The Shameless Playboy. CAITLIN CREWS

in the press for years. I am a glorious male animal. You may as well simply admit the truth.”

      “You should probably not believe everything you read, Mr. Wolfe,” Grace replied airily. Easily. She wished she could feel the way she sounded. “It can lead to all sorts of issues. A swollen head, for one thing.”

      She knew the moment she said it that she should not have used that word.

      “My head is the not the part of me—” he began, evident delight in his tone and in his bright green eyes when she turned to frown at him.

      “I beg you,” she said crisply. “Let us preserve the fantasy that you are not, in fact, a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Please do not finish that sentence.”

      The wicked smile that should have irritated her, but somehow did not, flirted with his mouth even as his eyes darkened with a heat she wished she could not feel.

      “I assure you, Ms. Carter,” he said softly. “I am a grown man in all the ways that could possibly interest you.”

      She was all too aware that he was a man. Just a man, she reminded herself. No more and no less, no matter what the fawning press and her own reactions seemed to suggest. And no matter that, yesterday, he had seemed to sense how agitated she was when no one else had. She had no idea what that could mean.

      He had discarded his suit jacket the moment he’d entered the vehicle, stripping it from his lean, masculine form in a manner she’d found entirely too disconcerting—and Grace was forced to note that his biceps were more muscular, his shoulders wider and harder, his torso more sculpted than she had imagined when he was covered in more than just a soft bit of linen. She shifted farther, trying to pull herself as far toward the opposite side of the car as possible without looking as if that was what she was doing.