Shameless Playboy (23 page)

 
          
“Unfortunately,
I grew bored of me years ago,” he said in his everyday, mild and languid tone.
He tossed the paper aside without so much as a glance at it, as if the article
held no interest for him. He then sat down at the table with every appearance
of relaxed ease, signaling the hovering waitress for hot coffee—the topic
clearly closed as far as he was concerned.

 
          
Grace
swept a quick look over the table as she took a seat opposite him, confident
she exuded nothing but her usual competence in the face of all the averted
eyes, the speculative glances. She would not give them the reaction they
clearly wanted. She would not let them see her crack. She would be nothing but
her usual ice queen self, ready for another day’s work with a calm smile and a
no-nonsense approach to even this.

 
          
They
were only pictures, and the truth was, before Travis and her mother had sullied
the experience, she’d
liked
them.
They were gorgeous pictures, and just happened to be of her. They’d paid for
her college education and, one way or another, they’d made her the driven,
successful woman she was today.

 
          
Why
should she be ashamed of them?

 
          
And
what went on between her and Lucas was nobody else’s business.

 
          
So
she ignored the damned tabloid, and the too-beautiful man who watched her with
hooded green eyes and a disconcerting intensity, and snapped open her event
notebook instead.

 
          
“All
right, then,” she said briskly, as if this was any other morning. Any morning
meeting on any normal day. As if everyone at the table had not seen what she
knew they’d seen. Her nearly naked body, in so many suggestive poses. Her
passion-flushed face. But there was nothing she could do about that now, and
she’d be damned if she’d apologize for herself, so she shoved it aside. “We’re
in the final countdown, people,” she said. “Tell me where we are and what needs
to happen before tonight.”

 
          
The
irony, she thought as the staff member nearest her launched into his spiel, was
that before she’d walked into the breakfast room this morning, she had been on
track to thinking this had been the most magical week of her life.

 
          
The
week in Wolfestone had passed like some kind of delicious, wickedly sensual
fever dream. For the first time in her life, Grace had not analyzed, plotted or
planned out her every last move. Nor had she let the past keep her locked down,
hidden away. Once she had accepted the fact that she would not be beating Lucas
at his own game, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and could
neither fight it nor summon the will to try, she had simply … lived.

 
          
The
days were full to bursting with all the last-minute details involved in
transforming the long-forsaken Wolfe Manor into the appropriate spot to
celebrate the new Hartington’s. Grace traipsed over every inch of the site with
the designer and various contractors, nailing down the final details of
placement, construction, access and out-of-bounds areas, parking and security.
She had coordinated all the reports from her staff regarding the floral
arrangements, the dramatic ice sculptures and their delivery, the many food
stations that would have to entice the guests yet never overpower the tented
area with long queues—all stocked with delicacies available in the revered
Hartington’s gourmet food hall.

 
          
She
went over set lists with the DJ and the band, debated the placement of the
dance floor and spent hours placating both the talent and their often far more
excitable representatives. She made sure the details of transportation for all
of the A-list guests, talent and executives were nailed down and agreeable to
all parties. She held the caterer’s hand during a brief breakdown over the
mini-Cornish pasties. She did her job, and she did it well.

 
          
And
then, every night, she lost herself in Lucas’s arms.

 
          
He
was the least inhibited, most adventurous lover imaginable. He knew no
boundaries, had no hang-ups and always maintained his wicked sense of humor. He
was as happy to have her standing up against the wall as slippery and wet in
the deep tub. He was as interested in exploring her body as in having her test
his hardness in her mouth. He reached for her again and again, but he also held
her so tenderly, and kissed her so sweetly, that it made Grace ache in ways she
knew better than to consider too closely. He was not at all the man she’d
thought he was when he’d first walked into her office, and Grace hardly knew
how to reconcile all the different images she had of him in her head—much less
in her heart.

 
          
It
was easier, somehow, when they were both naked, and her body hummed with an
overload of pleasure after another demonstration of his boundless enthusiasm
for all things carnal in general and Grace’s body in particular.

 
          
“I
may require a stiff drink,” she had said one night as they lay on the thick,
soft rug before the fire, smiling as he toyed with the ends of her hair,
curling the waves around his finger as she lay sprawled across his chest. “Perhaps
several.”

 
          
“To
dull the pain?” he had asked in his mocking way, but she’d known him better by
then and had known that he was teasing her—and more, that the mockery he used
so skillfully was perhaps the only form of affection he knew how to give. It
made her feel warm.

 
          
“To
see which is more potent,” she had said softly, propping her chin on her
stacked hands and looking at him, as if she could memorize the artistic dream
that was his beautiful face, so close to hers. “Hard liquor or you.”

 
          
There
had been a moment then, a heartbeat or two too long, when he had gazed back at
her with an almost arrested look in his smoky green eyes, as if he could not
quite work her out. She loved such moments—when she knew she was looking at the
true, unadulterated Lucas. The real man, not the act.

 
          
“I
imagine it very much depends on the bartender,” he had said, but she had the
sense he had wanted to say something else entirely. His smile sharpened. “I did
used to be one, as it happens. In a former existence.”

 
          
“What?”
She had wrinkled up her nose as she gazed at him. “Yet another job? You
continue to destroy my faith in your terrible reputation.”

 
          
“Keep
your faith,” he’d suggested dryly. “I had no choice but to get a job—any job. I’d
already blown through the first part of my inheritance with a group of
disreputable malcontents all over London, and I was all of twenty-three.”

 
          
“Only
the first part of your inheritance?” she’d asked in the same dry tone. “Not the
whole of it? That seems to lack commitment.” She had not wanted to think about
the amount of money that might have been, nor how he had managed to throw it
all away. It might have sent her fiscally conservative heart into cardiac
arrest.

 
          
“My
father perhaps anticipated that his children might take his profligate,
hard-partying example to heart,” he’d said, with that challenging gleam in his
eyes, daring her to swallow yet another example of how terrible he believed he
was. “Or that I might, anyway. My inheritance was split in two. Half on his
death, and half again should I survive to my thirtieth birthday. He expressed
his doubts about the latter in his will.”

 
          
“And
you lost the first half by the age of twenty-three,” she had said, forced to
shield her gaze from his at that point. She’d looked at the hard muscles of his
chest instead, the tempting valley between his pectorals, the steel-hewn
strength of his shoulders.

 
          
At
twenty-three, she had used her carefully chosen, prestigious summer internship
as a springboard into her first events management firm, and had been working on
her first parties. She had never wasted a single penny in all her days. Her
modeling money had paid for what her scholarship had not and then some, because
she had always been obsessed with savings accounts, a retirement fund and the
careful stewardship of conservative investments. She could not allow herself to
imagine the kind of money Lucas had frittered away.

 
          
But
then, she could not imagine the childhood he had had to live, either.

 
          
“I
managed to charm my way behind a bar in one of the casinos in Monte Carlo,” he’d
said then, holding her to him as he’d shifted slightly beneath her.

 
          
“Monte
Carlo,” she’d echoed, shaking her head at him. She thought of the famous sweep
of tall buildings cascading toward the yacht-studded marina, all of it huddled
there between the craggy French mountains and the sparkling Mediterranean. “Of
course. Where all the paupers naturally congregate.”

 
          
He’d
ignored her, though his eyes gleamed and he ran a possessive hand along the
length of her spine, making her arch against him, feeling like a fat and
satisfied cat.

 
          
“It
was my first job, and I was shockingly good at it,” he’d said with his usual
modesty. “I was showered in fantastic tips, no doubt in enthusiastic
recognition of my keen knowledge concerning all things alcoholic.”

 
          
Grace
had laughed, and had pulled herself up to sitting position, pulling her mess of
hair over one shoulder to rake her fingers through it like a makeshift comb.

 
          
“No
doubt,” she’d agreed. But when she’d looked down at him he had a strange
expression on his face. “What is it?” she’d asked.

 
          
“Do
you remember the first time you fell in love?” he’d asked then, his expression
unreadable. But she’d had no doubt it was not an idle question. Or, at least,
it had not felt in the least bit idle to her.

 
          
Grace
had felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention, and had had
to look away, to focus on the flames dancing merrily in the fireplace,
crackling and popping. She’d told herself she was tired from all their
lovemaking and the insanely busy days—that there was no other reason her face should
feel warm, or there should be that worrying wet heat behind her eyes.

 
          
“Of
course,” she’d said quietly. “I was a teenager, and I was mistaken.”

 
          
But
his hand on her bare thigh was kind, and somehow she had found herself telling
him the rest of the story about Roger Dambrot. How she had thought giving him
her virginity was the same as giving him her heart, and how devastated she had
been when he had been so contemptuous of both. How utterly destroyed. How her
mother had spoken to her, and what she’d said. And then, so soon afterward, the
scene with Travis. All those predictions, those curses. And worst of all, how
Grace had always believed them—how she’d always thought falling in love and sex
and emotion were inextricably linked with shame, loss, pain.

 
          
“I
thought if I could keep myself apart, removed, I could escape the future she’d
always predicted for me,” she’d told Lucas. “Blood will tell, she said. Carter
women were fated for heartbreak and misery.” She’d bit at her lip. “And then,
later, she said I was fated for far worse.”

 
          
“Perhaps
you were simply seventeen,” he’d said gently. “Gorgeous and new, while she was
simply jealous.”

 
          
“Jealous?”
It wasn’t that Grace had never considered that possibility before; it was the
way he’d said it. So matter-of-fact. As if, contrary to everything Grace had
always believed, there had never been anything wrong inside of her. As if she’d
never had any reason to be ashamed.

 
          
“Jealous,”
he’d said again. “And you were too young to know better.” He’d met her gaze. “I
was no better, let me hasten to assure you. The bar manager’s name was Amanda,
and I fell madly in love with her. She had the most adorable little girl.” He’d
smiled the kind of smile that made Grace want to weep, without even knowing
why. “Her name was Charlotte, and I worshipped every angelic curl on her head
with all the weight and gravity of my twenty-three-year-old heart.”

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