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embarrassed he’d never worked a
single day in his pampered, over-privileged life of sin and excess—whatever he
might have claimed the previous week.
                 He
certainly made it easy to dismiss him, Grace thought. She dearly wished that
she could—that she had not been ordered to personally handle him. But she had
been, and so she waited until she had his full, if amused, attention, and began
to tick off her points on her fingers.
                 “You
must knock and receive permission to enter before barging into an office,” she
said briskly. “You must not ignore your coworkers when they are speaking to
you, no matter if you think what you have to say is more interesting—it is
unlikely that your coworkers will agree. And it is completely inappropriate to
make insinuations regarding the private lives or thoughts of anyone you might
work with, under any circumstances. Do you understand me?”
                 It
was as if he lounged against something, though he stood in the center of her
office. Such was his natural indolence. He reminded her of the great cats she
found so fascinating in the nature programs she often watched—a lazy grace,
sleepy-eyed and seemingly harmless, and yet with all that predatory
watchfulness and physical prowess hidden just beneath his sleek surface.
                 “Did
I make insinuations?” he asked, not seeming remotely cowed. Only interested.
And, if possible, even more amused. “I do beg your pardon. They cannot have
been particularly interesting, if I cannot recall them.”
                 “One
imagines that you are so used to insinuating inappropriate things about
everyone you meet that it is rather like a comment on the weather for anyone
else,” she replied sweetly. She let her smile widen. “Please do try to remember
that this is not a yacht on the Côte d’Azur, brimming with starlets and
debauchery—this is Hartington’s, a much-beloved and revered British
institution.”
                 He
thrust his hands into his pockets and regarded her with that cool green gaze
that made her wonder, against her will, what else he hid behind all that
sexiness and swagger.
                 “Rather
like me,” he said after a moment, his mouth curving, daring her, somehow. “A bit tattered around the edges, perhaps, the
pair of us, but I think somehow the gilt and glamour remain.” He smiled. “Don’t
you agree?”
                 Grace
eyed him, torn between the urge to laugh—or to scream. Or, worse, to give in to
the hugely inappropriate and somewhat alarming urgings of her body and the heat
he seemed to ignite within her without even trying. She did none of the above.
She did not even fidget under his scrutiny, though it cost her.
                 “The
team will be meeting in the conference room in a half hour for our daily status
update,” she said instead, pointedly glancing at the slim gold watch she wore
on her wrist, and then back toward her computer monitor, dismissing him. “If
you don’t mind …?”
                 “You
were the only woman in the crowd who refused to smile at me,” Lucas said, in
that silken voice of his that, she reminded herself sternly, had seduced
millions in exactly the same way. No need to be the next in line in the endless
parade. Not that she was considering it! “At first I thought you were one of
the ones who scowl at me on purpose, to distinguish themselves from the fawning
fans, but you didn’t do that, either.”
                 “Are
you sure it was me?” Grace asked, pretending to be bored with the conversation.
“I remember your rather spectacular exit from the party, but very little else.”
She gazed at her computer screen as if she could read a single thing on it. As
if she was not entirely too focused on the man who stood so close, just on the
other side of her desk, commanding all the air in the room