Shameless Playboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “Why should you hide yourself away?” Lucas asked, in the same light tone, because what wasn’t light to this man?

  And it was just too much. Over a decade of anguish seemed to well up within her, threatening to spill over and drown her. She had already been down this road—she knew what happened. Let a man see her as a piece of meat and he would treat her that way, too. This was the truth about men. This was what Grace inspired in them. Hadn’t she spent all these years completely immersed in her job, her career, to keep from having to face the uncomfortable truth? The loneliness? Why had she wanted so desperately to believe that Lucas was any different?

  “Did you really believe I would be delighted to see these pictures?” she countered. Her eyes narrowed. How had she tricked herself into believing there was more to him than this shiny surface? When would she learn that she knew nothing of men—especially not men like Lucas, who wielded sex as just one more weapon? “Or was this one more of the sick little games you play that mean nothing to you, because you are completely heedless of the damage you cause to the people around you?” She was unable to hide the hurt from her voice. “Because you can be?”

  He stood there against his desk, an arrested look on his face, his smoky green eyes changing to something much darker, much grimmer. It was as if she watched him alter before her eyes. Gone was the sly, insinuating good-time guy, made of sin and rumor and utter carelessness. And in his place was this … man. Different. Darker.

  Tortured, she thought, her heart pounding like a drum, too fast and too hard. But how could that be? How could he be hurt?

  And why should she care?

  He is like all the rest! that old voice inside of her cried, still nursing the wounds her mother and Travis had inflicted so long ago. Don’t listen to a word he says—don’t believe the things you think you read on his face!

  But she could not bring herself to move.

  “You have no idea of the damage I can do,” he said, his voice thick with what could only be self-loathing, the lash of it making her blink and sway slightly on her feet. “And ferreting out a few perfectly tasteful pictures from a decade ago hardly match up to the destruction I can wreak. You should count yourself lucky, Grace.”

  She did not want to care about this man. She did not want to feel that unwelcome tug in the vicinity of her heart, or want to soothe away the darkness that had overtaken him. She wished she did not know that he could feel pain, that he could react at all to the things she’d said. She wished he was no more and no less than the flighty playboy she’d believed him to be.

  But if she’d truly believed that, why, the relentlessly logical part of her brain asked, had she told him the story she’d never told another living soul?

  “Do not show those pictures to anyone,” she said, her voice shaking slightly, trying hard not to notice the way his mouth twisted, as if she’d wounded him again.

  “They are only pictures,” he said softly, with a bitterness she could not understand. He swept the folder into his hand, and then pitched it into the wire trash bin that stood next to his desk. “And now they are gone. No lives ruined. But I am Lucas Wolfe, after all. I’m sure there are six or seven other lives I can destroy before the evening news.”

  Grace knew she should have walked away then. She should have turned on her heel and left the offensively luxurious top-floor office he’d done nothing to earn. She should have considered the matter finished, and comforted herself with the knowledge that he was the person she’d believed him to be from the start—shallow, conscienceless, empty.

  But she did none of those things.

  “Why do you want me—the world—to think the worst of you?” she asked before she knew she meant to speak. That odd tension that had gripped her in the lobby of the hotel and out on the street the other night returned, hovering between them, making the air feel heavy with portent and meaning. Regret and fear. Secrets. Hope. Or perhaps that was no more than the way he looked at her.

  “It saves time,” he replied, his voice strained, almost harsh. “There is nothing here, Grace. Nothing beneath the pretty face. Isn’t that what you think? What everyone thinks? Congratulations. You are correct.”

  His pain has nothing to do with you! she cried at herself, but it was as if another person inhabited her body. Another person who swayed closer to him, whose hands itched to reach over and touch him—a person who could not let that much raw pain go unacknowledged. Especially when it was his. A person who could not believe he was who he said he was. Who would not believe it.

  God help her.

  “I think,” she said, very quietly, unable to look away from him, unable to hide herself as she should, as she’d meant to do, because something about the way he was talking made her think he was grieving and she could not ignore that, she simply could not, “that your looks are quite probably the least interesting thing about you.”

  “Grace—”

  He bit out her name, but she could not stop. She lifted her chin and did not so much as blink as she gazed at him. As she saw him.

  “I think that you could teach lessons on how to hide in plain sight,” she said. “That you do it all the time. That you are doing it even now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE following afternoon, Grace forced herself to unpack her things from her suitcase and put them away in the wardrobe of her cozy room at the Pig’s Head, the only inn and tavern in the quaint little village of Wolfestone—just down the road from Wolfe Manor. The honey-colored beams above her head and the cheerful fireplace in the corner should have made her feel relaxed, as if she was on holiday, but she could not seem to keep the wild tension swirling inside of her at bay.

  In fact, she was not sure she’d breathed fully since that stark, upsetting scene in Lucas’s office. She did not know what might have happened had they not been interrupted by Charles Winthrop’s pursed-mouthed secretary, who had taken no notice at all of the crackling tension in the room and had invited Lucas to visit Mr. Winthrop at once.

  It was only after he’d left that she had retrieved the photographs from his waste basket, because she could not leave them lying around, and certainly not in his office. She had shredded them with great relish in her own office, shoved the past back down into the vault where it belonged and told herself she’d had a lucky escape.

  But somehow, she did not feel lucky at all.

  She should be jubilant, she told herself now and not for the first time, that they had been stopped before they could go any further along that road of personal revelation. She had a feeling that they had hovered perilously close to a great disaster, and disaster was something she could not afford with the gala so close. It had been a relief to depart for Wolfestone this morning, knowing that this last stretch of time before the party was crucial—and that living immersed in the venue and on hand to deal with the inevitable issues that would crop up was necessary.

  Necessary and convenient, Grace acknowledged ruefully. There would be little time to deal with the mysteries of Lucas Wolfe. Much less her own confusion regarding her reaction to him. So far she had discovered that she could neither keep her hands off Lucas nor her mouth shut around him. Even his own behavior failed to give her pause. What was next? She shuddered to think.

  There was a sharp knock at her door, and she walked over to wrench it open. A jolt of awareness shot through her when she found Lucas himself standing there, as if she’d summoned him.

  Were they both thinking about those photographs? Grace wet, wild, debauched? She swallowed with some difficulty and felt herself flush.

  Lucas smiled.

  Up close, all hints of the tortured, wrecked man she’d seen the day before were gone. He lounged in the doorway as if he was the local gentry—which, of course, she reminded herself, he was. His wicked mouth crooked invitingly, making his lean and clever face seem positively sinful. One arm was propped up over his head against the doorjamb. His dark hair was artfully tousled, as if he’d just woken from a nap or had raked his fi
ngers through the mess of it. Repeatedly. He was wearing a soft-looking shirt in bright blue that clung like a lover to the planes of his hard chest, thrown carelessly over a pair of denim trousers that fit him like paint, and Grace could not pretend to herself that he was anything but the most gorgeous man she’d ever beheld. He made her mouth run dry.

  Or maybe that was her fear about what might happen next.

  “Invite me in.” The crack of command in his voice dragged her attention to his eyes, which were far darker and ripe with the tension between them than the rest of him let on.

  She was doomed.

  “Why would I do that?” she managed to ask crisply, as if she was affected neither by his stark male beauty nor the darker truths she could see move through his gaze. “Do you plan to suck my blood?”

  “Is that a request?” he replied, but his customary easy charm was gone. She sensed it before she under stood it—a whisper of trepidation that danced across her skin, snuck down her spine. Something is different, a small voice whispered in alarm. He seemed edgier. More dangerous. Less controlled. She remembered that dark fury she’d sensed in him the first morning he’d walked into her office. Everything has changed, she thought. But she cast it aside.

  If she pretended she didn’t notice that the balance had shifted between them, that every breath and every moment seemed taut and terrifying and much too unwieldy to be borne, would that make it so?

  “I had to see it for myself,” he drawled, his eyes like green fire as they traveled over her, making her feel scorched. Making her want. Making the air seem to hum with everything that had changed, everything that was new and dangerous. “Up close.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Grace managed to say over the catch in her throat. She left him standing in the doorway, because it was that or risk much more than she dared, and moved back over to the bed as if she meant to finish unpacking. But she was aware only of Lucas.

  “You do.” He stepped inside the room and let the door swing shut behind him, which was not at all what she had planned. She jumped slightly and then turned to face him, her stomach dropping. The room seemed much smaller, suddenly, constricting around her. Trapping her—and yet she couldn’t bring herself to run.

  Worse, she did not want to run.

  She meant to speak, to deny him again, to keep up the civil, professional pretense—but she couldn’t seem to do it. It was the hungry look in his eyes as he moved closer, lean and big and more commanding than he should have been. More intense. More compelling. She could not tear her gaze away from him. It was as if, having seen a glimpse of what was behind the mask he wore, she could not see that mask any longer. She saw the man. Electric and consuming, and so much more real than he had seemed before—more real than was at all healthy for Grace. Her heart began to beat low and deep, the pace quickening—becoming ever wilder, more frenetic—the closer he came.

  “I had no idea you even owned a piece of clothing that was not strictly stodgy and office appropriate,” Lucas continued, that mocking note in his voice, the one that suggested he was being playful when she could all but see the tension shimmer through every tendon, every bone of his lean body. “Other than that one red dress.”

  “There is nothing in the least bit outrageous, or even interesting, in anything I’m wearing,” she said, trying to sound authoritative. In control. She had chosen the crisp denim jeans and smart black cashmere sweater deliberately, knowing that while her team might choose to dress more casually while away from the conservative head office, she could only allow herself to unwind so far. Her version of casual involved dry cleaning and clothes she would be comfortable wearing to business meetings with her superiors.

  Was she really thinking about her clothes? With this man so near? So unpredictable? Did she think that would work?

  He ignored her, and prowled closer, peering at the clothes stacked in her open suitcase and beside it on the thick white duvet. Grace felt frozen in place. She did not dare to move. He was much too close, so close she could smell him, heat and man and something expensively spicy. So close she could seem to do nothing at all but think of how his mouth had fit against hers—how demanding, how sure. Or recall how warm his skin was to the touch, or think about how she felt so shivery now, so hot and cold.

  And he knew everything. There were no secrets.

  Why should that make her feel even weaker? Even more aroused?

  He leaned back against the bed, far too close to where she stood, crossing his long legs at the ankle and tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His green eyes were hooded as he gazed at her for a long, hot moment while Grace could do nothing but panic. Her heart sped up and her pulse pounded. Her eyes seemed to glaze over with heat, while her mouth stayed far too dry. The very air in the room seemed to crackle.

  “Will we talk about it?” he asked, that dark edge to his voice, as if he fought the same demons that Grace did. “Or will we continue this game of cat and mouse until we end up in bed? I love to verbally spar with you, Grace, do not doubt it. And I intend to take you to my bed. But I rather think there is more to this than that.”

  “More?” She did not quite stammer. Not quite, though her voice went up an octave or two, and she flushed.

  “I am afraid you’ve seen behind the curtain,” he said in a low voice, with that odd, stirring current beneath. The corner of his mouth flirted with a smile, though his gaze was far too direct, too disconcerting. Too dark. Was this the real Lucas? The man behind the mask? Because Grace knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was not joking. Not this time. “There are penalties for that. Taxes that must be levied. Those are the rules.”

  She could not breathe. She moistened her lips and then clenched against a shocking flood of heat when his gaze dropped to her mouth and a stark, purely sexual hunger cast his face into wickedness. The kind of wickedness she wanted to taste, despite everything.

  “I came to find you yesterday, after meeting with Charlie Winthrop,” he said, coiled there, just out of reach, about to pounce. And still, Grace could not bring herself to move away as she knew she should. His head tilted slightly to the side, his gaze measuring her. “But you’d gone.”

  “I had a meeting,” she said faintly. An electric current was buzzing through her, skimming along her skin, burning through her veins. She felt almost light-headed. Almost dizzy.

  “I do not understand this,” he said in the same quiet, serious tone he’d used yesterday. The same stark, brutal honesty. The same directness, with the same undercurrent of something like despair. The room seemed to contract, trapping them both in the same tight, bright grip. “I do not understand why I feel compelled to tell you things I normally do not speak of to anyone. I do not understand why I cannot stop thinking about you. I can’t seem to stay away from you.” His smile turned wry. “And the truth is, I do not want to.”

  “You must,” she said, but her voice was insubstantial, the barest breath, and he ignored it, anyway.

  “I have never been very good at doing what I must,” he said, a hard amusement flashing through those smoky green eyes. “It is among my many and varied character flaws.”

  Grace did not want this. She could not want this—it was too much. He was too much. She felt as if the world shook, as if she shook with it, though nothing moved.

  “I am not interested in your flaws, many though they may be,” she said, fighting desperately to return to familiar ground. She could not do this. “We have a job to do. Nothing more.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Our job. That has brought us here, to this village of the damned I vowed I would burn to the ground before I’d return to it, and all I can seem to do is wonder.”

  His voice was deceptively light, completely at odds with the intensity and fire in his gaze.

  “Wonder?” she echoed, as if she did not take his meaning, but she knew.

  She wondered the same things. She wondered so much and so heatedly, so breathlessly, that she had barely slept in days. E
ven the invocation of her past, of what had happened to her, had not changed the wondering, the imagining. And that was only the physical part of this. The easy part. The only part she planned to acknowledge. The inn seemed to spin and tilt wildly at the corners of her eyes, but at the center of it all stood Lucas.

  And an uncomfortably reasonable voice inside of her whispered, Why not?

  Grace fought to keep her breath even. She had told Lucas the truth and he had not looked at her differently. He had not reacted like a long-ago almost-lover in college had: he had not looked at her in that calculating way and asked if, in fact, she had been seducing her mother’s boyfriend that day. If she had that scarlet letter blazoned upon her face, the way she’d always believed, Lucas had not seemed to see it. And if he already knew the worst but didn’t believe the worst of her—what was the point in denying herself the pleasure that might go with that kind of uncomfortable honesty? The spoonful of sugar to sweep away the taste of the bitter pill?

  And who was to say that this time she couldn’t be the one to take control—to beat the player at his own game? Why not be the seducer instead of the seduced? Why not call the shots? Why not, indeed?

  She blinked, dazed by her own trail of thought. And all too aware of the heat and sleek beauty of him, standing near enough to touch, watching her so closely.

  If she’d learned anything from her mistakes, from her mother, from her own hard-won successes, Grace thought with a dawning sense of certainty, it was this: it was always better to be the one in control.