“A KILT?” Luke murmured as they walked away.
“Just be grateful she didn’t order you to roll up your pant legs so she could take a look. Or worse yet, pull down your jeans so she could check out how you’d look in a loin cloth.” A mental image of Lucas clad in a brief piece of buckskin caused Grace’s unruly hormones to spike.
“Now there’s a thought.” The hotel staff had set up the happy hour buffet. Lucas watched as a clutch of female vampires and another Marie Antoinette look-alike began filling up plates.
“Actually,” Grace admitted, “although I hate to pump up your male ego any more than it’s undoubtedly already been inflated since you arrived, you’d certainly look better than some of the models I’ve had on my covers.”
“Why, thank you, darlin’.” He grinned down at her and tugged on another silky strand of hair that had escaped confinement to curl over her milkmaid’s cheek. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to say.” Ignoring the way she backed away from him, he glanced over at the buffet. “Want to grab a bite before the festivities?”
Grace’s nerves had been too on edge to eat all day. Now, strangely, with Lucas at her side, although she was much too aware of him as a male, she realized she was starving.
“Just a bite.” She still had her gown to get into for the dinner cruise tomorrow evening, and with all the food that was always served at RNN conferences, if she wasn’t careful, she’d have to hire heavy machinery to hook her into her strapless long-line bra.
Deciding she’d just have to get used to him touching her, since he fully intended to do a lot more of it, Lucas put his hand on Grace’s waist and deftly led her through the throng to a table in the corner. “Wait here. I’ll get you a plate.”
“I’m more than capable of feeding myself, Mr. Kincaid.”
“Well, of course you are, Ms. Fairfield. But one of us has to stay here and hold our table. Since it’s the last vacant one in the room.”
That made sense, Grace decided.
“And then there’s always the fact that we Southern boys like nothin’ better than an excuse to pamper a gorgeous woman.” He gave her another of those dashing buccaneer’s smiles, then headed off toward the table, leaving her feeling a lot like Scarlett at the barbecue being waited on by the Tarleton twins.
Not that Lucas reminded her at all of those two hapless young men. He was definitely more Rhett Butler, she considered, watching as he crossed the room, seemingly oblivious to the admiring looks. Despite his south of the Mason-Dixon line drawl, she had no trouble imagining him in the role of that world-famous Yankee blockade runner.
“Who in the name of cover hunks everywhere is that?” a voice beside Grace suddenly asked.
Shaking off the fantasy of kissing Lucas while Atlanta went up in flames behind them, Grace looked up and managed a faint smile for her best friend.
“His name’s Lucas Kincaid. And he’s not a cover model.”
“Lord, he should be. I know I write contemporaries, but I’ve been toying with the idea of a time-travel featuring a pirate hero.” Jamie Winston’s eyes turned thoughtful. “I don’t suppose—”
“No.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think he’s in the market for a career change.”
“So, what does he do?” Jamie slipped into a chair beside Grace without taking her eyes from the object of her speculation. “And wherever did you find him?”
“In the classifieds.”
“Lucky girl. All I’ve ever found in those ads is a used Plymouth and a kitten that needed to be wormed after we got her home. I guess I should have been looking under Hunks.”
“Actually, I found him in the personals.”
“While I’m pleased as punch that you’re getting out again these days, I cannot believe a man who looks like that has to advertise for companionship.”
“It’s not that way. He was listed as a hero. And I needed one.”
“Don’t we all,” Jamie drawled.
Grace laughed, relaxing for the first time in ages. “Well, there is that,” she agreed. “But this was serious. Lucas is a bodyguard.”
“Oh, no.” Jamie Winston’s smile faded from her face and from her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten another letter?”
“It was waiting for me here at the hotel when I arrived this morning.”
Grace would never have considered withholding the truth from her best friend. She and Jamie had first met in Boston six years ago, at one of the few conferences Grace had attended. She had been a fledgling writer and Jamie already had half a dozen books under her jeweled belt.
A middle-of-the-night fire alarm at the hotel had forced them to climb down twenty-eight flights of stairs in their nightgowns. Grace hadn’t even thought to grab her robe. Jamie, on the other hand, possessing a natural-born flair for the dramatic, had been swathed in ranch mink, which she’d willingly shared while they’d huddled together on the sidewalk on a cold New England night until the firemen had declared a false alarm.
That was how Grace discovered that Robert hadn’t been in their room. Later, he’d assured her he’d been meeting with Buffy to discuss a possible anthology. Since she hadn’t wanted to face the truth in those days, Grace hadn’t pressed for details.
“I still don’t think it’s anything serious,” she assured her friend. “But I was skimming through USA Today on the plane and saw this ad that asked, Need a Hero? Call 1-800-555-Hero. So I did.”
“And you got him.” Jamie’s gaze wandered back across the room. “I never realized fairy godmothers had 1-800 numbers. Talk about modernizing.”
Despite her reason for hiring Lucas in the first place, Grace laughed again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said with a warm rush of feeling.
“Where else would I be when my best pal wins a ROMI?” Jamie scowled. “It’s only too bad that the Rat has to get one, too.”
“The winners haven’t been announced yet,” Grace reminded her. “Besides, if it weren’t for the Rat, I might never have gotten published in the first place.”
Grace tried on occasion to remind herself that there’d been a time when Robert had been important to her. When she’d lived for his opinion, his approval. She certainly hadn’t married him for the sex. Which had never been anything to shout about and was virtually nonexistent in the end.
“Hell, of course you would have. You’re wonderfully talented, sweetie.”
“Thank you. That means a lot from someone whose work I’ve always admired. But without his encouragement, I might have given up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you could no sooner quit writing than I could quit having babies.” Jamie, who was pregnant with her fifth, patted her bulging stomach and smiled with feminine satisfaction. “Please tell me the hunk is single.”
“I have no idea. It didn’t come up.”
“It’s hard to believe women have let that one get away,” Jamie mused. “Oh, Lord. This is San Francisco. You don’t suppose he’s gay, do you?”
“I have no idea. And I don’t care.” Liar, Grace thought as her own gaze wandered over to where Lucas was now surrounded by a bevy of admiring romance writers.
“Well, even if he is, there’s no reason for anyone to ever know.” Jamie’s grin reminded Grace of a pregnant cat who’d just spotted a particularly succulent saucer of cream. “This situation is rife with possibilities for a delicious revenge.”
“Revenge?”
“If Robert even remotely suspects there’s anything personal going on between you two, he’ll go nuts.”
“If it doesn’t have anything to do with my money, I doubt he’d even care.”
“You’re overlooking the wonderfully fragile male ego. Robert might have dumped you, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t by nature competitive when it comes to women.
“It goes back to caveman days. Just because he was foolish enough to think he didn’t want you doesn’t mean he’ll be able to stand the idea of some drop-dead-hunk Neanderthal whacking you over the head with a club and dragging you home to his cave.”
“Lucas isn’t exactly a Neanderthal.”
“Don’t be so picky. As a writer you should recognize a metaphor when you hear one. But believe me, Grace, when the Rat sees the two of you together, he’ll undoubtedly go drown himself in the bay.”
“One can only hope. Especially since Lucas changed my cover story from us being old friends to being old lovers.”
“Oh, I just love this! It’s right from the plot of my last book, where the bodyguard and the princess fall madly in love and live happily ever after.”
“That’s fiction,” Grace noted dryly. “Just like Lucas’s story.”
“True. But don’t forget that old saying about life imitating art,” Jamie countered.
When she felt the hated telltale color rising in her cheeks again, Grace decided the time had come to change the subject. “By the way, did you hear that Robert’s telling people he’s going to be writing the new Scarlett book?”
“Not only did I hear, but Bubbles, his blushing bride, actually called me last week and asked me to write it for him.”
“Her name’s Buffy.” As Jamie well knew.
“Buffy, Bubbles, Bimbo, it’s all the same to me.” Jamie dismissed the correction. “Anyway, she mentioned a very generous royalty split, but since the Rat is about as capable of crafting a story as an orangutan with a fistful of crayons, it was obvious I’d be left to do all the work while he went on Good Morning America and took all the glory. Something he’s very good at. As you know all too well.”
“Are you considering it?” Grace couldn’t see where it would be a good career move. Then again, she didn’t have any right to tell Jamie what—and with whom—she could write. Especially since her husband, Peter Winston, had recently given up a lucrative Chicago law practice to set up a storefront office in the inner city. And there was always the matter of another baby on the way.
“Are you kidding? Even if you weren’t my best friend, and even if the Rat could write, which we both know he can’t, there’s no way I’d be willing to put up with his roving hands.”
“Roving...” Grace stared at her long-time friend. “Surely you’re not saying...”
“Aw, hell.” Jamie shook her head. “I swore to myself that I was never going to say anything. But yeah, he hit on me a few times.”
“When?”
“In Boston. And again in Chicago. And in Hawaii. And New York. Oh, and there were those brief little skirmishes we had in elevators in Dallas and Seattle.”
“That’s more than a few.” It was every national RNN conference Robert had attended. Since Grace had felt uncomfortable in the spotlight, after the first year, she’d stayed home, content to let her husband, who enjoyed the publicity end of the business, take center stage. Which had left her free to write. And him to fool around. “Is that all?”
“Absolutely.”
It was a lie and both women knew it.
Silence settled over them. “I should have told you,” Jamie said glumly.
“Yeah. You should have.”
“It was just that I valued our friendship so much I was afraid to risk his bad behavior coming between us.”
She placed her hand on Grace’s icy one.
“Besides, I didn’t have any proof that he was cheating. And you know what an outrageous flirt he is. So I just kept trying to convince myself that he wasn’t really serious about all those passes.”
“Well, that certainly makes two of us.” Grace sighed and realized that she’d willingly overlooked the signs herself during the early days of her marriage. By the end, she’d suspected, but hadn’t really cared.
“You know—” Jamie returned her gaze to Lucas, who seemed to be having a fascinating discussion about tempura shrimp with a flock of avid female admirers “—perhaps you could have the hunk beat him up.”
Even as Grace told herself that she’d moved on with her life, she couldn’t deny that the idea of Lucas pounding the stuffing out of Robert the Rat proved more than a little appealing.
When Lucas returned to the table with two gilt-rimmed plates, Grace made the introductions and was relieved when Jamie, who could be frighteningly outspoken, didn’t utter a single word about the possibility of him modeling for her upcoming book cover. In fact, she seemed almost eager to leave them alone.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lucas.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Lucas said, shaking the slender, outstretched hand. “As Gracie’s best friend, you’re probably just the lady to fill me in on any of the men in her life I might have to run off.”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed, then began to dance. “Gracie—” she drawled the nickname, seeming to enjoy it immensely “—has sworn off men.”
Lucas nodded, pleased. “That’s good to hear.”
Not that he was concerned about any competition. Since he’d been seven years old and opened that lemonade stand in Raintree to buy his first bike, he’d always attained everything he wanted. As he’d watched Grace from across the room, he’d decided he wanted America’s most beloved romance author. And he fully intended to have her.
“Lucas,” Grace murmured, so as not to be overheard by the other writers at nearby tables, “I’ve already told Jamie the truth. You don’t have to lie to her about our relationship.”
“Who said I was lying?”
While Grace stared up at him, Jamie Winston’s amused gaze went from Lucas to Grace, then back to Lucas again. Then finally settled on Grace. “Well, honey, for someone who’s always avoided conferences, you’ve definitely found a way to make a huge splash at this one.
“And as much as I’m a sucker for real-life romance, I’m afraid I have an interview with Milan television in...” She glanced down at her watch. “Ten minutes ago.” Her smile was quick and bright. “Fortunately for me, the Italians, bless their hearts, are never on time.”
She stood up with amazing grace for a woman who made a habit of gaining fifty pounds with every pregnancy, then losing it in the first six postpartum weeks, something Grace could have hated her for if they hadn’t been such close friends.
“I’m sure we’ll run into each other before the conference is over, Lucas.” Jamie bent down and brushed her lips against Grace’s cheek. “I’m thrilled for you,” she murmured. “I have a feeling this is going to be your most successful conference ever. And I’m not talking about the fact that you’re a shoo-in for the ROMI.”
“Lucas is just kidding,” Grace insisted, shooting a frustrated look at the bodyguard, who, dammit, was grinning devilishly back at her. “Tell her, Lucas.”
“Don’t bother,” Jamie said blithely. “Because I’d never believe it.” She shifted her gaze from Grace’s distressed face to Lucas again. “Grace is my best friend in the world. Break her heart and I’ll hire a mobster to break your legs.”
“You know, I almost think I believe you.”
“You should. Because I mean every word.” Warning given, she waggled her fingers. “Television Milan awaits. Have fun, you two.”
Lucas watched as she paused to chat briefly with Alice Vail on her way out of the lounge. “Nice lady.”
“The best,” Grace said absently. His nonchalant manner almost had her believing she’d imagined his outrageous remark about running off any men in her life.
“You’re lucky to have such a good friend.”
“I know.”
She tried to read his expression, which had turned frustratingly inscrutable. Surely she couldn’t have invented the male interest that had darkened his eyes, thickened his drawl. Then again, she’d been under a great deal of stress lately. Perhaps she really was having a nervous breakdown.
“What did you mean by that?”
“By what?” Appearing oblivious to her turmoiled thoughts, Lucas took a bite of barbecued-duck pizza.
“What you said to Jamie. That threat about running off any men in my life.”
“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “Of course I meant it. But it wasn’t a threat, Gracie. Merely a statement of intent.”
“You’re kidding.” Amazed yet again at his matter-of-fact attitude, she let out a huff of breath. “I know you are.”
“Well, that makes one of us.” He tucked the errant strand of hair behind her ear again, pretending not to notice the way she stiffened at his touch. “Believe me, sugar, I may not have been a Boy Scout all my life, but I’d never lie to a woman about my intentions.”
“I have no reason to believe you. Since I don’t know you,” she added.
“True enough. But don’t worry, we can take care of that. I promise, darlin’, that by the end of the conference, we’ll be old friends. Old very close friends.”
His easy drawl slipped beneath her skin in a way that set her nerves to humming again. For some reason she’d figure out later, when this strange fog cleared from her mind, Grace had to fight the urge to smile.
“Well, no one can fault you for your confidence.”
“It’s a Kincaid trait. Along with our natural-born charm.”
“How strange,” she said, beginning to enjoy herself, “I haven’t noticed that.”
“You probably haven’t been paying close enough attention,” he said helpfully. “Give me time, Gracie. I’ll grow on you.”
“Like algae.”
He laughed, appearing absolutely unwounded. “So, your friend Jamie’s a writer, too?”
“Yes.” Grateful for the shift in subject, she bit into the fluffy fried dough of a shrimp tempura and could have wept, it was so good. “I met her at a conference, actually, when I first began writing.”
“I guess that makes you competitors?”
“Competitors?”
“Yeah. Obviously, you’re both in the business to sell books. What happens if one of you tops the charts?”
“We buy enough champagne to float a battleship and celebrate.”
“So let’s say that you had a book that made number one on the bestseller lists the same week she didn’t make the top ten. Would that prove a problem?”
Grace was puzzled at the way the easy, flirtatious conversation had suddenly turned oddly serious. “Not at all. Our friendship has never been based on numbers, and besides, we don’t even write the same sort of books.”
“They’re both romance.”
“True. But hers are short contemporary stories for Harlequin’s Temptation line and mine are historicals. But it wouldn’t matter. Because we still only want the best for each other.”
“And she feels the same way?”
“Of course.”
He took another bite of pizza without taking his gaze from hers. He looked inclined to ask another question when a cocktail waitress appeared beside the table, pad in hand, pen poised.
“What would you like to drink?” Lucas asked.
“I’ll have a glass of chardonnay.” Grateful for the interruption, Grace ignored Lucas and gave her order directly to the waitress.
“And I’ll have a Coke,” he said. “Thanks.”
Grace reluctantly gave him points for not watching the young woman’s long slender legs, clad in black stockings, as she walked away.
“And here I would have guessed you to be a Southern Comfort man.”
“You would have guessed right, once upon a time. These days I don’t drink period.” He picked up a mushroom stuffed with Dungeness crab and popped it into his mouth. “You mentioned buying enough champagne to float a battleship? Well, I used to drink enough to float an entire flotilla.”
“But you stopped?”
“Yeah. One day about eighteen months ago, I poured the booze down the drain and have been on the wagon ever since.”
“Wasn’t that difficult? Quitting cold turkey?” Having researched alcoholism for a book she’d written, Grace suspected there was a great deal Lucas wasn’t telling her.
“It came down to life-style. I got tired of waking up every morning with the mother of all hangovers. So I decided the best way to avoid the hangover was to avoid the alcohol in the first place.”
“Why did you drink?”
“Because I was a drunk.” Lucas decided this was neither the time nor the place to discuss the nightmares that had haunted him after his final mission.
The waitress returned with their drinks. The smile the long-legged brunette bestowed on Lucas was warm, inviting and caused an unfamiliar jolt of jealousy Grace had never experienced when she’d been married to Robert. Even when he’d run off with Buffy, Grace had honestly been more devastated by the loss of her editor than her husband.
“So.” Lucas lifted his glass. “To a successful conference.”
Since she now had a very good idea what he’d consider successful, Grace decided the time had come to inform him yet again that she had no intention of warming his bed the next few nights.
“Speaking of that—”
“There you are!” The all-too-familiar male voice cut into her intended speech. “How the hell did you do it? That’s what I want to know.”
Grace looked up at her former husband, took in his face, which was as red as a boiled crab, and wondered what she’d ever seen in this man. Oh, she supposed he was handsome enough, in what she now knew to be a pseudointellectual sort of way. He was tall and lean, but without Lucas’s rangy strength. His eyes, reddened by the contact lenses he’d taken to wearing for television appearances, were currently shooting furious sparks, and his lips were pulled into that thin, disapproving line she remembered all too well.
“Do what?” She did not bother with pleasantries, since there was absolutely nothing about this man she found pleasant.
“Steal my suite out from under me.”
“What?” She shot a quick look at Lucas, who merely shrugged and turned his attention to the popcorn shrimp. Surely, he wouldn’t...he couldn’t... Could he?
“Actually, Robert, if you insist on bringing the subject up, it just happens to be you who stole my suite.”
“It was reserved in the Roberta Grace name,” he reminded her as he plucked a square of Swiss cheese from her plate. It was something he’d always done. Something that had also always annoyed her. “Which makes it as much mine as it is yours.”
“Aren’t you a little old to be claiming Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers?” Lucas asked mildly.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Lucas Kincaid.” He did not extend his hand. Grace watched, intrigued, as a spooky, silent warning seemed to rise in his dark eyes. “The new guy in Gracie’s life. Who, by the way, suggests that if you want to live, you refrain from speaking that way to my woman.”
“Your woman? Gracie?” When his jaw actually dropped, Grace wondered why she’d never noticed how weak it was.
Seeming to forget his initial complaint, Robert swung his attention back to Grace. “I cannot believe that a woman with your intelligence would stoop to sleeping with some...” he paused, fuming as he searched for the right word “...hunk!” Obviously piqued, he snatched a mushroom.
It did not escape Grace’s notice that he’d called her intelligent. Something he hadn’t done since their early days together. Heaven help her for being a petty person, but she actually found herself thoroughly enjoying the moment.
“I fail to see how what I do is any of your business,” she countered, conveniently overlooking the fact that she had no intention of sleeping with Lucas. “Now, I believe you were complaining about the accommodations?”
As if remembering Lucas’s warning, Robert drew in a deep breath and forced his voice to a less accusing tone. “I just went up to the suite to make a few phone calls and discovered Buffy’s and my things being moved out. And yours moved in! When I asked what they thought they were doing, I was informed that the order had come directly from the manager. Naturally, I sought him out immediately.”
“Naturally,” she murmured, still uncertain what exactly had happened, but continuing to suspect that somehow Lucas had had a hand in it.
“He informed me that there’d been a mixup and the room was originally reserved for you.”
“He was right.”
“That’s open to interpretation.” Robert waved her statement away with an irritated gesture that caused her to notice the diamond wedding band he was wearing. The wedding band that he and Buffy had obviously purchased with his unearned share of her royalties. “And you want to know the worst part?”
“Not particularly.” Her dry tone caused Lucas to pat her knee approvingly beneath the table. The touch, while meant as encouragement, seemed intensely intimate.
“Every damn room in the hotel is booked. And since it’s the holiday weekend, the best the guy could do was get me a room at the Marriott on the Wharf.”
Lucas’s hand was stroking her thigh now, in a way that sent little sparks through her bloodstream. “That’s a nice hotel.” Grace was amazed that her words didn’t come out in a croak.
“It’s not the Whitfield Palace,” he complained.
“True,” Grace murmured, wondering at what temperature the human body melted. She was concerned that if Lucas kept touching her like this, she was about to find out.
“You know, Radcliffe, if you’re going to settle into the Marriott and make it back here for the pageant on time, you’d better get moving,” Lucas suggested. He skimmed his fingers back down Grace’s thigh and cupped her knee again. “Traffic’s always tough this time of day. And it’s hard to get a cab.”
Again, his reasonable tone belied what actually appeared to be a potential for violence in his steady eyes. As Grace watched her former husband wisely opt not to challenge that look, she couldn’t help wondering how Lucas was capable of threatening Robert at the same time his wickedly clever hand was caressing her beneath the table.
Unaware of the intimate little drama taking place between Lucas and his former wife, Robert shot Grace a lethal glare that jolted her nerves and started them jittering, then turned on his heel and marched away from the table.