How to Trap a Tycoon(37)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Damn. He’d lost his train of thought. Something about having Mack…

Oh, yeah. Here he finally had her in the privacy of his own home—relatively speaking—and she was working for him, for God’s sake.

This wasn’t how he’d planned for their first encounter in his home to unfold. He’d rather hoped to have her as a guest. And he certainly hadn’t pictured her here dressed in her bartender uniform. He’d had her wearing something considerably more revealing and infinitely more feminine.

Stop it , he ordered himself. If he kept this up, he was going to be so focused on Mack tonight that he would forget all about the people—who was it he had invited again?—who were coming to his party. Including—

Oh, no. Oh, man. Oh, jeez.

Desiree.

Adam had been so wrapped up in his thoughts, or rather fantasies, or maybe plans—hey, a guy could dream, couldn’t he?—for Mack that he’d completely forgotten that he would have a date for his party tonight.

This, he thought, might pose a problem. Especially if Desiree got it into her head that she would be spending the night after the party. Which wasn’t entirely unthinkable, because the last time he’d had her at his place—wow, had it been almost two months ago?—he had, well … had her at his place.

What the hell had he been thinking to invite her tonight? he wondered now. Then he recalled the last night that she’d spent here and what she’d—almost—been wearing under her dress. Oh, yeah. He remembered now. He’d been thinking about her—

Well, that really wasn’t important at the moment, was it? he told himself. Because what he hadn’t been thinking when he’d invited Desiree tonight was that he would, at some point, discover that not only was Mack a single woman, but that she felt damned nice to hold in his arms. And once those little revelations about Mack had started playing out in his mind—over and over and over again, too, dammit—the last thing Adam had thought about was Desiree. About Desiree coming over tonight. About Desiree’s probable expectation that she would be staying until dawn.

And now Adam was going to have his work cut out for him trying to figure a way to juggle two women without hurting either of them—or himself, for that matter, seeing as how one of those women had such sharp fingernails and the other had such a sharp tongue.

As if to punctuate his dilemma, the doorbell rang rather ominously. With one final, longing look at Mack, he forced himself to go and answer it.

Oh, man , he thought again. It was going to be a loooong night.

* * *

As a clock somewhere behind Dorsey chimed softly nine times, she concluded that this was going to be the longest night of her entire life. Although only two hours had passed since Adam’s guests had begun to arrive, the evening had seemed interminable. Of course, that was probably because one of the first of those arrivals had been Adam’s date. His date, for crying out loud. This after he had asked Dorsey—no, commanded her—to remain after the party. To do what? she wondered now. Make cocktails for Emperor Odious the First and Princess Dainty during their romp in the royal love shack?

It didn’t help at all that Adam’s—she tried not to choke on the word—date was a pink, poofy powder puff of a woman, nor was it at all heartening to overhear an introduction of her and find out she was named Desiree. Truly. Desiree. What was worse, she was tiny and trim and bubbly, with elfishly cut, pink-tinted—I mean, really—blond hair. Still worse, she was dressed in a cute little Chanel suit the color of blush wine.

A Chanel suit , Dorsey reflected again. A cute little Chanel suit, too, exactly the kind Lauren Grable-Monroe described in How to Trap a Tycoon. Somehow, Dorsey couldn’t help but speculate further that Desiree had sporty separates, seductive peignoirs, and at least one diaphanous gown in her closet, as well, and that she was looking to trap herself a tycoon, a tycoon like, oh, Dorsey didn’t know, maybe Adam Darien, for example, and it was all Lauren Grable-Monroe’s fault, and damn, damn, damn, what the hell had she been thinking to write that stupid book to begin with?

Dorsey had always considered herself to be an average-sized woman, but she felt like a great, hulking ogre next to Desiree. Everything about the woman was just so dainty and so cute and so perky and so … pink. She’d even come to the bar and, when she couldn’t remember the name of the drink she usually had—it was something pink, though, she did remember that part—had asked Dorsey to fix her something that would match her suit. And Dorsey, damn her evil little mind, had recommended a cosmopolitan which, in addition to being a lovely shade of rose, was pretty much straight liquor and might just cause someone who was tiny and perky, someone like, oh, say, Desiree to pass out in the bathroom—or, as would be the case for her, the powder room—at some point during the evening.

So far, Desiree had consumed four of them. Any minute now, it ought to start getting interesting.

Likewise interesting was the look on Adam’s face now as he hastily approached the bar, because he looked uncomfortable and annoyed, and Dorsey was just superficial and ticked off enough to be happy about it. Hey, why should she be the only one who was having a lousy time?

"What the hell have you been serving Desiree all night?" he demanded without preamble.

Dorsey shrugged as innocently as she could. "Cosmopolitans," she told him benignly.

He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "That doesn’t sound too bad. What’s in a cosmopolitan?"

"Vodka."

"What else?"

"Triple Sec."

"What else?"

"A little splash of cranberry juice for color."

"What else?"

"A lime squeeze."

"What else?"

"More vodka."

He gaped at her in alarm. "Are you trying to tell me she’s been drinking straight liquor all night? Do you realize what that will do to a woman her size?"

"Make her really, really fat?" Dorsey asked hopefully.

Adam frowned but said nothing.

"Well, it can," she insisted. "Of course a little thing like her could use a few extra pounds."

Clearly detecting her malice, Adam countered just as coolly, "Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like the way Desiree is arranged."

"Yeah, you would," Dorsey muttered. Then, unable to help herself, she added, "She’d better be careful her Wonderbra doesn’t suffocate her. Those things can be fiercely hard to manage."

Adam eyed her blandly. "Gee, you talk as if you speak from experience. No offense, Mack, but you don’t seem the Wonderbra type." He dropped his gaze to the part of her that was most likely to don such a contraption and added, "Obviously."