. ‘Not yet.’
‘Would you like to try one of their signature cocktails?’ He fixed her with an inquiring look and she knew him well enough to recognise that his smile was forced. ‘They come with their own edible umbrella and are something of an institution.’
She tried not to look ungrateful, even though she found his tone distinctly patronising. But he was summoning a waitress who was travelling at the speed of light in her eagerness to serve him and Tara told herself not to be unreasonable. She had to look at it from his point of view. They’d had some bizarre unplanned sex and now it must look as if she were trying to gatecrash his new life. Because he still didn’t know why she was here and what she was about to tell him—and it was going to come as a huge shock when he did.
So the sooner she did it, the better.
Nervously, she cleared her throat. ‘Just a glass of water would be fine for me.’
The darkness on his face intensified, as if he had suddenly picked up on some of the tension which was making her push nervously at the cuticles of her fingernails, like someone giving themselves a makeshift manicure. He glanced up at the eager server who was hovering around his chair. ‘Bring us a bottle of sparkling water, will you?’
‘Coming right up, sir.’
And once they were on their own, all pretence was gone. The courteous civility he’d employed when asking her what she wanted to drink had all but disappeared. All that was left in its place was a flintiness which was intimidating and somehow scary, because it suddenly felt as if the man sitting opposite was a complete stranger, and Tara shifted uncomfortably on the velvet seat, dreading what she had to tell him.
‘So. I’m all ears. Are you going to tell me why you’re here, Tara?’ Those curiously empty green eyes fixed her with a quizzical look. ‘Why you’ve made such a dramatic unannounced trip?’
Tara sucked in a deep breath, wishing that the water had arrived so that she could have refreshed her parched mouth before she spoke. Wishing there were some other way to say it. She sucked a hot breath into her lungs and expelled it on a shudder. ‘I’m... I’m having a baby,’ she croaked.
There was a silence. A long silence which even eclipsed Stella’s reaction when she’d told her the news. Tara watched Lucas’s face go through a series of changes. First anger and then a shake of the head, which was undoubtedly denial. She wondered if he would try bargaining with her before passing through stages of depression and acceptance—all of which she knew were the five stages of grief.
‘You can’t be,’ he said harshly.
Tara nodded. This was grief, all right. ‘I’m afraid I am.’
‘You can’t be,’ he repeated, leaning forward so that his lowered voice was nothing more than a deep hiss of accusation. ‘I used protection.’
Tara licked her lips, pleased when the server arrived with their bottle to interrupt their combat, although the silence grew interminably long as she poured the water and it fizzed and foamed over two ice-filled crystal glasses. It was only when the woman had gone and Tara had forced herself to gather her composure long enough to take a deep and refreshing mouthful that she nodded. ‘I realise that. And I also understand that the barrier method isn’t a hundred per cent reliable.’
Incredulously, he looked at her. ‘The barrier method?’ he echoed. ‘Who the hell calls it that any more?’
‘I read it in a book about pregnancy.’
‘When was it published? Some time early in the eighteenth century?’
Tara urged herself to ignore his habitual sarcasm, which right now seemed more wounding than it had ever done before. This was way too important to allow hurt feelings and emotions to get in the way of what really mattered, which was the tiny life growing inside her. But neither was she prepared to just sit there and allow Lucas to hurl insults at her, not when he was as much to blame as she was. And I don’t want to feel blame, she thought brokenly. I don’t want my baby to have all the judgmental stuff hurled at it which I once had to suffer.
She put her glass down on the table with a shaky hand and the ice cubes rattled like wind chimes. ‘Being flippant isn’t going to help matters.’
‘Really? So do you have a magic formula for something which is going to help matters, because if so I’m longing to hear it?’
‘There’s no need
to be so...rude!’
He leaned forward so that the tiny pulse working frantically at his temple was easily visible. ‘I’m not being rude, I’m being honest. I never wanted children, Tara,’ he gritted out. ‘Never. Do you understand? Not from when I was a teenage boy—and that certainty hasn’t diminished one iota over the years.’
She told herself to stay calm. ‘It wasn’t exactly on my agenda either,’ she said. ‘But we’re not talking hypothetical. This is real and I’m pregnant and I thought you had a right to know. That’s all.’
Lucas stared at her, half wondering if she was going to suddenly burst out laughing and giggle, ‘April Fool,’ and he would be angry at first, but ultimately relieved. He might even consider taking her up to his hotel room and exacting a very satisfying form of retribution—something which would give him a brief respite from the dark reality which had been visited upon him in that damned lawyer’s office. But this was October, not April, and Tara wouldn’t be insane enough to fly out here without warning unless what she said was true. And she wasn’t smiling.
He thought about the ways in which he could react to her unwanted statement.
He could demand she take a DNA test and quiz her extensively about subsequent lovers she might have dallied with after he’d taken her innocence. But even as he thought it he knew only a fool would react in that way, because deep down he knew there had been no lover in Tara Fitzpatrick’s life but him.
He could have a strong drink.
Maybe he would—because the time it took to slowly sip at a glass of spirit would give him time to consider his response to her. But not here. Not with half of New York City’s movers and shakers in attendance and a couple of people he recognised staring at him curiously from the other side of the room. He wasn’t surprised at their expressions, because never had anyone looked more as if they shouldn’t be there than Tara Fitzpatrick, with her thick green sweater the colour of Irish hills and her striking hair piled on top of her head, with strands tumbling untidily down the sides of her pale face.
He saw that her ridiculously over-long scarf was wound around her neck—the multicoloured one she’d started knitting when she first came to work for him and which had once made him sarcastically enquire whether she ever planned to finish it. ‘I don’t know how to cast off,’ had been her plaintive reply, and he had smiled before suggesting she ask someone. But he wasn’t smiling now.
Was he ashamed of her? No. He’d broken enough rules in his own life to ever be described as a conformist and he didn’t care that his skinny housekeeper was sporting a pair of unflattering jeans rather than a sleek cocktail dress like the few other women in the bar. And besides, hadn’t he just discovered something about himself which would shock those onlookers in the bar and fill them with horror and maybe even a little pleasure at hearing about someone else’s misfortune, if they knew the truth about him? The Germans even had a phrase for that, didn’t they? Schadenfreude. That was it.
He needed to get away from these blood-red walls, which felt as if they were closing in on him, so he could try to make sense of what she’d told him. As if giving himself some time and space would lessen the anger and growing dread which were making his heart feel as heavy as lead.
‘We can’t talk here,’ he ground out, rising to his feet. ‘Come with me.’
She nodded obediently. Well, of course she would be obedient. Hadn’t that been her role ever since she’d entered his life? To carry out his wishes and be financially recompensed for doing that—not to end up in his bed while he gave into an unstoppable passion which had seemed to come out of nowhere.
‘Where are we going?’ she questioned, once they’d exited the bar and were heading back down a dimly lit corridor towards the foyer.
‘I have a room here in the hotel.’
‘Lucas—’
‘You can wipe that outraged look from your face,’ he said roughly as he slowed down in front of the elevator. ‘My mind is on far more practical things than sex, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Would you mind keeping your voice down?’ she hissed.
‘Isn’t it a little late in the day for prudery, Tara?’
‘I’m not being a prude,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘I just don’t want every guest in this hotel knowing my business.’
He didn’t trust himself to answer as he ushered her into the private elevator and hit the button for his suite. In tense and claustrophobic silence they rode to the top, his thoughts still spinning as he tried to come to grips with what she’d told him. But how could he possibly do that, when he’d meant what he said? He’d never wanted to be a father. Never. His experience of that particular relationship had veered from non-existent to violent—and he’d never had a loving mother to bail him out. At least now he knew the reason why, but that didn’t make things any better, did it? In many ways it actually made them worse.
‘In here,’ he said tersely as the doors slid noiselessly open and they stepped into the penthouse suite of the Meadow Hotel, which was reputed to command one of the finest views of the Manhattan skyline. It was growing dark outside and already lights were twinkling like diamonds in the pale indigo sky. Most people would have automatically breathed their admiration on seeing such an unparalleled view of the city. But not Tara. She barely seemed to notice anything as she stood in the centre of the room and fixed those strange amber eyes on him.
‘I came because I felt you had a right to know,’ she began, as if she had prepared the words earlier.
‘So you said in the bar.’
‘And because I felt it better to tell you face to face,’ she rushed on.
‘But you didn’t think to give me any warning?’
‘How could I have done that without telling you what it was about?’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘I wanted to see your face when I told you.’
‘And did my reaction disappoint you?’
‘I’m a realist, Lucas. It was pretty much what I thought it would be.’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘But I want you to know that this has nothing to do with any expectations on my part. I’m just giving you the facts, that’s all. It’s up to you what you do with them.’
Lucas flinched, suddenly aware of his heart’s powerful reaction as he acknowledged he was to be a father. But it clenched in pain, not in joy. ‘Brandy,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ll order strong tea for you, but I think I need brandy.’
Her reaction was not what he’d been expecting. He’d thought she might be slightly pacified by him remembering the way she liked her tea—but instead she turned on him with unfamiliar fury distorting her face. ‘Can’t you leave your girlfriend out of it for a minute?’ she flared. ‘Can’t we at least have this discussion in private without you talking to her?’
‘Excuse me?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Tara. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘You were meeting someone called Brandy when I called you from the airport!’ she accused.
It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious but Lucas was in no mood for laughing. ‘That’s the name of the house agent, not my girlfriend,’ he gritted out, but her chance remark put him even more on his guard. Was she already showing signs of sexual jealousy? Already planning some kind of mutual future which would be a disaster for them both, despite her fiery words to the contrary? Well, the sooner he disabused her of that idea, the better. ‘The drinks can wait. Why don’t you take a seat over there, Tara?’
Tara didn’t want to take a seat. She wanted to be back at home in her iron-framed bed in Dublin, where she could see the sweep of the Irish sea in its ever-changing guises. Except that it wasn’t her home, she reminded herself painfully—it was Lucas’s. She bit her lip. But it was the closest she’d ever come to finding a place where she felt safe and settled—far away from all the demons of the past. ‘I’d prefer to stand, if it’s all right by you,
’ she said stiffly. ‘I’ve been sitting on a long flight for hours and I need to stretch my legs.’
He nodded but she couldn’t miss the faint trace of frustration which briefly hardened his eyes. Was he finding it difficult to cope with the fact that, since she was no longer technically his employee, he could no longer order her around as he wanted?
‘As you wish,’ he said. His drink seemingly forgotten, he stared at her. ‘So where do we go from here?’
She wished he would show more of the emotion she’d seen in the bar a little while ago. It might have been mostly anger and negativity but at least it was some kind of feeling—not this icy and remote person who seemed nothing like the Lucas Conway she knew.
But she didn’t know him, did she? Not really. And not just because he kept so much of himself hidden that people called him a closed book. You couldn’t really know someone you worked for—not properly—because their interactions had only ever been superficial. Yes, she’d witnessed different sides of his character over the years—but ultimately she’d just been a person on his payroll and that meant he’d treated her like an employee, not an equal.
Had he ever treated his girlfriends as equals? she wondered. Judging by the things she’d witnessed over the years she would say that, no, he had not. If you were heavily into equality, you didn’t pacify dumped exes by giving them expensive diamond necklaces rather than an explanation of what had gone wrong. And you are not his girlfriend, Tara reminded herself bitterly. You are just a woman he had sex with and now you’re carrying his baby.
His baby.
Her fingers crept to touch her still-concave belly and she saw him follow the movement with the watchful attention of a cheetah she’d once seen on a TV wildlife programme, just before it pounced on some poor and unsuspecting prey.
The Argentinian's Baby Of Scandal Page 7
