voice that had gotten her out of sticky situations in the past. She pretended not to notice how hard it was to dredge up this time, how hard it was to employ. “But I doubt very much I’m the target demographic for your particular brand of charm.”
“You are a woman, are you not?” he asked mildly.
“Yes.” She smiled, bright and false. “But a discerning woman, I’m afraid.”
His gaze moved to her mouth, and she felt it like a touch. Hot and demanding. Sure.
“Excellent,” he said softly. “Can you discern my thoughts?”
She felt herself flush in helpless reaction, and could only hope that her legendary cool kept her skin from actually turning red and broadcasting her response to him. How could this be happening? She had never had trouble in the past, keeping her feelings and any unwanted attractions safely hidden away in the parts of herself she kept locked up tight. Soon enough, they’d disappeared, subsumed into the work she’d always known would save her. Anything to pretend her past belonged to someone else.
“I’m afraid not,” she managed to say, forcing herself to sit there calmly, as if she was relaxed. “My psychic abilities only work on more … intellectual subjects.”
“That is a great pity, indeed,” Lucas said, not at all discomfited. “My own abilities are far more universal. Shall I tell you what you’re thinking?”
She wanted to know what she was missing, she knew suddenly—with a deep, new need that frightened her with its intensity. She wanted him to touch her, to taste her. To mark her. Brand her. Take her. She wanted to taste that wicked mouth with her own. She wanted him in ways she’d never wanted another man—even though it made no sense. Even though it made her everything her mother had ever called her. But none of that seemed to matter. She wanted.
But that didn’t mean she planned to act on it.
“I doubt that would be wise,” she said, and mustered up an approximation of her professional smile. “Mr. Winthrop wanted me to usher you through your first project, not mortally insult you.”
His gaze moved up to meet hers once more, and his smile was far too satisfied, far too aware. As if he knew that all he needed do was touch her and she would collapse at his feet, as much his to toy with as any of the hundreds of women who had undoubtedly landed face-first at his trouser cuff before. He was the ultimate predator, and that should have repulsed her utterly—but it did not, and she could not account for it. Anger and fear and something else, something too much like yearning, collided inside of her, making Grace feel jangly and breathless, unnerved.
“It seems your luck has held, Ms. Carter,” he said at last, laughter lurking somewhere in his voice, and that dark, sensual promise in his eyes. That was when she noticed that the car had slowed considerably. He inclined his head toward the window. “We’re here.”
Lucas did not mind when Grace all but leaped from the car the moment it rolled to a stop at the top of the winding drive, in the looming shadow of the great house he so hated. Let her run. He had always enjoyed the chase—not that, in truth, he had ever had to do much more in the way of chasing than indicate his interest. But he’d always liked a new challenge to keep life interesting, and there were only so many times one could leap from a plane or climb a mountain when one did not, in fact, have a death wish.
He climbed out of the limousine after her, more focused on the sweet curve of her behind in the latest of her series of stuffy, corporate suits than in the fact that he was once more at Wolfe Manor.
Acquiescing to an urge he only belatedly realized was uncharacteristically chivalrous instead of calculating, he relieved the driver of his umbrella. He motioned the poor man back into the warm and waiting car, then followed the prickly Ms. Carter through the rain toward the front of the house, from where, he knew, she could see just about the whole of the property laid out at her feet. He loathed the very sight of it—all the picturesque British countryside spread out so prettily, with the charming little village of Wolfestone in the distance. He knew that appearances were deceiving: the prettier the surface, the uglier the mess beneath. He had not, perhaps, thought through his impulsive offer of this house for Hartington’s use, much less considered that he would have to return here himself.
He concentrated instead on the woman standing with her back to him, frowning through the weather at what there was left of the once-famous view.
“You’re wet,” he said, close enough to her to see her start, and man enough to enjoy the flustered look she sent his way when he caught up to her. He indicated the rain, lighter now than before but still falling with no sign of stopping, and then moved even closer, shielding them both beneath the umbrella.
He doubted she knew the picture she made as she stood there, damp and inviting, her lush mouth soft, her usually sleek hair escaping from its confines and curling slightly, making her seem more wanton, more open. He felt himself harden and shifted closer to her.
“You failed to mention that this house is falling down,” she said, her voice faintly accusing, her chin tilting up as she looked at him.
“Not yet,” he said. He looked at the house, still regrettably upright and this time, thankfully, without his brother’s disapproving presence on the front stair. While it was certainly in a notable state of disrepair, it had not been reduced to rubble and a hole in the earth, as Lucas had often fiercely imagined while still forced to live here. “Though one can dream.”
But Grace was not looking at him any longer. She peered up at the house, then pivoted to look out over the wild, overgrown gardens and sweeping lawn that led down to the picturesque lake, pretty even beneath the onslaught of the rain. Her brow creased in fierce concentration, and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth as she let her gaze move from one dilapidated marker of the once-lush Wolfe estate to the next. She sighed and then turned her frown on him.
Somehow, he restrained himself from pressing his mouth into the indentation between her dark blond brows.
“I suppose we can set up a big tent on the lawn,” she said. “It will be pretty if the weather is fine, and there will be enough space if it isn’t. And the state of everything else could work for us. The house and grounds will add a bit of gothic splendor to the whole enterprise.”
Lucas laughed, the sound more bitter than he’d intended. “This is Wolfe Manor. The ghosts here outnumber the living, I assure you, and are all known by name. And there is not a person in the whole of England who does not want to come here and see it for himself.”
She looked at him, her expression warily polite, and he remembered belatedly that she was American, and was not, perhaps, as conversant on the Wolfe family and their tragic history as any citizen of the United Kingdom might be. He was not sure if he liked the possibility of her ignorance regarding all things Wolfe or resented that she might now have to learn all those terrible stories as if they were new.
He could not imagine why he should care either way. And yet he did.
“One of my ancestors supposedly drowned in the lake,” he said abruptly, jerking his chin toward it. “Regrettably, not my father. He died in the house.” He smiled, though he could feel it was not a very nice smile. It matched the dark memories that flew at him, each one a new knife in his gut. He shoved them all aside, ruthlessly. “The rest of us survived this place, in one form or another, but left the better part of our souls behind. I am not being poetic. There was never anything good here. Ever.”
He looked
