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But he shook his head to silence her because he needed to say it, to let it all out so it could no longer gnaw away at him.
‘I would never have found this out if you hadn’t encouraged me to find my brother,’ he said. ‘You are responsible for that, Tara. For the bond I now have with my brother. For the discovery that I have a nephew and a sister-in-law. But when I saw that family of theirs it was like a dagger to my heart.’
‘Lucas!’ she said, as if she could hardly believe he was saying stuff like this, and wasn’t there a part of him who could hardly believe it himself?
‘I realised then that I had been given the opportunity to have a loving family—with you,’ he said huskily. ‘And because of my pride and arrogance and my cold and unfeeling heart, I had probably blown it. But I’m hoping against hope that I haven’t blown it and I’m asking you to give me another chance because... I love you, Tara.’
She was shaking her head as if she didn’t believe it, but the brief clouding of her eyes told him she didn’t dare believe it and he knew he wasn’t in the clear yet.
‘I love your spirit and the way you answer me back,’ he continued softly, and his eyes crinkled. ‘Even although sometimes that trait makes me as mad as hell. I like the way you’re loyal and true and that beneath your often prickly exterior there beats a heart of pure gold.’ He swallowed. ‘The first time I made love to you, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. The way you made me feel was completely alien to me—’
She pursed her lips together. ‘That’s why you couldn’t wait to dash away the next morning and fly to New York early?’
‘Because it scared the hell out of me,’ he admitted. ‘It made me feel vulnerable, in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for years. And then, when I told you stuff I’d kept bottled up for so long and you comforted me with your arms and with your body...’ He swallowed. ‘You just rocked my world. You’re still rocking it. Even now when I told you about my real mother and father, you just accepted it calmly. I was watching your face and you didn’t seem appalled, or shocked. You didn’t start expressing fears about what bad blood I may have being passed onto our baby.’ He saw her flinch. ‘Listen to me, Tara, I know I handled it badly but I didn’t know at the time how to handle it. But now I do. I’m asking you to forgive me and telling you that since you’ve been gone my life seems empty. To tell you that I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. To give our child love and security, as well as to each other. To create a family. A real family. The kind of family which neither of us has ever had before. That is...that is if you feel you could ever love me too. So what do you say, Tara Fitzpatrick?’
Right then Tara was finding it impossible to say anything, she was feeling so choked up. Because Lucas might not be carrying a big bunch of flowers and
a diamond ring, but he was telling her he loved her and he was asking her to marry him.
But he still didn’t know, did he?
He didn’t know everything about her because she’d kept her own guilty little secrets. And although she’d tried several times to tell him about her past—hadn’t she been quietly glad when he’d cut her short? Hadn’t that given her the justification she’d needed to bury it even deeper—to act as if she were Tara Goody-Two-Shoes—in which case, perhaps she was the coward, after all.
‘I’m not the woman you think I am,’ she said slowly.
‘You’re everything—’
‘No. I’m not. Hear me out, Lucas. Please. Because this is important.’ She stood up, because it was difficult sitting there in the piercing green spotlight of his gaze. So she walked around the Doyles’ lovely old sitting room, with its faded furniture and leaf-framed view over the silvery lake, and gave a small sigh as she began her story. ‘My mother was a nurse in England when she got pregnant by someone whose name I was never told.’ Her voice grew reflective. ‘She never saw him again, so she came back to Ireland with me and I was brought up by my grandmother, while Mammy went out to work. We lived pretty much hand to mouth, in a little cottage on the outskirts of Ballykenna, and when I was two, my mother got breast cancer—’
‘Tara.’
‘No, Lucas,’ she said fiercely. ‘Let me finish. She got breast cancer and it was very aggressive. It was obviously very sad but I can’t remember much about it, or maybe I just blocked it out. She died very quickly and I was left in the sole care of my grandmother.’ She swallowed as she made an admission she’d never dared make before, even to herself. To realise that just because someone went through the mechanics of caring for you, didn’t mean that they liked you or loved you. Especially if you reminded them of their own failings.
‘She was a cold and bitter woman,’ she continued, with a wince. ‘Though it took me a long time to find out why. To discover why she hated men so much and why she used to dress me like a frump.’ She swallowed. ‘And why the other children used to laugh at me behind my back.’
‘Why?’
She drew in a deep breath. Here it was. The truth—in all its unvarnished clarity. ‘My grandmother had been a nun and my grandfather a priest and their liaison was a huge scandal at the time, because my mother was the result of that liaison. Oh, they tried to hush it up but everyone knew. And I think that some of the burden of the guilt my grandmother carried around with her must have transferred itself onto me. It’s why I was terrified of men and of intimacy until I met you, Lucas.’
She didn’t know what she expected him to do, but she’d imagined some moment of reflection while he processed what she’d just told him. As if he’d need time to come to terms with her revelation and maybe to get his head around what a massive scandal it had been at the time. But instead he was getting up out of the faded velvet chair and crossing the room with a purposefulness which was achingly familiar to her. And when he put his arms around her and pulled her close, she started to cry and once she had started she couldn’t seem to stop. The tears came hard and fast and Tara realised she was crying for all kinds of reasons. She was crying for the women of earlier generations who’d had to deal with judgement and being shunned. And she was crying for her poor dead mother who would never know her grandchild. Those tears were of sorrow, but hot on their heels came tears of gratitude, and joy—for being fit and healthy and carrying a child beneath her fast-beating heart. A child who...
She turned her wet face up to Lucas and saw compassion and love blazing from his green eyes and that gave her the courage to tell him. ‘I love you, Lucas,’ she whispered. ‘So much. And yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’
He nodded, but didn’t speak, just drew his arms around her even tighter and for now that was enough.
It was more than enough.
EPILOGUE
‘LUCAS...’ TARA GAVE a luxurious stretch as she felt the warm lips of her husband tracking over her bare stomach, making her flesh shiver into little goosebumps. Again.
She swallowed down her growing desire, because they’d only just made love, hadn’t they? Was it always going to be this good? she wondered dreamily.
‘We’ll...we’ll be late for dinner.’
‘Dinner isn’t until nine-thirty,’ he whispered. ‘You know they eat late in Argentina.’
‘Yes, but even so.’ She fluttered her fingertips to his bare shoulders. ‘We really ought to be getting dressed.’
