How to Trap a Tycoon(46)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

She arched her eyebrows in disbelief. "Excuse me?" she demanded right back. "What were you thinking to follow me and scare me half to death?"

"You should be scared to death," he countered. "A woman walking alone in a deserted city in the middle of the night. Anything could have happened to you out there."

"Hey, I can take care of myself," she told him.

His cool smile indicated just how seriously he took that assurance. "Yeah, right," he muttered.

"I can."

He looked nowhere near convinced. "Uh-huh. Sure. Okay. Whatever you say."

"And even if you don’t believe that, it didn’t give you any right to follow me," she told him.

He hesitated only a moment—a moment he used to glare at her even more—then said, "I wasn’t the one who was following you. I was following the guy who was following you."

Okay, now she was really confused. "What are you talking about?"

He sighed heavily, then threw her another one of those looks that suggested she was responsible for ruining his whole evening. Hey, his whole life. "I was sitting in my car across the street from Adam’s place, about to pull away, and—"

"You got a parking space that close?" she interrupted, unable to help herself. Figures a guy like him would get a break like that. Lucas Conaway was the kind of person who got every break life had to offer. Good looks, massive intelligence, expensive education, fabulous job right out of the gate. Of course, there was that small matter of him completely lacking a soul, she thought further. But then, nobody was perfect, right?

He eyed her in a way that made her feel like she was about two years old. "Ye-ess," he said, drawing the word out curiously. "I got a parking space that close. Is that a problem?"

She shook her head. She wanted to ask him if he’d found true love and profound happiness, too. She’d already seen for herself that he had a dream job and a chic apartment and fabulous clothes. He no doubt also had an adoring family and maybe even true love, as well. Then again, she didn’t really want to know about it if he did have all those things. It would only reinforce her conviction that the universe was in no way balanced. Why should Lucas Conaway get all the breaks? she wondered. Especially since he obviously didn’t appreciate them.

"No," she told him. "It’s not a problem. Just interesting, that’s all."

"In what way?"

In response, Edie only shook her head and told him to go on.

"Anyway, I was getting ready to pull away from the curb," he continued, "when I saw you leave the building. I watched you go, and—"

"Why?" she interjected, her curiosity getting the better of her.

He said nothing for a moment, then leaned forward again and fixed his gaze even more studiously on her face. And then, very softly, he told her, "Because I like the way you move."

When she noted the way he was looking at her—all hungry and agitated and intense—a strange heat circled up from her belly to coil around her heart. All she could manage in response to his revelation was "Oh," in a very small voice.

Thankfully, their server returned with his coffee then, giving Edie some small reprieve to collect her thoughts. Unfortunately, she discovered that she’d lost most of them. And she doubted she would be finding them anytime soon.

Lucas said nothing as their server set his coffee before him, only continued to study Edie’s face as if it was something he honestly found worth studying. Hah. What a laugh. She knew she was in no way study-worthy, with her makeup long gone and the stain of embarrassment darkening her cheeks. She had to fight back the urge to lift a hand to her hair and brush back the straggling bits of blond that had escaped her topknot, faint tresses she could feel dancing around her face and neck. She’d tugged on a massively stretched-out, faded green Severn College sweatshirt before leaving Adam’s, and she was certain the shapeless garment only enhanced her utter lack of appeal now.

Nevertheless, in spite of her certainty to the contrary, Lucas must have found her intriguing, because his gaze roved hungrily from her eyes to her hair to her cheeks to her mouth, where it lingered for some moments more. The heat that had flooded Edie’s face moved lower then, to her heart, her belly, her womb, then exploded somewhere lower still, somewhere deeper, somewhere she hadn’t felt heat ever before. And on the heels of that heat came a wanting, a needing, a desiring that was completely alien to her.

Never in her life had Edie desired a man. Never had she wanted one. She had certainly never needed one. And she was stunned to discover that, after all this time, after all her certainty to the contrary, her body would feel something like this and betray her so thoroughly. Especially now. Especially here. Especially with someone like Lucas Conaway.

"Anyway," he finally continued, scattering her thoughts again—for now. "I watched you go, and then, as I was getting ready to pull out, I saw some guy leave the building behind you and take off in the same direction."

"What made you think he was following me?" she asked.

Lucas smiled again, but, as usual, there was no happiness in the gesture. Such a bundle of contradictions he was, she thought, not for the first time.

"What can I say?" he muttered. "I always expect the worst from people."

"Yeah, well, I can’t say that’s exactly a surprise," she muttered back.

"I didn’t like the thought of you being out there alone if this guy tried something," he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, "so I left my car where it was and took off after him. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, all right?" he added apologetically. But the apology seemed to come less because he had scared her and more because he was ashamed of himself for caring.

"I don’t know who it was," he said further when she opened her mouth to ask him exactly that. "And when you ducked in here, he just kept on going. Probably because by then he knew he was being followed, too, by me. But he was following you, Edie. Not me. Him. I wouldn’t do something like that to you. I wouldn’t try to scare you."

You might not try , she thought, but you do a damned fine job of it anyway.

"I can’t imagine why anybody would be following me," she said.

He chuckled low, without an ounce of humor. "You can’t imagine," he repeated.

She shook her head slowly but said nothing.

"A beautiful woman alone on a deserted street in the middle of the night?" he cajoled. "And you can’t imagine what it is about that scenario that would inspire a man to commit mayhem? Or worse?"