The Shameless Playboy. Caitlin Crews
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with a kind of rueful acknowledgment. With a kind of recognition she knew she should fight. Instead, something about him made her want to needle him, to get under his skin.
She could not bring herself to imagine what that might mean.
Meanwhile, he watched her with those cat’s eyes, and he knew. Her secrets, her darkest corners. Everything. As if he could see right into her.
It should have horrified her. It should not have made her ache and her skin seem to shrink against her bones. It should not have made her breath catch in her throat, her mouth dry. It should not have made her want to show him all her secrets, one by one, even the ones that still made her cringe.
“It’s that voice of yours,” he said, musingly, as if he’d given the matter a great deal of thought. His head tilted to one side. “It’s so surprising. It goes down like a good cream tea, and then a few moments later the sting sets in. It’s quite a formidable weapon you have there, Miss Carter.”
“I prefer Ms. Carter, thank you,” she retorted automatically.
“You should be careful how you use it,” he replied, and she knew she did not mistake the threat then, the sensual menace. It resonated between her legs, made her breasts feel too heavy, brought her breath too quickly to catch in her throat. He knew that, too—she had no doubt. His wicked, battered lips crooked to the side. “Ms. Carter.”
“So you do, in fact, listen when others speak,” she said as if delighted and smiled sharply at him. “One did hope. Perhaps next week we can graduate to knocking before entering!”
“But where’s the fun in that?” he asked, laughing at her. A real laugh—one that made his eyes crinkle in the corners and his head tip back. One that lit him up from the inside. One that seemed to make her chest expand too fast, too hard.
It was a good thing she had resolved to ignore him, Grace thought dimly, captivated against her will—or she might really be in trouble.
The novelty of his brand-new office wore off quickly, Lucas found. It rather made him feel like a caged animal, for all that it gleamed of dark wood and chrome and featured no-doubt-coveted views of London from the floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated the far wall. But while Lucas was many things, most of them damning, covetousness had never been among his flaws. Why should he covet anything? Whatever he wanted, he had. Or took. And yet he stayed in the grand leather chair, behind the immense desk, and pretended he could convey some kind of authority—become some kind of authority figure—by doing so.
But then, he was not sitting in his new office to feel good about himself or his life choices. He was doing it to prove a point. A long overdue point that should not have required proof, he thought, tamping down the surge of anger that seared through him.
“Hello, Lucas,” Jacob had said that early Thursday morning, freshly risen as if from the dead. He had looked Lucas up and down from the great front door where he’d stood, the restored master of Wolfe Manor, his black eyes flicking from bruise to cut to disheveled shirt and making Lucas feel as close to ashamed as he’d been in years.
The very grounds around them had seemed infested with the malevolent ghost of William Wolfe and all the pain he’d inflicted on his unlucky children and wives—or perhaps that had just been the sleepless night getting to Lucas. Perhaps it was Jacob himself, taller and broader than in Lucas’s memory—a grown man now, of substance and wealth, if his fine clothes were any indication.
For a long moment they had both stood there, the early-morning light just beginning to chase away the gray, sizing each other up as if they were adversaries.
On the one hand, Lucas had thought, Jacob had once been his best friend, his partner in crime and his brother. They were only a year apart in age, and had grown up sharing the brunt and burden of their father’s temper. If Lucas could have been there that one fateful night to do what Jacob had done for their family, he would have. Happily—and without a shred of the agony he knew Jacob had felt for what Lucas had always viewed as a necessary act, if not long overdue.
On the other hand, Jacob had taken off without a word and stayed gone for well over a decade. He had left Lucas in his place—a disaster for all concerned. They had been boys back then, if much older than they should have been and far too cynical, but they were grown men now and, apparently, strangers.
But Lucas had not wanted to believe that. Not at first. Not after so long.
“It is lovely to see you, dear brother,” he’d said when the silence had stretched on too long. “I would have slaughtered a calf in your honor, but the kitchens are in some disrepair.”
“I’ve followed your exploits in the papers,” Jacob had said in his familiar yet deeper voice. His black eyes raked Lucas from head to toe again, then back, missing nothing.
Even Jacob, Lucas had thought, something sinking through him like a stone. But he had summoned his most insouciant smile. He had not otherwise reacted.
“I’m touched,” Lucas had replied, blandly. “Had I known you were so interested in my adventures, I would have added you to the annual Christmas card list. Of course, that would have required an address.”
Jacob had looked away for a moment. Lucas had wanted to reach out, to bridge the gap, but he had not known how. His head had pounded ferociously. He’d wished fervently that he’d just gone home, slept it off and left the ghosts of his past alone. What good had this family ever been to him? Why did he still care?
“It’s not as if we don’t already know where this lifestyle leads,” Jacob had said, so quietly that Lucas almost let it go, almost pretended he hadn’t heard. Anything to maintain the fiction of Jacob he’d carried around in his head all these years. Jacob, the hero. Jacob, the savior. Jacob, who knew him.
“My original plan was to prance off into the ether, abandoning family and friends without so much as a backward glance,” Lucas had snapped back at him. “But unfortunately, you’d already taken that role. I was forced to improvise.”
“You know why I had to leave,” Jacob said in a low voice, thick with their shared past and their family’s secrets, public and private.
“Of course,” Lucas had interrupted him, years of pain and resentment bubbling up from places he’d spent his life denying even existed. He’d laughed, a hollow sound that echoed against the stones of the manor house and inside of him in places he preferred to ignore. “You’re nearly twenty years too late, Jacob. I don’t need a big brother any longer. I never did.”
“Look at yourself, Lucas—don’t you see who you’ve become?” Jacob’s voice had been quiet, but had flashed through Lucas as if he’d shouted.
It was not the first time Lucas had been compared to his father, but it was the first time the comparison had been made by someone who shared his bone-deep loathing of the man who had wrecked them both. By someone—the only one—who ought to know better. It was a body blow. It should have killed him. Perhaps it had.
“I thought you were dead,” Lucas had said coldly, unable and unwilling to show his brother how deeply those words cut at him. “I’m not sure this is an improvement.”
“For God’s sake,” Jacob had said, shaking his head, his eyes full of something Lucas refused to name, refused to consider at all. “Don’t let him win.”
Staring out the windows of his luxurious office now, Lucas let out a hollow sort of sound, too flat to be a laugh. He had turned on his heel and left his prodigal brother behind—and had thought, To hell with him. He’d spent the whole long walk down the private lane pretending nothing Jacob had said had gotten to him. Yet when he’d reached the road, he’d flipped open his mobile and rousted Charlie Winthrop from his sleep to announce he’d had a sudden change of heart and would, despite years of claiming otherwise, dearly love to work for Hartington’s in any capacity at all.
Careful what you wish for, he mocked himself now. Especially if you were Lucas Wolfe, and had a tendency to