Shameless Playboy Read Online Free PDF Page A

now a crucial component of their strategy
for the fast-approaching centenary project, she had kept a suitably straight
face and had imagined lighting a small, personal bonfire on her wraparound
balcony and setting ablaze the art she’d hung on the walls when she’d moved in
a year earlier. The painting she’d bought directly from the hungry-looking
painter with the poet’s eyes on the Charles Bridge in Prague. The print of the
first van Gogh she’d seen in the famous Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
All smoke and ashes. It made her smile feel real.
                 “We
are delighted to have you on the team, Mr. Wolfe,” she said as they walked
together from the conference room, her smile sweet and her tone razor sharp. “But
in future, please do try to contain yourself. The secretaries are not here to
serve as your personal dating pool.”
                 “Have
you asked them?” he asked lazily, his rangy body moving with a grace that
should have seemed out of place in the dim light of the hallway. Instead, he
seemed to take it over. “Because I was under the impression that my every wish
was their command. I believe one of them told me so.”
                 “I
don’t need to ask them,” Grace replied, smiling more sharply and pretending she
was un affected by his nearness. “I need only consult company policy.”
                 “Hartington’s
has a Lucas Wolfe clause?” he asked, in that deeply amused drawl that wove
spells through her and around her. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or
insulted.” Against her will, hardly aware of it, Grace found herself standing
still in the corridor instead of walking briskly toward her office. Standing,
gazing up at him, like a moon-faced calf. How could he beguile her without even
seeming to do so?
                 She
could not afford it.
                 “Leave
the secretaries alone,” she said calmly, as if he had not slipped past her
defenses somehow already. As if she had meant to stop there and look up at him.
                 “Happily,”
he said. His abused mouth tilted up in the corner. His green gaze was a banked
fire that seemed to kick off echoes within her, hot and wild. “But tell me,” he
continued softly, pointedly, “where else should I direct my attention?”
                 “Perhaps
to your brand-new job,” she bit out, ignoring the way he looked at her, his
eyes so hooded, so suggestive. “You may find it challenging, after all, having
never had one before.”
                 “I
am so sorry to shatter your illusions,” he said, laughing, though she thought
it did not quite reach his eyes, “but despite my well-documented, dissipated,
sybaritic existence, I have, in fact, held a job. We all have our deep, dark
secrets, do we not?”
                 She
had no intention of discussing secrets with this man.
                 “You
understand, Mr. Wolfe, that when one says ‘job,’ one is not referring to your
rather questionable relationships with somewhat older ladies of excessive
means.” She smiled. Hard. “There are other words for that.”
                 “Someday
you will have to teach me all the ins and outs of your vocabulary,” he said, in
a voice that seemed to demand she imagine what tutoring him might involve. Something
powerful shook through her, stealing her breath. He smiled. “The job I held was
somewhat less illicit, I’m afraid.”
                 “You?”
she asked, in disbelief. “Who on earth would employ you?”
                 “Not
everyone finds my face as distasteful as you seem to do,” he said, challenge
and mockery stamped across his expression. He angled his head toward her, too
close, and she had to fight to keep herself from jumping back and letting him
see how he got to her. “In fact, some people find it addictive.”