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The Argentinian's Baby Of Scandal
Sharon Kendrick
‘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!
“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!
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 realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, 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…
Also by Sharon Kendrick (#ub481430e-9fb3-5ffd-8191-7b72f2479eba)
Secrets of a Billionaire’s Mistress
The Sheikh’s Bought Wife
The Pregnant Kavakos Bride
The Italian’s Christmas Secret
Di Sione’s Virgin Mistress
Bound to the Sicilian’s Bed
Crowned for the Sheikh’s Baby
The Greek’s Bought Bride
The Italian’s Christmas Housekeeper
The Sheikh’s Secret Baby
The Bond of Billionaires miniseries
Claimed for Makarov’s Baby
The Sheikh’s Christmas Conquest
The Legendary Argentinian Billionaires miniseries
Bought Bride for the Argentinian
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
The Argentinian’s Baby of Scandal
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08802-2
THE ARGENTINIAN’S BABY OF SCANDAL
© 2019 Sharon Kendrick
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Note to Readers (#ub481430e-9fb3-5ffd-8191-7b72f2479eba)
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
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Text to speech
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
Cover (#u9c72a4d7-3241-5081-bcf0-9ed73fd37560)
Back Cover Text (#u27abc4be-3147-569d-92f8-cfc70216a23f)
About the Author (#u94aeab28-8720-5d02-900f-6b49a0187b16)
Booklist (#ubde4f793-67a9-5d4d-a825-1c535e76d506)
Title Page (#ub821f236-bfc1-5b09-befb-7a7ecd87edc0)
Copyright (#u8ec8ac89-df6c-5d28-9c9b-890b1daa009c)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#u404705ab-d605-5960-92f1-38e6e2a8d831)
CHAPTER ONE (#ubd2d547b-85f4-5cbb-b261-8f643e817a8a)
CHAPTER TWO (#u0d874c8d-008b-5aca-a191-696b8f4e879e)
CHAPTER THREE (#u643b2096-7710-5962-b1a9-f94fef42ea7c)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ub481430e-9fb3-5ffd-8191-7b72f2479eba)
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 who 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.’
