Kate Hewitt - Bad Blood

So there was no reason at all he should want to alter her impressions.

“What you need is a place that is intimately connected with Hartington’s, yet adds a touch of exclusivity, as well. A destination location.” He had no idea what he was talking about, or why. And yet he could not seem to stop himself. He held her gaze. Challenge and demand. Mystery. He could not resist it. Her. “How would Wolfe Manor suit?”

The rest of the team exploded into excited noise, but Lucas could only see Grace. It was worth it, he told himself, to see her stunned expression, to watch her swiftly reevaluate him in that single split second. The fact that he might be a touch cocky in proposing this particular solution hardly signified, he told himself. He could see the wheels in her head turning, the possibilities occurring to her, a new plan taking shape.

And then she smiled the real smile he’d imagined, and time seemed to still. There was nothing fake or pointed about this smile—it was all that honey and shine, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, no matter what, he would have this woman.

He had to.

RAIN drummed against the roof of the limousine as it made its way out of London toward Wolfe Manor the following day. Water tracked silken, wet paths across the windows in ever-changing patterns as the car slid through mile after mile of the wet and green British countryside—and yet all Grace could concentrate on was the six feet and more of Lucas Wolfe, stretched out with far too much lazy confidence and sheer male appeal next to her in the confines of the car.

“You can look at me directly,” he said in that low, insinuating, endlessly amused voice, far too close to her ear. “I can’t imagine why you would fight the urge. I am, after all, quite marvelously handsome.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is conceited ,” Grace replied, her gaze on the PDA in her hand as if he did not affect her in the slightest. And yet she could only seem to concentrate on the fact that he was much too close to her on the plush seat, his strong shoulders just a whisper away, his spicy, expensive scent—male and seductive and him— seeming to inflame her, to tease her and taunt her, every time she inhaled.

He laughed, completely unfazed, as ever. “Conceit cannot possibly be the right word,” he countered. She was much too aware of how he shifted in his seat, how he inched even closer. “I’ve had independent confirmation in the press for years. I am a glorious male animal. You may as well simply admit the truth.”

“You should probably not believe everything you read, Mr. Wolfe,” Grace replied airily. Easily. She wished she could feel the way she sounded. “It can lead to all sorts of issues. A swollen head, for one thing.”

She knew the moment she said it that she should not have used that word.

“My head is the not the part of me—” he began, evident delight in his tone and in his bright green eyes when she turned to frown at him.

“I beg you,” she said crisply. “Let us preserve the fantasy that you are not, in fact, a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Please do not finish that sentence.”

The wicked smile that should have irritated her, but somehow did not, flirted with his mouth even as his eyes darkened with a heat she wished she could not feel.

“I assure you, Ms. Carter,” he said softly. “I am a grown man in all the ways that could possibly interest you.”

She was all too aware that he was a man. Just a man, she reminded herself. No more and no less, no matter what the fawning press and her own reactions seemed to suggest. And no matter that, yesterday, he had seemed to sense how agitated she was when no one else had. She had no idea what that could mean.

He had discarded his suit jacket the moment he’d entered the vehicle, stripping it from his lean, masculine form in a manner she’d found entirely too disconcerting—and Grace was forced to note that his biceps were more muscular, his shoulders wider and harder, his torso more sculpted than she had imagined when he was covered in more than just a soft bit of linen. She shifted farther, trying to pull herself as far toward the opposite side of the car as possible without looking as if that was what she was doing.

“Tell me about Wolfe Manor,” she said, dropping her PDA into her lap and facing head-on the dragon in its lair. An apt comparison for this man, who was all fire and heat and that coiled danger that no one ever seemed to mention, but which Grace found mesmerizing. And alarming.

His green eyes gleamed and his fine mouth crooked into a half smile as he considered her for a moment.

“If we are to pull off a huge party there in a very short period of time,” she said mildly, reminding them both why they were there, together, “I really should know everything there is to know about the place.”

“I can tell you that it has never flooded,” Lucas said in that silken voice, a dark eyebrow arching high. Grace was forced to consider—and not for the first time—the unnerving possibility that he was much quicker and significantly wittier than any pathetic international playboy had a right to be. She did not know why that thought should unsettle her. Why it should make her arms break out in goose bumps.

“Touché,” she said, but still gazed at him expectantly.

“What is there to tell?” he asked then, with a careless sort of shrug. “It is a manor house like any other. The country is infested with them. It is the ancestral encumbrance, passed down through generations, a monument to aristocratic greed. I thank the gods every morning for the great gift of primogeniture, which, as I am not the firstborn son, ensures I need never set foot there again unless I wish it.”

A moment passed, and then another. The tires swished along the wet roadway, the rain drummed against the roof, and still, Grace was too aware of the way his eyes met hers, bold and demanding, daring her to look away. To ignore him. To pretend he was not getting to her.

“Thank you,” Grace managed to say in her driest tone. “I’m sure that will be very useful information as we prepare to throw a gala there. No thoughts on an appropriate place to pitch the tent? Where to set up the catering? How to craft the perfect delivery system to ensure the guests are properly wowed as they enter the event?”

Lucas only continued to watch her, that wolfish smile and a silvery light in his eyes that made her feel as if she was made of sand, something insubstantial that would blow away at his next breath. Grace felt almost dizzy, and hated it. Hated him , she told herself fiercely, that he should be the reason she felt so wildly out of her depth when she was working—the one place Grace had always exerted complete control.

He was a devil, clearly. He was used to this, to using his incredible sexual magnetism to bend all he encountered to his whim. Simply because he could. But he was not the first devil she’d met, and she refused to be seduced. She refused .

“I imagined my role was to be rather more decorative than administrative,” he said, his eyes laughing at her.

“My mistake,” she said, redirecting her attention to her PDA as if dismissing him. “I thought for a moment in yesterday’s meeting that you were a creature of substance as well as style.” She smiled, to soften her words—to pretend she was still being professional, when she felt so edgy, so raw and unwieldy within. “But you can rest assured, Mr. Wolfe, that your face alone is of great use to Hartington’s, however else you choose to help. Or not.”

“I know,” he agreed, not appearing in the least chastened by her words. Or even particularly offended by them. “This is not the first time I have worked for Hartington’s, Ms. Carter. Though it is true that when I did it last, I was still quite young.”