LITMIR.BIZ

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was a complete stranger to me. And I once found one of her diamond studs when it was wedged into the floorboards of the dining room and she bought me a nice big bunch of flowers as a thank-you present. So what was I expected to do when she turned up today with mascara running all down her cheeks?’ She glared at him. ‘Turn her away?’

      ‘Tara—’

      ‘Do you think she was in any fit state to drive in that condition—with her eyes full of tears and her shoulders heaving?’

      ‘Tara. I seem to have missed something along the way.’ Lucas put his untouched coffee cup down on the table with as close an expression to incomprehension as she’d ever seen on those ruggedly handsome features. ‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’

      Tara still didn’t know. Was it something to do with the dismissive way her boss’s gaze had flicked over her admittedly disobedient hair when he’d walked into the kitchen? As if she were not a woman at all, but some odd-looking robot designed to cook and clean for him. She wondered if he would have looked like that if Mona O’Sullivan had been standing there whipping him up a cheese soufflé, with her high heels and her luscious curves accentuated by a tight belt.

      But you dress like a frump deliberately, a small voice in her head reminded her. You always have done. You were taught that the safest way to be around men was to make yourself look invisible and you heeded that lesson well. So what do you expect?

      And suddenly she saw exactly what she might expect. More of the same for the countless days which lay ahead of her. More of working her fingers to the bone for a man who didn’t really appreciate her—and that maybe it was time to break out and reach for something new. To find herself a job in a big, noisy house with lots of children running around—wouldn’t that be something which might fulfil her?

      ‘I’ve decided I need a change of direction,’ she said firmly.

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      Tara hesitated. Lucas Conway might be the biggest pain in the world at times, but surely he would give her a glowing reference as she’d worked for him since she’d been eighteen years old—when she’d arrived in the big city, slightly daunted by all the traffic, and the noise. ‘A new job,’ she elaborated.

      He narrowed his stunning eyes—eyes as green as the valleys of Connemara. ‘A new job?’

      ‘That’s right,’ she agreed, thinking how satisfying it was to see the normally unflappable billionaire looking so perplexed. ‘I’ve worked for you for almost six years, Lucas,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Surely you don’t expect me to still be cooking and cleaning for you when you reach retirement age?’

      From the deepening of his frown, he was clearly having difficulty getting his head around the idea of retirement and, indeed, Tara herself couldn’t really imagine this very vital man ever stopping work for long enough to wind down.

      ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you so rudely,’ he said slowly. ‘And that is an apology.’

      ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ she agreed. ‘But maybe you’ve done me a favour. It’s about time I started looking for a new job.’

      He shook his head and gave a bland but determined smile. ‘You can’t do that.’

      Tara stilled. It was a long time since anyone had said those words to her, but it was the refrain which had defined her childhood.

       You can’t do that, Tara.

       You mustn’t do that, Tara.

      She had been the scapegoat—carrying the can for the sins of her mother and of her grandmother before her. She had been expected to nod and keep her head down, never to make waves. To be obedient and hard-working and do as she was told. To stay away from boys because they only brought trouble with them.

      And she’d learned her lessons well. She’d never been in a relationship. There hadn’t been anyone to speak of since she’d arrived in Dublin and had gone on a few disastrous dates, encouraged by her friend Stella. She tried her best to forget the couple of encounters she’d shared with one of the farm hands back home, just before she’d left for the big city and landed the first job she’d been interviewed for. The agency had warned her that Lucas Conway was notoriously difficult to work for and she probably wouldn’t last longer than the month but somehow she had proved them wrong. She earned more money than she’d ever imagined just by keeping his house clean, his shirts ironed and by putting a hot meal in front of him, when he wasn’t gallivanting around the globe. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, was it?

      On that first morning she had slipped on her polyester housecoat and, apart from a foreign holiday every year, that was where she’d been ever since, in his beautiful home in Dalkey. She frowned. Why did Lucas even own a place this big when he lived in it all on his own, save for her, carefully hidden away at the top of the vast house like someone in a Gothic novel? It wasn’t as if he were showing any signs of settling down, was it? Why, she’d even seen him recoil in horror when his friend Finn Delaney had turned up one day with his wife Catherine and their brand-new baby.

      ‘You can’t stop me from leaving, Lucas,’ she said, with a touch of defiance. ‘I’ll work my month’s notice and you can find someone else. That won’t be a problem—people will be queuing up around the block for a job like this. You know they will.’

      Lucas looked at her and told himself to just let her go, because she was right. There had been dozens of applicants for the job last time he’d advertised and nothing much had changed in the years since Tara had been working for him, except that his bank balance had become even more inflated and he could easily afford to hire a whole battalion of staff, should the need arise.

      But the young redhead from the country did more than just act as his housekeeper—sometimes it felt as if she kept his whole life ticking over. She didn’t mind hard work and once he had asked her why she sometimes got down on her hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor, when there was a perfectly serviceable mop to be had.

      ‘Because a mop won’t reach in the nooks and crannies,’ she’d answered, looking at him as if he should have known something as basic as that.

      He frowned. She wasn’t just good at her job, she was also reliable, and no laundry could ever press a shirt as well as Tara Fitzpatrick did. It was true that sometimes she chattered too much—but on the plus side, she didn’t go out as often as other young women her age so she was always available when he needed her. If he asked her to cook when he had people over for dinner she happily obliged—and her culinary repertoire had greatly improved since he’d arranged for her to go on an upmarket cookery course, after pointing out there were other things you could eat, rather than meat pie. As far as he knew, she never gossiped about him and that was like gold to him.

      He didn’t want her to leave.

      Especially not now.

      He felt the pound of his heart.

      Not when he needed to go to the States to deal with the past, having been contacted by a lawyer hinting at something unusual, which had inexplicably filled him with dread. A trip he knew couldn’t be avoided, no matter how much he would have preferred to. But the attorney’s letter had been insistent. He swallowed. He hadn’t been back to New York for years and that had been a deliberate choice. It was too full of memories. Bitter memories. And why confront stuff which made you feel uncomfortable, when avoidance was relatively simple?

      Lucas allowed his gaze to skim down over the old-fashioned denim jeans Tara wore beneath her housecoat. Baggy and slightly too short, they looked as if they’d be more appropriate for working on a farm. No wonder she’d never brought a man back in all the time she worked for him when injecting a little glamour into her appearance seemed to be an unknown concept to her. And wasn’t that another reason why he regarded her as the personification of rock-like reliability? She wasn’t surreptitiously texting when she should have been working, was she? Nor gazing into space vacantly, mooning over some heartbreaker who’d recently let her down. Despite

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