The Argentinian's Baby 0f Scandall (One Night With Consequences) Read online

  “I’m...pregnant.”

  The consequence of his seduction!

  Housekeeper Tara Fitzpatrick is always as efficient and professional as possible. Until her billionaire boss, Lucas Conway, looks at her with a fiery intensity she just can’t resist. Only now Tara has the mortifying task of flying to New York to tell him—a renowned bachelor whose least favourite word is family—that their electrifying night in his bed had the most scandalous of consequences!

  Follow Cinderella to glamorous New York!

  Lucas’s baby.

  Tara’s fingers crept to touch her still-concave belly, and she saw him follow the movement with the watchful attention of a cheetah she’d once seen on a TV wildlife program, just before it pounced on some poor and unsuspecting prey.

  “How...pregnant are you?” he questioned, lifting that empty gaze to her face.

  He said the word pregnant like someone trying out a new piece of vocabulary, which was rather ironic given that he was such a remarkable linguist. And Tara found herself wanting to tell him that it felt just as strange for her. That she was as mixed-up and scared and uncertain about the future as he must be. But she couldn’t admit to that because she needed to be strong. Strong for her baby as well as for herself. She wasn’t going to show weakness because she didn’t want him to think she was throwing herself in front of him and asking for anything he wasn’t prepared to give.

  One Night With Consequences

  When one night...leads to pregnancy!

  When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire, it’s impossible to think past the morning after!

  But with the sheets barely settled, that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test, and it doesn’t take long to realize that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!

  Only one question remains:

  How do you tell a man you’ve just met that you’re about to share more than just his bed?

  Find out in:

  The Venetian One-Night Baby by Melanie Milburne

  Heiress’s Pregnancy Scandal by Julia James

  Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal by Dani Collins

  The Italian’s Twin Consequences by Caitlin Crews

  Greek’s Baby of Redemption by Kate Hewitt

  His Two Royal Secrets by Caitlin Crews

  Look for more One Night With Consequences stories coming soon!

  Sharon Kendrick

  The Argentinian’s Baby of Scandal

  Sharon Kendrick once won a national writing competition by describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realize that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Harlequin, and her books feature often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life...

  Books by Sharon Kendrick

  Harlequin Presents

  The Italian’s Christmas Housekeeper

  Conveniently Wed!

  Bound to the Sicilian’s Bed

  The Greek’s Bought Bride

  One Night With Consequences

  The Pregnant Kavakos Bride

  The Italian’s Christmas Secret

  Crowned for the Sheikh’s Baby

  Secret Heirs of Billionaires

  The Sheikh’s Secret Baby

  Wedlocked!

  The Sheikh’s Bought Wife

  The Legendary Argentinian Billionaires

  Bought Bride for the Argentinian

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  This story is for Megan Crane, with whom I shared an unforgettable trip to the west of Ireland...and for Abby Green—the diva of Dublin!

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM THE MAID'S SPANISH SECRET BY DANI COLLINS

  CHAPTER ONE

  LUCAS CONWAY SURVEYED the blonde who was standing in front of him and felt nothing, even though her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks wet with tears.

  He felt a pulse beat at his temple.

  Nothing at all.

  ‘Who let you in?’ he questioned coldly.

  ‘Y-your housekeeper,’ she said, her mouth working frantically as she tried to contain yet another sob. ‘The one with the messy hair.’

  ‘She had no right to let anyone in,’ Lucas returned, briefly wondering how the actress could be so spiteful about someone who’d supposedly done her a good turn. But that was women for you—they never lived up to the promise of how they appeared on the outside. They were all teeth and smiles and then, when you looked beneath the surface, they were as shallow as a spill of water. ‘I told her I didn’t want to be disturbed.’ His voice was cool. ‘Not by anyone. I’m sorry, Charlotte, but you’ll have to leave. You should never have come here.’

  He rose to his feet, because now he felt something, and it felt like the fury which had been simmering inside him for days. Although maybe fury was the wrong word to use. It didn’t accurately describe the hot clench to his heart when he’d received the letter last week, did it? Nor the unaccustomed feeling of dread which had washed over him as he’d stared down at it. Memories of the past had swum into his mind. He remembered violence and discord. Things he didn’t want to remember. Things he’d schooled himself to forget. But sometimes you were powerless when the past came looking for you...

  His mouth was tight as he moved out from behind his desk, easily dwarfing the fair-haired beauty who was staring up at him with beseeching eyes. ‘Come with me. I’ll see you out.’

  ‘Lucas—’

  ‘Please, Charlotte,’ he said, trying to inject his voice with the requisite amount of compassion he suspected was called for but failing—for he had no idea how to replicate this kind of emotion. Hadn’t he often been accused of being unable to show any kind of feeling for another person—unless you counted desire, which was only ever temporary? He held back his sigh. ‘Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.’

  Briefly, she closed her swollen eyelids and nodded and he could smell her expensive perfume as he ushered her out of his huge office, which overlooked the choppy waters of Dublin Bay. And when she’d followed him—sniffling—to the front door, she tried one last time.

  ‘Lucas.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I have to tell you this because it’s important and you need to know it. I know there isn’t anyone else on the scene and I’ve missed you. Missed being with you. What we had was good and I... I love you—’

  ‘No,’ he answered fiercely, cutting her short before she could humiliate herself any further. ‘You don’t. You can’t. You don’t really know me and if you did, you certainly wouldn’t love me. I’m sorry. I’m not the man for you. So do yourself a favour, Charlotte, and go and find someone w
ho is. Someone who has the capacity to care for you in the way you deserve to be cared for.’

  She opened her mouth as if to make one last appeal but maybe she read the futility of such a gesture in his eyes, because she nodded and began to stumble towards her sports car in her spindly and impractical heels. He stood at the door and watched her leave, a gesture which might have been interpreted as one of courtesy but in reality it was to ensure that she really did exit the premises in her zippy little silver car, which shattered the peace as it sped off in a cloud of gravel.

  He glanced up at the heavy sky. The weather had been oppressive for days now and the dark and straining clouds were hinting at the storm to come. He wished it would. Maybe it would lighten the oppressive atmosphere, which was making his forehead slick with sweat and his clothes feel as if they were clinging to his body. He closed the door. And then he turned his attention to his growing vexation as he thought about his interfering housekeeper.

  His temper mounting, Lucas went downstairs into the basement, to the kitchen—which several high-profile magazines were itching to feature in their lifestyle section—to find Tara Fitzpatrick whipping something furiously in a copper bowl. She looked up as he walked in and a lock of thick red hair fell into her eye, which she instantly blew away with a big upward gust of breath, without pausing in her whipping motion. Why the hell didn’t she get it cut so that it didn’t resemble a birds’ nest? he wondered testily. And why did she insist on wearing that horrible housecoat while she worked? A baggy garment made from some cheap, man-made fibre, which he’d once told her looked like a relic from the nineteen fifties and completely swamped her slender frame.

  ‘She’s gone, then?’ she questioned, her gaze fixed on his as he walked in.

  ‘Yes, she’s gone.’ He could feel the flicker of irritation growing inside him again and, suddenly, Tara seemed the ideal candidate to take it out on. ‘Why the hell did you let her in?’

  She hesitated, the movement of her whisk stilling. ‘Because she was crying.’

  ‘Of course she was crying. She’s a spoiled woman who is used to getting her own way and that’s what women like her do when it doesn’t happen.’

  She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something and then appeared to change her mind, so that her next comment came out as a mild observation. ‘You were the one who dated her, Lucas.’

  ‘And it was over,’ he said dangerously. ‘Months ago.’

  Again, that hesitation—as if she was trying her hardest to be diplomatic—and Lucas thought, not for the first time, what a fey creature she was with her amber eyes and pale skin and that mass of fiery hair. And her slender body, which always looked as if it could do with a decent meal.

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t make it plain enough that it was over,’ she suggested cautiously, resting her whisk on the side of the bowl and shaking her wrist, as if it was aching.

  ‘I couldn’t have been more plain,’ he said. ‘I told her in person, in as kind a way as possible, and said that perhaps one day we could be friends.’

  Tara made a clicking noise with her lips and shook her head. ‘That was your big mistake.’

  ‘My big mistake?’ he echoed dangerously.

  ‘Sure. Give a woman hope and she’ll cling to it like a chimp swinging from tree to tree. Maybe if you weren’t so devastatingly attractive,’ she added cheerfully, resuming her beating with a ferocity which sent the egg whites slapping against the sides of the bowl, ‘then your exes wouldn’t keep popping up around the place like lost puppy dogs.’

  He heard the implicit criticism in his housekeeper’s voice and the tension which had been mounting inside him all week now snapped. ‘And maybe if you knew your place, instead of acting like the mistress of my damned house, then you wouldn’t have let her in in the first place,’ he flared as he stormed across the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

  Know her place?

  Tara stopped beating as her boss’s icy note of censure was replaced by the sound of grinding coffee beans and a lump rose in her throat, because he’d never spoken to her that way before—not in all the time she’d worked for him. Not with that air of impatient condemnation as if she were some troublesome minion who was more trouble than she was worth. As she returned his gaze she swallowed with confusion and, yes, with hurt—and how stupid was that? Had she thought she was safe from his legendary coldness and a tongue which could slice out sharp words like a knife cutting through a courgette? Well, yes. She had. She’d naively imagined that, because she served him meals and ironed his shirts and made sure that his garden was carefully weeded and bright with flowers, he would never treat her with the disdain he seemed to direct at most women. That she had a special kind of place in his heart—when it was clear that Lucas Conway had no heart at all. And wasn’t the fact of the matter that he’d been in a foul mood for this past week and growing snappier by the day? Ever since that official-looking letter had arrived from the United States and he’d disappeared into his office for a long time, before emerging with a haunted look darkening the spectacular verdant gleam of his eyes?

  She ran a wooden spoon around the side of the bowl and then gave the mixture another half-hearted beat. She told herself she shouldn’t let his arrogance or bad mood bother her. Maybe that was how you should expect a man to behave when he was as rich as Lucas Conway—as well as being the hottest lover in all of Ireland, if you were to believe the things people whispered about him.

  Yet nobody really knew very much about the Dublin-based billionaire, no matter how hard they tried to find out. Even the Internet provided little joy—and Tara knew this for a fact because she’d looked him up herself on her ancient laptop, soon after she’d started working for him. His accent was difficult to figure out, that was for sure. He definitely wasn’t Irish, and there was a faint hint of transatlantic drawl underpinning his sexy voice. He spoke many languages—French, Italian and Spanish as well as English—though, unlike Tara, he knew no Gaelic. He was rumoured to have been a bellhop, working in some fancy Swiss hotel, in the days before he’d arrived in Ireland to make his fortune but Tara had never quite been able to believe this particular rumour. As if someone like Lucas Conway would ever work as a bellhop! He was also reputed to have South American parentage—and with his tousled dark hair and the unusual green eyes which contrasted so vividly with his glowing olive skin, that was one rumour which would seem to be founded in truth.

  She studied him as the machine dispensed a cup of his favoured industrial-strength brew of coffee. He’d had more girlfriends than most men had socks lined up in a top drawer of their bedroom, and was known for his exceptionally low boredom threshold. Which might explain why he’d dumped the seemingly perfect Charlotte when she—like so many others before her—had refused to get the message that he had no desire to be married. Yet that hadn’t stopped her sending him a Valentine’s card, had it—or arranging for a case of vintage champagne to be delivered on his birthday? ‘I don’t even particularly like champagne,’ had been his moody aside to Tara as he’d peered into the wooden case, and she remembered thinking how ungrateful he could be.

  Yet it wasn’t just women of the sexy and supermodel variety who couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Men liked him, too—and old ladies practically swooned whenever he came into their vicinity. Yet through all the attention he received, Lucas Conway always remained slightly aloof to the adulation which swirled around him. As if he was observing the world with the objectivity of a scientist, and, although nobody would ever have described him as untouchable, he was certainly what you might call unknowable.

  But up until now he’d always treated her with respect. As if she mattered. Not as if she were just some skivvy working in his kitchen, with no more than two brain cells to rub together. The lump in her throat got bigger. Someone who didn’t know her place.

  Was that how he really saw her?

  How others saw her?

&
nbsp; She licked lips which had suddenly grown dry. Was that how she saw herself? The misfit from the country. The child who had grown up with the dark cloud of shame hanging over her. Who’d been terrified people were going to find her out, which was why she had fled to the city just as soon as she was able.

  She told herself to leave it. To just nod politely and Lucas would vacate the kitchen and it would all be forgotten by the time she produced the feather-light cheese soufflé she was planning to serve for his dinner, because he wasn’t going out tonight. But for some reason she couldn’t leave it. Something was nagging away at her and she didn’t know what it was. Was it the strange atmosphere which had descended on the house ever since that letter had arrived for him, and she’d heard the sound of muffled swearing coming from his office? Or was it something to do with this weird weather they’d been having, which was making the air seem as heavy as lead? Her heart missed a beat, because maybe it was a lot more basic than that. Maybe it all stemmed from having seen someone from home walking down Grafton Street yesterday, when she’d been window-shopping on her afternoon off.

  Tara had nearly jumped out of her skin when she’d spotted her—and she was easy to spot. At school, Mona O’Sullivan had always been destined for great things and her high-heeled shoes and leather trench coat had borne out her teacher’s gushing prophesy as she’d sashayed down Dublin’s main street looking as if she didn’t have a care in the world. A diamond ring had glittered like a giant trophy on her engagement finger and her hair had been perfectly coiffed.

  Tara had ducked into a shop doorway, terrified Mona would see her and stop, before asking those probing questions which always used to make her blush to the roots of her hair and wish the ground would open up and swallow her. Questions which reminded Tara why she was so ashamed of the past she’d tried so desperately to forget. But you could never forget the past, not really. It haunted you like a spectre—always ready to jump out at you when you were least expecting it. It waited for you in the sometimes sleepless hours of the night and it lurked behind the supposedly innocent questions people put to you, which were anything but innocent. Was that why she had settled for this safe, well-paid job tucked away on the affluent edge of the city, where nobody knew her?