Shameless Playboy by Caitlin Crews

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.
     

  CHAPTER FOUR

 
                 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