Modern Romance August 2019 Books 1-4. Heidi Rice

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СКАЧАТЬ is my new normal, she thought weakly. The same normal which was making her breasts sting with awareness as her gaze roved unwillingly over his powerful body. Because this man has known you intimately, she realised. Known you in a way nobody else has ever done. She felt a clench of exquisitely remembered desire, low in her belly, and before she could stop them vivid images began to flood her mind as she remembered how it felt to encase him—big and hard and erect. Despite everything she’d been brought up to believe, it hadn’t felt shameful at all. It had felt right. As if she hadn’t known what it really meant to be alive and to be a woman—until Lucas Conway had entered her and she’d given that little gasp as brief pain had morphed into earth-shattering pleasure.

      Her heart was thumping so hard she was afraid he might notice its fluttering movement beneath her T-shirt and so she sat up, her fingers digging into the duvet, which she dragged up to a deliberately demure level, just below her chin. Only then was she ready to give him a cautious nod. ‘Good morning.’

      He returned the nod but didn’t return the sentiment. ‘Did you sleep well?’

      ‘Very well, thank you.’

      ‘Good.’

      They stared at each other cautiously, like two strangers forced into close proximity. Tara cleared her throat, wishing she could get rid of the sense of there being an unexploded time bomb ticking away unseen in one corner of the room. But maybe that was what babies really were. She forced her attention to the pale sunlight which splashed over the wooden floor. ‘Is it late?’

      ‘Just after eleven.’

      ‘Right.’ Her fingers didn’t relax their hold on the duvet. ‘I need to start thinking about leaving—and it’s no good shaking your head like that, because I don’t work for you any more, Lucas. You can’t just tell me no and expect me to fall in with your wishes, just because that’s what I’ve always done before.’

      His eyes narrowed and she saw the hard light of the practised negotiator enter them, turning them into flinty jade colour. ‘I wouldn’t dream of laying down the law—’

      ‘You’ve had a sudden personality change, have you?’

      He completely ignored her interjection, and didn’t respond to the humour which was intended. ‘We need to talk about where we go from here,’ he continued. ‘Just hear me out, will you, Tara?’

      Once again she shifted awkwardly but the movement didn’t manage to shift the syrupy ache between her thighs, which was making her wish that he would tumble down on top of her.

      And where did that come from?

      Since when had she become so preoccupied with sex?

      She swallowed.

       Since the night Lucas Conway had introduced her to it.

      With an effort she dragged her thoughts back to the present, wondering why he was talking so politely. He must want something very badly, she thought, instantly on her guard. ‘Okay,’ she said.

      He traced his thumb over the dark shadow at his jaw, drawing her unwilling attention to its chiselled contours. ‘Would you like coffee first?’

      ‘I’m not drinking coffee at the moment, thank you. I’ve already had some water and I think you’re playing for time. So why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me what’s on your mind, Lucas?’

      Lucas’s jaw tightened with frustration. It was easy to forget that she’d been working for him and sharing his house for years. Longer than he’d lived with anyone at a single stretch—and that included his parents. But despite the relative longevity of their relationship, Tara didn’t really know him—not deep down. Nobody did. He made sure of that because he’d been unwilling to reveal the dark emptiness inside him, or the lack of human connection which had always made him feel disconnected from the world. Now he understood what had made him the man he was. He’d been given a kind of justification for his coldness and his lack of empathy—but that was irrelevant. He wasn’t here to focus on his perceived failings. He was here to try to find a solution to an unwanted problem.

      ‘You don’t have any family, do you, Tara?’

      She flinched. ‘No. I told you at my interview that my grandmother brought me up after my mother died, and my grandmother has also since passed.’

      Lucas nodded. Had she? He hadn’t bothered probing much beyond that first interview, because if you asked someone personal questions, there was always the danger they might just ask them back. And Tara had impressed him with her work ethic and the fact that, physically, he hadn’t found her in the least bit distracting. What a short-sighted fool he had been.

      Because the truth was that she was looking pretty distracting right now—with those wild waves of hair bright against the whiteness of the pillow and her amber eyes strangely mesmeric as they surveyed him from beneath hooded eyelids.

      ‘Why don’t you put some clothes on?’ he said, shooting the words out like bullets. ‘And we’ll have this discussion over breakfast.’

      ‘Okay.’ Tara nodded, not wanting to say that she didn’t feel like breakfast—just relieved he had turned his back and was marching out of the room, wanting to be free of the terrible awareness which had crept over her skin as his green gaze had skated over her in that brooding and sultry way.

      After showering and shrugging on an enormous bathrobe, she found him drinking coffee in the wood-panelled dining room—another room which was dominated by the Manhattan skyline and she was glad of the distraction.

      ‘I can’t believe the size of this place,’ she said, walking over to the window and looking down at a green corner of what must have been Central Park. ‘Why, even the bathroom is bigger than the hostel Stella and I stayed in last Christmas!’

      ‘I’m not really interested in hearing how you saw New York on a budget,’ he drawled. ‘Just sit down and eat some breakfast, will you?’

      As she turned around Tara was about to suggest it might do him good to stay in the kind of cramped accommodation which most people had to contend with, but then she saw a big trolley covered with silver domes which she hadn’t noticed before. On it was a crystal jug of juice, a basket covered by a thick linen napkin, and on a gilded plate were little pats of butter—as yellow as the buttercups which used to grow in the fields around Ballykenna. She’d thought she wasn’t hungry but her growling stomach told her otherwise and she realised how long it had been since she’d had a square meal. And she’d been sick last night, she reminded herself.

      She walked towards the trolley to help herself but Lucas stayed her with an imperious wave of his hand.

      ‘No. I don’t want you collapsing on me again,’ he instructed tersely. ‘Sit down and I’ll serve you.’

      Tara opened her mouth to tell him she was perfectly capable of serving herself, but then a perverse sense of enjoyment crept over her as he offered cereal and eggs, fruit and yoghurt, and she sat there helping herself with solid silver spoons. Because if she allowed herself to forget her awful dilemma for a moment, this really was role reversal at its most satisfying! The food was delicious but she ate modestly, a fact which didn’t escape Lucas’s notice.

      ‘No wonder you always look as if a puff of СКАЧАТЬ