Shameless Playboy (25 page)

 
          
Why
had she let her mother’s fears, Travis’s lies, control her for so long?

 
          
If
being around Lucas had taught her anything, it was this: once someone saw
behind the mask, it was impossible to go on wearing it. It no longer fit in the
way it had. Once she had been seen—
known—
how
could she settle for anything less?

 
          
And
once she knew what she was hiding, how could she allow it to remain hidden?

 
          
“I’m
falling in love with you,” she told him matter-of-factly, because that was the
only secret she had left. And he knew all the rest of them. She had turned over
every last stone she had and showed him all the dirt she’d hidden away beneath.
She laughed slightly, at her own daring, and her own folly. “Who am I kidding?
I’ve already fallen.”

 
          
“You
don’t mean that.” There was an edge of something like panic in his voice, a
certain shock in the way he looked at her then. “You are far too intelligent
for that kind of nonsense.”

 
          
“I
am not telling you this because I expect anything from you,” she told him
quietly, holding his gaze, her head high and proud. “But because I suspect you
believe you are inherently unlovable, as if you were somehow born undeserving
of it, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

 
          
“I’ve
told you more about my past than I’ve ever told anyone else,” he gritted out,
moving closer and grasping her shoulders in his hands, holding her tightly—but
not hard. Gentle, even now. “Damn you, Grace! You know more than enough to run!”

 
          
“I
have no intention of running,” she said, her voice crisp, despite the emotion
she could feel searing through her, making her eyes glaze over. Despite the
waves of deep emotion and long-denied truths that washed through her, over her.
Changing her completely even as she stood there. Shaking her. Rendering her
maskless forever.

 
          
No
matter what happened.

 
          
“Then
I will do it for you,” he growled, but he did not let go of her. He did not
back away. He did not, in fact, run.

 
          
“Are
you saving me from yourself?” she whispered. “Is that what a man as bad as you
claim to be would do, Lucas? Or is that a bit more noble than you normally
allow yourself to be?”

 
          
“You
have no idea how bad I can be,” he insisted, a wildness to his voice, his gaze.
“You have no idea what real ugliness is, Grace. But I do—and I have his blood
running in my veins!”

 
          
He
let go of her then, as if the invocation of William Wolfe brought his ghost
between them to shove them apart.

 
          
“He
is dead,” she said, her voice low, intense. “And even if he were not, you are
nothing like him. You are a good man, Lucas. A decent man. A man worth loving.”

 
          
She
heard the way her voice cracked with emotion, felt the way she shook where she
stood, but all she could see was Lucas. All she could see was the shock on his
face and the heavy curtain of denial that fell across it, obscuring him.

 
          
For
a moment he only scowled at her, his big body vibrating with tension and fury,
his green eyes gone black with all of his self-loathing, all his years of
self-destruction, his whole lifetime of loneliness. She could see all of it.

 
          
She
wanted to fight all the ugliness, all the darkness, all the lies he’d made
truth over the years to fulfill his own prophecies. She knew about that. And
now, today, she knew truths she should have seen long ago. She wanted to reach
inside where he was so cold, so alone, and warm him. But she knew she could not
do any of that, not really. Not without his help.

 
          
She
had only one weapon in her arsenal. Only one chance.

 
          
“I
love you,” she said, letting the words hang there, strong enough, she hoped, to
battle his ghosts. Because they were all she had. “I do.”

 
          
“Then
you are a fool,” he said, his mouth twisting.

 
          
He
brushed past her on the stair, turned the corner and was gone.

 
          
LUCAS
saw the solitary figure standing away from the scaffolded manor house and the
commotion in and around the gala’s big tent that commanded the better part of
the grand lawn. He knew who it was. The figure stood down near the lake, facing
away from the gathering crowds, and Lucas moved toward him before he could
think better of it—before, in fact, he could fully register what he meant to
do.

 
          
Lucas
had been wandering aimlessly for hours, stamping about the property like some
kind of wraith. He had made his way through the overgrown reaches of the
estate, all of it so much the same and yet so different from the grounds he
remembered combing every inch of as a child. Had there only been moors, he
thought, he could have done an impression of Heathcliff to put his brother
Nathaniel, recently awarded his first Sapphire Screen Award to international
acclaim, very much to shame.

 
          
He
had walked and walked, as if he could outpace his demons, as if he could leave
his past behind him simply by remaining in motion.

 
          
He
should never have returned here. He should have known better.

 
          
Grace
was not the first woman to tell him that she loved him, but she was the only
one he’d ever believed. The only one he knew had nothing to gain, everything to
lose and absolutely no reason to lie to him. He wanted to deny it, even to
himself, but he’d seen her face. He’d seen the truth in her deep brown eyes,
heard the quiet conviction in her honeyed voice. Worse, he’d felt something
shift inside of him, as if in answer.

 
          
It
should have been impossible. Grace was determined and intelligent, resourceful
and strong. She was more beautiful than she wanted anyone to notice, and far
kinder than she should be. She had worked her whole life to get where she was,
against the kind of odds Lucas could hardly imagine. What could she possibly
see in a wastrel like him?

 
          
Was
there anything to see? After a
lifetime insisting there was not, why was he suddenly so worried that he was
exactly as empty as he’d always declared he was?

 
          
“Jacob,”
he said in greeting when he reached his brother’s side. They both stared out
over the deceptively placid water, watching it gleam in the late-afternoon
light. Lucas thrust his hands in his pockets, aware as he did so that he and
Jacob moved in concert. As if they still knew each other as they once had. It
nearly made him smile.

 
          
“How
thoughtful of you to ask for permission to throw an event here,” Jacob
murmured, an ironic undertone to his voice. “In this house which, for better or
worse, I own.”

 
          
“Oh,
good,” Lucas said mildly. “You received your invitation.” He pivoted toward
Jacob. “I did wonder, having only tossed it through the door.” That had also
been his version of requesting permission. He looked back over the water, and
pretended he did not care about the next question. “Does that mean you are
staying?”

 
          
“I’m
happy that Wolfe Manor could be used in such a creative manner,” Jacob said,
with something like a smile, avoiding the question. Lucas felt the other man—the
grown man and near-stranger who had taken the place of his long-lost brother—look
at him, then away. “And that you took my advice so closely to heart.”

 
          
“I
believe it was more a shot
to
the
heart,” Lucas said dryly.

 
          
He
did not press Jacob about his plans. He tried to summon the anger he had felt
before, the dark fury that had propelled him away from this house, from his
brother, but he realized in a dawning sort of amazement that it was no longer
there. Where there had been all of that bubbling, simmering resentment and
despair, there was now only Grace. He was not at all sure how to handle that
knowledge. Nor how she had managed to become the thing that haunted him, even
here.

 
          
“I
never thought I’d see the day you held down an honest job,” Jacob said in a
quiet voice.

 
          
“You
are certainly not alone,” Lucas said. He smiled slightly, rocking back on his
heels. “Though I think I might be rather good at it.”

 
          
“That
does not surprise me at all,” Jacob said. Lucas let that sit there, afraid that
if he looked at it too closely, paid it too much attention, it might disappear
as if he had imagined it. He did not want anything to mean so much to him,
especially not one man’s opinion. But then, this man’s opinion was the only one
that ever had.

 
          
Jacob
shifted his weight, frowning, and Lucas instinctively braced himself for the
inevitable blow. Would Jacob throw the latest tabloid report in his face? He
would deserve it. Would he mention William Wolfe’s rather notorious reign in
the same position Lucas now held at Hartington’s, fueled by cocaine and
intemperate rages? He could certainly draw some pointed comparisons. There were
so many ways Lucas could disappoint him without even trying that it was
pointless to try to pick one on his own. He could only roll with whatever punch
might come his way.

 
          
The
way he always had.

 
          
Jacob
turned so he faced Lucas, his dark eyes unreadable, his mouth a serious line. “You
deserve more from life than to make yourself over into his ghost. That is all I
meant.”

 
          
Lucas
thought of Grace’s wide brown eyes, filled with emotions he dared not name,
could not accept—even though he longed to do so. He thought of the peace he
felt when he held her, the fierce, unexpected loyalty she showed no matter what
story he told her, no matter how often he expected her to register her disgust
with him. He thought of her bravery, her dignity in the face of a scandal that
could have—should have—taken her to her knees.

 
          
He
thought about her voice, all Texas heat and that sweet, Southern honey, saying,
I love you
. He thought about the way
the words seemed to loosen things inside of him, open him up, make him feel as
if there was light where there had only been dark and decay before.

 
          
“Do
you know,” he said conversationally, as if the world had not shifted beneath
him, as if he was the same man he had been before, as if the very concept of
hope
was not foreign to him in every
way, “I think you may be right.”

 
          
The
late-afternoon sun dipped closer to the land, casting shadows all around them.
Behind them, lights blazed from a thousand clever lanterns Grace had placed
every few feet, and the closed-off yet well-lighted manor house gleamed like a
gothic wonderland, beckoning guests to venture near. Inviting the whispered
stories, the half-recalled legends, the tragic and celebrated and mythical
history of the Wolfe family.
His
family.

 
          
Meanwhile,
the rather less mythical truth was two men who might one day be friends again,
but were in any case still brothers, standing quietly near an old family lake,
putting ancient ghosts to rest.

 
          
“I
will see you at your gala, then,” Jacob said after a moment.

 
          
“Indeed
you will,” Lucas agreed. He felt some of his old mischief rise to the surface,
and grinned. “I will be performing the role of Lucas Wolfe, England’s favorite
playboy, for all the assembled guests. Prepare yourself. I am quite good at it.
No less than three-quarters of the crowd will end the night desperately in love
with me.”

 
          
“They
always do,” Jacob said, in the lightest tone Lucas had heard from him since his
return. He reached over and clasped a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, briefly, then
let go as he turned toward the house.