“If we are to pull off a huge party there in a very short period of time,” she said mildly, reminding them both why they were there, together, “I really should know everything there is to know about the place.”
“I can tell you that it has never flooded,” Lucas said in that silken voice, a dark eyebrow arching high. Grace was forced to consider—and not for the first time—the unnerving possibility that he was much quicker and significantly wittier than any pathetic international playboy had a right to be. She did not know why that thought should unsettle her. Why it should make her arms break out in goose bumps.
“Touché,” she said, but still gazed at him expectantly.
“What is there to tell?” he asked then, with a careless sort of shrug. “It is a manor house like any other. The country is infested with them. It is the ancestral encumbrance, passed down through generations, a monument to aristocratic greed. I thank the gods every morning for the great gift of primogeniture, which, as I am not the firstborn son, ensures I need never set foot there again unless I wish it.”
A moment passed, and then another. The tires swished along the wet roadway, the rain drummed against the roof, and still, Grace was too aware of the way his eyes met hers, bold and demanding, daring her to look away. To ignore him. To pretend he was not getting to her.
“Thank you,” Grace managed to say in her driest tone. “I’m sure that will be very useful information as we prepare to throw a gala there. No thoughts on an appropriate place to pitch the tent? Where to set up the catering? How to craft the perfect delivery system to ensure the guests are properly wowed as they enter the event?”
Lucas only continued to watch her, that wolfish smile and a silvery light in his eyes that made her feel as if she was made of sand, something insubstantial that would blow away at his next breath. Grace felt almost dizzy, and hated it. Hated him, she told herself fiercely, that he should be the reason she felt so wildly out of her depth when she was working—the one place Grace had always exerted complete control.
He was a devil, clearly. He was used to this, to using his incredible sexual magnetism to bend all he encountered to his whim. Simply because he could. But he was not the first devil she’d met, and she refused to be seduced. She refused.
“I imagined my role was to be rather more decorative than administrative,” he said, his eyes laughing at her.
“My mistake,” she said, redirecting her attention to her PDA as if dismissing him. “I thought for a moment in yesterday’s meeting that you were a creature of substance as well as style.” She smiled, to soften her words—to pretend she was still being professional, when she felt so edgy, so raw and unwieldy within. “But you can rest assured, Mr. Wolfe, that your face alone is of great use to Hartington’s, however else you choose to help. Or not.”
“I know,” he agreed, not appearing in the least chastened by her words. Or even particularly offended by them. “This is not the first time I have worked for Hartington’s, Ms. Carter. Though it is true that when I did it last, I was still quite young.”
She blinked at him, thrown. She could hardly think which was more astonishing—that he had ever been young, or that he had ever actually worked. Neither seemed possible. He was too dissolute to have ever been a child, surely, and far too committedly lazy to ever have worked for his living.
“Define ‘worked for Hartington’s,’” she suggested, mildly enough, trying to conceal her interest. She should not find him fascinating. She should not care that he was able to fence words with her so easily. She should not let that soften her. “Because, and do forgive me if I’ve misunderstood, I was under the impression that you took great pride in the fact that you’ve never worked a day in your charmed life. Aside, that is, from your vague claims last week of once having been employed.”
“Perhaps my charmed life is more complicated than you might imagine,” he said, a hint of chill in his voice and that uncannily shrewd gaze of his, but only for the barest moment. Grace was convinced she’d imagined both when he blinked, and that self-mocking smile of his returned. “My brothers and sister and I were once the Hartington’s window display at Christmas,” he said, his tone light and yet, somehow, Grace could hear only the sardonic inflection beneath, the hint of something much darker. “Decked out in matching outfits like the von Trapps, merry and bright. A true Christmas card come to life. The punters adored us, of course. Who could resist a brood of angelic children? They all but emptied their wallets on the spot.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve seen the pictures,” Grace said quietly, uncertain of him, suddenly. Perhaps he was unaware that there were blown-up photographs of his family all over the executive office suite: seven bright-eyed, shockingly good-looking children arrayed around their attractive father, like a series of Norman Rockwell paintings. They all fairly exuded hearth and home and happiness. She was not sure he would welcome that knowledge. The atmosphere inside the car had changed, and he seemed more dangerous, more unpredictable, though he had not moved at all.
She was imagining things, she told herself. But she remained on her guard.
“Such a happy family we looked,” Lucas said in a soft voice that Grace did not believe at all. “Beyond that, my brother Jacob and I worked in the store during every school holiday for years. My father felt it was character building, apparently.” His smile seemed knife-edged now, deeper somehow, and resonated through her, making her ache in ways she was afraid to examine. “I spent my time talking the shopgirls out of their pants rather than learning how to operate the till. I built my character carefully, and with excessive practice.”
Grace had a sudden, flashing vision of the teenaged Lucas, prowling about the gleaming sales floors of Hartington’s with this same lean and feral edge to him. He would have been much less restrained in his youth, she imagined—all green eyes and cocky swagger and far too much self-awareness. She repressed a sudden shiver. There was nothing safe about this man. She doubted very much there ever had been, even when he’d been small. If.
“It is difficult to imagine you young,” she said, voicing her thoughts without meaning to, her voice far softer than it should have been. Almost as if she cared.
Their eyes met then, and something bright and profound moved through Grace, searing into her through the gloom of the rainy day and the stuffy confines of the car. She found she was holding her breath. That she could not look away from him as she knew she should.
“It was a chronological situation, nothing more,” he said after a short pause, never moving his electric, arrogant gaze from hers. “I never had the opportunity to be naive or innocent.” He seemed to recollect himself and looked away then, that smile sharpening as he did. Grace felt it as if he’d cut into her, as if he’d carved symbols deep into her flesh. “But I doubt innocence would have suited me, in any case.” When he looked at her again, he had gone predatory. Male. Hot and knowing—and it made her melt and tremble, despite her best intentions. “I was always far more proficient in sin.”
“So I have read,” Grace said primly, ignoring the clamoring need in her own body. “At length. It is what makes you such an excellent choice to head up the new Hartington’s campaign. All women have already had numerous fantasies about you, and all men wish they could be you. You are, yourself, the ultimate luxury brand.” She smiled. Professionally. “Kudos.”
“All women?” he asked, his eyes hard and gleaming on hers—as, she realized on some level, she must have known he would.
Had this man ever ignored a gauntlet thrust down before him? She knew, somehow, that he had not. He smiled that wolf’s smile, and it connected hard with that strange humming deep inside of her that grew louder the nearer he was. He was everything she had spent her whole life fearing, avoiding. He made her into someone else, someone lost in the shimmering heat that suffused her, the flame of interest in his gaze. He made her feel things she’d never believed she was capable of feeling. She could not seem to look away. For a long, spinning moment, she could not find it in her to fight him—to fight the weakness in herself.