that it had begun to rub off on him in ways he was not entirely comfortable with. The fact that he was musing over Grace while seated in his office instead of in a hot tub filled to the brim with nubile women whose names he would never learn did rather tell its own story, he reflected, wincing slightly.
He knew that she was quick, and smart, and not in the least bit intimidated by either his famous name or his admittedly formidable good looks, both of which had been known to overawe those who encountered him in the past. He knew she gave as good as she got, and could throw his own words back at him as if she was trying to best him at a game of tennis. He even knew that, on some level, she enjoyed the deliciously combative relationship they’d developed, because he found it surprisingly addictive—and he’d seen the look in her eyes that indicated she did, too.
He knew that she buttoned herself up like a latter-day Victorian maiden and reacted with the same level of overblown outrage when called on it. He suspected she did it deliberately, to hide the mouthwateringly perfect body he had now seen in clinging silk and felt with his own hands. He knew that she unfairly concealed her glorious mess of hair from view, which he felt was an offense against every aesthetic he possessed. Why would a woman allow her hair to grow like that, so wild and free and sexy, and then spend most of her life scraping it back and wrestling it into submission?
Grace was a mystery, and Lucas discovered that he did not much care for mysteries. Not knowing left too much to chance, and left him far too unsettled.
Before he knew it, Lucas found himself typing her name into the search engine on his computer, just to see what other tidbits he could come up with. There were pages upon pages of links to her name, most having nothing at all to do with the Grace Carter, events manager for Hartington’s, that he knew. There were images of all kinds of Grace Carters, none of whom were his Grace.
He scrolled idly through the list, trying to imagine the Grace he knew as a production assistant in Los Angeles, a concert pianist from Saskatchewan, a book-writing missionary in the Côte d’Ivoire. And then his eyes fell on one link that did not seem to go along with the others. Gracie-Belle Carter, it read. It made Lucas laugh, even as he clicked through. Gracie-Belle sounded absolutely nothing like the Grace he knew—in fact, it sounded a lot more like the kinds of women, soft and smiling and always submissive, who had helped him solidify his reputation over the years.
But then the picture loaded on the screen in front of him, and Lucas froze in his chair. Desire and curiosity combined, rushing through him like something heady and illicit.
Because it was—yet also wasn’t—the Grace he knew.
The woman before him in full-color photography was more properly a girl, all coltish limbs and ripe curves, hair flowing all around her, sexy and rumpled, wet and lush. One picture showed her in nothing but a pair of bikini bottoms, looking coquettishly over her shoulder at the camera with big eyes and sultry lips, the line of her bare back an enticing, mesmerizing curve. Another featured an even smaller bikini, and a whole lot of sand plastered in interesting places, as she knelt on a dark rock and stared moodily at the camera, holding back her wild, wet hair with both hands. A third showed her lying on her back in some kind of hammock, eyes closed, a wet T-shirt showing the full swells of her breasts while her thumbs were hooked in her bikini bottoms as if she were about to tear them from her body and bare all.
She was delectable. Shockingly sensual in ways he had not imagined she could be, and he knew how she tasted.
It took Lucas longer than it should have to realize that he was looking at an old American sports magazine with a swimsuit photo shoot. It took even longer than that for him to accept that he was, without a doubt, looking at Grace. His Grace, listed as Gracie-Belle Carter from Racine, Texas. She could not have been eighteen when these pictures were taken. She was flushed with youth, yet still somewhat unformed—beautiful in the way young girls could be, but not yet as mesmerizing as she would become with the passing of the years.
His Grace, the born-again Victorian, a swimsuit model? That went against everything he thought he knew about her—and some deep, male part of himself loved it.
Alone in his office, Lucas smiled. He’d known it, hadn’t he? He’d known that she was wild beneath that prim, severe exterior. He’d sensed it, and he’d tasted it. And now he knew for certain.
What would it take to bring the real Grace out of hiding? What would she be like if she let this part of herself free? He felt himself harden just imagining her fierce and unfettered, bold and sexy, hiding nothing.
He sent all the images he could find to the printer. His Grace, a wanton. His Grace, unrestrained and unbound by propriety. He was deeply, darkly thrilled. He couldn’t wait to get under her skin and taste the truth of her, at last.
Grace slammed open his office door without knocking, which was his first clue that he’d riled her considerably. She was halfway across the room before he had time to react at all. When he did, he found he could only watch her as she stormed toward him, the file folder he’d left on her desk gripped tight in one hand.
She was furious.
And glorious, he could not help but notice, with the flush of temper high on her cheeks and the light of battle in her eyes. She had hidden herself away in one more dreary corporate suit, a depressing gray with a long hem and a high collar, and he could not help but imagine her in nothing but her bikini instead. She stopped in front of his desk and slapped the folder of photographs down in front of him.
“I expected you to be contemptible,” she told him in a low, angry voice. “After all, you quite famously have the moral standards of an alley cat in heat, but this is over the top, even for you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucas said easily, leaning back in his chair and eyeing her. She was like a high-octane narcotic, a rush and a thrill, and he could not help the fact that he enjoyed it when she fought with him. “I am excoriated daily for photographs of me, many of which are taken without my consent. You, on the other hand, posed for these, did you not?”
“I was seventeen!” she gritted out from between her teeth, her hands in fists at her sides. “And I have not courted public opinion and infamy every day since!”
“I do not have to court attention, Grace,” he replied, smiling slightly. “It finds me whether I want it or not.” He indicated her presence before him with a languid wave of his hand, and was rewarded by the sparks that flashed like lightning in her eyes.
“That might have been more believable before you proved yourself to be a master manipulator of the press, the marketing department and anyone else you come into contact with,” Grace seethed at him. She shook her head fiercely. “I don’t believe your lazy playboy act any longer.”
Lucas did not speak for a moment, watching the play of emotion across her face instead. There was fear behind her anger, fueling it. He found it fascinating—and disconcerting. Something turned over in his gut.
“What happened to you?” he asked her quietly, his eyes searching her flushed face.
He took in the inevitably sleek and perfect bun she’d wrapped her hair into, the severe and overly conservative cut of her suit. All she was missing was a pair of clunky black eyeglasses, and she could have completely embodied the stereotype. Why was she hiding? What was she hiding from?
And why was he so compelled to find out the truth about her?
“If you mean what happened to me this morning,” she snapped at him, vibrating slightly with tension and fury and that incomprehensible fear, “I came into the office to discover that the resident Don Juan spent his free time digging around in a past I leave buried for a reason!”
“I mean, in your life,” he said, shaking his head slightly. The look in her dark eyes made him feel restless, made him want to do things that were anathema to him—like try to save her, galloping in on a gleaming white horse and pretending to be someone who could. But he had stopped rescuing people a long, long time ago. “I could hardly believe these were pictures of you. Why do you hide all your joy, power, beauty?