Shameless Playboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “Touché,” she said, but still gazed at him expectantly.

  “What is there to tell?” he asked then, with a careless sort of shrug. “It is a manor house like any other. The country is infested with them. It is the ancestral encumbrance, passed down through generations, a monument to aristocratic greed. I thank the gods every morning for the great gift of primogeniture, which, as I am not the firstborn son, ensures I need never set foot there again unless I wish it.”

  A moment passed, and then another. The tires swished along the wet roadway, the rain drummed against the roof, and still, Grace was too aware of the way his eyes met hers, bold and demanding, daring her to look away. To ignore him. To pretend he was not getting to her.

  “Thank you,” Grace managed to say in her driest tone. “I’m sure that will be very useful information as we prepare to throw a gala there. No thoughts on an appropriate place to pitch the tent? Where to set up the catering? How to craft the perfect delivery system to ensure the guests are properly wowed as they enter the event?”

  Lucas only continued to watch her, that wolfish smile and a silvery light in his eyes that made her feel as if she was made of sand, something insubstantial that would blow away at his next breath. Grace felt almost dizzy, and hated it. Hated him, she told herself fiercely, that he should be the reason she felt so wildly out of her depth when she was working—the one place Grace had always exerted complete control.

  He was a devil, clearly. He was used to this, to using his incredible sexual magnetism to bend all he encountered to his whim. Simply because he could. But he was not the first devil she’d met, and she refused to be seduced. She refused.

  “I imagined my role was to be rather more decorative than administrative,” he said, his eyes laughing at her.

  “My mistake,” she said, redirecting her attention to her PDA as if dismissing him. “I thought for a moment in yesterday’s meeting that you were a creature of substance as well as style.” She smiled, to soften her words—to pretend she was still being professional, when she felt so edgy, so raw and unwieldy within. “But you can rest assured, Mr. Wolfe, that your face alone is of great use to Hartington’s, however else you choose to help. Or not.”

  “I know,” he agreed, not appearing in the least chastened by her words. Or even particularly offended by them. “This is not the first time I have worked for Hartington’s, Ms. Carter. Though it is true that when I did it last, I was still quite young.”

  She blinked at him, thrown. She could hardly think which was more astonishing—that he had ever been young, or that he had ever actually worked. Neither seemed possible. He was too dissolute to have ever been a child, surely, and far too committedly lazy to ever have worked for his living.

  “Define ‘worked for Hartington’s,’” she suggested, mildly enough, trying to conceal her interest. She should not find him fascinating. She should not care that he was able to fence words with her so easily. She should not let that soften her. “Because, and do forgive me if I’ve misunderstood, I was under the impression that you took great pride in the fact that you’ve never worked a day in your charmed life. Aside, that is, from your vague claims last week of once having been employed.”

  “Perhaps my charmed life is more complicated than you might imagine,” he said, a hint of chill in his voice and that uncannily shrewd gaze of his, but only for the barest moment. Grace was convinced she’d imagined both when he blinked, and that self-mocking smile of his returned. “My brothers and sister and I were once the Hartington’s window display at Christmas,” he said, his tone light and yet, somehow, Grace could hear only the sardonic inflection beneath, the hint of something much darker. “Decked out in matching outfits like the von Trapps, merry and bright. A true Christmas card come to life. The punters adored us, of course. Who could resist a brood of angelic children? They all but emptied their wallets on the spot.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve seen the pictures,” Grace said quietly, uncertain of him, suddenly. Perhaps he was unaware that there were blown-up photographs of his family all over the executive office suite: seven bright-eyed, shockingly good-looking children arrayed around their attractive father, like a series of Norman Rockwell paintings. They all fairly exuded hearth and home and happiness. She was not sure he would welcome that knowledge. The atmosphere inside the car had changed, and he seemed more dangerous, more unpredictable, though he had not moved at all.

  She was imagining things, she told herself. But she remained on her guard.

  “Such a happy family we looked,” Lucas said in a soft voice that Grace did not believe at all. “Beyond that, my brother Jacob and I worked in the store during every school holiday for years. My father felt it was character building, apparently.” His smile seemed knife-edged now, deeper somehow, and resonated through her, making her ache in ways she was afraid to examine. “I spent my time talking the shopgirls out of their pants rather than learning how to operate the till. I built my character carefully, and with excessive practice.”

  Grace had a sudden, flashing vision of the teenaged Lucas, prowling about the gleaming sales floors of Hartington’s with this same lean and feral edge to him. He would have been much less restrained in his youth, she imagined—all green eyes and cocky swagger and far too much self-awareness. She repressed a sudden shiver. There was nothing safe about this man. She doubted very much there ever had been, even when he’d been small. If.

  “It is difficult to imagine you young,” she said, voicing her thoughts without meaning to, her voice far softer than it should have been. Almost as if she cared.

  Their eyes met then, and something bright and profound moved through Grace, searing into her through the gloom of the rainy day and the stuffy confines of the car. She found she was holding her breath. That she could not look away from him as she knew she should.

  “It was a chronological situation, nothing more,” he said after a short pause, never moving his electric, arrogant gaze from hers. “I never had the opportunity to be naive or innocent.” He seemed to recollect himself and looked away then, that smile sharpening as he did. Grace felt it as if he’d cut into her, as if he’d carved symbols deep into her flesh. “But I doubt innocence would have suited me, in any case.” When he looked at her again, he had gone predatory. Male. Hot and knowing—and it made her melt and tremble, despite her best intentions. “I was always far more proficient in sin.”

  “So I have read,” Grace said primly, ignoring the clamoring need in her own body. “At length. It is what makes you such an excellent choice to head up the new Hartington’s campaign. All women have already had numerous fantasies about you, and all men wish they could be you. You are, yourself, the ultimate luxury brand.” She smiled. Professionally. “Kudos.”

  “All women?” he asked, his eyes hard and gleaming on hers—as, she realized on some level, she must have known he would.

  Had this man ever ignored a gauntlet thrust down before him? She knew, somehow, that he had not. He smiled that wolf’s smile, and it connected hard with that strange humming deep inside of her that grew louder the nearer he was. He was everything she had spent her whole life fearing, avoiding. He made her into someone else, someone lost in the shimmering heat that suffused her, the flame of interest in his gaze. He made her feel things she’d never believed she was capable of feeling. She could not seem to look away. For a long, spinning moment, she could not find it in her to fight him—to fight the weakness in herself.

  And she knew that was as good as the death of her.

  “Does that mean you’ve fantasized about me, Grace?” he asked, in his seducer’s voice, a low, sexy rasp that promised far too much she knew he could never deliver.

  “I believe I have already asked that you call me Ms. Carter,” Grace said, sounding like a starchy, stereotypical schoolmarm sort of person, to her horror. Yet it was exactly the image she strove to project, with her severely cut suits and her scraped-back hair: efficient and competent. A vestal virgin, clutching her pearls.


  But what other option did she have? She was trapped in the back of a car with a man who exuded sex—long, slow, all-encompassing, masterful sex, for that matter, from which one was unlikely to recover. And Grace knew what that kind of sex meant, the damage it could and did wreak. She had seen it happen too many times. She had lived it.

  “You should have said no, Gracie,” her mother had said so long ago, her face hard and drawn, her eyes flashing the same censure Grace had seen everywhere else. Her own mother, who should have known better—should have tried harder, Grace had thought, to protect her daughter. But Mary-Lynn had made her choice. “You should have said no, but you didn’t, and now you have to live with the consequences.”

  Sex like that was a threat, Grace knew, shaking off the unpleasant past. Sex like that was about power, and, ultimately, pain. She had never wanted anything to do with it after the events of her senior year—but then, she had never met a man who fascinated her on all the levels this man seemed to do. For the first time in years, since she had set her course and focused exclusively on putting the past behind her and excelling in her career, Grace felt lost.

  “Is that part of your fantasy?” Lucas asked, his voice low, suggestive. He shifted closer to her, and Grace froze—her entire body, her very being, focused on the heat he generated, on the length and strength of his lean, hard body mere inches away from hers. Only inches. A breath. “I’m happy to call you anything you like.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wolfe,” she said in that brisk, insultingly matter-of-fact voice that had gotten her out of sticky situations in the past. She pretended not to notice how hard it was to dredge up this time, how hard it was to employ. “But I doubt very much I’m the target demographic for your particular brand of charm.”

  “You are a woman, are you not?” he asked mildly.

  “Yes.” She smiled, bright and false. “But a discerning woman, I’m afraid.”

  His gaze moved to her mouth, and she felt it like a touch. Hot and demanding. Sure.

  “Excellent,” he said softly. “Can you discern my thoughts?”

  She felt herself flush in helpless reaction, and could only hope that her legendary cool kept her skin from actually turning red and broadcasting her response to him. How could this be happening? She had never had trouble in the past, keeping her feelings and any unwanted attractions safely hidden away in the parts of herself she kept locked up tight. Soon enough, they’d disappeared, subsumed into the work she’d always known would save her. Anything to pretend her past belonged to someone else.

  “I’m afraid not,” she managed to say, forcing herself to sit there calmly, as if she was relaxed. “My psychic abilities only work on more … intellectual subjects.”

  “That is a great pity, indeed,” Lucas said, not at all discomfited. “My own abilities are far more universal. Shall I tell you what you’re thinking?”

  She wanted to know what she was missing, she knew suddenly—with a deep, new need that frightened her with its intensity. She wanted him to touch her, to taste her. To mark her. Brand her. Take her. She wanted to taste that wicked mouth with her own. She wanted him in ways she’d never wanted another man—even though it made no sense. Even though it made her everything her mother had ever called her. But none of that seemed to matter. She wanted.

  But that didn’t mean she planned to act on it.

  “I doubt that would be wise,” she said, and mustered up an approximation of her professional smile. “Mr. Winthrop wanted me to usher you through your first project, not mortally insult you.”

  His gaze moved up to meet hers once more, and his smile was far too satisfied, far too aware. As if he knew that all he needed do was touch her and she would collapse at his feet, as much his to toy with as any of the hundreds of women who had undoubtedly landed face-first at his trouser cuff before. He was the ultimate predator, and that should have repulsed her utterly—but it did not, and she could not account for it. Anger and fear and something else, something too much like yearning, collided inside of her, making Grace feel jangly and breathless, unnerved.

  “It seems your luck has held, Ms. Carter,” he said at last, laughter lurking somewhere in his voice, and that dark, sensual promise in his eyes. That was when she noticed that the car had slowed considerably. He inclined his head toward the window. “We’re here.”

  Lucas did not mind when Grace all but leaped from the car the moment it rolled to a stop at the top of the winding drive, in the looming shadow of the great house he so hated. Let her run. He had always enjoyed the chase—not that, in truth, he had ever had to do much more in the way of chasing than indicate his interest. But he’d always liked a new challenge to keep life interesting, and there were only so many times one could leap from a plane or climb a mountain when one did not, in fact, have a death wish.

  He climbed out of the limousine after her, more focused on the sweet curve of her behind in the latest of her series of stuffy, corporate suits than in the fact that he was once more at Wolfe Manor.

  Acquiescing to an urge he only belatedly realized was uncharacteristically chivalrous instead of calculating, he relieved the driver of his umbrella. He motioned the poor man back into the warm and waiting car, then followed the prickly Ms. Carter through the rain toward the front of the house, from where, he knew, she could see just about the whole of the property laid out at her feet. He loathed the very sight of it—all the picturesque British countryside spread out so prettily, with the charming little village of Wolfestone in the distance. He knew that appearances were deceiving: the prettier the surface, the uglier the mess beneath. He had not, perhaps, thought through his impulsive offer of this house for Hartington’s use, much less considered that he would have to return here himself.

  He concentrated instead on the woman standing with her back to him, frowning through the weather at what there was left of the once-famous view.

  “You’re wet,” he said, close enough to her to see her start, and man enough to enjoy the flustered look she sent his way when he caught up to her. He indicated the rain, lighter now than before but still falling with no sign of stopping, and then moved even closer, shielding them both beneath the umbrella.

  He doubted she knew the picture she made as she stood there, damp and inviting, her lush mouth soft, her usually sleek hair escaping from its confines and curling slightly, making her seem more wanton, more open. He felt himself harden and shifted closer to her.

  “You failed to mention that this house is falling down,” she said, her voice faintly accusing, her chin tilting up as she looked at him.

  “Not yet,” he said. He looked at the house, still regrettably upright and this time, thankfully, without his brother’s disapproving presence on the front stair. While it was certainly in a notable state of disrepair, it had not been reduced to rubble and a hole in the earth, as Lucas had often fiercely imagined while still forced to live here. “Though one can dream.”

  But Grace was not looking at him any longer. She peered up at the house, then pivoted to look out over the wild, overgrown gardens and sweeping lawn that led down to the picturesque lake, pretty even beneath the onslaught of the rain. Her brow creased in fierce concentration, and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth as she let her gaze move from one dilapidated marker of the once-lush Wolfe estate to the next. She sighed and then turned her frown on him.

  Somehow, he restrained himself from pressing his mouth into the indentation between her dark blond brows.

  “I suppose we can set up a big tent on the lawn,” she said. “It will be pretty if the weather is fine, and there will be enough space if it isn’t. And the state of everything else could work for us. The house and grounds will add a bit of gothic splendor to the whole enterprise.”

  Lucas laughed, the sound more bitter than he’d intended. “This is Wolfe Manor. The ghosts here outnumber the living, I assure you, and are all known by name. And there is not a person in the whole of England who does not want to come here and see it for him
self.”

  She looked at him, her expression warily polite, and he remembered belatedly that she was American, and was not, perhaps, as conversant on the Wolfe family and their tragic history as any citizen of the United Kingdom might be. He was not sure if he liked the possibility of her ignorance regarding all things Wolfe or resented that she might now have to learn all those terrible stories as if they were new.

  He could not imagine why he should care either way. And yet he did.

  “One of my ancestors supposedly drowned in the lake,” he said abruptly, jerking his chin toward it. “Regrettably, not my father. He died in the house.” He smiled, though he could feel it was not a very nice smile. It matched the dark memories that flew at him, each one a new knife in his gut. He shoved them all aside, ruthlessly. “The rest of us survived this place, in one form or another, but left the better part of our souls behind. I am not being poetic. There was never anything good here. Ever.”

  He looked down at her, unable to understand why he was speaking to her this way—as if it mattered to him that she see the truth about Wolfe Manor. He could not understand the urge.

  “But it will make the perfect backdrop for your gala, I imagine,” he continued after a moment. “The only thing people like more than glamour is glamour gone wrong, left to crumble into dust and disrepair and salacious old stories.”

  “You are so optimistic about human nature,” she said, her voice as tart as ever despite the sweet honey of it, and completely devoid of any cloying compassion—or, worse, pity. She did not quite roll her eyes at him, and he felt something fierce and hot expand in him. “It is no wonder your company is so sought after.”

  “I am sought after because I am me,” he said, arrogant and deliberate, daring her to look away, to deny him. “And because anyone seen in my company is certain to be photographed and speculated about in the next day’s gossip rags. I am sought after because I am rich, sickeningly handsome and rumored to be excellent in bed.” He raised his brows at her, challenging her.