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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. Why not reclaim the city of his youth and enjoy it as he had never been able to do before?
With a quick glance at his watch, he set off by foot to meet the real-estate agent. He walked along Fifth Avenue, his body tensing as he stared up at the Flatiron building he hadn’t seen since he’d been, what...fourteen? Fifteen? That had been the last time he’d spent his school vacation here. That particular homecoming had ended in the usual violence when his father had raised his fist to him but Lucas had turned his back and simply walked away, trying to block out the sound of the other’s man’s taunts which
had been ringing in his ears.
‘Not man enough to fight?’
It had been a flawed assessment because for the first time ever, Lucas had felt too much of a man to fight back. He’d filled out that summer and his muscles had been hard and strong. The almost constant sport he’d done at his fancy Swiss boarding school had made him into a fine athlete and deep down he knew he could have taken out his adoptive father, Diego Gonzalez, with a single swipe.
And the reason he hadn’t was that because he was afraid once he started, he wouldn’t know when to stop. That he would keep punching and punching the cruel bully who had made his life such a misery.
So he had carried on walking and not looked back. The only other time he had returned had been for his mother’s funeral, when the two men had sat on opposite sides of the church without speaking. With the cloying scent of white lilies making him want to retch, Lucas remembered staring at the ornate scrolling on the lavish coffin, realising he’d never really known the woman he’d thought at the time had given birth to him. And he had been right, hadn’t he? He hadn’t known her at all.
But he wasn’t going to dwell on that. He had spent his life rejecting the past and he wasn’t going to change that now.
Deliberately focussing his attention on the here and now, he saw a woman standing up at the lights in front of him and the tawny colour of her hair made him think about Tara, even though that was something else he had decided was off-limits. He’d told himself that it had been a mistake. That maybe it had happened because he’d been thrown off-balance by what had lain ahead of him in New York. But at least he had let her down gently and no real harm had been done. And as she’d said herself—she’d had to lose her virginity some time.
Yet his eagerness to put her out of his mind hadn’t been the plain sailing he’d expected. His night-time dreams had been haunted by memories of her slim, pale body and the delicious tightness he’d encountered as he had entered her. He would wake up frustrated and angry—with a huge erection throbbing uncomfortably between his thighs.
He still couldn’t quite believe he’d had sex with her—his innocent housekeeper. Someone who, despite her fiery curls, had always seemed to blend into the background of his life, so that he hadn’t regarded her as a woman at all—just someone to cook and clean and scrub for him. But she’d been a woman that night in his bed, hadn’t she? All milky limbs and hair which had glowed like fire as the storm had flashed through the sky with an elemental force which had seemed to mimic what had been taking place in his bed. He found himself recalling the passion with which she’d kissed him and the eagerness with which she’d fallen into his arms. And then the unbelievable realisation—of discovering he was her first and only lover.
How could he have been so reckless?
His uncomfortable preoccupation was interrupted by the vibration of the cell-phone in his pocket and when he pulled it out his fingers froze around the plastic rectangle as he saw the name which had flashed up onto the screen. He shook his head in slight disbelief, as if his thoughts had somehow managed to conjure up her presence.
Tara.
Quickly, he calculated the time in Dublin and frowned. Getting on for ten in the evening, when normally she would have been laying the table for his breakfast, before retiring to her room at the top of the house. Of course, he wasn’t there to make breakfast for, so she was free to do whatever she wanted, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she was ringing him.
Why was she ringing him?
He couldn’t think of a conversation they could possibly have which wouldn’t be excruciatingly uncomfortable, but, despite wanting to let the call go to voicemail, he knew he couldn’t ignore her. He might wish he could take back that night and give it a different outcome but that wasn’t possible. And she’d been a faithful employee for many years, hadn’t she? Didn’t he owe her a couple of minutes of conversation, even if it was going to be something of an ordeal? What if there’d been a burglary—a bone fide one this time, not just some holy statue crashing to the floor in the middle of a storm?
He felt an unmistakable wave of guilt as his thumb hit the answer button. ‘Tara!’ he said, his voice unnaturally bright, and he thought how usually he would have greeted such a call with a faint growl—the underlying message that he hoped she had a good reason for ringing. ‘This is a surprise!’
‘Is it a bad time to ring?’
She sounded nervous. Maybe she was remembering that other time when she’d called him and he’d been abroad, with a model called Catkin. Despite the warning look he’d given her, Catkin had picked up his phone and answered it, her voice laughing and smoky with sex. He remembered Tara’s stuttering embarrassment when she’d finally come on the line and the way the model had sniggered beside him, loud enough to be heard. And with that loathsome demonstration of feminine cruelty, she had unwittingly put an end to their relationship.
‘I’m dodging pedestrians on Fifth Avenue, Tara,’ he said lightly. ‘So you may have trouble hearing me above all the traffic noise.’
‘Oh.’
She sounded flat now and he thought how their easy familiarity seemed to have been replaced by an odd new formality as he asked a question which sounded more dutiful than caring. ‘Nothing’s wrong, I hope?’
Her response was cautious. As if she was picking out her words—like someone sorting through the loose change in their pocket while searching for a two-euro coin. ‘Not exactly.’
