He took money and walked away, Lacey. She had to remember that he’d been great to look at back then, too.
That crooked smile and the once-broken nose only added character to a face that was far too attractive to her. Clever mind, brilliant green eyes that looked too closely, a sense that when he was listening to you, nothing else interfered with his concentration. It was like being caught in the glow of a brilliant floodlamp, with nowhere to hide.
A lady does not seek the limelight, Lacey. In her mother’s world, a lady only attracted public attention three times in her life—at birth, when she married, and when she died.
“Over here,” Dev directed, his hand settling lightly against her waist.
The heat of his hand distracted her until they were almost upon his car. She stopped in her tracks. “This is yours?”
Green eyes turned to glass. “It’ll get us where we’re going. If you’re lucky, none of your friends will see us in it.”
“That’s not what I—” But it was too late. He’d shut her door and rounded the back to place the basket in the trunk.
Just great, Lacey. Offend him before you even make it to the park.
Two hours. It might as well be eons.
Chapter Four
Hermann Park spread out before them in all its lush green glory. Lacey had chosen it over the grounds of the Menil Museum she’d originally planned to use for her auction contribution. She wanted lots of people around them. Intimacy with Devlin Marlowe was to be avoided at all costs.
The day was sunny and humid, but fall had at last decided to visit Houston. Temperatures had finally dropped into the seventies, thank goodness.
Dev parked the car. “This all right?”
She looked straight ahead and only nodded.
He muttered something under his breath and jerked his door handle open. The heavy door slammed behind him.
Lacey reached for her own door handle, feeling a shiver run through her. She couldn’t do this.
I’ll take care of it. Her father’s worried gaze rose up before her.
It’s a simple picnic, Daddy, she had said. I can handle it.
But she’d never handled Devlin Marlowe. She’d been too mesmerized by him, been putty in his hands.
He used you, Lacey. He didn’t love you. That was your foolish dream. If her father hadn’t shown up that night, he’d have taken her virginity and he still would have left.
And now he was back to rub it in. To show her how successful he was, that he wasn’t her father’s gofer anymore. She’d never thought of Dev as cruel, but then she’d been so sick in love with him that she’d never dreamed he’d trade her for money, either. She’d begged him, for heaven’s sake. Begged him to be the first. Cherished all the dreams he’d whispered in the night, thought that love was all that was important.
She’d been so naïve. Such a romantic. But she wasn’t sixteen anymore.
Anger began to steady her. Lacey seldom allowed herself the luxury of temper, but right now she welcomed its heat, its ability to scorch away the scar tissue, reopen the wound of how badly Dev had hurt her.
I’ll show him that it didn’t matter. That I don’t care.
And she thanked her mother for all the lessons on presenting a serene face to people she couldn’t abide.
Carefully, Lacey drew her own face into that mask. When her door flew open, she flinched but recovered quickly. With studied grace, she alighted from the car, her gaze skipping right past Dev’s.
“Would you like me to carry the quilt?” she asked.
Dev heard the polite tone, saw the elegant disdain. With great effort, he forced back the rage that swamped him.
So they were back to that. Princess to peasant.
Fine. Two could play this game. She thought he was a barbarian not fit to clean her dainty slippers. He would show her that the years had taken off the rough edges.
“I’ve got it,” he said evenly. “You pick the spot.”
She looked everywhere but at him, finally nodding toward a huge live oak spreading its deep shade on a slight rise about a hundred yards away.
“After you, Princess.” For a moment, he thought he saw her flinch from his tone and knew he’d have to work harder to cover how much she unsettled him.
He’d faced enraged husbands he’d caught cheating, boxing opponents out to tear off his head, vicious drunken fellow GIs out to prove who was more man. None of them had rattled him like this delicate creature crossing the grass on legs that could stop traffic.
That was the other challenge. Even if he could bury the sense of betrayal deeply enough to keep his head, what did he do about the hunger of his body for hers? It was as if all the years in between had never existed…only this time it was much worse. She wasn’t a young girl he needed to treat with kid gloves. She might be delicately made, but she was a full-grown woman who made his body burn. He wanted to get his hands on her worse than he wanted his next breath, and knowing how she’d betrayed him didn’t seem to mean a damn to the ache in his gut.