His mouth pulled into that self-mocking curve. “But I still need you to be my date tonight.” He shook his head when she started to protest. “It is work-related, of course. I may be a desperate egomaniac, but I can, on occasion, listen.”
His eyes were intent on hers, hinting at all the layers of himself he kept hidden that she could sense hovered there, just out of reach.
“Sometimes I am even capable of processing the information I hear,” he continued, deep irony laced through his voice. “It is astonishing.”
“There is no need for sarcasm,” Grace said, trying to sound firm and in control but fearing she sounded unnecessarily prim instead.
He did not answer for a moment, and then, he casually dropped the name of the current reigning pop star sensation, the young woman who had recently taken the country by surprise with her debut album—an achievement made all the sweeter because she was the daughter of one of England’s most beloved former football heroes.
Grace blinked, unable to track the change of subject. “What about her?” she asked, baffled.
“It’s her birthday party tonight,” Lucas said. “Quite the coveted invitation list. It should be one of the events of the year.”
“And, naturally, you’ve been invited,” Grace supplied for him.
He did not bother to address that absurdity, and Grace wondered why she’d bothered to say it. He was Lucas Wolfe. Of course he was invited.
“I thought you could accompany me and we could convince her to sing at the gala,” he said instead, and there was the unmistakable light of challenge in the gleam of his eyes, the set of his chin. “I suspect she’ll do it if I ask. She’s had a crush on me since she was a schoolgirl.”
Grace shook her head at him. Getting the current number-one pop star to perform at the gala would, indeed, be a coup—but for some reason, that was not the part of what he’d said that she focused on.
“She is eighteen!” she chided him, even as she was caught up in the challenge in his gaze. The dare. Even as she found herself unable to look away from him.
“I said she had a crush on me, not that I returned the favor,” Lucas replied, unperturbed. His gaze grew hotter and seemed to light Grace up from within. “Besides, everyone knows I prefer my women older, desperate and married.”
Grace wanted to discuss his sexual preferences about as much as she wanted to fling herself out the window behind her to the cold street below. But that did not keep her mouth from drying out, nor her pulse from leaping at her throat.
“So you are pathetic rather than predatory,” she found herself saying, despite her best intentions. Despite the fact she knew it was not at all wise. “My congratulations.”
But Lucas only smiled.
“Nine o’clock,” he said quietly, his voice as low as his eyes were bold. He let his eyes fall over Grace’s tightly buttoned jacket, then back up, and his lips twisted. “But you cannot wear one of those ghoulish suits you love so much, not in front of the paparazzi in my company. And, I beg you, do something with your hair.”
His smoky gaze met hers—dared her, provoked her, made her want to throw the nearest paperweight at his inflated head—and then he smiled again.
No one should have a smile like that, Grace thought, hating herself for the flush that washed through her, the fire that licked into her—for her inability to tell him exactly what he could do with his sartorial suggestions.
“Anything else?” she asked tightly, furiously.
Because they both knew that she would do it. She would go to this party and she would dress more or less to please him. Because she had no choice, she told herself, because it was her job to do so, but still—she was surrendering, like all of her worst fears. His eyes gleamed with a hard, male triumph she could feel echo inside of her, making her soften instead of scream. Making her yearn.
“That should do it,” he said in that insinuating voice of his, the one that tickled and teased, and crept along her skin like the softest feather, the lightest touch. “And, Grace—I have a certain reputation to uphold. Don’t force me to choose an outfit for you. I guarantee that you won’t like it.”
She was the most irritating woman he had ever encountered, Lucas thought later that night, lounging on a suede settee in the middle of the celebrity-studded birthday party, under the all-glass dome of one of London’s most exclusive nightclubs. Yet for all his annoyance, he was unable to shift his attention from Grace, who was sitting beside him and yet, somehow, managing to ignore him completely.
He might have admired her fortitude had he not had this electric current of desire and temper surging through him, making him want to take out his frustrations on her very sweet flesh. All over her flesh, again and again and again.
But that was not a productive line of thought.
“No one is convinced by this act,” he told her. “The entire British press knows you are only pretending to ignore me for effect.”
“Just a minute …” she murmured, not paying any attention. Not even glancing at him.
It was lowering, to say the least. Lucas almost laughed at himself. He was brooding in public, which was not like him at all. He, who was known for his ability to make all around him laugh and fall a little bit in love with his smile. But he could not seem to shift his attention from the woman next to him, as she blithely tapped away at that damned PDA of hers. She had taken him at his word regarding her attire—which perhaps he should have expected.
But he had not been prepared. He had suspected she was beautiful beneath her gloomy clothes, of course—but he’d had no idea how correct he was.
For the first time since he’d met her, she was not wearing an undertaker’s suit in black or gray. Instead, she had chosen to wear a dress so red, so bright, that it was all he could do not to gawk at the way it flowed over the mesmerizing legs she’d made even longer, even more wicked, in high platform sandals. The dress clung to her breasts as he would like his hands to do, spanned her waist with a lover’s attention to detail and then flared out from her body to show only saucy hints of the magnificent legs beneath. She looked like a column of fire, and he wanted to burn them both beyond recognition.
But because she was Grace, and might possibly be the death of him, she had left her hair up. In a slightly more complicated knot, to be sure, with a few tendrils of golden blond waves left hanging to tease and entice, but it was ultimately no less controlled than her usual style. He felt certain it was a deliberate act of defiance on her part.
One step at a time, Lucas thought. He was that much closer to getting her naked and beneath him, and that, really, was what mattered. It was fast becoming an obsession.
He had presented her to the pop princess who had, as he’d anticipated, eagerly agreed to perform at the gala—an agreement that Grace had immediately set out to confirm with the girl’s hovering management team while Lucas suffered through a series of indecent propositions that should have appealed to him more than they did. He had smiled obediently for the cameras, and then the princess and her entourage had moved on, leaving Grace behind to email back and forth with her team members about ways to update the design concept for the party to best showcase the new talent. And leaving Lucas with nothing to do but imagine removing that silky smooth red dress
