The Shameless Playboy

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.