Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (13 page)

An image of a lovesick Declan down on one knee, proclaiming his adoration of her, filled Grace’s mind.
My, you
are
full of surprises
, she would say.
I was wondering how far you’d go with a woman you once called dumpy
. His face would fall, his heart crumpling like
tinfoil as for the first time in his life he had his heart broken and was made to feel a fool.

Why are you doing this to me?
he’d ask.

Because you let me
, she’d say.

And because he was a rotten bastard who deserved to have his heart trod upon. Grace had never been one to seek retribution for wrongs done to her, trying instead to take the moral high road, but it was luscious to imagine having the power to humiliate Declan. If she was honest with herself, hadn’t she only developed her “it’s better to rise above it” philosophy because she was too cowardly to take action against her enemies?

Not only did Declan deserve such treatment, he would benefit from it. He’d learn empathy, a trait crucial to developing a strong, loving relationship with a woman. Grace didn’t believe that anyone was pure evil. Declan was callous because he hadn’t ever experienced the pain of being rejected by someone he wanted. She would be doing him—and any future women he dated—a great favor by squishing his heart.

Grace’s delight faded at a suspicious thought. “Declan is your friend. Why would you want him hurt?”

“Blood’s thicker than water, Grace. He hurt you, which is as good as hurting me.”

Grace narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t think that’s it. No . . . you don’t think I’ll succeed! You don’t think I’ll ever have the power to hurt him!”

Sophia shrugged. “The man’s a player. More talented women than you have tried and failed to capture his heart.”

Grace propped one hand on her hip. “I thought native talent had nothing to do with it. You said you could teach me how to be the woman no man could resist.
No
man.”

Sophia sighed. “Players are different. It would require too much of you.”

“How much?”

“Everything.”

“You mean . . . ,” Grace trailed off, her stomach sinking.

“He won’t fall completely for someone he can never touch. He will be intrigued by you, he will pursue you and perhaps even become obsessed with you—which is good, and necessary—but he won’t lose himself entirely without the bonding that comes with physical contact and with sex. He will eventually—not too soon, but
eventually—
need that, and the burst of hormones that comes with sexual release. Without that, he’ll never believe himself wholeheartedly in love; but even
with
sex, love is no guarantee. He is as likely to lose interest in you after sex as to bond with you.” Sophia watched her dismayed reaction, then nodded. “So you see why it’s much better that you use him for harmless practice. To sleep with a man you dislike, in the faint hope of exacting revenge . . . it’s too much, Grace. You couldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t want you to.”

Grace felt a welter of emotions: doubt, anger, revulsion, fear, and under it all sneaking sexual arousal. She tried to smother it and focus on the possibility of revenge. It had never occurred to her that she could hurt Declan as badly, or even worse, than he had hurt her. She could humiliate him. How would that feel, to rule over him in such a way?

She’d even be willing to concede that Aunt Sophia was right about the powers of bombshellitude, if she could use it to pierce the rhino hide of a man like Declan.

“If I
did
get Declan obsessed with me,” Grace said, “and he fell for me? What if I could do that, with or without sex?”

“My dear,” Sophia said drily, “if you can make Declan O’Brien fall in love with you, I’ll turn that twenty thousand dollars into fifty.”

CHAPTER

10

D
eclan shut off his smart phone and stood looking out at the ocean, wondering what else he could do to fill the time waiting for Grace. He’d already returned phone calls, replied to e-mails, and checked up on the progress of his development project with the architecture firm and his contacts in the county, but if he didn’t find more busywork to do, he risked dwelling on the last time he’d seen Grace, and what an utter ass he’d been.

Cyndee had scampered off to wherever she’d come from, leaving him with faint interest in their date tonight. The sex that followed would be athletic and enthusiastic, but he didn’t want to spend the whole night with her; the woman couldn’t sit still or be quiet to save her life. How had such noise ever evolved in the human female? He’d have thought they’d all been eaten by lions on the savannah before Homo sapiens left Africa.

He blew out a breath. It had been stupid to ask out Cyndee the human pogo stick. He didn’t know what had come over him: Grace had looked at him with eyes that declared him a chauvinist pig, and the next thing he knew he was doing his best to prove her right. It was as if he unconsciously wanted her to hate him even more than she already did.

On the night of Grace’s arrival, he’d had a little too much to drink and decided to spend the night; one of the guest rooms was
his whenever he was in town. He’d made the mistake of sitting down on the couch in the living room, though, and before he knew it he was zonked out, waking only when Grace began her midnight serenade.

He didn’t know what had motivated him to all that followed. There were Sophia’s instructions to behave as normal—i.e., as a cad—but he’d gone beyond that. He’d wanted to chase Grace away from the house entirely, hoping she’d leave in the morning with her volatile friend.

Once he’d started touching Grace, though, all that mattered was the warm, soft female who was slowly giving herself to him. All cats were gray in the dark, and this one had been in heat. Her flesh beneath his touch had been deeply, darkly inviting, filling him with the animal urge to conquer and consume. At that moment, he
had
to have her. Rational thought had ceased.

It hadn’t returned when Catherine crashed into the crockery; it hadn’t returned when she stood in the doorway calling Grace’s name. It was only when the light came on that his brain reengaged.

He wished it hadn’t. Interrupted passion, embarrassment, Sophia’s instructions, the hateful imagined image of Grace and Dr. Andrew in marital bliss, they all came together and made him behave in a way that now brought an unfamiliar twinge of shame.

He thought he was a nice guy under the hound exterior. Not yet ready to settle down, but never the type of asshole who ended up on DontDateHimGirl.com, either. A good guy who’d never intentionally hurt someone innocent.

Now, every time he looked at Grace he would see the ugly truth reflected in her eyes. Given the right situation, he could be a dick.

It was exactly how Sophia wanted him to behave, but he was having a hard time feeling good about it. It was so much more
fun to be a womanizer when it came naturally, without conscious thought. Self-awareness was a bitch.

To please Sophia he would take Grace out today, and he’d be as rude and crude as Grace no doubt expected of him, but he wasn’t going to touch her again. A guy had to be able to look at himself in the mirror.

Deep in thought, he didn’t realize Grace was approaching until she appeared in the corner of his eye. With a start he looked down at her, his vision falling smack into as lush a mound of breasts as had ever graced the cover of a men’s magazine. They welled up from the V-neck of a green dress that wrapped round her body and tied at the side, hugging a small waist and full hips that belonged on Kim Kardashian or Marilyn Monroe. He was used to California gym addicts with their sinewy arms and boys’ hips, and in comparison, Grace’s voluptuous feminine display was shocking, almost pornographic. There were so many wild curves flowing this way and that, he didn’t know where to look, or even if he
should
look.

“Christ, what happened to you?” he blurted. Had her eyes been that bright a green before? And—was that makeup she was wearing? Her hair was up in a high ponytail, leaving the smooth column of her neck bare.

“I took a shower.”

“You must have damn good soap.”

“Positively transformative,” she said and put on a big pair of sunglasses, the better—he suspected—to hide her true thoughts. “I’m looking forward to this very much,” she said robotically. “It’s very kind of you to show me around.”

“What did Sophia have to do, bribe you?”

Grace jerked guiltily, then rubbed her arm. “Mosquito,” she offered in explanation. Her mouth twisted as if tasting something unpleasant, and then curved into a smile. Her voice dropped and
she purred up at him with seeming sincerity, “Will you forgive me for my unappreciative behavior earlier? I was too worn out by my workout to give proper thought to how wonderful it would be to be shown around. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful parts of California, and you were so kind to offer to introduce me to it. Please forgive me.”

“Er . . . ,” he said in confusion. He was too surprised to make sense of what was happening.
She
was apologizing to
him
?

Grace laid her fingers on his arm, the contact startling him. “Say you forgive me?”

“Did Sophia slip you some of her pain meds?”

He was rewarded by the tightening of her lips. The hint of her real emotion made him feel on more solid ground: she wasn’t entirely the baaing lamb of sweetness she pretended.

“Pain meds?” she said. “What nonsense. Of course not. I’ve just realized that you’ve been a perfect gentleman, and that you deserve to be treated as one.”

He grunted, which seemed the only polite response to such a pile of rubbish. He was curious, though, about what she was up to. Maybe this outing would prove entertaining after all. He gestured to the terrace stairs. “Shall we?”

Grace walked beside him down the stairs and around the side of the house. He kept glancing down at her, expecting to catch her making obscene gestures at him. Her Stepford wife change of tone was a mask for some purpose, he was sure of it.

His 1956 Jaguar convertible hunkered in a shady corner of the courtyard, waiting to be set free upon the road. They reached the passenger door at the same time, both their hands reaching for the handle, landing upon it together. Grace’s hand tightened on the latch, and Declan expected her to make a feminist remark about not being so weak that she couldn’t open her own door.

Instead, her grip loosened and fell away. He opened the door
and she slid into her seat, and smiled up at him again. “Thank you.”

Smiling up at him like that—she was really quite lovely. Did she know? He grunted in response to her, and went round to his side and got in.

“What a beautiful car! Did you find it in such perfect condition, or did you restore it?”

“I restored it,” he said. “But I’m sure you don’t care about cars.”

Her mouth twitched, as if her first impulse was to agree, but then it formed itself into a lipsticked smile once again. “I don’t care about modern cars, but
this
is something special. I noticed it the first day I got here, and wondered who owned it.”

He didn’t believe her for a moment. He grunted yet again—he was devolving into an ape in her unexpectedly polite company—and started the engine. His ears noted the velvet purr that said the carburetors were still in perfect balance. The timing might be a hair too advanced, though; he might want to back it off a bit.

“Where did you find it? There can’t be many like this around.” Grace ran her fingertips slowly over the polished wood of the dash, and he imagined her doing the same to him. “It’s gorgeous. Tell me all about it. Is this wood original?”

Her compliments warmed him. He was proud of his handiwork and he loved the car, so if she was trying to soften him up for a nefarious purpose, she had chosen her method well. He put the car in gear and drove down the driveway, biting back the volumes of detail ready to spill forth about the car. He had touched every bolt, belt, and piston and could happily go on about it for hours to a fellow enthusiast. But Grace was
not
an enthusiast, and she was feigning interest. “I didn’t figure you for a car person.”