Shameless Playboy (10 page)

 
          
“Well,”
she said after a long, searing moment. Her voice seemed thicker—or did he only
imagine that? “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. He did not know what to make of it. He only
knew he could not look away.

 
          
“You
mean
your
life,” he amended quietly,
as if they stood in the presence of something bigger—something important.

 
          
“And
in any event,” she continued, squaring her shoulders as if he had not spoken, “I
have a very strict policy against becoming personally involved with coworkers.
I understand you’ve never really worked in an office before—”

 
          
“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 policies. I could make you forget
your own name.”

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

 
          
At
him.

 
          
GRACE
thought she sounded on the verge of hysteria—and that was certainly how she
felt, her chest too tight and her skin on fire—but Lucas merely stared down at
her, his beautiful face looking nonplussed and not a little disconcerted. His
hand tightened around the handle of the umbrella he still held above them. She
could still feel the places where he’d touched her face, her hand—as if he’d
burned the imprint of his hand into her flesh.

 
          
“I’m
so sorry,” she said, biting back the laughter before it gave her away, before
he saw the truth. Before he realized she was putting on a desperate act to
divert his attention. “I have no doubt you could do all of those things. You
are Lucas Wolfe, are you not? You’re famous for doing all of that and more to
the better part of Europe.”

 
          
“Never
fear,” he said stiffly. His green eyes burned like smoky emeralds in the wet,
gray air. “I am reckless with the feelings of others, perhaps, but never my own
health.”

 
          
“I’m
sure you’re all you claim to be,” she said, injecting a placating note into her
voice, which made his eyes narrow and his full lips thin. But he was no longer
touching her, which meant he was no longer turning her brain and body to smoke
and need, and Grace felt she had to count her blessings where she could.

 
          
“You
have no idea,” he murmured.

 
          
I have more of an idea than I should
,
she thought ruefully, pushing aside a host of dangerously vivid images that
taunted her, teased her, made her yearn to throw herself headlong into the very
thing she knew would destroy her. It was as if Lucas Wolfe had been created
with every one of Grace’s preferences and secret desires in mind. The
aristocratic drawl. The quick, smart wit that suggested an agile mind he chose
to hide behind his famed laziness. The lean, arrogant swagger. The narrow,
beautiful face that made Grace think of fallen angels and other impossible
creatures, all seduction and compulsion, magic and wonder, wrapped up in a
package that was unmistakably, devastatingly male.

 
          
“And
that is yet one more reason I can’t possibly allow anything to happen between
us,” Grace said as politely as she could, speaking more to herself than to him.
She forced herself to meet his gaze fully and blandly. She forced herself to
smile serenely, despite the wild tumult that raged inside of her, nearly
knocking her from her feet.

 
          
“Grace
…” he began, but she had one more card to play. She splayed one hand over her
chest, and let her smile take on just the slightest hint of something in the
neighborhood of pity.

 
          
“I
am, of course, very flattered,” she said. Distinctly. Sweetly. Sympathetically.

 
          
She
knew she’d hit the right note when he stiffened, his eyes narrowing to outraged
green slits. She almost opened her mouth then to take it back, to tell the
truth, compelled by a force she could not begin to understand. Why should she
have the insane urge to protect him? To shield him—even from herself, at her
own expense? What was happening to her?

 
          
It
was the rain, she told herself with some desperation. The rain and a man she
should never have met, who she could never allow herself to know in any way
other than the superficial. Just the wet and the peculiarly British dampness
that crept into the bones and stayed there, squatting, like a kind of grief.

 
          
It
was the rain, she thought, and nothing more.

 
          
“I
think we’re done here,” she said, when he only stared at her, affront and
something else she was afraid to consider too closely written plainly across
his face.

 
          
“Are
you certain?” he asked coolly. “Surely you are only now warming to the subject.
Just think, with some more time and energy you could flay my flesh entirely
from my bones using only that sharp tongue of yours.”

 
          
“Tempting,”
she could not help but reply, not wanting to think about her tongue near any
part of him, not wanting to feel how much of a temptation he truly was, how
completely he could ruin her if she let him. “But I think I’ll pass.” A kind of
shadow passed across his face, darkening those fascinating eyes, and she felt
an answering twinge in the vicinity of her chest. She cleared her throat. “I’m
sorry if I hurt your feelings—”

 
          
“Please
contain yourself, Ms. Carter,” he interrupted her smoothly, with a touch of
hauteur, all hint of shadows gone from his perfect features as if she’d
imagined them. “I am Lucas Wolfe. I don’t have feelings, I have sycophants. I
think, somehow, I will manage to survive the disappointment.”

 
          
She
was surprised she was still standing, that they were still huddled together
beneath the same umbrella—that she was not lying in pieces scattered at his
feet after that lacerating tone of voice.

 
          
But
this was a good thing, she reminded herself when she was tempted to let that
affect her as it should not. When it came to this man, antagonism was the
better part of valor. It was the hint of tenderness, the suspicion of emotion,
that would be her downfall. But this—
this
she could handle.

 
          
She
smiled her frostiest smile at him, the one that had helped earn her the title
of ice queen from everyone who’d been unlucky enough to receive it.

 
          
“If
you say so, Mr. Wolfe,” she replied in a tone as sharp as his had been, his
formal name feeling bitter against her teeth.

 
          
Then
she strode toward the car, grateful for the rain against her face because it
was cold. Grateful for the cold because it snapped her out of the strange spell
she’d been in since she’d gotten in the car with him in London. Grateful
because finally—
finally
, she told
herself
—
she felt like herself again.

 
          
Grace
would have preferred it if Lucas had reverted to his expected type over the
next few days—rolling into work at odd hours, drunk and disreputable and
incapable of doing more than ogling the secretaries, which was just as everyone
expected him to behave—but he did not.

 
          
Instead,
he turned out to be good at his job.

 
          
He
threw a press conference to announce his own new position at Hartington’s,
deliberately starting the kind of media frenzy that would have taken anyone
else a great deal of time and money to attempt to duplicate. And then he simply
… went out on the town, as he normally did. He attended all the usual parties,
with all the usual people. Pop stars and models, actors and Sloane Rangers.
Up-and-coming artists across all mediums, and brash rockers known as much for
their prodigious use of recreational substances as their music. And wherever he
went, whoever he was with and whatever the event, when he was photographed—and
he was always, always photographed—he talked about Hartington’s.

 
          
He
knew the very fact that he’d taken a job would be considered noteworthy, and so
he milked the public’s fascination with the idea of him at work for all it was
worth. All the while talking so much about the Hartington’s gala at Wolfe Manor
that Grace was soon reading breathless reports on celebrity gossip sites about
who was and who wasn’t on the guest list, which artists were jockeying for a
chance to perform—the kind of exposure and excitement she normally only
fantasized about. With the centenary gala approaching so quickly, there simply
could not be
enough
publicity—and
certainly not of this kind and caliber.

 
          
Lucas
Wolfe, it turned out, was a publicity machine, completely adept at using the
press to his own ends.

 
          
“Your
ability to manipulate the press is really very impressive,” Grace told him at
the morning meeting, the paper in front of her spread open to yet another story
about the perennially shiftless Wolfe brother and his shocking newfound
interest in corporate life.

 
          
Though
she could not help but wonder—if he was this good at making the press do his
bidding, had he been doing precisely this all along, creating the very image
that even she now reacted to as if it was the gospel truth about him? Perhaps
he really was as clever as she’d now and again imagined him to be, Grace
thought, and could not have said why that revelation made her shiver slightly.
Nor why he would have deliberately chosen to spend his life this way, to be
known far and wide as this … dismissible.

 
          
“Not
at all,” Lucas replied with a careless shrug, though there was a measuring sort
of look in his eyes when he met Grace’s gaze across the conference table.
Something much too commanding for a lifelong layabout. Something dark. Aware. “Paparazzi
have followed me around for the whole of my life. It’s long past time they made
themselves useful.”

 
          
“Usefulness
is apparently going around,” Grace said, unnerved by the way he looked at her
and determined not to show it in front of her team members, all of whom still
gazed raptly at Lucas as if he descended to work each morning from Mount
Olympus itself, complete with a thunderbolt and a golden chariot.

 
          
Lucas,
meanwhile, only watched her with an undecipherable expression that made Grace
distinctly uncomfortable. Wrenching her gaze from his, she returned to the
business at hand, grateful that hers was a high-pressure career that had taught
her years ago how to always, always appear calm and collected no matter what
fires burned inside of her or around her.

 
          
No
matter if she felt scorched.

 
          
This
was what she had wanted, she reminded herself more stridently than should have
been necessary when she was back in her office, away from his too-incisive
green scrutiny. She wanted distance. She wanted him to stay away.

 
          
She
did.

 
          
So
there was no reason at all for her heart to skip a beat in her chest when she
looked up from a frustrating email chain regarding the florist’s latest temper
tantrum about the changed location to see Lucas filling up her doorway, far too
broad of shoulder and smoldering of eye.

 
          
Her
smile felt more forced than usual. As if that odd interlude in the rain had
happened only moments ago, instead of days. As if she thought that somehow
Lucas could truly see inside of her, where she still shivered for him, still
wanted him, still ached for him to put his hands on her, no matter how much she
wanted to deny it.

 
          
“I
need a date,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking slightly.