Authors: Caitlin Crews
And
Mary-Lynn never blamed the men. She always blamed herself, and so lost a little
bit more of herself, her battered heart and the light in her eyes every time.
Until the day she’d blamed her daughter instead.
Grace
kicked off her shoes and curled up on the couch. She could not afford to be
fascinated with Lucas Wolfe. She could not allow herself to be intrigued. She
had to throw a relaunch party so fabulous that it cemented her reputation for
years to come, and she could not permit any deviation from her plan, especially
not in the form of a man who was clearly put on the earth to ruin every woman
he touched.
It
made her heart ache that she was so susceptible, as if it really was a genetic
defect passed down from mother to daughter. When all this time, after
everything that had happened in high school had changed her so completely, she’d
truly believed she was immune. She would be different, no matter what her
mother thought—no matter what she’d screamed at Grace when she’d thrown her out
like so much trash.
She would
.
But
she would start tomorrow, she thought, closing her eyes, succumbing to her
weariness and letting all of her heavy armor drop from her for a moment. She
felt the helpless fascination creep in and take her over, and then curled up on
the couch with the memory of his devastating smile raging through her like a
wildfire she could not bring herself to put out.
Not
yet. Not tonight.
“I’VE
remembered you,” Lucas announced, swaggering into her office like a conquering
hero, his smile far too bright and much too wicked as it played over his mouth.
“It came to me over the weekend.”
It
was Monday morning, nearing eleven o’clock, and Grace was not feeling at all
charitably inclined toward her new team member. She sat back in her desk chair
and regarded him stonily.
It
did not matter in the least that he looked even more delicious this morning, in
yet another absurd, catwalk-ready sort of suit that made him seem like a sleek,
wild, green-eyed jaguar set down among a fleet of tamed and corpulent house
cats. His dark hair was still too long for civility—and the office—and stood
about in what she imagined were spikes as carefully managed as his wardrobe.
His perfect male form was still showcased to mouthwatering effect, his muscled
shoulders and lean hips lovingly defined, his torso a work of art in dark wool.
His beauty was still far greater, far more masculine and disturbing, than one
would suspect from having seen him in photographs.
His
bruises had faded considerably, she could not help but notice. His dizzying
appeal had not.
Happily,
she told herself with some internal rigor, her moment of weakness had passed.
There was no genetic defect, no predisposition. Lucas Wolfe was nothing more
than the human version of a well-known painting, widely regarded as beautiful
in the extreme—even a masterpiece. One could appreciate such a painting the way
one appreciated all forms of beauty. Lucas Wolfe was a curiosity to be admired,
and then ignored.
“Mr.
Wolfe,” she said now, smiling perfunctorily. “I understand that this may be a
new experience for you, and I’ll try to be sensitive to that, but I think you’ll
find the team is expected to make it into the office at nine o’clock sharp each
morning, not at eleven. Even you, I’m afraid.”
“At
Samantha’s party,” he continued, unperturbed. Quite as if she had not spoken,
much less reprimanded him. “It was when I went to get the drinks, wasn’t it?
You were standing by the bar.” His dark brows rose in challenge, and something
else she told herself she did not wish to explore, even as it slid intimately
along her skin, kicking up goose bumps. “I knew I recognized you.”
“I’m
afraid I can’t remember,” Grace said, lying coolly and without a single shred
of remorse.
“Of
course you do,” he said, with that easy confidence and a knowing gleam in his
bright eyes that arrowed directly into Grace’s sex, making her knees feel weak
even as she felt herself soften.
For him
.
Her heart jumped in her chest. She was entirely too grateful that she happened
to be sitting down. He was lethal.
And impersonal
, she reminded herself
sharply, crossing her legs beneath her desk.
You could be a random shopgirl. A bus driver. The bus itself. He has
chemistry with the very air around him—he can’t help it
.
“Mr.
Wolfe, really,” she said, frowning at him. “This project is doomed to failure
if you cannot respect the most basic rules of the workplace. Allow me to give
you a refresher course.”
“Less
a refresher course, and more an introduction,” he amended, with a careless
shrug and no visible sign that he was at all embarrassed he’d never worked a
single day in his pampered, over-privileged life of sin and excess—whatever he
might have claimed the previous week.
He
certainly made it easy to dismiss him, Grace thought. She dearly wished that
she could—that she had not been ordered to personally handle him. But she had
been, and so she waited until she had his full, if amused, attention, and began
to tick off her points on her fingers.
“You
must knock and receive permission to enter before barging into an office,” she
said briskly. “You must not ignore your coworkers when they are speaking to
you, no matter if you think what you have to say is more interesting—it is
unlikely that your coworkers will agree. And it is completely inappropriate to
make insinuations regarding the private lives or thoughts of anyone you might
work with, under any circumstances. Do you understand me?”
It
was as if he lounged against something, though he stood in the center of her
office. Such was his natural indolence. He reminded her of the great cats she
found so fascinating in the nature programs she often watched—a lazy grace,
sleepy-eyed and seemingly harmless, and yet with all that predatory
watchfulness and physical prowess hidden just beneath his sleek surface.
“Did
I make insinuations?” he asked, not seeming remotely cowed. Only interested.
And, if possible, even more amused. “I do beg your pardon. They cannot have
been particularly interesting, if I cannot recall them.”
“One
imagines that you are so used to insinuating inappropriate things about
everyone you meet that it is rather like a comment on the weather for anyone
else,” she replied sweetly. She let her smile widen. “Please do try to remember
that this is not a yacht on the Côte d’Azur, brimming with starlets and
debauchery—this is Hartington’s, a much-beloved and revered British
institution.”
He
thrust his hands into his pockets and regarded her with that cool green gaze
that made her wonder, against her will, what else he hid behind all that
sexiness and swagger.
“Rather
like me,” he said after a moment, his mouth curving,
daring
her, somehow. “A bit tattered around the edges, perhaps, the
pair of us, but I think somehow the gilt and glamour remain.” He smiled. “Don’t
you agree?”
Grace
eyed him, torn between the urge to laugh—or to scream. Or, worse, to give in to
the hugely inappropriate and somewhat alarming urgings of her body and the heat
he seemed to ignite within her without even trying. She did none of the above.
She did not even fidget under his scrutiny, though it cost her.
“The
team will be meeting in the conference room in a half hour for our daily status
update,” she said instead, pointedly glancing at the slim gold watch she wore
on her wrist, and then back toward her computer monitor, dismissing him. “If
you don’t mind …?”
“You
were the only woman in the crowd who refused to smile at me,” Lucas said, in
that silken voice of his that, she reminded herself sternly, had seduced
millions in exactly the same way. No need to be the next in line in the endless
parade. Not that she was considering it! “At first I thought you were one of
the ones who scowl at me on purpose, to distinguish themselves from the fawning
fans, but you didn’t do that, either.”
“Are
you sure it was me?” Grace asked, pretending to be bored with the conversation.
“I remember your rather spectacular exit from the party, but very little else.”
She gazed at her computer screen as if she could read a single thing on it. As
if she was not entirely too focused on the man who stood so close, just on the
other side of her desk, commanding all the air in the room despite his
seemingly languid slouch and his unkempt hair.
“Neither
a smile nor a scowl. You simply looked at me,” Lucas said, his voice like a
caress, dark and unfair as it worked its way through her like fine wine,
turning her too warm too quickly. She could feel him everywhere. Hot. Shivery. “Even
after I said hello.”
“Sorry,”
she said in mild yet clear dismissal, her attention on the screen in front of
her, as if she could not feel the pull of him, the heat. “You must have me
confused with someone else.”
“No,”
he said, his gaze shrewd, considering. “No, I don’t think so.”
Grace
would rather die than admit she remembered that moment—because she had been
quite literally struck dumb to turn from the bar and find him so close, so
glowing and impossibly compelling, sexy and rumpled and
male
. In painful hindsight, it ranked as one of the single most
humiliating moments of her life. She, twenty-eight years old, a fully grown
adult woman who oversaw teams of staff and high-level events, had been struck
mute at the sight of this man. This waste of space, famous for no particular
reason aside from his name, who used his considerable charm like currency.
Yes
, something in her had whispered,
deep and sure—as, no doubt, it did in every silly female who laid eyes on him
up close. But Grace had never forgiven herself for losing her head so
spectacularly over a man back in high school, with so many horrible consequences;
she would not compound the error now. She would not do it again.
“Yes,
well,” she said, proud that her voice remained cool, “perhaps I was simply
astounded that you could manage to speak coherently. You do have the reputation
of being somewhat consistently drunk, don’t you?”
“Which
means that I am rarely incoherent,” he said, smiling faintly. “It is my finest
skill. For all you know, I could be drunk right now.”
But
his eyes were too clear, too watchful. His voice too deliberately blasé. He was
about as drunk as she was.
“I
will keep that in mind in future,” she replied briskly. She straightened in her
seat and let impatience creep into her voice. “I’m sorry I don’t remember
meeting you at Samantha Cartwright’s party, Mr. Wolfe. How embarrassing, when I
am usually so good with faces. But then, it was a busy night for everyone, wasn’t
it?”
She
could not seem to keep her own insinuations from creeping in, and she knew why
when she saw his green eyes warm with a kind of rueful acknowledgment. With a
kind of recognition she knew she should fight. Instead, something about him
made her
want
to needle him, to get
under his skin.
She
could not bring herself to imagine what that might mean.
Meanwhile,
he watched her with those cat’s eyes, and he
knew
. Her secrets, her darkest corners. Everything. As if he could
see right into her.
It
should have horrified her. It should not have made her ache and her skin seem
to shrink against her bones. It should not have made her breath catch in her
throat, her mouth dry. It should not have made her want to show him all her
secrets, one by one, even the ones that still made her cringe.