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“I must not have received that memo,” she said, attempting to match the lightness in his tone, if not his eyes—but her voice betrayed her. It was too rough, too emotional. Too fragile.
Wordlessly, he held out his hand, and that was when she noticed that he held her small, glittering clutch. She swallowed and reached for it, taking care not to touch him in any way. She knew, somehow, that it would ignite that fire all over again, and she was not so foolish as to think she could walk away from this man twice. She was not even sure she could do it now.
“I never took you for the Cinderella type,” Lucas said. Still that light, easy tone, but she could see something much darker, much more intense in his face, his gaze. As if he knew, too, that they danced around the same land mines, the same quicksand. That one false step would incinerate them both.
“I loathe Cinderella,” Grace said, trying to firm her spine, to breathe. To retain control. “There is never any need to wear shoes so precarious that you might lose one should you need to run. And why was a ball so important to her, of all things? She’d have been much better off looking for a job instead of a prince.”
“I suspect you are missing the point of the fairy tale,” Lucas said in that same quiet voice. His dark brows rose. “Deliberately.”
She did not know why she stood there, simply looking at him. She did not know why the moment felt so heavy, yet so breakable, and why she could not seem to make her escape as she knew she should. As she knew she must.
“Come home with me,” he said, and it was a command, not a request. It licked through her, into her. She could not seem to breathe through the heat suffusing her, the tight, hot desire that coiled in her and pulled taut.
What terrified her was how tempted she was to simply do it. To give in to the demands of her body. To surrender to him and the pleasure she knew he could deliver. Had already delivered, little as she wanted to admit it.
But it was that terror that spurred her into action. She heard herself sigh, or perhaps she’d tried to speak, but then she stepped around him and headed for the grand entrance across the lobby. There was nothing to be gained by a discussion, because she could not be trusted around him. It was as simple as that. She had to get away from him—from this spell he’d cast that seemed to compel her to do the very thing she’d vowed she would never do.
The night outside was frigid and wet, but Grace welcomed both, gasping slightly as the cold slapped into her.
“This is absurd,” Lucas said from behind her, his voice clipped with impatience. “The weather is vile. You’ll contract pneumonia.”
“That would be preferable, at this point,” she said without thinking and heard his short laugh.
And then she was spinning around, because his hands were hot and firm on her bare shoulders, and then the world tilted again and there was nothing but the smoky green of his impossibly beautiful eyes. The ones that saw too much, however unlikely that should have been.
“You would prefer the fate of an opera heroine to one moment more in my company, is that it?” he asked with a certain grim amusement, and were he any other man, Grace might have thought she’d hurt his feelings.
But this was Lucas Wolfe. He had none, as he would be the first to announce.
“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin and wishing that alone could clear her head. “Consumption. Tuberculosis. Either is far better than being photographed as yet one more hapless female connected at the mouth to the infamous Lucas Wolfe.”
The night was dark and the rain seemed to blur the edges of things, but, even so, Grace could have sworn that she’d wounded him somehow. Far more confusing than that possibility was her reaction. She wanted to apologize, to comfort him. To make that hint of vulnerability disappear.
She had no idea what was happening to her.
“Don’t worry,” he drawled, his eyes flashing as his fingers flexed slightly against the flesh of her shoulders before letting go. “I cannot imagine anyone will recognize you as my ‘unnamed companion du jour,’ or care. I doubt that it will even make the papers.”
“I’m so glad,” she bit out, unable to process why she was suddenly so angry with him—and not wanting to examine it, just as she did not want to examine why she felt so jagged, so messy, so ruined—as her mother had spitefully predicted all those years ago. She wrapped her arms around herself, her hands moving to absently cup the places he’d just vacated.
“Grace,” he said, and her name was something between a sigh and a curse. “Come home with me,” he said again. He shook his head slightly, as if he was as unnerved by his own tone of voice as she was. “Please.”
“I …” But she could not seem to finish the sentence. She could not bring herself to break the odd spell between 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