"I'm not wholesome."
"How many naked photo shoots have you posed for?"
"Seriously, that's your yard stick?" She shook her head, wriggling her shoulders to get comfortable on the pillow. "It's funny. You work hard and take a lot of care so people think you're just doing whatever you want, not caring about anything."
"I used to not care. A few years ago, I really was the man I'm still pretending to be."
"What changed?"
He shifted so he was lying on one side, propped up on one elbow. Now they were lying next to each other, his head above hers. They were close enough for the sexual tension between them to notch up to a whole new level. It was a move he wouldn't have made if he was serious about keeping his distance. She was a beautiful woman, and last night had only whet his appetite for more.
"What are you doing?" Her voice had a husky note.
"You know what I'm doing," he murmured, brushing a curl from her cheek.
"You're trying to distract me. I asked you what changed."
In the firelight her brown eyes were laced with gold, as though a spoonful of honey had been swirled in. He thought about not answering the question, or kissing her instead. But he found that he wanted to tell her.
"I hurt the person who mattered most to me. It was my fault my brother left his architecture practise and abandoned his plans to build the office building he'd been working on."
"What did you do to him?"
Bronson hesitated, not quite able to believe he was about to admit the awful, unvarnished truth. She was lying beneath him with those luscious lips slightly parted, waiting for him to answer. His wound had been festering a long time. Perhaps it was time to flush it clean. "You won't put any of this on your blog, or social media?"
"Not a word. It's just between you and me."
It was impossible not to believe her. Maybe he hadn't known her for long, but somehow they'd connected on a level he'd never expected. The way she was looking at him, he couldn't help but trust her.
"Michaela had been my assistant for a while, and I knew Christof was in love with her. Head over heels." He shook his head, regret filling his mouth with a bitter taste. "But I was used to doing whatever I wanted. Having whoever I wanted. I slept with her without giving a thought to the consequences."
"Were you in love with her?"
"If I was, maybe it wouldn't have been such an asshole move. But she was nothing to me, and everything to Christof."
"So why did you do it?"
"Why did I do anything, back then? Because I wanted to."
"Is that why you haven't dated since?"
He shrugged. "I suppose so. There was no way to take back what I did, so I decided to do things differently from then on. I made some changes." He hesitated, thinking about how to make all the feelings he'd had somehow fit into words. "But because Christof wasn't around to see how I'd changed, nothing I did felt like enough. Until I hit on the plan to build his twenty-floor tower. That would be big, and visible. Surely where ever he was, Christof would find out about it. Then he'd come back and realize the rest." And Bronson had felt a lot better doing something. Better than the endless wait for the private investigator to find Christof's trail.
"Thank you for telling me." Her voice was so soft it was almost a whisper. She looked beautiful, lying back with her hair like a messy halo across the pillow.
He bent his head to brush his lips across hers, bumping her glasses with his nose. She tasted good, and her lips were as soft as he remembered. She kissed him back, but when he pulled away, her forehead creased. "We shouldn't do this again. I felt bad enough after the first time."
"Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb."
She blinked, then let out a snort of laughter. "That's your justification?"
"I told you all my secrets. Now it's your turn."
"What do you want to know?"
His gaze went down to her white shirt, pulled tight over her breasts. The buttons tempted him to pop them, and he ran his hand slowly down her throat to finger the top one.
"You have to answer my questions, and for every answer I don't like, one of your buttons will pay the price."
Her cheeks flushed. "So if I answer honestly, I get to stay dressed? Will you play fair?"
"Not a chance." He flicked the first button and it came undone. The merest hint of her white bra showed underneath, but even that glimpse was enough to quicken his breath. What was it about Lacey that he found even the smallest things unbelievably sexy?
"Hey! You didn't even ask a question."
"Question one. Tell me about this." He gently traced the tattoo above her breast that he'd just uncovered. Written in script inside the little crescent moon was the word Moonstruck. But when he moved his fingers away, her hand went up to cover it. "You don't like it?" he asked.
"It's not that I don't like it. But I got it for the wrong reason. My dad hates tattoos, so I got it to spite him." She bit her lip. "I was awful to him."
"Why a moon?"
"It's from a poem my mother wrote, that I found in one of her notebooks after she died. The poem's called Moonlit Love Dance, and it starts like this." She took a breath. "Moonstruck I spun, I laughed and loved. Bewitched by a devil, kissed from thought and mind."
"Beautiful," he murmured, meaning Lacey herself, as much as the words. He could picture her as a passionate young woman reading poetry after her mother's death. He would have loved to have known her then. The photos in her room gave a hint of how lovely she'd been even in her gothic phase, with thick-rimmed glasses and hair as wild as she was.
"Isn't it, though? The next line is, A girl half crazy, aching for life. And that's what I was, back then. Half crazy, and furious with my father, because he was always angry with me." Her mouth twisted, and he could see the regret in her eyes. That was the last thing he wanted. With a quick motion, he flicked her next button open.
"But I told you what you wanted to know," she protested.
"And I make the rules. Question two is about the books you sold." He nodded toward the bookcase. "Did you take them to a local dealer?"
"A guy just down the road. Why?"
"I'm the one asking the questions. Another penalty for you." He undid the next button and ran his fingers over the swell of her breast to her nipple. It was hardening under her bra, and he stroked it, enjoying the way it peaked.
"What else do you want to know?" Her voice was breathy.
A noise came from the front door. He turned his head toward the sound. "What was that?"
"Nothing." Lacey scrambled to her feet, buttoning her shirt back up. "Sometimes the door makes a funny noise, that's all. I'll fix it." She all but bolted for the hall, and he frowned. Something was going on. Whatever it was, she didn't want him to know. He stood up, but she was back a moment later.
"It was nothing. Just a creak, you know, it does that sometimes."
He studied her for a moment, considering whether to tell her it was a good thing she wasn't an aspiring actress, because she had the worst poker face he'd ever seen. Then he shook his head and started for the hall.
Fourteen
"Stop." Lacey stepped in Bronson's way. Her ears strained for any more noise from the hall. As she'd thought, it had been Patrick the pest controller sneaking in with a cage, and she'd only had time to shoot him a quick thumbs-up before rushing back to Bronson. Now Bronson was going to catch Patrick letting the rodents go.
She had to do something to distract him, but there was only one thing she could think of.
Grabbing the front of her shirt, she pulled all the buttons open at once. Then she let it fall off, so she was standing in front of him in just her bra and jeans. Her mind was half on the fact that in a minute her place would be crawling with vermin, and half wondering if Patrick would walk into the living room and catch her half naked. Still, Bronson's expression still sent a thrill of lust snaking deep into her belly.
Who'd have thought that an ultra-rich playboy would look at her as though she were the sexiest woman alive, when her best bra was plain white cotton? But at least he seemed to have forgotten about checking out the noise from the front door. And when he kissed her, his arousal was obvious.
"Come on." She tugged him toward her bedroom, and breathed a sigh of relief when he followed. Dozens of candles were lit in the bedroom, and their dancing light made the room seem magical. By cutting the power, she'd inadvertently turned her run-down home into a sexy love cave.
Bronson kicked the door shut behind them, and drew off her glasses and put them on her dresser. Then he cupped her face and looked into her eyes. His gaze seared into her, turning her bones to liquid. "What mischief are you planning?"