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CHAPTER 1

If there was one thing that Lucas Tate fervently wished it was that wherever his father had gone to after he'd died it was Hell and that he was currently burning in it.

It wasn't that Lucas hated his old man. That would assume some level of caring and Lucas had approximately zero level of caring. No, he felt nothing for the guy, and feeling nothing was pretty much Lucas's usual modus operandi.

But standing on a New York sidewalk, with the tiny ripped-up pieces of Noah Tate's last letter to him in his pocket, staring through the plate-glass window of the art gallery opposite, he almost felt the faintest stirrings of hate.

It wasn't because he was now one of the reluctant directors of the billion-dollar family company Tate Oil and Gas. And it wasn't because it was starting to look like he wasn't going to be able to get back to base and resume his career as one of the Navy's best SEAL snipers as quickly as he wanted to.

It was because of the woman standing in that gallery opposite, having what looked like an argument with someone else.

The woman who in his last letter to Lucas, his father had ordered him to protect.

If it had been any other woman Lucas probably would have found someone else to do his father's dirty work for him, since he wasn't in the least bit sentimental about women in general. But it wasn't any other woman. It was Grace Riley, the widow of one of Lucas's fellow SEAL team members, Griffin Riley, a man who had once been the closest to a friend Lucas got and who had been killed in a terrorist operation in Europe some six months earlier.

A man who'd turned out to be a traitor, having been discovered supplying illegal experimental weaponry to international arms dealers, which was also the reason his widow currently needed protection.

It was a mess, a fucking mess, and if there was one thing Lucas hated more than any of the above it was messes.

He stared through the art gallery window at the woman inside, watching as she lifted a hand, making some emphatic gesture with it as she argued with the very well-dressed man standing opposite her and looking defensive.

Lucas had met Grace Riley on a number of occasions, at various ceremonies and other military gatherings, not to mention once up at the Tates' place in the Hamptons when Lucas had invited Griffin to one of Noah's infrequent summer garden parties. He'd also seen her a few times at her and Griffin's place, when he and Griffin had been on leave and Griffin asked him around for the odd barbecue or dinner.

Lucas didn't like her. In fact, every single time he met her he found himself thinking about exactly how much he didn't like her. It wasn't anything specific, there was just something about her that rubbed him the wrong way. She was opinionated and fiery and passionate in her views, and didn't hesitate to let people know all about whatever she was feeling at the time, all of which were traits he found extremely distasteful.

Nevertheless, for some completely inexplicable reason, whenever he was in her general vicinity he found himself drawn to her very much against his will, in a way he couldn't explain even to himself.

He still couldn't now.

Grace made another gesture, waving her hand, the many bracelets she wore sliding up her arm. The man she was arguing with took a step back as if he was slightly afraid of her.

No, Lucas really didn't understand his own fascination, because she wasn't beautiful. She wasn't even pretty. Not that beauty had ever been a big drawcard for him anyway, but Grace certainly didn't possess it. Her nose was far too long, her jaw too strong, and her chin too decisive for a start. Her hair was a pretty color, like fresh apricots, but it fell in long, frizzy untamed waves almost to her waist, and what with the scattering of freckles over her forehead and cheekbones, she kind of looked like Pippi Longstocking. And not in a good way.

Nevertheless, despite all of that, he had to admit there was something compelling about her all the same. Something he really couldn't put his finger on.

It had always annoyed him and now it looked like it was going to continue to annoy him.

Lucas closed his fingers around the pieces of that fucking letter he'd torn up three days earlier in Leo's Alehouse, the bar he'd met his brothers, Van and Wolf, in after scattering some of their father's ashes off the Brooklyn Bridge.

All three of them had gotten a letter each from their father, and if Van's and Wolf's letters had been anything like what was in the contents of his, Lucas couldn't blame them for the past three days of silence.

They were probably doing exactly what he was doing now, wondering what the fuck they were going to do. Not that there was any doubt in his mind about what he was going to do.

He respected Noah Tate, the man who'd adopted him and Wolf and Van from the St. Mary's Home for Boys all those years ago. But respect was the only emotion Lucas allowed himself. Certainly he felt nothing else for the guy.

So no, Lucas wasn't going to protect a woman he didn't particularly like for his foster-father. Lucas was going to protect her because this was a mission he'd been given and he'd never refused a mission yet. Plus she was a civilian and it wasn't her fault that her husband had been negotiating with a number of international arms dealers and apparently now owed those dealers a shitload of money. Money that he couldn't pay back because he was dead.

But Grace wasn't. And if Lucas's father's letter was correct those dealers would be coming to get that money from her.

Lucas couldn't let that happen, no matter how he felt about his erstwhile buddy or his foster-father. No matter how Lucas personally felt about her. Because if she couldn't give them their money they'd kill her, no two ways about it. Hell, they'd probably kill her anyway.

Lucas might have taken lives himself, all in the name of freedom, but he wasn't about to let an innocent civilian die. If she was innocent, that was. Maybe she'd known about Griffin's little deals? Then again, from what Griffin had told him about their marriage and from what he'd seen himself, he knew that wasn't likely.

There was only one thing Grace Riley cared about and that was her art. Everything else was just noise.

Across the road, Grace flung out her hand again, bracelets glittering in the dull winter light, then curled her hand around the long fall of her mermaid hair and shifted it over one shoulder in an unconscious, reflexive gesture.

Another thing he didn't like about her. Damn woman could never keep still.

A cold wind had started up, the gray sky above him lowering. Snow was in the air.

Lucas ignored all of it the way he ignored most things when he was on reconnaissance. Because that's what this was. Reconnaissance for a mission. Intelligence gathering on a target, Grace being his target. He'd been planning on visiting her anyway before he went back to base, simply to pay his respects and offer his condolences about Griffin, because it was the right thing to do. But then Lucas had gotten his father's letter and so the courtesy visit had instead turned into three days spent shadowing her, learning about her and her daily life. What she did, where she went. Where she lived. Where she worked. Who she associated with, the usual. All of it was all very mundane, nothing special.

She lived in a tiny apartment in the East Village with absolutely no security whatsoever, worked three nights a week in a local bar, and from the looks of her financial details — which he'd hacked with relative ease — she paid the extortionate rent with Griffin's military pension. She had a few friends whom she met once a month to drink and bitch with in a cafe near Central Park or called and texted with every few days — her phone records too had been relatively easy to hack — but she didn't have a boyfriend from the looks of things, which wasn't unsurprising considering she'd only been widowed recently. She had some family — her mother — but judging from those phone records, Grace had no contact with her whatsoever. The only other detail of note was that Grace spent most of her meager wages on art supplies. Typical struggling artist, in other words.

All up, it was a relatively boring life for a relatively boring female.

There were no signs she was being followed or anything else suspicious, though, which was at least one blessing, since Lucas had been hoping to deal with anyone coming after her without her knowing. Dealing with her personally was something he wanted to avoid, especially when it would lead to painful explanations, messy scenes, and would probably further delay his return to base.

Interacting with people was not Lucas's favorite. Most particularly hysterical females, and if he could get away without actually having to explain to her that Griffin had been a traitorous asshole selling high-tech weaponry to people who shouldn't have it that would be good.

In the pocket of Lucas's motorcycle leathers, his phone buzzed with a text. He grabbed it and briefly glanced down at the screen. Of course it would be Van, his older brother, breaking the silence of the last three days. Lucas even suspected he knew what it was about too: being one of the directors for Tate Oil and Gas.

Problem was, he didn't give a shit about his father's company, had never been interested in it, and although he'd agreed to be a director, he didn't particularly want to have anything to do with it now, so he left the text unanswered and put his phone back in his pocket. Van could wait. Right now, Lucas had more important things to take care of.

Grace was now throwing both hands in the air in a dramatic gesture, the man she was arguing with slowly shaking his head in response. Clearly she was having trouble with something and maybe, given this was an art gallery and she was an artist, it had something to do with an exhibition or a potential exhibition.

Lucas went back over the information he'd managed to glean on her over the past couple of days. He couldn't recall that there had been anything in her phone records to do with this particular gallery or in her e-mails, though that didn't mean she didn't have something going on here. She was having financial difficulties, though, as he could see from her last couple of bank statements. Basically all her money went on art supplies, which weren't cheap.

He narrowed his gaze as she pulled her hair over her shoulder in that reflexive movement again. Crazy woman What kind of person put art supplies over food and utility bills? The logical thing, if she was having money troubles, would have been to move out of New York and go somewhere much, much cheaper, not stay here.

Not that he cared. He didn't give a shit what she did with her money or her life for that matter. The only thing he cared about was that she kept her actual life, since it was pretty damn obvious she had no means to pay the people who were after her.

In fact, his initial response had been to doubt the veracity of his father's facts about Griffin, especially since the man was a friend and fellow SEAL and the accusations leveled at him were pretty fucking serious.

But the day after Lucas had gotten Noah's unexpected letter, an e-mail had arrived in his in-box with a heavily encrypted file attached. After running the decryption program suggested in the e-mail, Lucas had opened the file to find all sorts of financial information, photos, copies of e-mail conversations, copies of texts, and all about Griffin. Who'd apparently been recruited to work for a man called Cesare de Santis, the erstwhile owner of DS Corp, one of the country's biggest weapons designer and manufacturer, and who also just happened to be the Tate family's biggest enemy. Cesare and Noah had once been friends until it had all gone bad, and Noah had drummed it into each of his boys that one day Cesare would come for the Tates.

Certainly Cesare had come for Griffin. He'd been trying to get DS Corp experimental weapons onto the illegal arms market and had been paid very well for his efforts by Cesare de Santis himself. Until Griffin had been blown to bits by an unusually well-targeted missile strike.

Across the street, Grace made another emphatic gesture with her hand; then quite suddenly, as if she'd heard a sharp sound, she turned her head.

And Lucas found himself staring into a pair of intense amber eyes.

It had never happened before, a target seeing him before he was ready to reveal himself, and he couldn't think for the life of him what he'd done to give himself away.

And then as if being spotted weren't bad enough, Grace abruptly made things worse by starting toward the art gallery front door, leaving him in no doubt as to what she was going to do.

Shit.

She was coming to confront him.

*
Grace had been feeling an odd itch to the back of her neck for the past day or so, and the sensation had been aggravating her even before she'd gone to see Craig at his pretentious SoHo gallery. Then he'd refused to allow her to change the dates for her exhibition, which had only aggravated her further.

Not that she actually wanted to change the dates, it was just that she was having real difficulty with the final piece she was working on, the piece that would tie her entire exhibition together.

The piece she hadn't actually started yet, because she'd seemingly run out of inspiration.

Yeah, and that too had been aggravating. In fact, more than aggravating. Her lack of inspiration was anxiety making in the extreme and she was doing her best not to think about it, hoping that Craig would be at least a little understanding and move the dates to give her some breathing space.

Sadly, Craig was not understanding.

And that annoying prickle on the back of her neck was getting worse, like someone was watching her. Like she was being followed.

"I understand it's difficult," Craig was saying, condescending as always. "But the schedule is what it is. And it'll affect a whole lot of other artists as well, you do understand that, don't you?"

Momentarily forgetting her argument, she turned her head sharply, squinting through the big plate-glass windows of the gallery and studying the street outside. A steady stream of people went by, heavy traffic moving beyond them.

Then she spotted a tall figure, dressed in black motorcycle leathers and standing very still beside a streetlight. At first glance he looked like a bike courier, and there was nothing very suspicious about that, yet something kicked hard in her gut, an instinct she never questioned.

She squinted harder. His features were indistinct, but that instinct was telling her she knew him somehow. That he was familiar. And that quite definitely he was the one who'd been following her.

Griffin?

A jolt of electricity went through her and she had to stop herself from saying his name aloud, because of course it wasn't Griffin. He was dead and had been for six months, and if there was one thing this man wasn't it was her deceased husband. He was too tall, for one thing.

A thread of grief wound through her in the way it did whenever she thought of Griffin, bringing with it a flare of unreasonable anger at whoever the hell was standing out there, reminding her of things she didn't want to be reminded of. Clearly she needed to go out there, find out who it was and why he was following her, then give him a piece of her mind.

Craig was still going on about something, but Grace wasn't listening. Turning back to him, she held up a finger. "One second. I'll be right back."

Without waiting for a response she turned and headed straight for the gallery doors.

Outside the weather was being its usual crappy winter self, the wind whipping under the leather trench coat she'd found in a flea market the year before and cutting straight through the gold wrap dress that had been her thrift-store find the month before that.

Ignoring it, she strode straight out into the traffic, dodging a few cars and shrugging off the sound of car horns, still squinting at the tall, dark figure standing by the streetlight and trying to figure out who it might be, because she still couldn't quite make him out.

The man didn't move, simply stood there watching her come, and as she got closer his features became more and more distinct, arranging themselves into a familiar pattern.

Deep gold hair shorn close to his skull. Silver-blue eyes. A very singular, intensely masculine beauty. And cold. Cold as the icy wind that was whipping around her booted ankles right now.

Oh yeah, she knew him. You didn't forget a face like that.

It was Lucas Tate, one of Griffin's SEAL buddies and the most beautiful man she'd ever met.

Her anger melted away as quickly as it had come, replaced instead with a small shock of surprise. Because what the hell was Lucas Tate doing here?

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Wicked Billionaire"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Jackie Ashenden.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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