How to Trap a Tycoon(65)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"Oh, yes," she cooed. Actually cooed, he thought. How incredibly irritating. "Why don’t you and I go somewhere that’s a little more … private?" she added smoothly.

Good God. "Private?" he echoed.

"Private," she reiterated. "I have my car tonight—but not my husband," she told him shamelessly. "We could have a lot of fun together, you and I. And not just tonight, either." She smiled with much satisfaction before concluding, "And it goes without saying that it would be my treat. All of it," she further assured him, "would be my … treat."

Unbelievable , Lucas thought. Everything he’d been looking for in a tycoon for weeks, everything he needed for his article, everything, in fact, that he could possibly have ever fantasized about in his entire life… It had all just walked right up and introduced itself. All he had to do was open his mouth and agree to this woman’s proposition, and he would have both his story for the magazine and one helluva good time. And it even went without saying that it would be her treat.

So he opened his mouth to agree to the woman’s proposition. Unfortunately, what came out was, "Thanks, but if you’ll excuse me, I really need to go find my date."

And then, as gracefully as he could—which wound up being not very graceful at all—he disengaged himself from the woman’s enthusiastic clutches, offered her a smile of—almost genuine—regret, and ran like hell in the opposite direction.

Tycoon schmycoon. What Lucas really wanted more than anything else in the world was Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm.

* * *

"You blew it. You totally and completely blew it. I can’t believe how badly you blew it. Excuse me a moment while I crown you King Blowing It the First. It just boggles the mind how you blew it."

Lucas waited patiently for Edie to finish berating him—again—and tried to focus on navigating the road ahead of him instead. Ever since leaving the gallery, she had taken enormous pleasure in telling him over and over and over again how close he’d come to bagging his quarry only to fail miserably by letting his tycoon get away. In fact, Edie seemed to take a little too much pleasure in telling him that. Here she’d gone to all this trouble to help him trap a tycoon, and when he’d finally had one in his grasp—or, at the very least, had found himself in her grasp—he had let the woman get away, and Edie actually sounded happy about it.

What an interesting development.

"The world isn’t a big enough place to hold how badly you blew it," she continued relentlessly. "That big sucking sound you hear? That’s you blowing it. I mean, Lucas…" She sighed heavily. "You blew it."

"So you’ve said. Sixty-four times now."

"But you blew it."

"Sixty-five."

He braved a glance in her direction to find that she had braced her elbow against the passenger side window and was clutching a fistful of blond curls over her forehead. She looked beat. She looked frustrated. She looked confused. What she didn’t look was happy.

"I’m sorry," he said, turning his attention back to the highway. "I know you went to a lot of trouble, and I apologize for not taking advantage of you."

He felt, more than saw, her go rigid.

"It," he hastily corrected himself. "I apologize for not taking advantage of it. You, I would never apologize for taking advantage of. Mainly because I think you’d have as much fun as I would."

"Oh, right. In your dreams."

"Oh, believe me, Edie, we have definitely been enjoying ourselves in my dreams. You can’t imagine."

She said nothing in response to that, and Lucas didn’t push. He was still thinking about how she had touched him—okay, slapped him … details, details, sheesh—earlier in the evening, and he was still wondering how to go about broaching that particular subject with her. Because he did indeed intend to broach that particular subject with her. And he would do it before this night was through. He just hadn’t quite decided yet how he was going to tiptoe delicately around it.

"So, Edie, about that little slap you gave me earlier this evening," he began. Okay, so forget the tiptoeing. Steamrollering had always worked much better for him, anyway. "Did you enjoy that as much as I did?"

He glanced over at her again, and this time he found her smiling. Still looking beat, frustrated, and confused, but smiling. It wasn’t a big smile, but it wasn’t bad. It was something they could work on.

"I enjoyed it more than you could possibly know," she told him.

He smiled back. "I thought so."

"But probably not in the same way you did," she qualified.

"Oh, I don’t know about that," he told her. "How does the saying go? A little S and M now and then is relished by the wisest men."

She hesitated only slightly before revealing, "I’ve never heard that saying."

He feigned surprise. "No? Well, I sure have."

"And it wasn’t S and M," she corrected him.

"Wasn’t it?"

"No, it was F and R."

"F and R?"

"Fun and rewarding."

He threw her a lascivious grin. "So then we did enjoy it in the same way."

She expelled a few halfhearted chuckles. "You are the strangest man," she said.

Her comment stung just enough that Lucas couldn’t quite stop himself from remarking, "Oh, and that’s something coming from a woman who can slap a man without compunction but can’t tolerate having his hand curled innocently over hers."

Once again, he felt Edie stiffen in the seat beside him. "That’s none of your business, Lucas."

"Maybe not," he retorted. "But it sure as hell makes it difficult to get to know you better."

"Then don’t try to get to know me better."

He kept his gaze trained on the road ahead as he said, "See, now that’s going to be something of a problem."

"Why?"

"Because, Edie, I’d really like to get to know you better."

She said nothing in response to his assertion, and from the corner of his eye, Lucas saw her turn her head to look out the window at the quickly passing night beyond. "You’ll get over it," she said softly.

"Maybe," he conceded. "But maybe I don’t want to get over it."

"You’ll get over it," she repeated, more softly than before.

He wanted to tell her that was unlikely, seeing as how he had no intention of even trying to get over her. But the words never formed in his mouth—or his brain, for that matter—which was actually just as well, because they’d arrived at her apartment building. Which was actually not so well, after all, because before the car had even come to a complete halt, Edie was scrambling out of it to rush up the walkway toward the big, rectangular, utterly nondescript brick building.