Shameless Playboy (21 page)

 
          
He
was in trouble. More trouble, he understood, than he had ever been near before.

 
          
“You
accused me of hiding yesterday,” he said without turning around, not moving
from where he stood in front of the big bay window. “In plain sight.”

 
          
He
had heard the water shut off, had heard the old pipes cease their chattering
and clanking. He’d heard her move around in the bathroom, and then emerge. She
brought a cloud of fragrance with her, something floral with a faint kick of
spice. Her soap, shampoo, perfume. It teased his nose and made him harden again
in the jeans he’d thrown back on to answer the porter’s knock when their food
had been delivered. Lamb with buttery mashed potatoes and peas. Hearty fare
befitting a cold March night—and yet he could not seem to summon up an appetite.

 
          
“It
was an observation,” she replied in an even tone, closer to him than he’d
expected, though he still did not turn. “Not an accusation.”

 
          
“It
was astute, either way,” he said. “But I cannot seem to do it here.”

 
          
He
turned to find her just beyond his shoulder, her face carefully blank, her
brown eyes noticeably wary, her hair piled haphazardly on the top of her head
and curling at the ends. She was wrapped in a thin silk wrapper of a deep royal
blue, her skin flushed pink and rosy from her ablutions. Or perhaps from what
had happened between them.

 
          
She
looked like candy, sweet and damp and all too edible. And he could not
understand why tasting her again, though he yearned to, was not the urge that
drove him. Why something else battled to take him over instead.

 
          
It
was the ghosts again, he thought darkly. There were too many, especially in
Wolfestone. Hadn’t his run-in with Jacob taught him the folly of revisiting the
past? And yet here he was, back in this village, as if he’d learned nothing at
all. He’d even been the one to suggest coming here, so full of himself, never
considering the consequences. The story of his damned life.

 
          
“I
don’t know what this is,” he muttered. “If it is you—or this damned place. It
brings back far too many memories. None of them good.”

 
          
Her
wary eyes searched his face, and he saw her swallow, as if fighting for calm.
Oddly, that small sign of discomfort eased him. It made him realize that this
woman—who knew something about hiding herself in plain sight just as he did—could
understand. That he wanted her to understand.

 
          
“What
happened to you here?” she asked in a soft voice, as if she feared he would not
like the question.

 
          
He
looked at her for a long moment, and then back out the window. The night was
dark and blustery, with no hint of moon or stars. He could see only the
wind-tossed branches of the trees across the lane, and the impenetrable country
blackness beyond. But he still knew precisely where he was. He still knew that
the Wolfe estate began just on the other side of the deceptively bucolic river
that wound through the town, that the manor house hunkered out there in the
dark, empty and brooding and marked, as far as he was concerned—forever marked
as soulless and evil as its former owner had been.

 
          
What
had he been thinking, to return here?

 
          
“I
had the misfortune to be born William Wolfe’s son,” he said, a hollow laugh
escaping him. “That is what happened to me. Do not let the tales of his fame,
his great charisma and cult of personality fool you, Grace.” He shook his head.
“I’ve managed to put him from my mind for vast swathes of my life—but that does
not work here, apparently. The things he did and the kind of man he was hang in
the air in this village like smoke.”

 
          
She
was quiet for a long moment, and Lucas felt that ache inside of him expand. As
if he had never known loneliness, not really, until this moment. But then she
brushed past him, and sat down on the couch just beside the window and faced
him, tucking her long, bare legs beneath her. She tilted her face toward him,
and he saw … nothing. No judgment. No arch, inside knowledge she might use
against him. Nothing but her warm, steady gaze.

 
          
“He
was a monster,” Lucas said baldly. He felt his mouth twist and turned away,
staring out the window once again, though what he saw was the past. He
shrugged, as if he could will it away.

 
          
“And
…” Her voice was hesitant. “Your mother?”

 
          
“I
never knew who she was,” Lucas said, on a sigh. Funny that the truth could
still sting, when he should have long since ceased caring about a relatively
meaningless fact like that one. “He told me only that she could not stand the
sight of me, and that was why she’d left me on his doorstep.” He smirked a
little bit then, ignoring the small noise she made. “I grew up rather amazed
that what people saw when they looked at me was this remarkable face I’d been
awarded in the genetic lottery, when I knew the truth about how ugly I was. So
ugly it repulsed my own mother, who was never heard from again. So ugly it made
my father hate me. Quite a dichotomy.”

 
          
“And
you had only your father’s word on that?”

 
          
Grace
asked, and it was the lack of pity, the simple calm in her voice that made it
all right, somehow, that he was telling her all of this. No matter that he
still did not know why.

 
          
Lucas
remembered then, unwillingly, the night he’d confronted William in his study
with the birth certificate he’d found after hours of searching. He’d been a
mere teenager then, angry and bitter that all of his siblings knew their
parents—even Rafael, the other bastard son who lived in the village yet out of
William’s view, had the comfort of his mother’s presence to ease William’s
rejection of him. But Lucas had nothing. Only William’s lifelong loathing and a
birth certificate with the mother’s name blanked out.

 
          
William
had reacted predictably when Lucas had waved the document in front of him, and
Lucas had still been too emotional, too small yet to fight back as he might
have done later. It was only when William had him pinned to the wall that he’d
relented at all—in true William Wolfe fashion.

 
          
“Your
mother is a difficult woman to forget,” he had said, in a vicious sort of tone,
designed to wound, confuse.

 
          
He
had thrown a photo album at Lucas’s feet, sneered at the nose he’d bloodied
with his own big fist and left Lucas to page through photographs of his uncle
Richard’s wedding—to a woman who had Lucas’s own unusual green eyes. If what he
had seen was true, it meant William had slept with his own sister-in-law. Lucas
had been sick right there on the study floor.

 
          
The
subject of Lucas’s mother had never been raised again.

 
          
“Yes,”
Lucas said now. “I never discovered who she was. Not really.” He could not
believe how much William’s behavior could still get under his skin, even all
these years later. When it could not matter to anyone, not even to him. When
the man had been dead for nearly twenty years. “Not for certain.”

 
          
“My
father disappeared before I was born,” Grace said matter-of-factly, wrapping
her arms around her knees. “There are any number of John Benisons in the world,
and none of them were interested in claiming me. I don’t even have his name.”
She looked at him, her dark eyes intent on his. “There is no shame in being an
accident, Lucas. There are only parents who are not up to the challenge.”

 
          
“William
was not up to any kind of parental challenge,” Lucas said. “He was not what I
would call a parent at all, aside from his biological contribution.”

 
          
He
looked at her then, taking in the way she gazed at him, his own
near-overpowering urge to touch her, to hold her, to pull her close to him
again and make him feel that fleeting sensation he’d felt in the bed, that he’d
never felt before. He was afraid to name it.

 
          
“I
told you before that there are ghosts here, Grace,” he said quietly, but in
that moment he did not know if he meant in Wolfestone or in himself.

 
          
She
smiled slightly, seemingly unperturbed by his warning.

 
          
“Will
they rattle their chains and scare the guests away with all their moaning?” she
asked.

 
          
“They
are more likely to dress in designer labels and behave as if they are normal
human beings,” Lucas replied dryly. “When they are not. Not one of them.”

 
          
She
searched his face for a moment, then twisted around to look out the window, as
if she, too, could pierce the darkness with her gaze and see the dilapidated
manor house in the distance.

 
          
“Is
that why it was abandoned?” she asked, and he knew she meant the house, not
him. “Too many ghosts?” She frowned slightly, as if trying to make sense of it.
“Was it easier somehow to let it crumble into the ground?”

 
          
“If
it were mine,” Lucas said with a quiet ferocity, “I would demolish it and salt
the earth on which it stood.”

 
          
Her
brows arched then, and another near-smile played over her generous mouth,
drawing him like a moth to a flame. He could not bring himself to look away.

 
          
“That
seems unduly dramatic,” she said. “Surely you could simply choose not to visit.
Or donate the place to English Heritage. It is only a house.” When he did not
speak, she shrugged. “And surely not all of your siblings share your opinion of
the place?”

 
          
“We
are not close,” he said. He laughed slightly, a hollow sound. “Or perhaps it is
more truthful to say they are not close with me. And why should they be?”

 
          
“Because
you are their brother,” Grace said quietly, as if she believed in him. As if
she knew him. And he could not let her, could he? He could not let her think he
was something other—something better, something less worthless—than he was. Not
even if it felt as if she’d wrapped him in sunshine. This was meant to be an
exercise in exorcism, not in intimacy.

 
          
He
sat down next to her on the plush, bright couch, confused by the urge to be
near her even when he planned only to disabuse her of any positive notions she
might have of him. Then, even more confusing, he reached over and took one of
her pale, slender hands in his. He did not understand himself, when he thought
he had looked into every dark corner he possessed, and more than once, leaving
no surprises. He had never been more of a stranger to himself than he was
tonight.

 
          
“One
night when I was eighteen,” he said, striving for an even tone, “William got
drunk. This would not have been of interest to anyone, you understand, except
that on that particular night he worked himself into a temper over my sister,
Annabelle.” He smiled, though it was the barest sketch of a smile. “He
brutalized her,” he said, his voice growing raspy. He indicated his face with
his free hand. “Slashed her face with a riding crop.”

 
          
“Why?”
Grace breathed, her eyes wide.

 
          
“He
was a bully and a drunk,” Lucas said caustically. “Did he need a reason?” He
shook his head slightly. “My brothers tried to stop him,” Lucas continued. “But
they were too young. When my older brother, Jacob, came home, he waded right
into it.” He paused and looked at her, hard. “I was not there, of course. I was
chasing a set of twins through Soho.”

 
          
But
she did not flinch, nor look away. So he did.

 
          
“When
Jacob pulled William off Annabelle,” he said, concentrating on their linked
hands, “he punched the drunken bastard as he richly deserved. Hard.”

 
          
Grace’s
hand tightened around his, as if she knew. “And then?” she asked quietly.