The Wicked Billionaire--A Billionaire SEAL Romance

by Jackie Ashenden

  Yet that didn’t stop Grace from wondering. It ate away at her, made her replay the last couple of years of their marriage, looking for some signs of what had made him think that selling Cesare de Santis’s high-tech weapons was a good idea. Had it been about the money or had there been something more involved? Had he been angry? Or had he been forced? Had someone blackmailed him into it?

  It was easier to think that he’d been forced than to think he’d made the decision himself. Especially when she couldn’t help wondering whether it was something she’d done that had turned him into a traitor.

  Well, it wasn’t as if you were the best wife in the world, was it?

  Her hand shook a little, disturbing the fine line she was drawing. Okay, so she hadn’t been perfect, but they’d had a decent marriage, hadn’t they? They’d gotten on well, had been comfortable in each other’s company. Yes, he’d been away a lot, but that was part of being a military wife. She hadn’t liked it, but she’d accepted it.

  You didn’t have a marriage. You had a friendship.

  Irritated with the direction her thoughts were taking, Grace stared at her toes instead. Did they need anything else? Or maybe she should start again, with butterflies or something.

  Or maybe you should be thinking about how you’re going to solve your little inspiration problem.

  Grace muttered a curse under her breath, because the sad fact was she had no idea. Her muse, when it came down to it, was a fickle creature and when it had fixated on someone it didn’t want to change. Even if she weren’t a prisoner in an admittedly luxurious Village apartment and weren’t currently being chased by a gang of nasty people she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find inspiration anywhere else. She knew herself too well; she wasn’t going to be able to paint anything else until she’d managed to capture him.

  She glared at her toes. How the hell was she going to get him to agree? What was his problem with doing it anyway? All he had to do was stand there, or sit there until she’d managed a quick sketch. That should be enough to get him out of her head.

  The elevator chimed.

  Speak of the devil.

  Grace didn’t look up, keeping her attention on her toes. “I hope you haven’t brought me more fish. Or maybe you’ve found the arms-dealer assholes instead?”

  There was silence, but that didn’t mean anything. Lucas could move soundlessly, like a ghost, and sometimes she didn’t notice he was there until he spoke. It was unnerving.

  A pair of heavy black boots appeared in her field of vision, just beyond her outstretched legs.

  “Tracking down an international arms ring is proving somewhat difficult, so no, I haven’t found them,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Painting my toenails with tiny silver roses.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it helps with inspiration sometimes.” She finally looked up, meeting his familiar cold blue gaze. “I have to find it somewhere, since I’m stuck here with a painting to finish.”

  From this angle, with her sitting on the floor, he was even more imposing than usual, towering over her like one of her canvases. He was in his black motorcycle leathers again today, which somehow only added to his air of cold, dark ruthlessness. A shaft of light from the windows lay across his face, blue and red and gold, and the contrast of that color with that darkness was … fascinating.

  She could draw him like this, with her sitting on the floor, looking up. Capture that darkness somehow, because she knew it was there. She could sense it.…

  The restless energy inside her began to coil tighter, the way it always did whenever he was around. Making her heart race and her breath catch.

  “Can you stay just like that?” she said before she could stop herself.

  He frowned, the minutest twitch of his brows, the angle making him look somehow saturnine. “Why?”

  A dark angel, that’s what he was. Not so much Gabriel now, but something much less heavenly and bright. If he’d suddenly grown a pair of soot black wings from his broad back she wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

  Her fingers crept for the drawing pad and pencil that were sitting on the floor beside her. “Just … don’t move.”

  But he wasn’t stupid, his sharp gaze picking up the movement toward her pencil. “I told you I wasn’t going to let you draw me.”

  Grace glared at him. “Yeah, and I’m not going to be able to do anything else until I have.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “I could make it your problem.”

  Lucas raised one brow skyward. “Oh really?” There was a world of scorn in the words and another whole universe of threat. And the way he stood there, with that raised brow, more beautiful than the devil himself, made her so desperate to put pencil to paper she could hardly stand it.

  She stared up at him, meeting that brutally cold gaze, the energy inside her becoming sharp and electric. What was his problem with her drawing him? She didn’t understand the issue. “What are you so afraid of?”

  Emotion flared unexpectedly in his eyes, but it was gone too quickly for her to figure out what it was, leaving behind it nothing but ice crystals and frost.

  “I’m not afraid.” His deep, cold voice was expressionless.

  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Who could tell when he never betrayed any emotion at all? The world could explode right in front of him and he’d probably stare at it the way he was staring at her right now.

  God, it made her want to … do something. Poke at him. Ruffle him up. Disturb that icy front of his. See if she could uncover the man she’d caught a glimpse of at the punching bag, all that intense heat and raw, vital energy. The very antithesis of this … cold, dark stillness.

  Grace slowly leaned back on the heels of her hands and gave him a very direct look. “Then it won’t matter to you whether I draw you or not, will it?”

  He said nothing to that, but the tension gathering around him changed, pulled tighter, became somehow … dangerous.

  Yeah, she had him there and they both knew it.

  She smiled at him. Deliberately. “All I want is ten minutes. That’s all. Ten minutes and then you’re done.”

  He didn’t speak, that flat intense stare on hers.

  Normally, she was pretty good at reading people, but she had absolutely no idea what was going on inside that beautiful head of his. No idea what he was thinking, none at all.

  And you want to know.

  She kind of did. She wanted to know what had made him like this, so cold and hard and smooth, like that frozen lake. Because something had. Something had made him lock himself down so tight, nothing could ever escape.

  “Ten minutes then,” Lucas said coldly. “Time starts now.”

  She didn’t hesitate. Instantly her pad and pencil were in her hand and she began to draw as if the entire point of her existence were this moment. Were to capture the stretch of his powerful body above her and the way the light fell over his face. The arch of his brow. The pure line of his nose. The slightly cruel cast of his sensual mouth. His strong jaw. The intensity of his gaze on her.

  Her heartbeat began to pick up speed, the sound of her pencil moving across the paper filling the sudden, deep silence. It came so easily, so naturally, Lucas starting to appear on the paper as if by magic.

  “So,” she began. “I know you and Griffin were on different teams, but did you—”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “Why not? I like to talk while I’m drawing.” She glanced up, noting the shadows over one side of his face and figuring out how she wanted to shade it, her pencil moving fast. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “It’s not.”

  She couldn’t help grinning at the flat note in his voice, the thrill of creating something after weeks of not being able to like a fire in her blood. “What have you got against talking?”

  “It’s pointless noise. Only useful when it involves sharing important information.” He stood as still as a statue and seemed completely comfor
table with it. As if he could stand there all day and it wouldn’t bother him.

  But of course it probably wouldn’t. Griffin had told her Lucas was a sniper, which meant he was used to being still. Used to being patient. So very, very patient—

  Inexplicably, a chill raced down her spine, and she had to force herself to refocus. His eyes needed work. They were going to be important to get right, since how could she capture that thousand-yard stare otherwise?

  She glanced up again, studying him. His lashes were thick and surprisingly dark for a blond guy. “Pointless noise, huh? You’re kind of a downer, you know that?”

  He betrayed no reaction. “If you’re wanting to know how he died I presume they told you.”

  The words gave her a little shock, making her pencil jerk. Griffin, he meant, and of course they’d told her. He’d died in an assault on a terrorist stronghold in Eastern Europe somewhere. They hadn’t given her details, but that was okay, she didn’t need to know. The fact that he was dead was the important bit. How he’d died didn’t matter.

  “They did.” She picked up an eraser and rubbed out the mistake. “And that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  Her pencil, currently shading around his jaw, stopped in the middle of the paper. “What?”

  “Why did you marry him?” His expression gave nothing away as usual, but there was something flickering in his gaze she didn’t understand.

  “Because I loved him of course.” For some reason the question made her uncomfortable, so she glanced back down on to her sketch instead. “That’s usually why people get married.”

  “Why did you love him?” He said the words in the same way as he’d asked her the first morning whether she preferred tea or coffee.

  The uncomfortable feeling inside her deepened. “That’s kind of a personal question.”

  “I’m letting you draw me and you like to talk. That means I get to ask some questions.”

  “I didn’t realize this was going to be a quid pro quo type of deal.”

  “Five minutes left.”

  Asshole. Not that it mattered anyway. It wasn’t like it was a secret.

  “I loved Griffin because he was a really lovely guy. A good person. Chilled out and relaxed. Easy to talk to, fun to be with. He was supportive of my art, didn’t try to tell me what to do, that kind of thing.” She glanced up, checking the angle of Lucas’s head and avoiding that stare of his. “Why do you want to know?”

  Lucas’s gaze was steady. “Give-and-take, Grace. You’re doing the drawing, I’m asking the questions.”

  Her jaw tightened and she looked back down at her pad, focusing on the lean, powerful lines of his body. Fine, if he didn’t want her asking questions she wouldn’t. But that didn’t necessarily mean she had to give him any answers.

  “What else do you want to know?” She drew the shape of his arm, the crook of his elbow, the long fingers pushed into the pockets of his bike leathers. “We had a good marriage and I was heartbroken when he died. Yes, I was faithful to him, and yes, he was faithful to me too.”

  “He wasn’t happy.”

  Her pencil slowed, her heart shuddering painfully in her chest, a cold feeling spidering through her.

  Of course he wasn’t happy and you knew he wasn’t. But you let it go because you didn’t want to have to deal with it.

  Her throat constricted and it was only through sheer force of will she kept her pencil moving. “You don’t know that,” she managed to say, which was, naturally, an admission in its own right.

  “I do. He told me.”

  She flicked a glance up at his beautiful face, the cold feeling getting worse. “What did he say?”

  Lucas’s stare was inescapable. “He said that he thought there was something missing from your marriage and he wanted more.”

  You knew what was missing. You just hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  Grace tore her gaze away, that uncomfortable feeling a cold, hard lump in her gut. She’d told herself that their marriage was fine for a long time. Sure, it had become more a friendship than anything else in the last two years, she could admit to that. But she’d thought Griffin had been okay with it.

  Clearly he hadn’t been.

  “The state of my marriage is really none of your business.” She added some devil horns to his head, then began to give him those wings she’d been imagining earlier. “It’s between me and Griffin. Actually, it’s just me now that he’s gone, and I don’t really want to discuss it with you.”

  Lucas said nothing to that, and after another minute of silence he asked, “Time’s up. Are you done?”

  Grace shoved all the uncomfortable feelings away, studying the drawing in her lap. The sketch was bare-bones, but she thought she’d managed to capture him better than she had from memory the day before, the powerful lines of his body, the arrogant angle of his head, the intense, focused stare of those blue eyes.… Though she was missing something. Like a tail and a pitchfork.

  Suddenly she didn’t want to sit at his feet like a supplicant any longer. Or no, not like a supplicant. She was more like an insect, studied and poked and prodded by some asshole looking at her through a microscope.

  Lucas Tate being the asshole.

  “Yes, I’m done.” She got to her feet, tucking her drawing pad under her arm. “I’m done drawing and I think I’m pretty much done with you for the evening too.”

  She didn’t wait to see his response. She simply turned on her heel and headed for the stairs.

  * * *

  Lucas watched as Grace made her way down the long stretch of the living room gallery, tall and straight, her hair drifting out behind her, leaving nail polish bottles and toothpicks all over his tidy floor. She wore some kind of pale purple floaty dress that shouldn’t have gone with her apricot-colored hair and yet did, the skirt swirling around her long legs, making him ache for reasons he couldn’t have described.

  Bullshit. You know exactly how to describe them.

  His jaw felt tight, every part of him tense.

  He shouldn’t have said those things to her, shouldn’t have asked her about why she’d married Griffin, and he really shouldn’t have told her that Griffin hadn’t been happy. But he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

  She’d sat there curled up on the floor, her hand moving across the piece of paper without hesitation. As if she knew exactly how to capture him. Then those luminous amber eyes had run all over him and he’d felt like she was systematically stripping layers off him. It shouldn’t have bothered him. It should have had no effect on him at all. But it had and he didn’t know why.

  Women looked at him all the time and he’d never felt the way he had when Grace had looked at him. Like a position he’d thought was secure had turned out to be way more exposed than he thought.

  He hadn’t liked it one bit and it had made him want to make her as uncomfortable as he was. Besides, she deserved it. Griffin had been unhappy.

  Lucas had never asked questions or probed for details about his friend’s marriage, Griffin had brought up the topic himself once or twice. From the sounds of it Grace had treated him more like a friend than a husband and Griffin had been getting frustrated at being constantly shoved aside while his wife directed her passion into her art rather than into him.

  She’s getting to you. She’s getting under your skin.

  Fuck, there was no denying it. She was.

  Lucas ripped open his bike jacket and flung it over the back of the sectional couch near the big rose window.

  Already he could feel the pull of her winding tight around him, making him want to go after her, ask her more questions, find out more about her.

  Touch her—

  No. Fuck, no. There would be no touching. He was stronger than that. Christ, he wasn’t a goddamn Navy SEAL for nothing. His control was perfect and he wasn’t going to lose it over one plain redhead.

  Your friend’s wife.

  Yeah, and there was that t
o consider too. Griffin had been a military buddy and Lucas didn’t have many friends. Shit, Griffin was probably Lucas’s only friend, since Lucas didn’t let himself get close to anyone.

  “Christ, even sex is a problem,” Griffin had told him one night, after a few too many beers. “She doesn’t even like me to touch her.”

  Lucas hadn’t mentioned that to Grace, but it was something he hadn’t forgotten. Because his fucking brain kept returning to it, going over it, examining it from different angles. Imagining what it would be like if he touched her. Would she like that? Would that fizz of electricity consume her or was it only him that felt it?

  Lucas realized he was pacing up and down in front of the window like a crazy man. Jesus, what the fuck was wrong with him?

  He made himself stop and go absolutely still, turning his mind inward. Breathing deeply, becoming motionless and silent, becoming part of the scenery, using some of the calming techniques he practiced when he was setting up a target.

  His heartbeat slowed and he concentrated on it, letting the deep sound of it fill him.

  Control. He was absolutely, perfectly in control.

  The buzz of sexual hunger began to ebb, thank God, and he turned, striding down the long gallery of the living room, going past the stairs and into the kitchen. Moving over to the fridge, he pulled it open, took out a beer, then leaned against the stainless-steel kitchen counter and popped the tab.

  Okay, so he had to focus. He’d gotten in touch with Van earlier that day at last, ignoring his demands for an explanation as to his silence, and, once Van had stopped giving him a lecture, agreed to a meeting with the Tate Oil board the next day. It wouldn’t be a pleasant meeting. The three brothers had to tell the current board they were out of a job and that the Tates were now going to be running the company in their stead.

  Lucas had accepted the position as one of the directors, but only because of his father’s letter. Because as a director he’d have access to more resources that would help him in his mission to keep Grace safe. He certainly didn’t intend for it to be permanent. He couldn’t. He had to get back to base, get out in the field again. The demands of his military career were what he needed in order to maintain his control and his focus, not sitting behind a desk wearing a fucking suit. Sadly, his military career was going to have to wait until the company bullshit Van had roped him into and the situation with Grace had been dealt with.