Shameless Playboy (22 page)

 
          
“He
died,” Lucas said matter-of-factly. “That was always the William Wolfe way.” He
let out a derisive sound. “He always did get the last laugh.”

 
          
“I
am so sorry,” Grace murmured. “For all of you.”

 
          
“It
is my younger siblings you should feel sorry for,” Lucas said, that jittery
feeling washing over him, as it always did. Muted, somehow, but still there,
making him restless. Making that old self-loathing glow and expand within him. “Once
Jacob was cleared of any charges, he, of course, put his life on hold to be a
guardian to us all, because that was Jacob. Generous to a fault. The perfect
older brother. But he could not live with himself.” Lucas shook his head. “What
did that vile old bastard ever do to deserve regret? What did he do besides
make us all miserable?”

 
          
He
could hear the echo of his voice, raw and rough, and was glad there was no
mirror nearby. He felt certain he would find himself unrecognizable. His heart
was hammering against the walls of his chest and he felt unhinged, untethered,
as if he might explode. But then Grace brought their linked hands to her mouth
and kissed his knuckles, one by one, and Lucas let himself breathe.

 
          
“I
dreamed every night for years that I’d killed William myself,” he said quietly.
He turned to meet her troubled gaze. “I hated him. I would not have lost a
single night’s sleep if I’d been the one to kill him, accidentally or otherwise,
nor would the weight of him on my conscience, such as it is, have caused me a
moment’s pause.”

 
          
“Then
what does?” she asked, and he had the most uncomfortable feeling, once again,
that she could read him. Much too easily, and far too closely. “Because,” she
continued, “it is clear that something weighs on you, Lucas. Heavily.”

 
          
“It’s
only myself,” he answered, with unflinching honesty. “When Jacob left, the role
of guardian fell to me.” His smile felt like acid. “I was unfit for the
position, to put it mildly. I abandoned them, too. Deserted them. That is the
kind of man I am.”

 
          
The
room was quiet. The enticing scents of the food set out on the room service
tray perfumed the air, and the wind rattled the windowpanes.

 
          
“How
old were you?” Grace asked after a moment, her gaze unreadable, her face calm.

 
          
“Eighteen.”
He made a bitter sound. “A man.”

 
          
“Or,
perhaps, a boy who had been brutally treated the whole of his life,” she said
quietly, holding his gaze. “A boy who knew nothing at all about how a parent
should act. I think you expected far too much of yourself. Unfairly.”

 
          
He
looked at her for a long moment, his history shimmering between them, his
failures and flaws lying out there with nothing to cover them. Not his charm,
his wit, his face—none of the usual tools he’d used his whole life to prevent a
moment like this from ever occurring.

 
          
And
what was most unreal was that he had done all this himself. He had thrown all
of this at her feet. And he still could not allow himself to think about why he
had done it. He did not dare.

 
          
“This
is what I was talking about earlier,” he said, reaching over to cup her jaw in
his hand, his body thrilling to the feel of her soft skin, the way her lips
parted slightly. “No one has ever expected anything of me, Grace. Least of all
me. Why should you?” He stroked his thumb along her soft cheek. “Why do you?”

 
          
Her
eyes were luminous. Deep and unwavering as she stared back at him.

 
          
She
shrugged slightly, though her gaze never left his. “Perhaps it’s time you started.”

 
          
And
then she turned her head, pressing her lips into the palm of his hand, and that
simply ruined him.

 
          
GRACE
felt all the blood drain from her head, fast, as she stared at the tabloid
newspaper in front of her. Her stomach twisted into a complicated pretzel and
she thought for a moment she might simply pass out from the shock. Her knees
wanted to give way beneath her. Her mind wanted to simply succumb to the spiral
of dizziness.

 
          
But
she did none of that, much as she might have wished otherwise. Instead, she
could do nothing but read the paper the visibly embarrassed member of her staff
had handed her when she’d arrived at the team breakfast meeting prepared to go
over the last-minute details before the gala—which was tonight.

 
          
“I’m
so sorry,” Sophie murmured in an undertone—or perhaps she shouted. Grace could
hear nothing over the kettle-drum pounding of her heart.

 
          
The
headline screamed in block letters:
LUCAS
RELAUNCH? WOLFE UP TO USUAL TRICKS WITH AGING SWIMSUIT MODEL
. The article
that followed featured not just the pictures of Grace kissing Lucas at the pop
princess’s birthday party—fully identifiable despite her hair swirling around
her and her eyes dazed with passion, sprawled over his lap as if she were made
of syrup—but also the old American sports magazine photos that Lucas had
unearthed. In full, unavoidable color.

 
          
Grace
stood there like a stone and stared at the paper in her hands. This was what it
felt like to have her entire life fall to pieces, she observed from an odd,
stunned distance. This was how it happened, then: all of her years of hard work
came to a screeching halt in a place called the Pig’s Head, while her entire
body was displayed in a trashy newspaper for the whole of Great Britain to pore
over. She was sure she would have some feelings about that, but for the moment
she felt paralyzed, aware only of all the eyes fastened to her, waiting for her
reaction.

 
          
How could this be happening?

 
          
The
biggest party of her career was in a matter of hours, and her half-naked body
was plastered all over the tabloids. Not exactly the classic yet modern
sensibility Hartington’s wished to portray, she was certain. And even worse
than the swimsuit photos, everyone in the entire world—including the entire
staff, all the executives, and the board of directors of Hartington’s—would now
know that she was sleeping with Lucas Wolfe.

 
          
She
waited for that anguish to spill over, as it nearly had in Lucas’s office, but
it did not come.

 
          
“Sorry,
Grace,” Sophie muttered again, red-faced with embarrassment, as everyone else
pretended to be absorbed in their morning tea and full English breakfasts. “But
everyone was reading it and I thought you should know.”

 
          
A
quick glance around showed Grace that there were, indeed, copies aplenty of
this particular tabloid rag—seemingly one on every table in the restaurant. No
doubt on every breakfast table in all the world. Her mother was no doubt
reading it even now in Racine, Texas, and nodding knowingly over Grace’s
behavior and patting herself on the back for stamping out the viper in her
nest.
Terrific
.

 
          
“Thank
you, Sophie,” Grace said with every stitch of poise she could dredge up from
inside herself.

 
          
It
was her very worst nightmare, broadcast in lurid color, in the shape of her
seventeen-year-old bikini-clad body. She knew what happened next. She knew how
this scene played out. She felt her gorge rise in her throat, and wondered,
still as if from a distance, if she might actually get sick in full view of her
entire staff and half the village of Wolfestone, all of whom were packed into
the Pig’s Head to watch her with avid gazes only some tried to hide.

 
          
She
simply could not allow that to happen.

 
          
Especially
not when Lucas sauntered in from the lobby, looking sleepy and rumpled and as
if he’d just rolled out of a decadent bed—which she happened to know that he
had, as she had been in it with him. Every head in the room swiveled to track
him as he wound his way through the tables toward her. Grace could hear the
whispering, the muttering. She could feel the speculation heat up the room, as
if gossip were an electric current and she was being slowly, surely
electrocuted.

 
          
Grace
watched him approach, noting that easy lope, that careless swagger that called
so much attention to his inescapable masculine beauty. She’d spent a week
learning every last detail of his long, lean body, and melting under the
sorcery of his clever hands, and her body wanted more. Now. It readied itself
for him as if on command, melting and shivering, as if he had not been
thrusting deep inside her, kneeling over her with his hot mouth fastened to the
nape of her neck, one wicked hand wrapped around her breast and the other at
her core, not twenty minutes earlier.

 
          
She
had to clench her thighs together and force her bland, professional smile.
Apparently, he was irresistible, even when the worst had happened.
Was happening
, she amended.
Right now
.

 
          
But
something occurred to her then, as Lucas walked toward her. This had already
happened. Lucas had seen these photos, and nothing had changed. He had still
wanted her.
Her
, not some fantasy
photograph of her. He had not called her names, or looked down at her. The
world had not ended—if anything, the photos had been the catalyst for a whole
new world of possibility she’d never imagined.

 
          
Why do you care so much what so many
ignorant people think?
he had asked.

 
          
And
she could not help but ask herself, why did she?

 
          
Grace
watched him read the room as he moved through it. She saw the cool calculation
in his green gaze as he drew close, and could now tell the difference between
the real Lucas and the self-mocking, lazy and careless Lucas he produced on
cue, as he did now, smirking slightly as he reached the team’s table.

 
          
She
preferred the real one, but she was deeply grateful for his easy mask today.

 
          
“Has
it finally happened?” he asked mildly, yet in a voice that seemed to
accidentally carry throughout the room. He smoothed a hand down his chest,
calling attention to his excellent physique, and the phenomenal way he’d chosen
to package it today in a tight-fitting green designer T-shirt beneath a
fashionable black sport coat and a pair of distressed denim jeans that
transformed his delectable behind into sheer poetry. “Have I become
better-looking overnight?”

 
          
A
wave of laughter swept through the room. Because everyone loved Lucas, Grace
thought. How could they not? He was so good at pretending to take nothing
seriously, least of all himself, and it was impossible not to laugh when he
did.

 
          
Their
eyes met, held. Something almost painful flared between them, silently, and she
felt her practiced calm sweep through her. She saw that fierce light gleam in
the depths of his gaze, the one she wondered if only she could see. The one
that showed her the truth of him, that she craved more than she should. But she
was forced to ignore it in front of so many interested gazes. She handed him
the tabloid, keeping her face expressionless.

 
          
“Not
yet,” she said. “Though you are, apparently, as interesting to the press when
you are shilling for Hartington’s as when you are romancing minor royalty on
the Continent.”

 
          
She
could see the nearly imperceptible way his body tensed. She could almost see,
as well, the anger roll off him in waves. Was it the fact that they were in the
tabloids, or the offhanded way she’d introduced the topic, as if she thought
what had happened between them had something to do with Hartington’s? She could
not tell. And either way, no one else seemed to notice anything in his body
language at all. All they could see was scandal, and the bright shining light
that was the presence of Lucas Wolfe.