Why had she let her mother’s fears, Travis’s lies, control her for so long?
If being around Lucas had taught her anything, it was this: once someone saw behind the mask, it was impossible to go on wearing it. It no longer fit in the way it had. Once she had been seen—known—how could she settle for anything less?
And once she knew what she was hiding, how could she allow it to remain hidden?
“I’m falling in love with you,” she told him matter-of-factly, because that was the only secret she had left. And he knew all the rest of them. She had turned over every last stone she had and showed him all the dirt she’d hidden away beneath. She laughed slightly, at her own daring, and her own folly. “Who am I kidding? I’ve already fallen.”
“You don’t mean that.” There was an edge of something like panic in his voice, a certain shock in the way he looked at her then. “You are far too intelligent for that kind of nonsense.”
“I am not telling you this because I expect anything from you,” she told him quietly, holding his gaze, her head high and proud. “But because I suspect you believe you are inherently unlovable, as if you were somehow born undeserving of it, when nothing could be further from the truth.”
“I’ve told you more about my past than I’ve ever told anyone else,” he gritted out, moving closer and grasping her shoulders in his hands, holding her tightly—but not hard. Gentle, even now. “Damn you, Grace! You know more than enough to run!”
“I have no intention of running,” she said, her voice crisp, despite the emotion she could feel searing through her, making her eyes glaze over. Despite the waves of deep emotion and long-denied truths that washed through her, over her. Changing her completely even as she stood there. Shaking her. Rendering her maskless forever.
No matter what happened.
“Then I will do it for you,” he growled, but he did not let go of her. He did not back away. He did not, in fact, run.
“Are you saving me from yourself?” she whispered. “Is that what a man as bad as you claim to be would do, Lucas? Or is that a bit more noble than you normally allow yourself to be?”
“You have no idea how bad I can be,” he insisted, a wildness to his voice, his gaze. “You have no idea what real ugliness is, Grace. But I do—and I have his blood running in my veins!”
He let go of her then, as if the invocation of William Wolfe brought his ghost between them to shove them apart.
“He is dead,” she said, her voice low, intense. “And even if he were not, you are nothing like him. You are a good man, Lucas. A decent man. A man worth loving.”
She heard the way her voice cracked with emotion, felt the way she shook where she stood, but all she could see was Lucas. All she could see was the shock on his face and the heavy curtain of denial that fell across it, obscuring him.
For a moment he only scowled at her, his big body vibrating with tension and fury, his green eyes gone black with all of his self-loathing, all his years of self-destruction, his whole lifetime of loneliness. She could see all of it.
She wanted to fight all the ugliness, all the darkness, all the lies he’d made truth over the years to fulfill his own prophecies. She knew about that. And now, today, she knew truths she should have seen long ago. She wanted to reach inside where he was so cold, so alone, and warm him. But she knew she could not do any of that, not really. Not without his help.
She had only one weapon in her arsenal. Only one chance.
“I love you,” she said, letting the words hang there, strong enough, she hoped, to battle his ghosts. Because they were all she had. “I do.”
“Then you are a fool,” he said, his mouth twisting.
He brushed past her on the stair, turned the corner and was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LUCAS saw the solitary figure standing away from the scaffolded manor house and the commotion in and around the gala’s big tent that commanded the better part of the grand lawn. He knew who it was. The figure stood down near the lake, facing away from the gathering crowds, and Lucas moved toward him before he could think better of it—before, in fact, he could fully register what he meant to do.
Lucas had been wandering aimlessly for hours, stamping about the property like some kind of wraith. He had made his way through the overgrown reaches of the estate, all of it so much the same and yet so different from the grounds he remembered combing every inch of as a child. Had there only been moors, he thought, he could have done an impression of Heathcliff to put his brother Nathaniel, recently awarded his first Sapphire Screen Award to international acclaim, very much to shame.
He had walked and walked, as if he could outpace his demons, as if he could leave his past behind him simply by remaining in motion.
He should never have returned here. He should have known better.
Grace was not the first woman to tell him that she loved him, but she was the only one he’d ever believed. The only one he knew had nothing to gain, everything to lose and absolutely no reason to lie to him. He wanted to deny it, even to himself, but he’d seen her face. He’d seen the truth in her deep brown eyes, heard the quiet conviction in her honeyed voice. Worse, he’d felt something shift inside of him, as if in answer.
It should have been impossible. Grace was determined and intelligent, resourceful and strong. She was more beautiful than she wanted anyone to notice, and far kinder than she should be. She had worked her whole life to get where she was, against the kind of odds Lucas could hardly imagine. What could she possibly see in a wastrel like him?
Was there anything to see? After a lifetime insisting there was not, why was he suddenly so worried that he was exactly as empty as he’d always declared he was?
“Jacob,” he said in greeting when he reached his brother’s side. They both stared out over the deceptively placid water, watching it gleam in the late-afternoon light. Lucas thrust his hands in his pockets, aware as he did so that he and Jacob moved in concert. As if they still knew each other as they once had. It nearly made him smile.
“How thoughtful of you to ask for permission to throw an event here,” Jacob murmured, an ironic undertone to his voice. “In this house which, for better or worse, I own.”
“Oh, good,” Lucas said mildly. “You received your invitation.” He pivoted toward Jacob. “I did wonder, having only tossed it through the door.” That had also been his version of requesting permission. He looked back over the water, and pretended he did not care about the next question. “Does that mean you are staying?”
“I’m happy that Wolfe Manor could be used in such a creative manner,” Jacob said, with something like a smile, avoiding the question. Lucas felt the other man—the grown man and near-stranger who had taken the place of his long-lost brother—look at him, then away. “And that you took my advice so closely to heart.”
“I believe it was more a shot to the heart,” Lucas said dryly.
He did not press Jacob about his plans. He tried to summon the anger he had felt before, the dark fury that had propelled him away from this house, from his brother, but he realized in a dawning sort of amazement that it was no longer there. Where there had been all of that bubbling, simmering resentment and despair, there was now only Grace. He was not at all sure how to handle that knowledge. Nor how she had managed to become the thing that haunted him, even here.
“I never thought I’d see the day you held down an honest job,” Jacob said in a quiet voice.
“You are certainly not alone,” Lucas said. He smiled slightly, rocking back on his heels. “Though I think I might be rather good at it.”
“That does not surprise me at all,” Jacob said. Lucas let that sit there, afraid that if he looked at it too closely, paid it too much attention, it might disappear as if he had imagined it. He did not want anything to mean so much to him, especially not one man’s opinion. But then, this man’s opinion was the only one that ever had.
Jacob shifted his weight, frowning, and Lucas instinctively braced himse
lf for the inevitable blow. Would Jacob throw the latest tabloid report in his face? He would deserve it. Would he mention William Wolfe’s rather notorious reign in the same position Lucas now held at Hartington’s, fueled by cocaine and intemperate rages? He could certainly draw some pointed comparisons. There were so many ways Lucas could disappoint him without even trying that it was pointless to try to pick one on his own. He could only roll with whatever punch might come his way.
The way he always had.
Jacob turned so he faced Lucas, his dark eyes unreadable, his mouth a serious line. “You deserve more from life than to make yourself over into his ghost. That is all I meant.”
Lucas thought of Grace’s wide brown eyes, filled with emotions he dared not name, could not accept—even though he longed to do so. He thought of the peace he felt when he held her, the fierce, unexpected loyalty she showed no matter what story he told her, no matter how often he expected her to register her disgust with him. He thought of her bravery, her dignity in the face of a scandal that could have—should have—taken her to her knees.
He thought about her voice, all Texas heat and that sweet, Southern honey, saying, I love you. He thought about the way the words seemed to loosen things inside of him, open him up, make him feel as if there was light where there had only been dark and decay before.
“Do you know,” he said conversationally, as if the world had not shifted beneath him, as if he was the same man he had been before, as if the very concept of hope was not foreign to him in every way, “I think you may be right.”
The late-afternoon sun dipped closer to the land, casting shadows all around them. Behind them, lights blazed from a thousand clever lanterns Grace had placed every few feet, and the closed-off yet well-lighted manor house gleamed like a gothic wonderland, beckoning guests to venture near. Inviting the whispered stories, the half-recalled legends, the tragic and celebrated and mythical history of the Wolfe family. His family.
Meanwhile, the rather less mythical truth was two men who might one day be friends again, but were in any case still brothers, standing quietly near an old family lake, putting ancient ghosts to rest.
“I will see you at your gala, then,” Jacob said after a moment.
“Indeed you will,” Lucas agreed. He felt some of his old mischief rise to the surface, and grinned. “I will be performing the role of Lucas Wolfe, England’s favorite playboy, for all the assembled guests. Prepare yourself. I am quite good at it. No less than three-quarters of the crowd will end the night desperately in love with me.”
“They always do,” Jacob said, in the lightest tone Lucas had heard from him since his return. He reached over and clasped a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, briefly, then let go as he turned toward the house.
They had not been a demonstrative family at the best of times, whenever that might have been, and Lucas felt the gesture for what it was. An olive branch. A bridge. It was not the twenty years they’d lost, but it was a start.
“Jacob,” he said, staring ahead at the lake, as if all the answers lay just beneath the gleaming surface.
He heard Jacob pause behind him, and smiled then, more focused on the future than the endless, dreary past. More interested in who he could be than in who he’d been.
At last.
“Welcome home,” he said quietly into the coming night, and was not at all surprised to discover he meant it.
Lucas shook every hand, posed for every picture and flattered every guest who ventured near him. The great tent was filled with golden, glittering light and hung with tapestries and chandeliers, and the people who filled it were strictly the crème de la crème of Europe. Celebrities, socialites, aristocracy. All mingled with the expected corporate kings, basking in the past and future of Hartington’s with the members of the Wolfe family who had made an appearance.
Jacob, the mysteriously returned heir, was at least as interesting to the gathered press corps as the current reigning Hollywood idol, Nathaniel, and the brand-new fiancée he had on his arm. Even Annabelle, who was photographing the event and hid behind her camera and her great reserve as was her way, was a Wolfe and therefore noted, no matter how little she might have wished to interact with the guests. Or, for that matter, her brothers. And Lucas, of course, who the press could not help but love, so skillfully did he manipulate them at their own game, was always a paparazzi favorite.
“No more pictures,” he told his least-favorite photographer with a smile—when the man deserved his fists for taking those pictures of him and Grace. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble this week?”
But he laughed, as if there were no hard feelings, because that was how best to avoid having his next intimate moment broadcast to the entire world. It was better to work with them than fight against them, he knew. It was wiser to let them think they had control. He was certain there was a lesson in there somewhere, should he care to search for it.
It was, Lucas thought as he moved away from the photographer, straightening his tuxedo jacket with an expert jerk, a perfect night all around. Old Charlie Winthrop looked jovial and well pleased, sitting with the rest of the board of directors as they basked in the celebration happening all around them. The marketing and publicity departments had had their moment to shine and present the relaunch to great applause and many pictures, and Lucas had even said a few words before yielding the stage to the pop princess herself.
Yet Grace was nowhere to be found.
Lucas could see the other members of her team on the fringes of the crowd, weaving their way through the brightly clad groups to fix problems, relay information or put out the odd fire. But no Grace. Eventually, after he’d looked for her in vain for far too long, he flagged down one of the interchangeable girls who had always spent the morning meeting making cow’s eyes at him.
“Where is Grace?” he asked, impatient with the starry way the girl blinked at him. You do not even know me, he wanted to scold her, but did not.
“Oh …” the girl breathed. She gulped. “Well, Mr. Wolfe, uh, she’s been sacked.”
The words did not make sense. Lucas stared at the girl before him, aware that he had lost his smile, that he had gone too still, that he was glaring ferociously at the poor creature.
“I beg your pardon?” His tone out-froze the towering ice sculpture nearby, and made the girl flush scarlet.
“M-Mr. Winthrop met with her just before the first guests arrived,” she stammered out. “No one knows what he said, but she told Sophie to take charge and then she left.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “That’s all I know!”
But Lucas had already stopped listening to her. Temper roared through him, thick and vicious. He scanned the party, his eyes narrowing in on Charlie Winthrop, who was laughing merrily with his band of cohorts, completely unaware of the danger he was in. He wanted to rip the round little man apart with his hands, but there was a greater urgency moving through him then, something much closer to fear. He felt his hands clench into fists at his sides, and could only imagine what expression he wore when the girl before him made a squeaking sound and melted away.
He forgot her immediately. He looked around the glittering party, taking in all the famous faces, all the rich and the bored, the infamous and the outrageous. They were all the same. The same faces he had seen again and again, in every party, from London to Positano to Sydney and back again. The same gossip, the same stories, the same old game.
But he had no interest at all in playing, not anymore.
He had changed. He was not the same man he had been when he’d staggered up the drive to Wolfe Manor, battered and bleeding, all those weeks ago. He was not the same man he’d been pretending to be the whole of his life, and the pretense, the mask, no longer seemed to fit him as it should.
And the reason for that was not here, as she should be.
The great well of emotion, black and terrible, vast and unconquerable, that he had tried to outrun all day today swelled in him, nearly knocking him from his feet, so intense he wonde
red if he could beat it back and maintain his balance. He did, but barely. In his whole life, only three people had mattered to him so much that their loss had altered the course of his existence. His mother. His brother Jacob.
And now, tonight, the woman whose absence seemed to alter the very air around him, making it impossible to breathe.
He had suffered through the other losses, had even accepted them. But not this time. Not this one.
Not Grace.
For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, Lucas wanted to—had to—fight for what he desired, what he needed, what he could not imagine living without. He had no other choice. He could not let Grace leave him, could not let her disappear, could not let her go. He could not.
Because for the first time in his life, he realized as his heart beat too hard and the panic raced through him like an electric charge, he had far too much to lose.
Grace sat in her room at the Pig’s Head for a very long time, staring at nothing.
“We wanted you to manage Lucas Wolfe, Grace,” Charles Winthrop had said, his round face screwed into a contemptuous sneer, right there in full view of the staff and Wolfe Manor itself. Grace had had no recourse but to stand there and take it. “Not manhandle him in public view.”
So disgusted. So disdainful.
“Act like a whore and you’ll be treated like a whore!” her mother had shouted years ago, as all of Racine gathered around their copies of an old American sports magazine to condemn Grace and whisper about her behind their hands. As Mary-Lynn threw Grace’s meager belongings out the door into the dirt and screamed at her to stay out.
Charles Winthrop had not actually called her a whore, of course. He had murmured about propriety and reputation. He had made it clear that a woman who had had the bad taste to allow herself to be photographed in such a compromising position—he did not clarify if he meant on Lucas’s lap or in her bikini at seventeen—was by definition no longer the appropriate choice to represent Hartington’s interests, much less their corporate events. He might as well have handed her a brand-new scarlet letter to wear on her forehead—perhaps even affixed it himself.
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