Читать книгу The Shameless Playboy - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 9

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.