How to Trap a Tycoon

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Adam wanted to ask her about all those missed shifts, was curious as to just why there had been so many of them lately. But the question that came out of his mouth instead was, "When's your next night off? I want to see you again."

  For a long moment, she only gazed up at him in silence, her dark brows arrowed downward in very clear concern. Adam couldn't imagine what she had to feel worried about. In spite of all the uncertainty tying him up in knots, he hadn't felt this good himself for a long, long time.

  "I'll be off Thursday," she told him. "But I, um … I'm busy. I can't see you. I'm sorry."

  "How about this weekend, then?"

  She shook her head again, harder this time. "I can't. I have to … I have something I have to do."

  A knot of anxiety closed tighter inside him at her response. After the way they'd just responded to each other, he'd begun to think that maybe the two of them… Well. He wasn't sure what to think the two of them might do. But he had been thinking in terms of the two of them. And that was more than a little unsettling.

  "Is it because of your job at Drake's?" he asked. "Because Lindy would fire you if she found out you and I were going out? Because if that's the reason, Mack, she'll never have to know. Or if that makes you uncomfortable, then I can talk to her, and maybe—"

  "It's not that," she interrupted him.

  "Then what?"

  A slash of disappointment darkened her features. "I just have things to do, okay?"

  Things to do , he echoed to himself. He couldn't recall ever being brushed off quite so vaguely. Things to do. Yeah, that was pretty clear.

  "Fine," he muttered blandly. "No problem." Nodding once, he dropped his hands from around her waist and took a step away, then turned toward the stairs.

  "Adam—"

  It was the first time he'd heard her say his name aloud, and there was a pleading, plaintive tone to her voice when she said it. As if she was torn between what she wanted to do, and what she felt she should do. Even though it was probably pointless to make the effort, but unwilling to leave things as they were, Adam spun back around and reached for her again, pulling her roughly toward himself until her body was flush against his. He buried his hand beneath her hair, cupping it around the nape of her neck. And then he bent and covered her mouth with his again. This time when he kissed her, it was fiercely, insistently, possessively.

  She had just sighed her surrender, was just beginning to melt into him again, when the porch lamp above them flashed on, bathing them both in a slice of garish yellow light. In one swift motion, they separated, Adam leaping backward, Mack jumping toward the front door. Before she even had the knob in her hand, however, it opened inward, to reveal a pert, petite blonde standing on the other side.

  The newcomer blinked wide blue eyes, then arched delicate blond brows in not particularly convincing surprise. "Why, Dorsey," she said, turning her attention first to Mack and then to Adam. "I had no idea you were out here. I was just going to run next door to check on Mrs. Hoofdorp's cats."

  She looked at Adam again and smiled. "Mrs. Hoofdorp is traveling," she added parenthetically. "We have no idea where she is—I suspect she's in Betty Ford again, because that's where she was the last time she was traveling, if you follow my trail, but I'm much too polite to ask her—and since we have a key to her place, we're feeding Moochie and Jester while she's gone…"

  "I feel it's my civic duty to warn you," Mack interjected quietly, nodding her head toward the blonde, "that if you don't stop her right now, then she'll just keep on talking."

  Adam eyed her quizzically but said nothing. Why would he, when he had absolutely no idea what she meant?

  "Not that Moochie and Jester necessarily need feeding," the woman at the front door continued, just as Mack had said she would. "Why Jester is so fat, he could pass for that … that…" She fluttered a hand restlessly in front of her face. "Oh, who's that fat, pompadour-wearing, checkered-pants boy who holds the hamburger up over his head?"

  "Uh … Big Boy?" Adam supplied helpfully.

  "That's the one," she said with a smile. "And as for Moochie, well. He rather reminds me of that actor who played one of the criminals in the old Batman TV show. It wasn't one of the ones who wore spandex, though—or is it latex?" she asked. "I always get those confused. Anyway, it wasn't one of those, though I always rather liked that Frank Gorshin outfit. But this other actor I'm thinking about wore something Egyptian, I believe. Yes, in fact I know it was Egyptian because I took a class in Egyptology during that half-semester I spent at Brown. Actually, I spent half-semesters at quite a lot of universities, so it may not have been Brown. Not that I was really paying attention, anyway. I only went to college because I was hoping to meet some cute boys. And it worked! Because not only did I meet some cute boys, I—"

  "Carlotta," Mack interjected again. And with surprising delicacy, too, Adam thought.

  "What?" the rambling woman asked.

  "Um, we were talking about something else?"

  "So we were." She smiled at Adam again, but her words were clearly offered to Mack. "You were about to introduce your little friend to me."

  Actually, Adam recalled, they'd been talking about cats, but he sure as hell wasn't going to put them back on that track.

  Mack sighed in a martyred, taxed-patience sort of way, and Adam got the feeling that this was a scene the two women had played out before. Too often, if Mack's pained expression was any indication.

  "Carlotta, this is Adam Darien," she introduced him halfheartedly, as if she were unwilling to give Carlotta that information. "Adam, this is … this is my mother. Carlotta MacGuinness."

  So Mack lived with her mother, did she? Adam thought. A mother who had a tendency to switch on the porch light just when things were starting to get good. Well, well, well. That had no doubt hampered Mack's past dating habits a bit. For some reason, the realization reassured him—until he realized it would also hamper her future dating habits a bit, as well.

  "How do you do?" Mack's mother greeted him pertly.

  "Mrs. MacGuinness," he returned. "It's nice to meet you."

  "Oh, it's Miss MacGuinness, dear," she corrected him mildly. "I've never been married."

  Well, well, well, Adam thought again. There was just no end to the surprise package that Mack presented. "Miss MacGuinness," he amended. "It's nice to meet you."

  "Dorsey, of course, is Ms. MacGuinness," her mother continued. "And I don't guess I need to tell you how embarrassing that is for a mother to acknowledge."

  "Carlotta…" Mack groaned.

  Her mother waved another airy hand, this time evidently in surrender. "Are you coming in, dear?" she asked her daughter.

  Mack nodded obediently, but she made no real effort to move forward.

  "Anytime soon?" her mother asked further.

  Mack sighed in that martyred way yet again, then turned to Adam. She still looked a little dazed and confused by the evening's events and not a little wary. "Thank you for diner," she told him.

  "Thank you," he countered.

  She offered him a puzzled smile. "For what?"

  He leaned forward, lowering his voice as he spoke, shamelessly excluding her mother from the conversation. "For everything else," he murmured softly close to her ear. And then, because he couldn't quite help himself, he brushed a quick, chaste kiss along her neck.

  Okay, so it wasn't so chaste, he thought. Not when he took into account the way his groin ached as he performed the gesture. It was quick. Just not so quick that Carlotta MacGuinness didn't see it. He was also reasonably certain that she'd seen him out here on the front stoop trying to consume her daughter in one big bite a few minutes ago and that—not the impending starvation of poor Moochie and Jester next door—was why the porch light had snapped on when it did.

  Instead of calling Adam on the fact that she'd just caught him mauling her daughter, however, Carlotta MacGuinness only inspected him for a moment in thoughtful silence. " Darien ," she finally said. "You're Nate and Amanda's
boy, aren't you?"

  Adam couldn't mask his surprise. "You know my parents?" he asked.

  "Well, perhaps I know your father a little better than I know your mother…" she said, her voice trailing off cryptically as she completed the remark.

  "Carlotta."

  This time there was no taxed patience or martyrdom in Mack's voice. This time she was spitting fire.

  "Oh, Dorsey," her mother replied indulgently. "Not like that."

  "Like what?" Adam asked.

  "Nothing," Mack assured him, the word coming out clipped and cool. "I have to go," she continued hastily, before he had a chance to challenge her. "Thanks again for dinner, Adam. I'll see you at Drake's."

  And then she slipped through the door past her mother without a single glance back in his direction. Adam was left standing alone on the porch with Miss Carlotta MacGuinness, having no idea what to say or do next.

  Fortunately, she seemed to have no such problem. "It was lovely meeting you, dear," she said sweetly. "Thank you for bringing Dorsey home safely." And then, without further comment, she closed the front door and switched off the porch light, effectively—though very politely—communicating her desire that he scram.

  Bringing Dorsey home safely , he echoed to himself as he turned toward the steps and began to make his way back to his car. That, he decided, was open to debate. Certainly he had brought Mack home tonight. As to her safety, however…

  Well. He supposed he was just going to have to wait and see what happened there.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  L ucas Conaway was in a worse than usual mood by the time he arrived at Drake's—and that was saying something, because even his good moods were generally pretty lousy. His most recent irritation had been stirred up at the bookstore, generated by Lauren Grable-Monroe's incessant—and pretty damned effective—sexual innuendo. It had only grown—his irritation, that is … although that wasn't the only thing that had grown, now that he thought about it—when he'd realized there was no outlet in sight for his current state of … irritation.

  As a result, he was kind of irritable.

  Add to that the fact that he still hadn't found a female tycoon to trap for his Man's Life story, and the combination made for one sulky guy.

  Man. What was it with wealthy women? he wondered. All modesty—what little he had—aside, Lucas knew he was a reasonably good-looking guy of higher than average intelligence. He wasn't socially embarrassing or medically contagious. He could be charming when the occasion called for such nonsense, and he waded through the minefields of society bullshit and cocktail party chitchat better than most men. So why the hell hadn't he been able to trap himself a tycoon?

  He'd been following the rules of Lauren Grable-Monroe's book to the letter—well, except that stuff about diaphanous gowns and Chanel suits; there was, after all, only so much a man could be expected to do to get his story, regardless of how dedicated he was to his journalistic pursuits. Yet not one woman he had targeted for trapping had fallen into his snare. Every time he fired up his sales pitch and flexed his come-hither muscles, the women in question only gazed at him with faint amusement, fairly patted him on the head, and sent him home to have a cup of warm Bosco.

  At this rate, he'd be lucky to trap himself a date to the senior prom.

  Still feeling frustrated—and, of course, irritable—he wasn't paying attention to who was manning the bar. Or, rather, womanning the bar, as was the case at Drake's. So he didn't much care who was the recipient of his lousy mood when he dumped himself onto the leather stool he generally occupied and snarled, "Gimme a Tanqueray and tonic. And make it snappy."

  When his drink didn't magically and immediately materialize before him on the bar—an extremely odd development at Drake's—Lucas glanced up to find that the woman to whom he had just barked out his order was none other than Drake's illustrious and infamous owner, Lindy Aubrey. And he understood right away what he'd just done: namely, put his life—and more important than that, his manhood—in very grave peril.

  Lucas had nothing but respect for Lindy Aubrey. Like every other member of Drake's, he was too terrified of her not to have respect for her. Although he didn't know her well—or at all, for that matter—she was something of a celebrity in Chicago . Since opening Drake's, she had received extensive and not just local press; Adam himself had often commented to Lucas that he'd considered doing a story about Lindy for Man's Life. She'd grown up in one of the city's most notorious neighborhoods, was a survivor of the streets, and had been on her own since she was fourteen years old.

  In spite of her mean and meager beginnings, however, she had, through mysterious ways she'd never revealed, raised the money to open Drake's a few years ago. Since then, she had turned the club into one of the country's premier establishments. She was completely unapologetic about its masculine exclusivity and employed some of the best attorneys in the nation to fight and win numerous court battles to maintain the club's purely male membership.

  She was a man's man in many ways, yet her femininity was inescapable. In her mid-forties, she was a striking-looking woman. Lush, dark hair tumbled past her shoulders, and clear gray eyes reflected both intelligence and wry wit. Tonight, she wore a screaming-red suit, the short skirt showcasing what Lucas, even terrified, had noted long ago were spectacular legs. Bright gemstones sparkled on nearly every finger, around both wrists, around her neck, in her earlobes. It was rumored that she carried a revolver in her purse everywhere she went, and that it had been fired on more than one occasion.

  Lucas believed the rumor quite readily.

  She had been sifting through some papers when he had growled his command, but she had halted, mid-sift, to smile at him in a deceptively benign way. Now that she had his attention, she pursed her lips in a manner that another man—one who wasn't terrified of her, say—might find sexy. Lucas, on the other hand, just about wet himself.

  "Well, aren't you cute," she cooed softly. "And whose little boy are you?"

  "Oh, uh … hi, Lindy … um, Ms. Aubrey … uh, ma'am," Lucas stammered. "I didn't realize it was you standing there."

  She continued to gaze at him in that unnervingly bland I'll-huff-and-I'll-puff-and-I'll-have-you-shorts-for-dinner manner. "Obviously," she murmured in response.

  Lucas shifted a bit nervously—okay, a bit terrifiedly—on his stool. "I'll just, um … I'll just go, uh…" Go wet myself, he finished lamely. "Uh … I'll just wait for one of the bartenders to get my drink for me."

  Lindy's smile turned knowing. "Yes. You will."

  Unable to help himself, Lucas noted again the proliferation of jewelry adorning Lindy's not at all unattractive person, and unbidden, an idea popped into his head. Though, he had to admit right away, it wasn't a very good one. Because the idea that braved entry into his brain just then was that maybe he could target Lindy Aubrey as his tycoon to trap. She was rich, obviously, and a good-looking woman. Intelligent, wry sense of humor, sexy in her own man-eater kind of way. Hmmm…

  Of course, there was that small matter of him wanting to wet himself whenever she came within a hundred feet of him, he reminded himself. That could potentially put a damper on things, so to speak. Probably it would be best if he found someone else.

  Lindy continued to gaze at him in that bored, I'm-done-with-you-now way of hers, then, "Edie," she tossed over her shoulder at the bartender who stood nearby. Then she went back to sifting through her papers, and—just like that—dismissed Lucas with all the concern of a jackal that had finished bloating itself on a piece of ripe carrion.

  The good news, as far as Lucas was concerned, was that he no longer had Lindy Aubrey's attention. The bad news, however, was that he did have Edie Mulholland's.

  Oh, great , he thought. Little Edie Sunshine. Just what he needed to make a lousy night lousier. Little Edie Two Shoes. Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm. A woman who was so nice and so kind and so sweet and so polite and so … so … God, so blond, she could make the Olsen
Twins vomit.

  "Hi, Mr. Conaway," she greeted him pertly with a cheerful little smile.

  Pertly. Cheerful. Ew. Lucas tried not to lose his dinner all over the bar. And the "Mr. Conaway" thing was just too nauseating for words. He knew that referring to him as "Mr." was required by her job, and really, coming from another woman, he might find the address kind of … well, kind of arousing, actually, now that he thought more about it. But the fact that it was Little Edie Sunshine saying it revolted him for some reason. She was probably the same age he was, give or take a year, but she seemed so much younger somehow.

  Her pale blond hair was swept atop her head, held in place by some invisible means of support. A few errant tendrils had escaped to frame her face, giving her an ethereal, almost angelic appearance. He couldn't help comparing her to a Pre-Raphaelite madonna with her delicate build, her huge, blue eyes, and her high, elegant cheekbones. Her mouth, too, seemed more beatific than the average woman's was, as if she had been touched at birth by some holy hand and was divinely blessed as a result.

  She was just so naive, so ingenuous, so damned happy, Lucas thought uncomfortably. She couldn't possibly have even a nodding acquaintance with reality. Wherever Edie Mulholland lived, he knew it was, without doubt, an enchanted kingdom populated by fairies and sprites and unicorns and rainbows. Trolls and dragons like him would be completely unwelcome in such a fantastic place.

  "Edie," he said by way of a greeting, trying not to gag on the word. Jeez, even her name was nice and sweet and pert and blond. "What are you doing here? I thought you only worked days."

  She smiled easily. "I'm filling in for Dorsey. She had something she needed to do tonight."

  "Oh." Then, without further ado, Lucas said, "Gimme a Tanqueray and tonic."

  "Coming right up," she replied—happily, of course.

  Lucas tried not to hurl.

  And he tried not to be fascinated by the deft, capable way she prepared his drink and set it without flourish on the bar before him. As sweet and nice and polite and blond and nauseating as she was, Edie Mulholland, he had to admit, was one helluva bartender.