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.
And she knew that was as good as the death of her.
“Does that mean you’ve fantasized about me, Grace?” he asked, in his seducer’s voice, a low, sexy rasp that promised far too much she knew he could never deliver.
“I believe I have already asked that you call me Ms. Carter,” Grace said, sounding like a starchy, stereotypical schoolmarm sort of person, to her horror. Yet it was exactly the image she strove to project, with her severely cut suits and her scraped-back hair: efficient and competent. A vestal virgin, clutching her pearls.
But what other option did she have? She was trapped in the back of a car with a man who exuded sex—long, slow, all-encompassing, masterful sex, for that matter, from which one was unlikely to recover. And Grace knew what that kind of sex meant, the damage it could and did wreak. She had seen it happen too many times. She had lived it.
“You should have said no, Gracie,” her mother had said so long ago, her face hard and drawn, her eyes flashing the same censure Grace had seen everywhere else. Her own mother, who should have known better—should have tried harder, Grace had thought, to protect her daughter. But Mary-Lynn had made her choice. “You should have said no, but you didn’t, and now you have to live with the consequences.”
Sex like that was a threat, Grace knew, shaking off the unpleasant past. Sex like that was about power, and, ultimately, pain. She had never wanted anything to do with it after the events of her senior year—but then, she had never met a man who fascinated her on all the levels this man seemed to do. For the first time in years, since she had set her course and focused exclusively on putting the past behind her and excelling in her career, Grace felt lost.
“Is that part of your fantasy?” Lucas asked, his voice low, suggestive. He shifted closer to her, and Grace froze—her entire body, her very being, focused on the heat he generated, on the length and strength of his lean, hard body mere inches away from hers. Only inches. A breath. “I’m happy to call you anything you like.”
