them, the enchantment—as if doing so would cause him pain. And, she acknowledged with great reluctance, her, too.
He looked at her for an age, a moment, a heartbeat. Cars skidded past them on the late-night street, the traditionally uniformed doorman hailed a cab with a shrill whistle and London carried on all around them, the city bright and noisy and shimmering in the winter rain.
And there was Lucas, brilliant against the night, as if nothing else had ever mattered, or could.
“Come with me,” he whispered, and held out his hand.
She could not speak, or move. She felt herself sway slightly, as if pulled to him by some invisible chain. She knew too much now—that his body was so strong, so warm, so incredibly male. That he could set her on fire with only that dark, stirring gaze even as the cold rain fell down on them both.
She felt the great gulf of the loneliness she spent her waking hours denying yawn open inside of her, reminding her of all the nights she’d spent alone, all the years she’d denied she was a woman, all the vows and promises she’d made to herself about how different she would be than her mother, than her own past. Than what had happened to her. But then Lucas had touched her, and she was nothing but a woman.
Finally, something inside of her whispered, and that word seemed to ricochet inside of her, leaving marks. Scars.
She wanted to reach over and slip her hand into his more than she could remember ever wanting anything else.
He was far too good at this, she thought in a kind of daze—and it was that sudden spark of reality that gave her the courage, the strength, to step back from him. To really see him again, instead of what she felt.
To remember exactly who he was, and what he did, and why he knew all the right buttons to push, and how best to tempt her. He could seduce a stone gargoyle. He probably had.
And if her heart hurt inside her chest, well, that was just another secret she would learn how to keep. And hide away, where he could never find it again to use against her.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I won’t.” And then she turned away from him, blind but determined, and did not breathe again until she’d hurled herself into the nearest black cab and slammed the door between them.
Walking into the morning meeting the following day, with a smile on her face and exuding all the professionalism she possessed, was one of the most difficult things Grace had ever had to do.
If she could have, she would have called in sick. But she’d suspected that doing so would be far too telling—it would give Lucas far more of an advantage than he already had, and she could not live with that possibility.
I am my own heroin, he had said, and now she was terribly afraid he was hers, too. She felt very nearly strung out, and he had done nothing but kiss her. Just imagine …
But she refused to go down that road.
“Good morning,” he said, along with the rest of the team as she entered the conference room—his voice seeming to arrow straight into the center of her, kicking up echoes and vibrations.
There was no need to look at him directly, she told herself as she took her place at the head of the table and confidently addressed those gathered. There was no need for anything so foolish, and anyway, she had already blinded herself staring into that particular sun. She had already flirted with her worst fears. No need to compound her sins.
But, unfortunately, she did have to look at him when the topic of the gala’s entertainment was raised. She glanced over, surprised to see that while he lounged carelessly in his seat like a pasha, his eyes were on the tablet in front of him. It should have felt like a reprieve. Instead, she felt a hollowness behind her breastbone.
“We have some exciting news,” she said crisply, infuriated with her own weakness. Again. “Once again, our newest addition has proven himself to be an invaluable asset to the Hartington’s team. If you’ll explain your latest coup, M—”
She never finished saying Mr. Wolfe. She didn’t even fully say the word mister, because his head snapped up, his green eyes fierce. Searing. Furious. Daring her to call him a name designed to distance him, after all that had happened. After they had tasted each other and burned in the same fire. Daring her.
There was a tense, tight silence. Grace felt herself flush. His eyes slammed into her, and she was terrified that everyone could see—that everyone knew—that she might as well have been writhing in his lap there and then, making a fool of herself, a spectacle of herself just like before, every inch the names her mother had thrown at her….
She was losing it.
“Lucas,” she said, knowing as she did so that she should not have capitulated, that she should have prevented that gleam of deep male satisfaction from warming his gaze by any means necessary. That he had won something she could not afford to lose. “If you could share …?”
She could not let this happen, she told herself as Lucas began to talk. She watched him play to the crowd, with a self-deprecating smile and that wickedly funny turn of phrase that had everyone on the edges of their seats, hanging on his every word.
And she was no better.
She was, in fact, everything her mother had predicted she would become.
Grace let that sit there for a moment, a shocking and breathtaking realization, cruel and all-encompassing—but it was true. How could she deny it? Lucas Wolfe possessed not one single redeeming characteristic, and still, she had melted, become a stranger to herself, at his slightest touch. How could that make her anything but … loose? Easy? Ruined already, from within?
She thought of those strange, loaded moments in the rain outside the hotel last night. She thought of the arrested look in his eyes, as if he’d felt the same complicated rush of emotion and confusion that she had—
But she shoved that all aside, ruthlessly.
She would do whatever she had to do, but she would not let him destroy her. She would not let everything she’d worked for disappear so easily. She would not, could not, let herself be everything her mother had told her she’d be, sooner or later. Not now. Not ever.
He had expected a cold reception. He had even expected that she might pretend nothing had happened and carry on as if that was the case.
But Lucas had not been at all prepared for Grace Carter, the most determined and prickly woman he could remember tangling with, to completely avoid his gaze. To blush in public. And then to bolt toward the door when the meeting had ended, quite as if she planned to run away from him altogether.
He wanted to feel something like triumph, but did not. It was something else, something closer to temper, that surged through him.
“Grace?” he called after her, not bothering to rise from his seat, but loud enough to carry to the rest of the team as they filed for the door. To force her hand. “If I could have a word?”
He saw her back stiffen, but when she turned, that smile of hers was firmly stamped across her mouth. Perhaps only he could see the color high on her elegant cheekbones. Perhaps only he noticed the storm in her dark brown eyes.
She waited by the door, smiling and exchanging a few words with
