“Grace …” Something urgent was overtaking him, almost shaking him.

“Do you really think I don’t know you want me too?”

They were so close, the rain pounding down all around them, stranding them beneath a noisy umbrella. Wolfe Manor, with all of its howling ghosts and terrible memories, faded away until there was nothing but the weather, this umbrella, and this overly polite, overdressed woman who had somehow wedged herself under his skin.

And she was dismissing him.

“I want a great many things that are no good for me,” she told him. “No one should get everything they want. What kind of person would they be?”

“Me,” Lucas said, an odd note in his own voice, “They would be me.”

“Well,” she said after a moment. “Life is not about want, Mr Wolfe.”

Something passed between them, electric and alive, dancing in the breath of space between their bodies and jolting into him. “If I kissed you right now,” he said, his eyes trained on hers and the truth he could see there—the truth that resonated in him no matter what words she threw out to deny it, “I could make you forget your own name.”

That hung there like smoke for heartbeat, then another, and then, impossibly, she laughed.

At him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle-school social life. And so began her lifelong love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic-book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

SHAMELESS PLAYBOY
CAITLIN CREWS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A powerful dynasty, where secrets and scandal never sleep!

THE DYNASTY Eight siblings, blessed with wealth, but denied the one thing they wanted—a father’s love.

A family destroyed by one man’s thirst for power.

THE SECRETS Haunted by their past and driven to succeed, the Wolfes scattered to the far corners of the globe.

But secrets never sleep and scandal

is starting to stir …

THE POWER Now the Wolfe brothers are back, stronger than ever, but hiding hearts as hard as granite.

It’s said that even the blackest of souls can

be healed by the purest of love…

But can the dynasty rise again?

CHAPTER ONE

GRACE Carter glanced up from her computer, frowning at the figure that sauntered so confidently into her office high above the cold, wet February streets of central London, without so much as a knock on her door as warning.

And then she went very still in her chair. Something that felt like fire rolled through her, scorching everything in its path. She told herself it was indignation because he had failed to knock as any decent, polite person should—but she knew better.

It was him.

“Good morning,” he said in a low, richly amused and somehow knowing voice that seemed to echo inside of her. He seemed to smolder there in front of her, like a banked flame. She straightened in her seat in reaction.

“By all means,” she said, her voice cool, ironic. “Come right in.”

He was dressed in a sharp, sleek Italian suit that clung to the hard planes of his celebrated body and looked far too fashion-forward for the staid and storied halls of Hartington’s, one of Britain’s oldest luxury department stores, where conservative was the watchword in word, deed and staff apparel. His too-long dark chocolate hair was tousled and unkempt—rather deliberately so, Grace thought uncharitably—and fell toward his remarkable green eyes, one of which was ringed by a darkening bruise. It matched the split lip that failed, somehow, to dampen the impact of his shockingly carnal mouth. His cuts and bruises gave him a faintly roguish air and added to the man’s already outrageous appeal.

And well he knew it.

“Thank you,” he said, those famous green eyes bright with amusement, quite as if her invitation was sincere. His decadent mouth crooked to the side. “Is that an invitation into your office or, one can only hope, somewhere infinitely more exciting?”

Grace wished she did not recognize him, but she did—and this was not the first time she’d seen him in person. Not that anyone alive could fail to identify him on sight, with a face that was usually plastered across at least one or two tabloids weekly, in every country in the world. Showcasing exactly this kind of inappropriate behavior.

She was not impressed.

“Lucas Wolfe,” she said, as a gesture toward good manners, though her voice was flat.

He was Lucas Wolfe, second son of the late, notoriously flamboyant William Wolfe, darling of the paparazzi, famously faithless lover to hordes of equally rich and supernaturally beautiful women—and Grace could not think of a single reason why this creature of tabloids and lore should be standing in her office on a regular Thursday morning, gazing at her in a manner that could only be called expectant.

“All six resplendent feet and then some,” he drawled, his dark brows arching high above his wicked green eyes. “At your service.”

“You are Lucas Wolfe,” she said, ignoring the innuendo that seemed to infuse his voice, his expression, like some kind of molten chocolate. “And I’m afraid I am busy. Can I direct you to someone who can help you?”

“Too busy for my charm and beauty?” he asked, that wicked grin making his eyes gleam, his expression somewhere between suggestive and irrepressible—and surprisingly infectious. Grace had to fight to keep from smiling automatically in return. “Surely not. That would require hell to freeze over, for a start.”

She ignored him, rising to her feet to regain the appropriate balance of power.

“I would invite you make yourself comfortable,” she said with a tight smile, close enough to courteous, knowing her voice would make the words sound sweeter than they were, “except that seems rather redundant, doesn’t it?”

Every instinct she had screamed at her to let this man know exactly what she thought of his kind. Womanizing, useless, parasitic, just like all the men her poor mother had paraded in and out of their trailer when Grace was a child. Just like the father she’d never met, who from all accounts was yet one more pretty, irresponsible wastrel in a long line of the same. Just like every other idiot she’d had to slap down over the years.

But as a member of the Wolfe family Lucas was considered royalty at Hartington’s, given that his family had once owned the company. The Wolfes might not own Hartington’s any longer, but Hartington’s board of directors loved to play up the connection—and as the events manager who was in charge of Hartington’s centenary relaunch in a matter of weeks, Grace was expected to act in Hartington’s best interests at all times no matter the cost to herself.

“I am always comfortable,” he assured her, his voice a symphony of innuendo, his green eyes wicked and amused. “Making myself so at every opportunity is, I confess, very nearly my life’s work.”

She had a huge project to manage, which meant she had better things to do with her time than waste it on this useless, if shockingly attractive, man. Grace hated wasting time. That was the feeling that expanded within her, she told herself, threatening her ability to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” she began, the polite smile she was known for curving her lips, though she knew her gaze remained cool on his. “I’m afraid I’m quite busy today. May I help—?”

“Why do I recognize you?” he interrupted her, languidly, because of course he had all the time in the world.

Grace was horrified to feel that rich voice of his wash through her, sending tendrils of flame licking all over her skin, coiling low in her belly. She felt it, and it panicked her. Surely she should be immune to this man’s brand of practiced, cynical charm—she, who prided herself on being absolutely unflappable!

“I can’t imagine,” she said, which was a lie, but it was not as if she and Lucas Wolfe would ever speak again, would they? She could not fathom why they were speaking now—and why the cynical boredom she’d sensed in him in a chic and crowded hotel bar the night before had changed to something else, something dangerous and edgy. As if a dark fury lurked within him, just out of sight, hidden beneath his well-known and deliberately polished exterior.

But surely not. She was being fanciful.

“I know I’ve seen you before,” he continued, his green eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at her, then warming as he let his all-too-practiced gaze drop from her face to skate over the figure she’d dressed in Carolina Herrera and other exclusive labels no doubt down-market to a man of his tastes. His lips moved, sensual and inviting for all they were cut, seeming to … suggest things. “You have the most extraordinary mouth. But where?”

Heat danced through her, simmering in every place his green gaze touched her: her breasts, the indentation at her waist, her hips, her legs. Grace was forced to remind herself that a man like Lucas Wolfe more than likely looked at every single person he encountered in that very same way—that the promise of sex and intrigue that seemed to heat his expression meant about as much to him as a handshake meant to anyone else. Less.

She felt a strange sort of echo sound through her, a deep alarm, reminding her of that naive girl she’d been so long ago and had sworn she would never be again. Not with another man like this one, who would render her just as pathetic and deceived as her poor, trusting mother. Who would destroy her whole life if she let him.

That was what men like this did. Simply because they could.

Grace knew that better than anyone.

“He’s more than a bit of all right, isn’t he?” the fashion buyer from Hartington’s had cooed to Grace last night, when she’d first seen Lucas—much drunker and far more disreputable than he appeared now, if that was possible—at an extraordinarily glamorous fashion show thrown by Samantha Cartwright, one of London’s most beloved and avant-garde designers.

Mona had sighed lustily, gazing at Lucas from across the trendy bar as he’d flirted with Samantha Cartwright herself, oblivious to all the watching, judging eyes around them, Grace’s among them. “And, of course, we’re to treat him like a king should he so much as glance our way. Boss’s orders.”

Grace had nodded, as if she’d had the slightest expectation of interacting with the famous playboy, known as much for his devil-may-care attitude as for his long and illustrious string of lovers. Not to mention his much-discussed allergy to anything resembling work, particularly for Hartington’s, who had been after him for years to take a figurehead position with the company as his equally disreputable late father had once done.

She’d felt a potent mix of awareness and disgust as she’d watched him. How could a man like Lucas, who was unabashedly making a play for the much older, and very much married, Samantha Cartwright right there in full view of half the city, also manage to seem so … alive and vibrant, in the midst of London’s crème de la crème, as if he were the real thing and they were nothing but fluff and misdirection?

However, all his sexiness and charm had not prevented Samantha Cartwright’s husband from expressing his displeasure at finding Lucas secluded with his wife sometime later—all over Lucas’s pretty face.

The fact that she, personally, had had a strange moment, a near-interaction with this man, did not signify. He clearly could not recall it and she—well, if her sleep had been disrupted last night, what did that matter? It could as easily have been the espresso she should have known better than to order after dinner. It had to have been.

“I believe I saw you last night at the Cartwright show,” she said now, and felt gratified when he blinked, as if not expecting that response. Grace smiled, razor sharp, and let her dislike for him—for all men like him, so careless and callous—flood through her. “Though I cannot imagine you remember it.”

“I have an excellent memory,” Lucas replied, his voice silky, and she had to admit that it got to her. It should not have affected her at all, the lazy caress of it, like bourbon and sin, but it did. The man was lethal, and she wanted nothing to do with him.

“As do I, Mr. Wolfe,” she said crisply. “Which is how I know that we do not have an appointment today. Perhaps I can direct you …?”

She let her words trail off, and waved her hand in the general direction of the door and the offices beyond. But Lucas Wolfe did not move. He only watched her for a moment. His battered, sexy mouth curved slightly.

“You knew who I was the moment you saw me.” He looked amused. Triumphant. She could not have said why that seemed to claw at her.

“I imagine every single person in England knows who you are,” she replied briskly. She let her brows arch, hinting at disdain. “One assumes that must be your intention, after so many scandals, all of which are dutifully reported in the papers.”

“And yet, you are not English,” he said, shifting his body, making Grace suddenly, foolishly glad that her desk stood between them.

She was abruptly aware of how powerful he was, how well-tuned and whipcord tough his body was, for all he kept it concealed behind a lazy smile, calculating eyes and sophisticated clothes. Leashed and hidden, though the truth of it lurked beneath the surface. As if his playboy persona was a mask he wore … but that was ridiculous.

“You are American, are you not?” His head tilted slightly to one side, though his gaze never left hers. “Southern, if I am not mistaken.”

“I cannot imagine why it should be relevant, but I am originally from Texas,” Grace said, in quelling tones. She did not speak about her past. She did not speak about her private life at all, come to that—never at work, and certainly not with perfect strangers. The origin of the accent she’d worked so hard to minimize was about as far as she was willing to take this conversation. “But if you will tell me why you are here, I can find a more appropriate—”

“Exactly what did you see me doing last night?” he asked, interrupting her again, his gaze amused, his grin widening. “Did I do it to you?” His gaze warmed, became more suggestive. “Do you wish that I had?”

“I hardly think you would have had the time,” Grace said with a short laugh, but then his eyes gleamed and she recollected herself.

She had not worked as hard as she had, nor overcome so much, to ruin it all over someone like this. She didn’t know why Lucas Wolfe, of all people, should get under her skin in the first place. Grace had been working in events management since college, and she had seen her fair share of huge personalities, the very rich and the wished-to-be-famous, and everything in between. Why was this man the first to threaten her renowned calm? Lucas only gazed at her, his green eyes mild, though Grace could not quite believe what she saw there. She had the sense, again, that it was all a mask—the shocking masculine beauty, the roguish appeal, the sexy swagger—and that beneath it lurked something far shrewder. But where did such an idea come from? She dismissed it, impatient with herself.

“If you will excuse me,” she said, her voice perfectly calm, betraying none of her strange internal struggle, “I really must return to my work.”

“But that’s why I’m here,” he said, an unholy glee lighting up those marvelous green eyes. His mouth pulled into a smirk, and he shifted again, as if bracing himself for a blow—a blow he was fully prepared to handle, his body language assured her.

A prickle ran through the fine hairs at the back of her neck, making her hands itch to smooth her sleek, understated chignon and make sure it continued to tame her wild blond hair into something appropriate for her position. Making her want to remove herself until she had reverted to the ice queen norm that had saved her time and again, and until she’d gotten the best of this baffling heat he seemed to generate in her.

“What do you mean?” she asked, hoping she sounded cold instead of anxious. Stern instead of thrown.

She was resolved to fire whichever member of her staff had let this man in here to unsettle her like this when all of her focus needed to be on the relaunch. Yet even as she thought it, she knew that no one who worked at Hartington’s could possibly deny this man anything—he was a Wolfe. More than that, he was Lucas Wolfe, the most irresistible of his whole compelling, colorful family.

Even she could feel that pull, that attraction—she who had long considered herself terminally allergic to men of his ilk.

“I am the new public face of Hartington’s, like my dearly departed father before me,” he drawled, his green eyes sharp and mocking, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Just in time for the centenary relaunch.”

He smiled then, that famous, devastating smile that Grace discovered could light a fire within her even when she knew he must practice it in his own mirror.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, desperately, though she already knew. She could not seem to believe it, to accept it, and her stomach twisted in protest, but she knew.

That smile of his deepened, showing off the indentation in his jaw that had been known to cause hysteria when he flashed it about like the deadly weapon it was. The smile that had catapulted him into the hearts and fantasies of so many people the world over. The smile that drove so many women to distraction and regrettable decisions.

But not me, she told herself desperately. Never me!

“I believe we’ll be working together,” he confirmed, smiling as if he knew better. As if he knew her better than she could ever hope to know herself. As if he had that power already, had claimed it and who knew what else along with it. “I do so hope you’re the hands-on sort of colleague,” he continued, in a voice that should have infuriated her and instead made her feel weak. Susceptible. His smile deepened like he knew that, too. “I know I am.”

CHAPTER TWO

SHE looked appalled, which was not a reaction Lucas often inspired in women. Not even in starchy, standoffish females like this one, not that he met a great many of that breed in the course of his usual pursuits.

“Working together?” she echoed, sounding as if he’d suggested something unduly perverse. “Here?”

“That’s the idea,” he said, smiling wider. “Unless, of course, you can think of a better way to pass the time in this dreary office.”

Normally, even the most constitutionally unimpressed—librarians and nuns and the like—melted at the very hint of his smile. He had been wielding it as the foremost weapon in his arsenal since he was still a child. It had felled entire battalions of females across the globe. It was, in his practiced opinion, even more devastating than that of his younger brother Nathaniel, who was currently up for a Best Actor Sapphire Screen Award and whose inferior smile could be seen via every press outlet on the planet. Lucas was not entirely certain why Grace Carter, prim events manager for bloody Hartington’s, should be immune when legions before her had dissolved at the merest sight of it.

In point of fact, she scowled.

“I certainly cannot,” she said, judgmental and starched stiff and horrified. “And I’ll thank you to keep your suggestive comments to yourself, Mr. Wolfe.”

“How?” he asked with idle curiosity, shifting toward her and watching her tense in reaction.

“How …?” she repeated icily. “By exercising restraint, assuming you are capable of such a thing.”

“How will you thank me?” he asked, enjoying the flash of something darker than temper in her eyes, despite himself. “I am quite easily bored, you understand, and therefore only accept the most shocking and ingenious displays of gratitude these days. It’s my personal policy. One must have standards.”

“How interesting,” she said smoothly. Too politely. “I was under the distinct impression that your standards were significantly more lax.”

“A common misconception,” Lucas replied easily. “I am not so much lax as laissez-faire.”

“If by that you mean licentious,” she retorted.

Her gaze flicked over his battered face. Her distracting Southern drawl went suspiciously sweet. “I certainly hope you won’t be left with any unsightly scars.”

“On my famously beautiful face?” Lucas asked, affecting astonishment with a small tinge of horror. “Certainly not. And there are always surgeons should nature prove unequal to the task.”

Not that a surgeon would be much help with his other, less visible scars, he thought darkly. Lucas had not been particularly bothered by the appearance of Samantha Cartwright’s movie-producer husband at a delicate moment the night before. It took more than a few punches to impress him, and in any case, it was only sporting to let a wronged husband express his ill will. There was nothing about the situation that should have distinguished the night from any other night, bruises included.

Except that, upon leaving the hotel, Lucas had not ordered the waiting car to take him to his soulless flat high above the Thames in South Bank. Instead, responding to an urge he had no interest at all in naming, he had ordered it to take him out into the wilds of Buckinghamshire to Wolfe Manor, the abandoned familial pile of stone and bad memories he had assiduously avoided since he’d left the place at eighteen.

He’d heard a rumor that his prodigal older brother, Jacob, had returned after disappearing some twenty years before and Lucas, with the typical measure of cockiness brought on by the liberal application of too many spirits, had decided this particular drunken dawn was high time to test the truth of that story.

But Lucas did not want to think about that. Not about Jacob himself, not about why Jacob had disappeared, nor why he had returned and certainly not about what Jacob had said to him that had spurred Lucas into a series of unlikely actions culminating in his arrival in this office. And so, as he had done with great determination and skill since he was young, he focused on the woman in front of him instead.

The one who was still scowling at him.

“If I was someone else,” he said, letting his gaze drift to that expressive mouth she held so tightly, “I might begin to think that scowl meant you disliked me. Which is, of course, impossible.”

“Never say never,” she replied, so very sweetly.

“I rarely do,” he assured her in a low voice, lifting his gaze to hers and letting them both feel the heat of it. “As I’d be happy to demonstrate.”

There was a brief, searing pause.

“Did you just suggest what I think you suggested?” she demanded, her dark eyes promising fire and brimstone and other such irritants. Her full mouth firmed into a disapproving line.

He couldn’t have said why he was so entertained.

“I can’t say that I remember what I suggested,” he replied, smiling again. “But one gathers you’re opposed.”

“The word is insulted, Mr. Wolfe,” she retorted. “Not opposed.”

But he knew what that spark in her gaze meant, and it wasn’t insult. “If you say so,” he said, and let his gaze move over her body.

She was tall and slim, with rich curves in all the right places, bright blond hair and soulfully deep brown eyes, making her the perfect, long-legged distraction. Unfortunately, she was also wearing entirely too many severely cut articles of clothing, all of them designed to force a man’s eye from the very places it was naturally drawn.

Add to that her scraped-back, no-nonsense hairstyle and it was abundantly clear that this woman was one of those stuffy, deeply boring career women who Lucas found tedious in the extreme. The only kind of distraction this woman would be likely to provide, he knew from painful experience, would come in the form of a blistering lecture concerning his many moral failings rather than a few hot moments with her long legs wrapped around his hips while he thrust deep and true.

A great pity, Lucas thought, grudgingly.

“I beg your pardon?” It was not the first time she had said it, he realized. She was still staring at him in a horror he found overdone and on the verge of insulting, her honey-and-cream voice laced with shock. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Wolfe, but are you by any chance still drunk? “

She might have gone out of her way to hide her many charms, but he happened to be a connoisseur of women. He could see exactly what her full lower lip promised and could imagine the precise, delicious weight of her full breasts in his palms. Why a woman would hide her own beauty so deliberately was a mystery to Lucas—and one he had no interest at all in solving.

Not today, when there were mysteries to go around. Not ever.

He moved to one of the chairs in front of her desk and lowered himself into it, watching the way her huge brown eyes tracked his every movement as he sprawled into a much more comfortable position. Not with the shell-shocked, often lascivious awe to which he was accustomed, but with a certain, unexpected wariness instead. He was interested despite himself.

“Not at all,” he said, smiling at her, knowing that one of his legendary dimples was even now appearing in his lean jaw. “Though a drink would certainly not go amiss. Thank you. I find I am partial to bourbon this week.”

“I am not offering you a drink, or anything else,” she said, a snap in her voice, though her smile remained nailed in place. “From what I observed last night, I can’t imagine you would ever require another one.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied easily, still smiling, propping up his jaw with one hand. “Did we meet last night—or were you simply one of the many onlookers? Part of the inevitable crowd? Perfect strangers do so love to watch my every move and make up stories to suit their own opinions of my character.”

It was meant to embarrass her, as Lucas knew well that even the most prurient gossipmonger hated to be called out as such, but she did not balk. Instead, she waved a hand at his black eye, his split lip, her eyes steady on his. Bold, even.

“Is a story required?” she asked from behind that veneer of politeness that he noted and knew better than to believe. “The truth seems sordid enough, surely.”

He forced himself to sink even farther into the chair, every inch of him decadent and debauched, exactly as vile as she believed him to be. He knew more about veneers, about masks and misdirection, than anyone ought to know. It had always been his first and best defense. He thrust aside the dark cloud of memory that hovered far too close today, another offense to lay at Jacob’s prodigal feet, and forced a smile.

“The wages of sin,” he murmured, his voice suggestive, smoky.

She would see what he wanted her to see, he knew. The useless parasite, the indolent playboy. They always did.

“Sin is your area of expertise, Mr. Wolfe,” she said briskly. “Mine is events management.”

“And never the twain shall meet,” Lucas said with an exaggerated, theatrical sigh. “My heart breaks.”

“I rather think you operate from a different part of your anatomy,” she said, those dark eyes gleaming.

“I’m delighted you think about that part of my anatomy,” he replied smoothly. “Feel free to indulge yourself. At length.” He smiled. “No pun intended.”

He was fascinated by the color that showed against her high cheekbones, the way her full mouth firmed. She was dressed to exude a particular message—competence and elegance—and Lucas could see she hit those notes perfectly. But only a blind man could miss the fact that she was perfectly formed—which made him wonder about the rest of her, the trim body buttoned up tight beneath her layers of black and gray.

She held herself under such tight control. How could he not imagine what she would be like without it?

“I should tell you,” he said idly, flicking an imaginary piece of dust from his lapel as if he was not watching her closely, “I have never laid eyes upon something buttoned-up that I was not drawn to unbutton, whether I choose to indulge that urge or not.” He smiled as her hand crept toward the buttons on her suit jacket and then dropped sharply to her side as if she’d reprimanded herself. “It is one among my great many personal failings.”

She crossed to the front of her desk and leaned back against it, folding her arms over her chest. In that position, as she was clearly well aware, she could look down her fine, delicate nose at him as he sprawled below her in the visitor’s chair. He was no doubt meant to feel his inferiority keenly. But Lucas had grown up subject to the uncertain temper and intermittent cruelty of the late, unlamented bully William Wolfe, also known as his deeply despised and little-mourned father, and he knew power games when people were unwise enough to play them in his vicinity. He also knew how to win them. After all, he was Lucas Wolfe. He was not a legend by accident.

Something moved inside of him, rolled over and shook itself to life.

“Let me be frank, Mr. Wolfe,” she said, smiling at him again, that bland, placid smile that he knew, with sudden certainty, was meant to manage and soothe him even as it hid her own feelings. Unfortunately, it only drew his attention to her mouth.

“If you have so far been less than candid, I cannot imagine the difference,” he drawled as those brown eyes narrowed. “Will I require full body armor? “

That sweet, fake smile sharpened. “Not at all,” she said, and her honey-and-cream voice seemed to pool in his groin, making him uncomfortably hard. Surprising him. Intriguing him. “I do apologize if I seem anything less than thrilled about what will be, I’m sure, a long and productive relationship between you and Hartington’s. As you know, Hartington’s greatly values its relationship with your family.”

His family. Lucas refused to think about them, the great damaged mess of them, much less the cavern of guilt that always yawned open when he considered his own epic failures where they were concerned. He shoved the thoughts, the memories, aside—cursing Jacob’s name, his sudden reappearance. And then, as ever, himself. He needed to sleep, he thought; he needed to regain his usual equilibrium, to reaccess his sense of humor, at the very least.

“Do you always speak in press releases?” he asked mildly, allowing no hint of his inner turmoil to color his voice. “Or is this for my benefit? Because there are far more interesting ways to secure my undivided attention.”

“My focus is the centenary relaunch of the Hartington’s brand,” she continued, only the faintest flash in her milk-chocolate brown eyes to show him she’d even heard him. “You may not be aware that we will be throwing a gala event in just over three weeks to celebrate our hundredth year as we reintroduce Hartington’s to the modern age.”

“As a matter fact, I do know that,” he said, his gaze captured by the front of her stern jacket, where her crossed arms drew attention to the tempting valley between the breasts he saw only the barest hints of behind the gray silk of her blouse. He dragged his eyes north and bit back a laugh when he saw her eyes were narrowed even further in outrage. A different woman might have preened, but she didn’t, and Lucas found he was less disappointed by the fact she was not that woman than he should have been.

“Then you must also know that this is an exciting time for Hartington’s,” she said. Lucas did not think she sounded at all excited—rather, she sounded as if she would like to have him forcibly removed from her office. He was well acquainted with that tone, having heard it so often in his lifetime, even if, in her case, it was drenched in all that Texas honey. “I’m sure that a man of your stature will have a great deal to contribute.”

“And by ‘stature,’” he murmured silkily, unable, somehow, to look away from her narrowed chocolate gaze, and just as unable to rationalize his own behavior—why should he care what she thought or meant?—”am I to assume you, in fact, mean ‘notoriety'?”

“Yours is a face with which the whole of Britain, and indeed the world, is intimately familiar,” she said, her cool gaze at odds with her soft, velvety voice. “Your headline-grabbing antics are, truly, a gift to the public relations department. No publicity is bad publicity, after all.”

“I will have to schedule further antics at once,” he said, with bite, though she neither quailed nor colored as she gazed back at him, as she should have done. “I am certain there is no limit to the number of headlines I can grab, all for the greater glory of Hartington’s.”

“You are too kind,” she said sweetly, as if she had not picked up on his sardonic tone, when he was more than certain she had. He could see that she had. She nodded at his battered face. “Though perhaps you might let those bruises heal a little bit first.”

Lucas realized, belatedly, what a powerful asset she had in that voice of hers, so soft and sugary and deadly all at once. A rapier-sharp blade sheathed in honey and cream. It was impressive.

But he did not wish to be impressed.

“In any case,” she continued, “I am truly delighted to have had this opportunity to meet with you, Mr. Wolfe—”

“By all means, call me Lucas,” he said quietly, weighing that soft, sweet voice against the steel he could sense beneath, and could even see in her gaze. “I insist that all character assassinations be made on a first-name basis.”

“—and I am certain,” she continued, that smile remaining firmly in place, “that I will have the pleasure of working with you sometime in the future, after we’ve had the relaunch. I’ll be sure to schedule a meeting with the PR team in the next few weeks, once you’ve had time to settle in and get your bearings… .”

This time she trailed off as he shook his head, her brows rising in inquiry. Lucas found he enjoyed that far more than he should.

“You are Grace Carter, are you not?” He enjoyed saying her name—because he could see that she did not like the way he said it. As if he could taste the flavor of it with his tongue. It was his turn to smile. “Charlie assured me you were the person I needed to find.”

There was a slight, humming sort of pause. She blinked, and he felt it like a victory.

“Charlie?” she asked, an odd, slightly strangled note in her voice.

“Charlie Winthrop,” Lucas supplied helpfully, and was delighted when her cheeks reddened again—this time, he had no doubt, with temper.

It made him wonder what she would look like if it was passion that heated her. If it was him. “I am to be at your disposal,” he said, making his voice as suggestive as possible. “Completely.”

He was intrigued when the expression that flashed across her face was anger. Most women were not angry when flirted with, especially not when the flirt in question was as accomplished as Lucas, without a shred of immodesty, knew himself to be. He had once made the queen smile while enjoying the races at Ascot. What was one embittered executive next to Her Royal Majesty?

“Of course,” she said through her smile, even as she glared at him as if she’d like to incinerate him on the spot with the force of her gaze.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of him,” he said, unable to keep the amusement from his voice. The hint of triumph.

Lucas found himself fascinated by the way she visibly wrested control of herself, wrapping her show of temper behind another wide smile and an extra helping of that sweet, sweet Texas honey with its swift, sure kick beneath.

“If, as the CEO of Hartington’s, Mr. Winthrop feels your contributions to the company are best utilized through my office,” she said, her voice smooth while her eyes burned, “then I am delighted to have you aboard.”

If he had not known better, he might have believed her. If he had not seen her mask slip, and the way she put it back on so skillfully. If he had not been as accomplished a master of disguise himself, he might not even have recognized hers when he saw it.

But, God help them both, he was.

And, worse—she intrigued him.

He shifted in his chair, deliberately emphasizing his idle bonelessness because he knew, somehow, it would infuriate her. He stretched his long legs out in front of him, nearly brushing her feet with his, and watched her spine stiffen as she deliberately did not move out of the way, did not cede her ground. More power games, presumably.

Lucas had never encountered a power game he did not feel compelled to win. That was how he was wired, to his own detriment. And, unfortunately for Miss Grace Carter of the too-dark clothes and the obvious disapproval, he never, ever lost.

Not in decades now. Not ever again.

“You are a liar,” he continued, letting his voice drop into an insinuating growl that he knew would get to her. “Lucky for you, so am I.”

Their eyes met. Held. Seared.

“We should get along famously,” he said with a deep satisfaction, and then he let loose his smile, like the holstered weapon it was, and let it do its work.

* * *

When Charles Winthrop had confirmed publicly that, indeed, Hartington’s was delighted to welcome the famous Wolfe heir aboard—and privately that he expected Grace to personally manage the wild-card playboy with her usual aplomb—Grace had smiled calmly, exuded serenity and comforted herself with visions of smashing every piece of china and shred of pottery she owned. The deep blue bowl from her first trip to Paris, in smithereens. The candlesticks from her holiday on the Amalfi Coast, in a million tiny pieces. Bliss.

When she had explained to her awestruck team—in full view of the smirking, flirtatious Lucas, who appeared to bewitch three-quarters of the staff simply by existing, or possibly by lounging across the cabinets so that his magnificent torso was on display—that Lucas was now a crucial component of their strategy for the fast-approaching centenary project, she had kept a suitably straight face and had imagined lighting a small, personal bonfire on her wraparound balcony and setting ablaze the art she’d hung on the walls when she’d moved in a year earlier. The painting she’d bought directly from the hungry-looking painter with the poet’s eyes on the Charles Bridge in Prague. The print of the first van Gogh she’d seen in the famous Metropolitan Museum in New York City. All smoke and ashes. It made her smile feel real.

“We are delighted to have you on the team, Mr.

Wolfe,” she said as they walked together from the conference room, her smile sweet and her tone razor sharp. “But in future, please do try to contain yourself. The secretaries are not here to serve as your personal dating pool.”

“Have you asked them?” he asked lazily, his rangy body moving with a grace that should have seemed out of place in the dim light of the hallway. Instead, he seemed to take it over. “Because I was under the impression that my every wish was their command. I believe one of them told me so.”

“I don’t need to ask them,” Grace replied, smiling more sharply and pretending she was unaffected by his nearness. “I need only consult company policy.”

“Hartington’s has a Lucas Wolfe clause?” he asked, in that deeply amused drawl that wove spells through her and around her. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.” Against her will, hardly aware of it, Grace found herself standing still in the corridor instead of walking briskly toward her office. Standing, gazing up at him, like a moon-faced calf. How could he beguile her without even seeming to do so?

She could not afford it.

“Leave the secretaries alone,” she said calmly, as if he had not slipped past her defenses somehow already. As if she had meant to stop there and look up at him.

“Happily,” he said. His abused mouth tilted up in the corner. His green gaze was a banked fire that seemed to kick off echoes within her, hot and wild. “But tell me,” he continued softly, pointedly, “where else should I direct my attention?”

“Perhaps to your brand-new job,” she bit out, ignoring the way he looked at her, his eyes so hooded, so suggestive. “You may find it challenging, after all, having never had one before.”

“I am so sorry to shatter your illusions,” he said, laughing, though she thought it did not quite reach his eyes, “but despite my well-documented, dissipated, sybaritic existence, I have, in fact, held a job. We all have our deep, dark secrets, do we not?”

She had no intention of discussing secrets with this man.

“You understand, Mr. Wolfe, that when one says ‘job,’ one is not referring to your rather questionable relationships with somewhat older ladies of excessive means.” She smiled. Hard. “There are other words for that.”

“Someday you will have to teach me all the ins and outs of your vocabulary,” he said, in a voice that seemed to demand she imagine what tutoring him might involve. Something powerful shook through her, stealing her breath. He smiled. “The job I held was somewhat less illicit, I’m afraid.”

“You?” she asked, in disbelief. “Who on earth would employ you?”

“Not everyone finds my face as distasteful as you seem to do,” he said, challenge and mockery stamped across his expression. He angled his head toward her, too close, and she had to fight to keep herself from jumping back and letting him see how he got to her. “In fact, some people find it addictive.”

“Are you referring to yourself?” she asked lightly, and smiled to take the sting away.

His smile then was as sharp, and far more dangerous. “I mean myself most of all,” he said quietly, an undercurrent in his voice she did not understand. “I am my own heroin.”

It was the ferocity in his voice that lingered with her even hours later, and the fact she could not dismiss the man from her thoughts made her fantasize anew about destroying all of her belongings in a dramatic—if private—show of temper.

But the sad truth, she acknowledged late that evening when she arrived home and looked around the carefully pristine, perfectly decorated penthouse apartment that normally made her feel happy and successful and tonight felt oddly empty, was that she was entirely too practical.

She could not let herself be so reckless, so careless. No matter how good it would feel. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“Women in our family are built to love,” her mother had said with a shrug years ago, when Grace had collapsed in a sobbing mess on her bed, trying to handle the fallout of her first, doomed relationship. Back when her mother still spoke to her. “Too much and too long, and always messy. That’s how it goes. It’s our curse.”

“You don’t understand—” Grace had moaned.

“You’re no different, Gracie,” her mother had said, and shaken her head as she’d reached for another cigarette. “I know you want to be, but you’re not, and the sooner you get your head around that the happier you’ll be.”

Now, so many years and miles away from that conversation, and all the betrayal and pain that had followed it, Grace sank down on her smooth, modern couch in the foreign country she called home, and reached back to let her hair fall, heavy and thick, from its place on the back of her head. She shook out the pins, and ran her fingers through the wild mess of it that she only ever dared let down when she was alone. It was too unruly, too untamed—too reminiscent of the girl she had been, who she preferred to pretend had never existed at all.

I am my own heroin, he had said, and she thought it was an apt description of his lure, his innate danger.

There was never any something more with a man like Lucas. There was only heartbreak and loneliness. She needed only to consider her poor mother’s endless string of misery and despair, her life lived on the strength of broken promises and late-night tears, as one more man smiled like he meant it and Grace’s mother believed. She always believed, and they always let her down. Always.

And Mary-Lynn never blamed the men. She always blamed herself, and so lost a little bit more of herself, her battered heart and the light in her eyes every time. Until the day she’d blamed her daughter instead.

Grace kicked off her shoes and curled up on the couch. She could not afford to be fascinated with Lucas Wolfe. She could not allow herself to be intrigued. She had to throw a relaunch party so fabulous that it cemented her reputation for years to come, and she could not permit any deviation from her plan, especially not in the form of a man who was clearly put on the earth to ruin every woman he touched.

It made her heart ache that she was so susceptible, as if it really was a genetic defect passed down from mother to daughter. When all this time, after everything that had happened in high school had changed her so completely, she’d truly believed she was immune. She would be different, no matter what her mother thought—no matter what she’d screamed at Grace when she’d thrown her out like so much trash. She would.

But she would start tomorrow, she thought, closing her eyes, succumbing to her weariness and letting all of her heavy armor drop from her for a moment. She felt the helpless fascination creep in and take her over, and then curled up on the couch with the memory of his devastating smile raging through her like a wildfire she could not bring herself to put out.

Not yet. Not tonight.

CHAPTER THREE

“I’VE remembered you,” Lucas announced, swaggering into her office like a conquering hero, his smile far too bright and much too wicked as it played over his mouth. “It came to me over the weekend.”

It was Monday morning, nearing eleven o’clock, and Grace was not feeling at all charitably inclined toward her new team member. She sat back in her desk chair and regarded him stonily.

It did not matter in the least that he looked even more delicious this morning, in yet another absurd, catwalk-ready sort of suit that made him seem like a sleek, wild, green-eyed jaguar set down among a fleet of tamed and corpulent house cats. His dark hair was still too long for civility—and the office—and stood about in what she imagined were spikes as carefully managed as his wardrobe. His perfect male form was still showcased to mouthwatering effect, his muscled shoulders and lean hips lovingly defined, his torso a work of art in dark wool. His beauty was still far greater, far more masculine and disturbing, than one would suspect from having seen him in photographs.

His bruises had faded considerably, she could not help but notice. His dizzying appeal had not.

Happily, she told herself with some internal rigor, her moment of weakness had passed. There was no genetic defect, no predisposition. Lucas Wolfe was nothing more than the human version of a well-known painting, widely regarded as beautiful in the extreme—even a masterpiece. One could appreciate such a painting the way one appreciated all forms of beauty. Lucas Wolfe was a curiosity to be admired, and then ignored.

“Mr. Wolfe,” she said now, smiling perfunctorily. “I understand that this may be a new experience for you, and I’ll try to be sensitive to that, but I think you’ll find the team is expected to make it into the office at nine o’clock sharp each morning, not at eleven. Even you, I’m afraid.”

“At Samantha’s party,” he continued, unperturbed. Quite as if she had not spoken, much less reprimanded him. “It was when I went to get the drinks, wasn’t it? You were standing by the bar.” His dark brows rose in challenge, and something else she told herself she did not wish to explore, even as it slid intimately along her skin, kicking up goose bumps. “I knew I recognized you.”

“I’m afraid I can’t remember,” Grace said, lying coolly and without a single shred of remorse.

“Of course you do,” he said, with that easy confidence and a knowing gleam in his bright eyes that arrowed directly into Grace’s sex, making her knees feel weak even as she felt herself soften. For him. Her heart jumped in her chest. She was entirely too grateful that she happened to be sitting down. He was lethal.

And impersonal, she reminded herself sharply, crossing her legs beneath her desk. You could be a random shopgirl. A bus driver. The bus itself. He has chemistry with the very air around him—he can’t help it.

“Mr. Wolfe, really,” she said, frowning at him. “This project is doomed to failure if you cannot respect the most basic rules of the workplace. Allow me to give you a refresher course.”

“Less a refresher course, and more an introduction,” he amended, with a careless shrug and no visible sign that he was at all embarrassed he’d never worked a single day in his pampered, over-privileged life of sin and excess—whatever he might have claimed the previous week.

He certainly made it easy to dismiss him, Grace thought. She dearly wished that she could—that she had not been ordered to personally handle him. But she had been, and so she waited until she had his full, if amused, attention, and began to tick off her points on her fingers.

“You must knock and receive permission to enter before barging into an office,” she said briskly. “You must not ignore your coworkers when they are speaking to you, no matter if you think what you have to say is more interesting—it is unlikely that your coworkers will agree. And it is completely inappropriate to make insinuations regarding the private lives or thoughts of anyone you might work with, under any circumstances. Do you understand me?”

It was as if he lounged against something, though he stood in the center of her office. Such was his natural indolence. He reminded her of the great cats she found so fascinating in the nature programs she often watched—a lazy grace, sleepy-eyed and seemingly harmless, and yet with all that predatory watchfulness and physical prowess hidden just beneath his sleek surface.

“Did I make insinuations?” he asked, not seeming remotely cowed. Only interested. And, if possible, even more amused. “I do beg your pardon. They cannot have been particularly interesting, if I cannot recall them.”

“One imagines that you are so used to insinuating inappropriate things about everyone you meet that it is rather like a comment on the weather for anyone else,” she replied sweetly. She let her smile widen. “Please do try to remember that this is not a yacht on the Côte d’Azur, brimming with starlets and debauchery—this is Hartington’s, a much-beloved and revered British institution.”

He thrust his hands into his pockets and regarded her with that cool green gaze that made her wonder, against her will, what else he hid behind all that sexiness and swagger.

“Rather like me,” he said after a moment, his mouth curving, daring her, somehow. “A bit tattered around the edges, perhaps, the pair of us, but I think somehow the gilt and glamour remain.” He smiled. “Don’t you agree?”

Grace eyed him, torn between the urge to laugh—or to scream. Or, worse, to give in to the hugely inappropriate and somewhat alarming urgings of her body and the heat he seemed to ignite within her without even trying. She did none of the above. She did not even fidget under his scrutiny, though it cost her.

“The team will be meeting in the conference room in a half hour for our daily status update,” she said instead, pointedly glancing at the slim gold watch she wore on her wrist, and then back toward her computer monitor, dismissing him. “If you don’t mind …?”

“You were the only woman in the crowd who refused to smile at me,” Lucas said, in that silken voice of his that, she reminded herself sternly, had seduced millions in exactly the same way. No need to be the next in line in the endless parade. Not that she was considering it! “At first I thought you were one of the ones who scowl at me on purpose, to distinguish themselves from the fawning fans, but you didn’t do that, either.”

“Are you sure it was me?” Grace asked, pretending to be bored with the conversation. “I remember your rather spectacular exit from the party, but very little else.” She gazed at her computer screen as if she could read a single thing on it. As if she was not entirely too focused on the man who stood so close, just on the other side of her desk, commanding all the air in the room despite his seemingly languid slouch and his unkempt hair.

“Neither a smile nor a scowl. You simply looked at me,” Lucas said, his voice like a caress, dark and unfair as it worked its way through her like fine wine, turning her too warm too quickly. She could feel him everywhere. Hot. Shivery. “Even after I said hello.”

“Sorry,” she said in mild yet clear dismissal, her attention on the screen in front of her, as if she could not feel the pull of him, the heat. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

“No,” he said, his gaze shrewd, considering. “No, I don’t think so.”

Grace would rather die than admit she remembered that moment—because she had been quite literally struck dumb to turn from the bar and find him so close, so glowing and impossibly compelling, sexy and rumpled and male. In painful hindsight, it ranked as one of the single most humiliating moments of her life. She, twenty-eight years old, a fully grown adult woman who oversaw teams of staff and high-level events, had been struck mute at the sight of this man. This waste of space, famous for no particular reason aside from his name, who used his considerable charm like currency. Yes, something in her had whispered, deep and sure—as, no doubt, it did in every silly female who laid eyes on him up close. But Grace had never forgiven herself for losing her head so spectacularly over a man back in high school, with so many horrible consequences; she would not compound the error now. She would not do it again.

“Yes, well,” she said, proud that her voice remained cool, “perhaps I was simply astounded that you could manage to speak coherently. You do have the reputation of being somewhat consistently drunk, don’t you?”

“Which means that I am rarely incoherent,” he said, smiling faintly. “It is my finest skill. For all you know, I could be drunk right now.”

But his eyes were too clear, too watchful. His voice too deliberately blasé. He was about as drunk as she was.

“I will keep that in mind in future,” she replied briskly. She straightened in her seat and let impatience creep into her voice. “I’m sorry I don’t remember meeting you at Samantha Cartwright’s party, Mr. Wolfe. How embarrassing, when I am usually so good with faces. But then, it was a busy night for everyone, wasn’t it?”

She could not seem to keep her own insinuations from creeping in, and she knew why when she saw his green eyes warm with a kind of rueful acknowledgment. With a kind of recognition she knew she should fight. Instead, something about him made her want to needle him, to get under his skin.

She could not bring herself to imagine what that might mean.

Meanwhile, he watched her with those cat’s eyes, and he knew. Her secrets, her darkest corners. Everything. As if he could see right into her.

It should have horrified her. It should not have made her ache and her skin seem to shrink against her bones. It should not have made her breath catch in her throat, her mouth dry. It should not have made her want to show him all her secrets, one by one, even the ones that still made her cringe.

“It’s that voice of yours,” he said, musingly, as if he’d given the matter a great deal of thought. His head tilted to one side. “It’s so surprising. It goes down like a good cream tea, and then a few moments later the sting sets in. It’s quite a formidable weapon you have there, Miss Carter.”

“I prefer Ms. Carter, thank you,” she retorted automatically.

“You should be careful how you use it,” he replied, and she knew she did not mistake the threat then, the sensual menace. It resonated between her legs, made her breasts feel too heavy, brought her breath too quickly to catch in her throat. He knew that, too—she had no doubt. His wicked, battered lips crooked to the side. “Ms. Carter.”

“So you do, in fact, listen when others speak,” she said as if delighted and smiled sharply at him. “One did hope. Perhaps next week we can graduate to knocking before entering!”

“But where’s the fun in that?” he asked, laughing at her. A real laugh—one that made his eyes crinkle in the corners and his head tip back. One that lit him up from the inside. One that seemed to make her chest expand too fast, too hard.

It was a good thing she had resolved to ignore him, Grace thought dimly, captivated against her will—or she might really be in trouble.

The novelty of his brand-new office wore off quickly, Lucas found. It rather made him feel like a caged animal, for all that it gleamed of dark wood and chrome and featured no-doubt-coveted views of London from the floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated the far wall. But while Lucas was many things, most of them damning, covetousness had never been among his flaws. Why should he covet anything? Whatever he wanted, he had. Or took. And yet he stayed in the grand leather chair, behind the immense desk, and pretended he could convey some kind of authority—become some kind of authority figure—by doing so.

But then, he was not sitting in his new office to feel good about himself or his life choices. He was doing it to prove a point. A long overdue point that should not have required proof, he thought, tamping down the surge of anger that seared through him.

“Hello, Lucas,” Jacob had said that early Thursday morning, freshly risen as if from the dead. He had looked Lucas up and down from the great front door where he’d stood, the restored master of Wolfe Manor, his black eyes flicking from bruise to cut to disheveled shirt and making Lucas feel as close to ashamed as he’d been in years.

The very grounds around them had seemed infested with the malevolent ghost of William Wolfe and all the pain he’d inflicted on his unlucky children and wives—or perhaps that had just been the sleepless night getting to Lucas. Perhaps it was Jacob himself, taller and broader than in Lucas’s memory—a grown man now, of substance and wealth, if his fine clothes were any indication.

For a long moment they had both stood there, the early-morning light just beginning to chase away the gray, sizing each other up as if they were adversaries.

On the one hand, Lucas had thought, Jacob had once been his best friend, his partner in crime and his brother. They were only a year apart in age, and had grown up sharing the brunt and burden of their father’s temper. If Lucas could have been there that one fateful night to do what Jacob had done for their family, he would have. Happily—and without a shred of the agony he knew Jacob had felt for what Lucas had always viewed as a necessary act, if not long overdue.

On the other hand, Jacob had taken off without a word and stayed gone for well over a decade. He had left Lucas in his place—a disaster for all concerned. They had been boys back then, if much older than they should have been and far too cynical, but they were grown men now and, apparently, strangers.

But Lucas had not wanted to believe that. Not at first. Not after so long.

“It is lovely to see you, dear brother,” he’d said when the silence had stretched on too long. “I would have slaughtered a calf in your honor, but the kitchens are in some disrepair.”

“I’ve followed your exploits in the papers,” Jacob had said in his familiar yet deeper voice. His black eyes raked Lucas from head to toe again, then back, missing nothing.

Even Jacob, Lucas had thought, something sinking through him like a stone. But he had summoned his most insouciant smile. He had not otherwise reacted.

“I’m touched,” Lucas had replied, blandly. “Had I known you were so interested in my adventures, I would have added you to the annual Christmas card list. Of course, that would have required an address.”

Jacob had looked away for a moment. Lucas had wanted to reach out, to bridge the gap, but he had not known how. His head had pounded ferociously. He’d wished fervently that he’d just gone home, slept it off and left the ghosts of his past alone. What good had this family ever been to him? Why did he still care?

“It’s not as if we don’t already know where this lifestyle leads,” Jacob had said, so quietly that Lucas almost let it go, almost pretended he hadn’t heard. Anything to maintain the fiction of Jacob he’d carried around in his head all these years. Jacob, the hero. Jacob, the savior. Jacob, who knew him.

“My original plan was to prance off into the ether, abandoning family and friends without so much as a backward glance,” Lucas had snapped back at him. “But unfortunately, you’d already taken that role. I was forced to improvise.”

“You know why I had to leave,” Jacob said in a low voice, thick with their shared past and their family’s secrets, public and private.

“Of course,” Lucas had interrupted him, years of pain and resentment bubbling up from places he’d spent his life denying even existed. He’d laughed, a hollow sound that echoed against the stones of the manor house and inside of him in places he preferred to ignore. “You’re nearly twenty years too late, Jacob. I don’t need a big brother any longer. I never did.”

“Look at yourself, Lucas—don’t you see who you’ve become?” Jacob’s voice had been quiet, but had flashed through Lucas as if he’d shouted.

It was not the first time Lucas had been compared to his father, but it was the first time the comparison had been made by someone who shared his bone-deep loathing of the man who had wrecked them both. By someone—the only one—who ought to know better. It was a body blow. It should have killed him. Perhaps it had.

“I thought you were dead,” Lucas had said coldly, unable and unwilling to show his brother how deeply those words cut at him. “I’m not sure this is an improvement.”

“For God’s sake,” Jacob had said, shaking his head, his eyes full of something Lucas refused to name, refused to consider at all. “Don’t let him win.”

Staring out the windows of his luxurious office now, Lucas let out a hollow sort of sound, too flat to be a laugh. He had turned on his heel and left his prodigal brother behind—and had thought, To hell with him. He’d spent the whole long walk down the private lane pretending nothing Jacob had said had gotten to him. Yet when he’d reached the road, he’d flipped open his mobile and rousted Charlie Winthrop from his sleep to announce he’d had a sudden change of heart and would, despite years of claiming otherwise, dearly love to work for Hartington’s in any capacity at all.

Careful what you wish for, he mocked himself now. Especially if you were Lucas Wolfe, and had a tendency to get it.

At half past eleven, Lucas dutifully walked into the conference room, expecting to be bored silly by corporate nonsense. Bureaucracy and posturing. It was one of the reasons he managed his own affairs almost entirely via his computer. But instead of a dreary presentation, he found the room in the grips of evident chaos. One did not have to know a single thing about business to know that something had gone wrong. The very fact that none of the events team seemed to notice or care that he had entered the room told him that—it was a rare experience for him and, strangely, felt almost liberating.

He sank into a seat at the oval-shaped table, reveling in the feeling. It was as if he was very nearly normal, for the first time in memory.

Even smooth, efficient Grace looked harried when she strode into the room a few minutes late, a frown taking the place of the competent, soothing smile he already knew was as much a part of her as her ruthlessly controlled blond hair.

“I’m so sorry, Grace,” one of the anxious-looking girls said at once, all but wilting against the glossy tabletop, distress evident in her very bones.

“Don’t be silly, Sophie,” Grace said, but that marvelous voice was tighter than it had been earlier, and tension seemed to reverberate from her in waves as she set down a stack of files in front of her. “You could hardly have foreseen a burst pipe when you found the place six months ago.”

Another team member rushed up to whisper something in her ear, making her frown deepen, and as the rest of the staff took their seats, Lucas took the opportunity to simply look at Grace.

He wasn’t at all certain why he found the woman so compelling.

There was absolutely nothing about the severe gray suit she was wearing that should have appealed to him. Lucas preferred women in bright colors, preferably showing swathes of tanned, smooth skin. He liked impractically high heels and tousled manes of lustrous hair. Glimpses of toned thighs and full breasts. Not a skirt that showed far too little leg, a jacket he knew she had no intention of unbuttoning and another boring silk blouse in some pale, unremarkable pastel shade that covered her up to her delicate collarbone.

And yet. There was something about Grace Carter that he could not dismiss. That kept him captivated. That had plagued him throughout the long, boring weekend while he had been surrounded, as always, by the kinds of women he usually preferred yet had found unaccountably tedious and insipid this time. That had kept him awake and brooding until he’d placed exactly where he’d seen her before and why he’d noticed her in the first place. He’d thought her a boring prude, of course—but the point was, he’d remembered her.

That in itself was highly unusual.

“All right,” Grace said, calling the meeting to order, her brow smoothing and that great calm seeming to exude from her once again. Lucas could feel the room relax slightly all around him. That was her power, he realized. The gift of that smile.

He felt something in him ease, which should have alarmed him—but, oddly, did not. Instead, he watched her take over the room without seeming to do so. It was almost as if he could not bring himself to look away.

“As many of you have already heard,” she said briskly, “we’ve just had word from the centenary venue that their sprinkler system malfunctioned dramatically over the weekend and flooded the grounds. Completely. They expect that the space will be unusable for at least the next two months, which, of course, means we no longer have a location for the gala.” She raised her hands when the murmuring from the staff increased in volume and took on the unmistakable edge of panic. “I suggest we all look at this as a challenge,” she said. She flashed that smile. “Not a catastrophe.”

She seemed so calm, so at ease. As if she expected no less than seven catastrophes before lunch every day, and what was one more? But Lucas could see something in her chocolate-colored eyes, something that seemed to ring in him. Like she was scared and fighting hard not to show it. Like she had as much riding on this as he did, however improbable. Like she might be someone completely different when she was alone, and had nothing to prove, and was not performing for the crowd.

He could not have said why he wanted so much to believe that. Maybe that was why he opened his mouth, surprising himself as much as anyone else. More.

“Exactly what are you looking for?” he heard himself ask, as if from afar. “In terms of a location? “

Her dark eyes seemed to slam into him. She held his gaze for what seemed too long—and yet even as she smiled politely at him, he could see the wariness, the uncertainty, the panic she hid from the rest. It was almost as if he could feel it—he, who felt nothing. Deliberately.

“It must be the perfect melding of old and new, to stand as a showcase for Hartington’s—an updated classic.” She smiled that professional smile, the one that made him want to lick her until he saw the real one she must have hidden away in there somewhere. “Do you know anything that fits the bill?”

“As a matter of fact,” Lucas said, far too easily, “I do.”

He hadn’t known where he was going with this until it fell into his head, exquisitely formed, the perfect solution. Better by far than the miserable pile of stones and nightmares and broken childhood dreams deserved.

“It must also be suitable for a corporate event, Mr. Wolfe,” Grace said. Her dark eyes were level on his, her voice perfectly professional. “Not, for example, a den of iniquity.”

“Those are the only dens worth inhabiting,” he replied at once, aware of all the eyes on him, on them, as if they could see the same sizzle he felt. “I make an excellent guide to all the local dens of iniquity, in fact. Perhaps we should take a company field trip.”

There was a small titter from the group around him, but Grace, of course, merely flashed that calm smile.

“Tempting,” she said, though it was clear that she was anything but tempted, “and one has no doubt at all of your expertise—

“I should hope not,” he said, his lips curving. “I’m Lucas Wolfe.”

“—but I think we’ll have to decline.” Her smile took on that edge. He should not have found it so fascinating.

“Never fear,” he said before she could dismiss him entirely. “I have something far more boring in mind for your event.”

“Wonderful,” Grace said, her brows raised. She did not trust him, of course. Who did? Who could? He had made certain it was impossible—and so he could not imagine why it should bother him now. “By all means, let’s hear it.”

She thought he was as much of a lost cause as his brother did, he knew. He had gone out of his way to make sure of it—to make sure he lived down to every single low expectation others had of him. The “famous Lucas Wolfe” was his own, best creation, and he’d taken pride in that for years.

So there was no reason at all he should want to alter her impressions.

“What you need is a place that is intimately connected with Hartington’s, yet adds a touch of exclusivity, as well. A destination location.” He had no idea what he was talking about, or why. And yet he could not seem to stop himself. He held her gaze. Challenge and demand. Mystery. He could not resist it. Her. “How would Wolfe Manor suit?”

The rest of the team exploded into excited noise, but Lucas could only see Grace. It was worth it, he told himself, to see her stunned expression, to watch her swiftly reevaluate him in that single split second. The fact that he might be a touch cocky in proposing this particular solution hardly signified, he told himself. He could see the wheels in her head turning, the possibilities occurring to her, a new plan taking shape.

And then she smiled the real smile he’d imagined, and time seemed to still. There was nothing fake or pointed about this smile—it was all that honey and shine, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, no matter what, he would have this woman.

He had to.

CHAPTER FOUR

RAIN drummed against the roof of the limousine as it made its way out of London toward Wolfe Manor the following day. Water tracked silken, wet paths across the windows in ever-changing patterns as the car slid through mile after mile of the wet and green British countryside—and yet all Grace could concentrate on was the six feet and more of Lucas Wolfe, stretched out with far too much lazy confidence and sheer male appeal next to her in the confines of the car.

“You can look at me directly,” he said in that low, insinuating, endlessly amused voice, far too close to her ear. “I can’t imagine why you would fight the urge. I am, after all, quite marvelously handsome.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is conceited,” Grace replied, her gaze on the PDA in her hand as if he did not affect her in the slightest. And yet she could only seem to concentrate on the fact that he was much too close to her on the plush seat, his strong shoulders just a whisper away, his spicy, expensive scent—male and seductive and him—seeming to inflame her, to tease her and taunt her, every time she inhaled.

He laughed, completely unfazed, as ever. “Conceit cannot possibly be the right word,” he countered. She was much too aware of how he shifted in his seat, how he inched even closer. “I’ve had independent confirmation in the press for years. I am a glorious male animal. You may as well simply admit the truth.”

“You should probably not believe everything you read, Mr. Wolfe,” Grace replied airily. Easily. She wished she could feel the way she sounded. “It can lead to all sorts of issues. A swollen head, for one thing.”

She knew the moment she said it that she should not have used that word.

“My head is the not the part of me—” he began, evident delight in his tone and in his bright green eyes when she turned to frown at him.

“I beg you,” she said crisply. “Let us preserve the fantasy that you are not, in fact, a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Please do not finish that sentence.”

The wicked smile that should have irritated her, but somehow did not, flirted with his mouth even as his eyes darkened with a heat she wished she could not feel.

“I assure you, Ms. Carter,” he said softly. “I am a grown man in all the ways that could possibly interest you.”

She was all too aware that he was a man. Just a man, she reminded herself. No more and no less, no matter what the fawning press and her own reactions seemed to suggest. And no matter that, yesterday, he had seemed to sense how agitated she was when no one else had. She had no idea what that could mean.

He had discarded his suit jacket the moment he’d entered the vehicle, stripping it from his lean, masculine form in a manner she’d found entirely too disconcerting—and Grace was forced to note that his biceps were more muscular, his shoulders wider and harder, his torso more sculpted than she had imagined when he was covered in more than just a soft bit of linen. She shifted farther, trying to pull herself as far toward the opposite side of the car as possible without looking as if that was what she was doing.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.