That, more than anything else, had convinced Adam that Mack wasn't the soulless, flagrant opportunist that Lindy had assumed her to be. Because even if Mack had done this for the money, it hadn't been for personal gain. She was doing it for her mother. And hell, what could be more noble than that?
All right, so maybe it was still opportunistic. It wasn't selfish. And that was in keeping with the Mack that Adam had come to know and love. Because he did love Mack. He'd figured that out tonight if nothing else. In spite of everything he'd found out about her, in spite of the way she'd misled him, in spite of the fact that she had kept so many secrets…
Despite everything, he still cared about her. A lot. And he didn't want to lose her.
He didn't kid himself that there were smooth seas ahead. She had a lot to answer for and a lot of explaining to do. And God alone knew what her life was going to be like for the next several weeks if Lindy made good on her threat to out Dorsey MacGuinness as Lauren Grable-Monroe. But whatever pitfalls and potholes he and Mack encountered on the road ahead, he was fully confident they could repair them and move forward.
But that wasn't his greatest concern at the moment. Because at the moment, Lindy was still convinced that Mack intended to take Drake's down. And at the moment, Lindy intended to take Mack down first. Adam could try to talk her out of it, but she seemed determined. She had plenty of contacts of her own to spread the word that Lauren Grable-Monroe was really Dorsey MacGuinness, and hey, here's her address and her phone number, and you can find her at Severn College teaching on these days in these classrooms, and here's where she catches the El.
As if Lindy sensed his thoughts, she glanced up from her book and met his gaze. "So?" she asked.
"So what?" he stalled.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know, Lindy," he told her. "I honestly do not know."
She puffed a few more times on her cigar, then placed it carefully on a crystal ashtray bearing the Baccarat insignia. "Fine," she said. "You think about it. In the meantime, I know exactly what I'm going to do."
Adam nodded without much enthusiasm as he pushed the materials across the table toward Lindy and wondered what he might say that would possibly talk her out of doing what she'd threatened to do. But all he could think was, Poor Mack. Lauren Grable-Monroe's days were definitely numbered. And the number he saw most was, unfortunately, one.
* * *
Chapter 16
« ^ »
E die Mulholland's neighborhood was sort of middle everything, Lucas noted, as he sat in his car outside her apartment building, watching the sun dip low in the sky. Middle class, middle America , middle age, middle ground, middle-of-the-road. There wasn't much to remark about the area except that it was totally unremarkable. And somehow, he got the feeling that Edie lived here for that very reason—it would be easy to fade into the landscape.
A week had passed since she had told him to go away and leave her alone, and Lucas had done his best to abide by her wishes. He'd avoided Drake's during the hours she normally worked. He had curbed his urge to go hang out on the Severn campus. He hadn't dialed her number once when he'd picked up the phone. He'd respected her wishes, had left her alone.
And what had he gotten in return?
He'd gotten frustrated. He'd gotten annoyed. He'd gotten irritable. He'd gotten lonely.
There were just too many unanswered questions about Edie Mulholland, and there was one glaring fact about her that he didn't like at all. She'd been mistreated at some point in her past. Enough to keep her scared and uneasy in her present. Enough to prevent her from seeking a future with anyone who might want to get close to her. Lucas, for whatever reason—and God knew he'd tried to figure out what that reason might be—wanted to get close to her. Close enough to touch her. Close enough to hold her. Close enough to understand her.
Why? He had no idea. All this time, he'd been thinking of her as Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm, a woman who was all sweetness and light, with no shadows or sharp edges to her at all. He'd been certain she was the perfect product of a perfect union in a perfect place, a woman incapable of knowing what it was like to feel pain or experience the cold bite of reality. To Lucas, Edie Mulholland had always been a one-dimensional icon of all that was good in the world.
With last week's episode, however, he had been forced to acknowledge that there were indeed some shadows in her life. There were sharp edges. Badness had soiled her goodness. Darkness had dimmed her light. Bitterness had tainted her sweetness. And that didn't seem fair at all.
Which was laughable, really, because Lucas Conaway was always the first one to eagerly opine that Life Is Not Fair. It was the banner behind which he stoically marched, the standard he held aloft for all to see. Life Is Not Fair, he gleefully proclaimed to anyone who would listen—and even to those who wouldn't. And that was always followed immediately by his other heartfelt declaration: Deal With It.
But he hadn't dealt with it. Not this time. Not with Edie. And hell, it wasn't even his life that wasn't fair these days. Sure, he'd had his setbacks in the past, too. Poverty, abandonment, despair. But then, life is not fair. He had dealt with it. In his own life, at any rate. Somehow, though, he couldn't accept it for Edie's.
Because with Edie, it just wasn't fair.
He pushed open his car door and unfolded himself from inside, then slowly approached her building. Normally, he'd be home by now, home to his empty apartment, his empty life. Normally, about this time, he'd be sitting down alone to eat dinner, wondering what to do by himself with the long, lonely night ahead. But he'd broken his vow to Edie and stopped by Drake's earlier in the day, only to find that she hadn't shown up for her shift.
Illness, Lindy had told him.
Right, Lucas had replied.
And then he'd gotten worried about her, so he'd decided to swing by her place on the way home to see if she needed anything. Chicken soup. Cuppa tea. Bitter blond guy who missed her.
He hesitated only a moment before rapping hard three times on her front door. He waited a minute before trying again, then another minute before trying a third time. He was about to give up, was about to turn away, when a muffled sound on the other side of the door caught his attention. That was followed by a soft swoosh of something brushing against the door on the other side, and then total silence.
"I know you're in there, Edie," he said, gazing directly at the peephole. "I can hear you breathing."
More silence was his only reply.
"Okay, so now you're holding your breath," he said. "I can wait. Bet you can't."
For another long moment, there was only silence. Then the soft thump-clunk of a deadbolt being slowly and reluctantly rotated. Little by little the front door eased inward until Edie's face appeared in the opening. She had obviously just risen from bed. Her hair was a tumble of blond curls that cascaded over her shoulders, and her eyes were rimmed with red and shadowed by dark circles. As she pulled the door open a bit more, Lucas saw that she was dressed in a silky robe that fell to her ankles in a riot of color, a purple background patterned with palm trees and volcanoes and words that seemed to spell out Aloha from Waikiki.
All in all, she looked to him like a fading thirties film star, blond and pale and tragic. And he really wished he knew what to say or do that would make everything in Edie Mulholland's life perfect.
She sighed with much defeat and took one more step backward. "If you're not going to go away, then you might as well come in. I don't want the neighbors gossiping."
"About you?" he asked. "Get real. If the neighbors gossip about you, it's only to talk about what a sweet, decent, courteous, nice, kind, polite, blond do-gooder you are."
She muttered a sound of dubious origin. "Yeah, well, you got the blond part right, anyway."
She closed the door behind him, then gestured vaguely toward the interior in what he guessed was meant to be an invitation. Whatever. He'd take what he could get.
"Look, I know you told me to leave you
alone," he said as he followed her, "and you have to admit that I've done a pretty good job of it."
She paused just inside the living room and folded her arms over her midsection a bit self-consciously. "Yeah, you have," she agreed with what sounded like—dare he hope?—disappointment. Then, furthering his hopes, she added, with what was clearly not disappointment, "But you're here now, aren't you?"
"Yeah, well, I was kind of under the impression that your instructions carried an expiration date, even if you didn't say what it was."
"No, they don't," she said halfheartedly. "They don't expire at all. I want you to leave me alone forever."
Liar , he thought. Aloud, though, he said, "See, now that's going to be a problem for me."
"Why?"
"Because I can't stop thinking about you."
She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. So she snapped it shut again, turned her back on Lucas, and made her way silently toward the windows on the other side of the room.
Her apartment was small but tidy, an eclectic mix of secondhand castoffs and make-do pieces that combined to achieve a surprisingly pleasant effect. The sofa was actually a futon in a basic wooden frame, the mattress cover decorated with moons and stars. It was accessorized by an old steamer trunk tipped on its side to serve as a coffee table, and wooden crates plastered with paintings of fruit made up end tables on either side of the futon. The hardwood floors were bare, the walls painted a functional beige. They were brightened, however, by Art Institute posters advertising various exhibits and offerings. She seemed to like Paul Klee and Gustav Klimt a lot.
"You have a nice place, Edie," he said as he folded himself onto the futon.
"Thanks," she replied as she pulled aside a lace curtain to gaze down at the street. When she dropped it again and turned to face Lucas, she seemed a bit distracted somehow. "It's not much, but I call it home."
It felt like a home, he thought. Whereas his own place was artfully arranged and decorated—thanks to a friend of a friend who did that kind of thing for a living—it didn't feel or look much like a home. Edie's place, for all its lack of sophistication, was warm and comfortable and lived in. Plants tumbled from bookcases near the windows, throw pillows had been cast onto the floor, magazines spilled across the steamer trunk, and framed photographs were scattered about everywhere. Whereas Lucas's apartment looked like something from a magazine, Edie's looked like something from real life. It was yet another indication that she did indeed have a nodding acquaintance with reality.
"So how come you missed your shift at Drake's this afternoon?" he asked in as offhand a manner as he could manage.
She didn't answer right away, but he knew it wasn't because she hadn't heard him. She did offer a response in the form of another one of those heavy, resigned sighs. Then she sat down in a bentwood rocker near the window—a solid ten feet from where Lucas had seated himself—and said, "I missed my shift because I haven't gotten much sleep this week, and today it just all caught up with me."
When she sat, her robe fell open above her knees, exposing bare calves and feet beneath. Lucas tried really hard—okay, maybe not so hard—not to notice. "Not, uh, not sleeping, huh?" he echoed—sort of. "Seems to be a lot of that going around. I've been having a rough time of it myself in the sleep department lately." He held her gaze levelly as he added, "I can't imagine why."
Her expression remained impassive as she told him, "Not sleeping usually isn't a problem for me."
"Me, neither," he agreed. "I generally sleep like a rock."
"No, I mean not sleeping doesn't usually bother me," she clarified. "I've always been a bad sleeper. This week, though, for some reason, it's just taken a toll."
He eyed her thoughtfully as he asked, "How come you're a bad sleeper?"
She eyed him not at all as she replied, "I just don't like to sleep, that's all."
"Why not?"
"It's a waste of time."
"Mm."
"You, uh, you're not going to leave me alone until I tell you why I reacted the way I did last week, are you?" she asked pointedly.
No reason to dance around that one, Lucas thought. So, "Nope," he told her frankly. "I'm not going to leave you alone."
She nodded. "Okay, fine. It's not like it's any big secret, anyway. Even Lindy knows about my past. I felt obligated to tell her about my arrest record when she hired me. It was the decent thing to do."
Well, that certainly got Lucas's attention. "You have an arrest record?" he asked, not bothering to mask his surprise. "For what? Jay walking? Double parking? Failing to curb your dog?"
She shook her head, but her expression was inscrutable as she told him, "For prostitution. Burglary. And trafficking in controlled substances."
Lucas's jaw dropped open at her admission. He knew he must look foolish, but it was the only reaction that seemed appropriate. Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm was suddenly the estrogen-producing half of Edie and Clyde . And that was a crime against nature.
Taking advantage of his silence, Edie jumped right to her story. "We talked once, you and I, about having a lousy childhood. You remember that?"
He nodded. And somehow found the wherewithal to finally close his mouth.
"So why was yours so … unfulfilling?" she asked. Before he could object to the question, she added, "Hey, if I'm going to spill my guts to you, the least you could do is return the favor."
Okay, so she had a point. Reluctantly, and as quickly as he could, Lucas said, "I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin that never quite turned a profit. Or broke even, for that matter. My father was a dairyman who spent every waking hour trying to eke out a living that never materialized. My mother was an alcoholic who spent every waking hour complaining about her rotten life. She was a mean mom when she was drinking," he said with eloquent understatement, "but my father was never in the house often enough to intercede. One day, when I was eleven, just when I was getting big enough to fight back, she took off and never came back—said she was going to find a man who could afford to keep her. She died three years later—alone—in a Detroit hospital. A few years after that, my father collapsed in one of the barns after a heart attack. The United States government took everything that was left for back taxes. And then my older sister and I pretty much took care of ourselves. Mostly by going hungry in our struggle to survive.
"There," he concluded. "The Lucas Conaway Story, all nice and neat. Not the greatest Movie of the Week ever made, but, save the absence of a lingering illness or two, not bad. How about yours?"
Edie studied him with much consideration before beginning her own sentimental journey. Finally, she observed, "Interestingly, we seem to have a few things in common. Only it was my father who had the addiction—cocaine, in his case—and walked out on the family. Not that my mother was any prize herself, but she was sober most of the time and had no excuse for her behavior. Then one day, when I was sixteen, she wrapped her Mercedes around a concrete pylon on the expressway, and that was the end of that. It was also the end of the family fortune. After her funeral, I learned that everything was just … gone. Most of it, I'm sure, went right up my father's nose. He died of an overdose not long after that."
"So, uh … so then what happened?" Lucas asked stupidly.
Edie inhaled deeply and avoided his gaze. "I was supposed to go live with an aunt and uncle who were remarkably like my parents, so I took off," she told him. "It's a long story, but I'll be charitable and give you the condensed version, too. By the time I ran away, I was already a mess. I'd started drinking heavily when I was thirteen or fourteen and was using some pretty serious stuff by the time I turned sixteen. My father's stash was always easy to find. Once I hit the streets, my habit only got worse—and more low class. I pretty much became your garden variety, pathetic little junkie whose sole reason for living was to make that next score."
She paused to take another, less calming, breath. "I, uh … I did some things back then, Lucas, that I shouldn't have done. That I wouldn't have done,
had I been clean."
Feeling a bit sick to his stomach at hearing such a dark tale about Little Edie Sunshine, Lucas told her, "Edie, if you don't want to talk about this, you don't have—"
"No, I want you to know," she said, snapping her head back up to meet his eyes. "I think it's important that you know." But her gaze wandered from his once more as she continued, "I, um … I made a few bucks as a prostitute from time to time. I, uh … I broke into people's houses and stole from them. Worse than that, though, as messed up as I was, there are memories of that time that I'll have to carry with me for the rest of my life. And that's a hell of a lot worse than jail. I know. Trust me."
"Edie…" he tried again to interject.
But she would have none of it. "You have to understand that people in that kind of situation … they aren't thinking straight. They're not thinking at all. They're like animals, driven by instinct—or, at least, driven by their addiction. But I'm not like that anymore," she hastened to add—as if Lucas needed the reassurance. "I haven't been like that for a long time."
He opened his mouth to speak, realized he had no idea what to say, and closed it once again.
"A couple of weeks before my eighteenth birthday," she said softly, still not looking at him, "I got beaten up really bad by a, uh … by a client," she euphemized. "The cops responding to the call took me to the hospital, and I met a social worker named Alice Donohue there who, God knows why, took a liking to me. She helped me out a lot, Lucas. Got me into some good programs, helped me get straightened out. It wasn't easy for me or her. But Alice stuck with me, so I stuck with me, too."
"Where is she now?" he asked quietly, a bit roughly, still trying to digest all this unpalatable information.
"She, uh … she died," Edie said. "A few years ago. She had breast cancer, and they didn't catch it until it was too late. It wasn't fair," she said a little more softly. "She saved my life, but nobody could save hers." She swallowed with obvious difficulty before adding, "I promised her before she died that I'd—"
How to Trap a Tycoon Page 28
