LITMIR.BIZ

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shoulders and lean hips lovingly defined, his torso a work of art in dark wool. His beauty was still far greater, far more masculine and disturbing, than one would suspect from having seen him in photographs.

      His bruises had faded considerably, she could not help but notice. His dizzying appeal had not.

      Happily, she told herself with some internal rigor, her moment of weakness had passed. There was no genetic defect, no predisposition. Lucas Wolfe was nothing more than the human version of a well-known painting, widely regarded as beautiful in the extreme—even a masterpiece. One could appreciate such a painting the way one appreciated all forms of beauty. Lucas Wolfe was a curiosity to be admired, and then ignored.

      “Mr. Wolfe,” she said now, smiling perfunctorily. “I understand that this may be a new experience for you, and I’ll try to be sensitive to that, but I think you’ll find the team is expected to make it into the office at nine o’clock sharp each morning, not at eleven. Even you, I’m afraid.”

      “At Samantha’s party,” he continued, unperturbed. Quite as if she had not spoken, much less reprimanded him. “It was when I went to get the drinks, wasn’t it? You were standing by the bar.” His dark brows rose in challenge, and something else she told herself she did not wish to explore, even as it slid intimately along her skin, kicking up goose bumps. “I knew I recognized you.”

      “I’m afraid I can’t remember,” Grace said, lying coolly and without a single shred of remorse.

      “Of course you do,” he said, with that easy confidence and a knowing gleam in his bright eyes that arrowed directly into Grace’s sex, making her knees feel weak even as she felt herself soften. For him. Her heart jumped in her chest. She was entirely too grateful that she happened to be sitting down. He was lethal.

       And impersonal, she reminded herself sharply, crossing her legs beneath her desk. You could be a random shopgirl. A bus driver. The bus itself. He has chemistry with the very air around him—he can’t help it.

      “Mr. Wolfe, really,” she said, frowning at him. “This project is doomed to failure if you cannot respect the most basic rules of the workplace. Allow me to give you a refresher course.”

      “Less a refresher course, and more an introduction,” he amended, with a careless shrug and no visible sign that he was at all embarrassed he’d never worked a single day in his pampered, over-privileged life of sin and excess—whatever he might have claimed the previous week.

      He certainly made it easy to dismiss him, Grace thought. She dearly wished that she could—that she had not been ordered to personally handle him. But she had been, and so she waited until she had his full, if amused, attention, and began to tick off her points on her fingers.

      “You must knock and receive permission to enter before barging into an office,” she said briskly. “You must not ignore your coworkers when they are speaking to you, no matter if you think what you have to say is more interesting—it is unlikely that your coworkers will agree. And it is completely inappropriate to make insinuations regarding the private lives or thoughts of anyone you might work with, under any circumstances. Do you understand me?”

      It was as if he lounged against something, though he stood in the center of her office. Such was his natural indolence. He reminded her of the great cats she found so fascinating in the nature programs she often watched—a lazy grace, sleepy-eyed and seemingly harmless, and yet with all that predatory watchfulness and physical prowess hidden just beneath his sleek surface.

      “Did I make insinuations?” he asked, not seeming remotely cowed. Only interested. And, if possible, even more amused. “I do beg your pardon. They cannot have been particularly interesting, if I cannot recall them.”

      “One imagines that you are so used to insinuating inappropriate things about everyone you meet that it is rather like a comment on the weather for anyone else,” she replied sweetly. She let her smile widen. “Please do try to remember that this is not a yacht on the Côte d’Azur, brimming with starlets and debauchery—this is Hartington’s, a much-beloved and revered British institution.”

      He thrust his hands into his pockets and regarded her with that cool green gaze that made her wonder, against her will, what else he hid behind all that sexiness and swagger.

      “Rather like me,” he said after a moment, his mouth curving, daring her, somehow. “A bit tattered around the edges, perhaps, the pair of us, but I think somehow the gilt and glamour remain.” He smiled. “Don’t you agree?”

      Grace eyed him, torn between the urge to laugh—or to scream. Or, worse, to give in to the hugely inappropriate and somewhat alarming urgings of her body and the heat he seemed to ignite within her without even trying. She did none of the above. She did not even fidget under his scrutiny, though it cost her.

      “The team will be meeting in the conference room in a half hour for our daily status update,” she said instead, pointedly glancing at the slim gold watch she wore on her wrist, and then back toward her computer monitor, dismissing him. “If you don’t mind …?”

      “You were the only woman in the crowd who refused to smile at me,” Lucas said, in that silken voice of his that, she reminded herself sternly, had seduced millions in exactly the same way. No need to be the next in line in the endless parade. Not that she was considering it! “At first I thought you were one of the ones who scowl at me on purpose, to distinguish themselves from the fawning fans, but you didn’t do that, either.”

      “Are you sure it was me?” Grace asked, pretending to be bored with the conversation. “I remember your rather spectacular exit from the party, but very little else.” She gazed at her computer screen as if she could read a single thing on it. As if she was not entirely too focused on the man who stood so close, just on the other side of her desk, commanding all the air in the room despite his seemingly languid slouch and his unkempt hair.

      “Neither a smile nor a scowl. You simply looked at me,” Lucas said, his voice like a caress, dark and unfair as it worked its way through her like fine wine, turning her too warm too quickly. She could feel him everywhere. Hot. Shivery. “Even after I said hello.”

      “Sorry,” she said in mild yet clear dismissal, her attention on the screen in front of her, as if she could not feel the pull of him, the heat. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

      “No,” he said, his gaze shrewd, considering. “No, I don’t think so.”

      Grace would rather die than admit she remembered that moment—because she had been quite literally struck dumb to turn from the bar and find him so close, so glowing and impossibly compelling, sexy and rumpled and male. In painful hindsight, it ranked as one of the single most humiliating moments of her life. She, twenty-eight years old, a fully grown adult woman who oversaw teams of staff and high-level events, had been struck mute at the sight of this man. This waste of space, famous for no particular reason aside from his name, who used his considerable charm like currency. Yes, something in her had whispered, deep and sure—as, no doubt, it did in every silly female who laid eyes on him up close. But Grace had never forgiven herself for losing her head so spectacularly over a man back in high school, with so many horrible consequences; she would not compound the error now. She would not do it again.

      “Yes, well,” she said, proud that her voice remained cool, “perhaps I was simply astounded that you could manage to speak coherently. You do have the reputation of being somewhat consistently drunk, don’t you?”

      “Which means that I am rarely incoherent,” he said, smiling faintly. “It is my finest skill. For all you know, I could be drunk right now.”

      But his eyes were too clear, too watchful. His voice too deliberately blasé. He was about as drunk as she was.

      “I will keep that in mind in future,” she replied briskly. She straightened in her seat and let impatience creep into her voice. “I’m sorry I don’t remember meeting you at Samantha Cartwright’s party, Mr. Wolfe. How embarrassing, when I am usually so good with faces. But then, it

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