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‘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.
