How to Trap a Tycoon(27)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

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."