The Shameless Playboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “Why do I sense this does not have a happy ending?” Grace had asked.

  “Because love stories never do,” he had replied, his eyes crinkling in the corners as if he meant his words lightly. Grace had not been fooled. “Amanda started working all night shifts, but I hardly minded. I took care of Charlotte. I was dependable, stable. Good.”

  His voice had taken on that self-mocking lash again, harsher this time, deeper. Grace did not say a word; she merely laid back down beside him and pressed her lips to the place where his shoulder met his arm. And then against his lean, hard jaw, not sure he would speak again.

  “It turned out she was having an affair with a wealthy older man,” Lucas had said eventually, with a derisive smirk. “It was such a cliché. I believe I was no more to her than convenient child care. Poetically, I had been planning to tell her my true identity the very night she confessed.”

  He had not gone into details, but the bleak look on his face told Grace all she needed to know about Lucas and love. It was not necessary for him to draw her a picture. He had never had love, nor security, nor family, not really. He had felt responsible to his siblings when he could be the punching bag in their stead, but he was so convinced that there was nothing good in him, nothing worthwhile, that he had gone could be the punching bag in their stead, but he was so convinced that there was nothing good in him, nothing worthwhile, that he had gone out of his way to prove it, again and again—even when his siblings could actually have used him as something other than the most convenient target. And then he’d found a brand-new family, and had dared to hope— only to have that hope cruelly crushed. Again.

  She would have cried for him, had she not suspected he would hate her for it.

  “Things did not end well for Amanda,” he’d said, with evident satisfaction. “This may come as a great shock to you, as it did to me, but her marriage did not work out. Neither did any of her subsequent ones. I confess that I take greater pleasure in that than I should.”

  “And Charlotte?” Grace had asked, running her hand along his chest, letting her palm rest over the hard plane of muscle that covered his heart, broken though she knew it must be beneath.

  “She was far luckier,” he had said after a moment. His mouth curved. “It turned out she had a very generous and anonymous benefactor, who made certain that her mother’s many reversals of fortune over the years never affected her. She is currently at a Swiss boarding school, where, by all reports, she is thriving.”

  “Lucky Charlotte,” Grace had said, hiding her smile against his warm skin. “But I thought you had lost all your money?”

  “I made back my squandered inheritance, and then some,” Lucas had said, eyeing her with that air of challenge again. “By the time I was twenty-five. I found being discarded for a wealthier and far less attractive man exceedingly unpleasant. I much prefer to be cast aside for the defects in my personality, thank you.”

  “As do we all,” she’d agreed, humoring him.

  He’d smiled then, showing her that beloved dent in his lean jaw, that irresistible sparkle in his eyes. The sheen of vulnerability behind them. “But these are all deep, dark secrets, Grace. Can you be trusted to keep them?”

  “You will just have to wait and see,” she’d said lightly, her heart aching for this man, who would have argued if she’d suggested he was a hero to the little girl he’d loved and still protected. Who could not allow himself even the smallest shred of compassion. Who was so convinced he was damned.

  Who had, she’d understood that night with a deep, searing certainty that might have frightened her if she hadn’t felt the rightness of it, stolen her heart without her even having been aware of it.

  “If I must wait,” he’d murmured, pulling her closer and twisting so that he came over her on the rug, settling in between her legs with his arousal jutting hard and proud against her, “then we really ought to while away the time more amusingly.”

  “I can’t think of anything to do,” she’d whispered, caught by the emotion darkening his eyes, so at odds with the smile on his face, the lightness of his words.

  “Neither can I,” he’d replied, and thrust into her, riding them both into oblivion.

  Grace finished the morning meeting with her trademark minimum of fuss, and sent her staff off to attend to their duties. Her temples ached from the effort of maintaining her usual serenity, and she had an extremely unpleasant phone call to make to Charles Winthrop before she could head out to the manor house and oversee the final preparations for tonight. She gathered up her things as the team left and strode from the restaurant as if she could not see the patrons still looking at the tabloid and then measuring her against it—and as if she was unaware of Lucas’s golden, impossibly beautiful presence at her side.

  “We should talk about this,” he said in a low voice as Grace headed up the inn’s stairs toward her room two floors above.

  “There is nothing to say,” she replied, clutching her mobile in her hand as it vibrated yet again—announcing, she knew, one more no doubt increasingly tense message from Charles Winthrop’s secretary, ordering Grace to call in. “What’s done is done,” she continued. “The only thing to do now is minimize the damage—”

  “Grace.” It was the snap of command in his voice, or perhaps the darkness beneath it, the edge in it, that had her slow her steps and turn to face him.

  They had rounded the corner of the stairwell, and stood in the no-man’s-land between the floors. Though the bustle of the inn below them floated up the stairs, they were for all intents and purposes hidden away from all the eyes that had watched them so closely in the restaurant.

  Grace felt that same sweet, hot cocoon close around her, the way it always seemed to do when she was near him, as if there was some kind of bubble that they could disappear into when they were together. She did not know why she should feel it now, when she knew in the worst possible way that it was not true at all. That there was no bubble, there was nothing safe—there never had been. His world involved spies with cameras and was always monitored. She should have expected it.

  “I have to call Mr. Winthrop,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

  She was too caught in his troubled green gaze, too afraid that if she stepped any closer to him she would melt against him as she always did, and if she melted, she would let out all the emotions that she knew must swirl around inside of her somewhere. And she could not let that happen. Not with this phone call to handle somehow, and the gala to pull off— assuming she was not summarily fired for indecency.

  “I did not do this,” he said, his voice fierce, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

  “I did not hand those pictures over. I am capable of many things, Grace, but not that.”

  She was stunned. She blinked, and swayed toward him, putting a hand out to grasp his arm before she knew what she was doing. Before she remembered that she could not touch him without causing the very melting she was trying to avoid.

  “That never even occurred to me,” she said, emotion beginning to flood in from wherever she’d been keeping it. Perhaps she should have suspected him—perhaps she should have imagined that Lucas might betray her, but she had not. It had not even crossed her mind. What did that say about what had happened to her in the past week? Since she’d met him? Did she really trust him? Should she? Or was this precisely the same path she’d watched her mother tread a hundred times—leading straight to Travis, the biggest liar of all? Was this the ruin that had always been her destiny?

  The mad part was, she was not at all sure she cared.

  “This is my fault,” he said in the same low, angry voice. “I will take full responsibility. I’ll ring Charlie myself—”

  “I appreciate the offer,” she said, cutting him off. She shook her head, more at herself than at him. More at the panic she did not feel, the terror that was not dragging at her. Her lack of shame and despair. When had she stopped fearing what he could do to her? When had she decided to
enjoy him instead? “But this is my mess, Lucas. I’ll handle it.”

  “I am a great seducer of women,” Lucas said, the self-loathing crackling in his voice, turning his eyes nearly black. “I am sure he will have no trouble at all believing that I led you astray. That is what I do, after all.”

  His pain, his toxic hatred of himself, was like a live thing pressed between them, electric and dangerous. It pushed against Grace, crowding her, making her want to fight back. To fight him. To show him the truth.

  “You did not seduce me,” she reminded him, her hand tightening on his arm. “It was the other way around, if you remember—and anyway, it is none of Charlie Winthrop’s business, which I intend to make clear to him. I notice your mobile is not ringing off the hook. Why should mine be?”

  “I am a pollutant,” he said bitterly, his eyes grim and focused on her, as if he was desperate for her to understand. As if his world hung in the balance. “I destroy everything that crosses my path, sooner or later. None of this would have happened to you were it not for me. This is what happens to the people I care about, Grace—and heaven help you if you care about me. Then I’ll rip your heart out and make you regret you ever met me.” He let out a hollow bark of laughter. “You need only ask my family.”

  “Nothing has happened,” she said very distinctly, searching his face for the Lucas she knew, the Lucas who could be tender, gentle. Funny.

  Wry. Not this dark, angry man who she well believed could destroy himself and anything else in his path if he chose. “They are pictures, Lucas. Just pictures and nasty speculation. Who cares?”

  “You do,” he gritted out. “Charlie Winthrop does.”

  Grace considered him for a moment, and let her hand drop from his arm.

  “I should care,” she said, focusing once again on what was happening within her— and what was not. “I should care deeply. I keep waiting for it—I’m anticipating a tsunami of shame, anger, fear. All the things I felt when you left that folder on my desk.”

  “Because I am a prince among men,” he said acidly. “And still you allowed me in your bed. Do you not understand this yet, Grace? The only thing pretty about me is this godforsaken face. Everything else is rotted and ugly. Putrid. Corrosive.”

  “That is ridiculous,” she snapped at him. “The point is, the wave has yet to crash. I am worried about an embarrassing conversation with my boss, but that’s about it.” She shrugged, her eyes locked to his. “Those pictures were taken of me when I was very young. And I was, in fact, kissing you at that party. I never claimed I did not do those things. I never lied. I won’t apologize for any of it.”

  “You should.” It was stark, brutal. It hung between them.

  Grace felt something move through her then, akin to the wave she’d been expecting, but so much different, somehow. It was as if something had been ripped away from her, exposing her to a truth she’d been bending over backward to avoid.

  She did not want to hide anymore. Not from herself. Not from life. Not from anything. She had been wearing a mask for years, but no more. The tabloids had made certain her past and her present were exposed, laid open before the world, and why had she been so convinced there was something wrong with that? Why did she feel she had to hide who she was, what she felt, what she’d done? Why was she so ashamed? Why couldn’t she simply show her true face to the world, at last?

  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 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 don
e 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.”