of such a gesture in his eyes, because she nodded and began to stumble towards her sports car in her spindly and impractical heels. He stood at the door and watched her leave, a gesture which might have been interpreted as one of courtesy but in reality it was to ensure that she really did exit the premises in her zippy little silver car, which shattered the peace as it sped off in a cloud of gravel.
He glanced up at the heavy sky. The weather had been oppressive for days now and the dark and straining clouds were hinting at the storm to come. He wished it would. Maybe it would lighten the oppressive atmosphere, which was making his forehead slick with sweat and his clothes feel as if they were clinging to his body. He closed the door. And then he turned his attention to his growing vexation as he thought about his interfering housekeeper.
His temper mounting, Lucas went downstairs into the basement, to the kitchen—which several high-profile magazines were itching to feature in their lifestyle section—to find Tara Fitzpatrick whipping something furiously in a copper bowl. She looked up as he walked in and a lock of thick red hair fell into her eye, which she instantly blew away with a big upward gust of breath, without pausing in her whipping motion. Why the hell didn’t she get it cut so that it didn’t resemble a birds’ nest? he wondered testily. And why did she insist on wearing that horrible housecoat while she worked? A baggy garment made from some cheap, man-made fibre, which he’d once told her looked like a relic from the nineteen fifties and completely swamped her slender frame.
‘She’s gone, then?’ she questioned, her gaze fixed on his as he walked in.
‘Yes, she’s gone.’ He could feel the flicker of irritation growing inside him again and, suddenly, Tara seemed the ideal candidate to take it out on. ‘Why the hell did you let her in?’
She hesitated, the movement of her whisk stilling. ‘Because she was crying.’
‘Of course she was crying. She’s a spoiled woman who is used to getting her own way and that’s what women like her do when it doesn’t happen.’
She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something and then appeared to change her mind, so that her next comment came out as a mild observation. ‘You were the one who dated her, Lucas.’
‘And it was over,’ he said dangerously. ‘Months ago.’
Again, that hesitation—as if she was trying her hardest to be diplomatic—and Lucas thought, not for the first time, what a fey creature she was with her amber eyes and pale skin and that mass of fiery hair. And her slender body, which always looked as if it could do with a decent meal.
‘Perhaps you didn’t make it plain enough that it was over,’ she suggested cautiously, resting her whisk on the side of the bowl and shaking her wrist, as if it was aching.
‘I couldn’t have been more plain,’ he said. ‘I told her in person, in as kind a way as possible, and said that perhaps one day we could be friends.’
Tara made a clicking noise with her lips and shook her head. ‘That was your big mistake.’
‘My big mistake?’ he echoed dangerously.
‘Sure. Give a woman hope and she’ll cling to it like a chimp swinging from tree to tree. Maybe if you weren’t so devastatingly attractive,’ she added cheerfully, resuming her beating with a ferocity which sent the egg whites slapping against the sides of the bowl, ‘then your exes wouldn’t keep popping up around the place like lost puppy dogs.’
He heard the implicit criticism in his housekeeper’s voice and the tension which had been mounting inside him all week now snapped. ‘And maybe if you knew your place, instead of acting like the mistress of my damned house, then you wouldn’t have let her in in the first place,’ he flared as he stormed across the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.
Know her place?
Tara stopped beating as her boss’s icy note of censure was replaced by the sound of grinding coffee beans and a lump rose in her throat, because he’d never spoken to her that way before—not in all the time she’d worked for him. Not with that air of impatient condemnation as if she were some troublesome minion who was more trouble than she was worth. As she returned his gaze she swallowed with confusion and, yes, with hurt—and how stupid was that? Had she thought she was safe from his legendary coldness and a tongue which could slice out sharp words like a knife cutting through a courgette? Well, yes. She had. She’d naively imagined that, because she served him meals and ironed his shirts and made sure that his garden was carefully weeded and bright with flowers, he would never treat her with the disdain he seemed to direct at most women. That she had a special kind of place in his heart—when it was clear that Lucas Conway had no heart at all. And wasn’t the fact of the matter that he’d been in a foul mood for this past week and growing snappier by the day? Ever since that official-looking letter had arrived from the United States and he’d disappeared into his office for a long time, before emerging with a haunted look darkening the spectacular verdant gleam of his eyes?
She ran a wooden spoon around the side of the bowl and then gave the mixture another half-hearted beat. She told herself she shouldn’t let his arrogance or bad mood bother her. Maybe that was how you should expect a man to behave when he was as rich as Lucas Conway—as well as being the hottest lover in all of Ireland, if you were to believe the things people whispered about him.
Yet nobody really knew very much about the Dublin-based billionaire, no matter how hard they tried to find out. Even the Internet provided little joy—and Tara knew this for a fact because she’d looked him up herself on her ancient laptop, soon after she’d started working for him. His accent was difficult to figure out, that was for sure. He definitely wasn’t Irish, and there was a faint hint of transatlantic drawl underpinning his sexy voice. He spoke many languages—French, Italian and Spanish as well as English—though, unlike Tara, he knew no Gaelic. He was rumoured to have been a bellhop, working in some fancy Swiss hotel, in the days before he’d arrived in Ireland to make his fortune but Tara had never quite been able to believe this particular rumour. As if someone like Lucas Conway would ever work as a bellhop! He was also reputed to have South American parentage—and with his tousled dark hair and the unusual green eyes which contrasted so vividly with his glowing olive skin, that was one rumour which would seem to be founded in truth.
She studied him as the machine dispensed a cup of his favoured industrial-strength brew of coffee. He’d had more girlfriends than most men had socks lined up in a top drawer of their bedroom, and was known for his exceptionally low boredom threshold. Which might explain why he’d dumped the seemingly perfect Charlotte when she—like so many others before her—had refused to get the message that he had no desire to be married. Yet that hadn’t stopped her sending him a Valentine’s card, had it—or arranging for a case of vintage champagne to be delivered on his birthday? ‘I don’t even particularly like champagne,’ had been his moody aside to Tara as he’d peered into the wooden case, and she remembered thinking how ungrateful he could be.
Yet it wasn’t just women of the sexy and supermodel variety who couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Men liked him, too—and old ladies practically swooned whenever he came into their vicinity. Yet through all the attention he received, Lucas Conway always remained slightly aloof to the adulation which swirled around him. As if he was observing the world with the objectivity of a scientist, and, although nobody would ever have described him as untouchable, he was certainly what you might call unknowable.
But up until now he’d always treated her with respect. As if she mattered. Not as if she were just some skivvy working in his kitchen, with no more than two brain cells to rub together. The lump in her throat got bigger. Someone who didn’t know her place.
Was that how he really saw her?
How others saw her?
She licked lips which had suddenly grown dry. Was that how she saw herself? The misfit from the country. The child who had grown up with the dark cloud of shame hanging over her. Who’d been terrified people were going to find her out, which was why she had fled to the city just as soon as she was able.
She