Shameless Playboy (24 page)

 
          
“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 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?