How to Trap a Tycoon(67)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Edie did, finally, offer up a small grin in response. "Yeah," she said. "The seven PMS dwarfs. You know Grumpy, Crampy, Moody, Bitchy, Hungry, Angry, and Doc. What? They never visit you from time to time?"

"Oh, yeah," Dorsey assured her with a chuckle, feeling a little better in light of Edie’s—granted halfhearted—whimsy. "And not just when I’m PMS, either. But, gee, I’ve never seen the little buggers get you down like this before," she further observed.

Edie shrugged again, still fumbling with the ties on her apron, which had clearly tangled themselves into a knot. "It’s just…" She sighed again. "I had to tell someone to leave me alone last weekend, that’s all.

Dorsey nodded her understanding. "And he won’t leave you alone, huh?"

"No, he has left me alone," Edie said unhappily as she fought more fiercely with the apron ties that wouldn’t come free. "I haven’t seen or heard from him all week."

"And that’s a problem?" Dorsey asked, unable to mask her surprise. "I mean, I kind of thought you didn’t like to be bothered by testosterone-driven individuals."

"I don’t like being bothered by them," Edie agreed, increasing her efforts with the relentless apron ties. "I thought it would be good that this guy left me alone. But now it turns out that it’s not so good. Now it turns out that it’s pretty lousy. And I can’t understand why it bothers me so much that he’s left me alone. I can’t understand why he’s left me alone. I can’t understand any of it."

With a snarl of frustration, Edie jerked on the uncooperative apron ties with such force that she completely ripped one from its mooring. And with a growl of discontent, she snatched the apron from over her head, wadded it up ruthlessly in both fists, and stuffed it maliciously into the linen bin. Then, when she realized how thoroughly she had lost control, she punctuated the episode with a viciously muttered, "Oh, hell."

Dorsey’s eyebrows shot right up to her hairline. She’d never, ever heard Edie Mulholland swear. Not even the harmless ol’ H-E-double-hockey-sticks. "Uh … why don’t you go home and try to get some sleep?" she told the other bartender. "You look like you could use it."

Still staring into the linen bin she had just assaulted, Edie expelled a sound that was at once wistful and hopeless. "Sleep," she echoed. "Yeah, right. What a concept."

Without much enthusiasm, she gathered together her things and slung her backpack over her shoulder. And then, without so much as a see-ya-later, she ducked under the bar and strode away without a second glance.

"That girl needs someone to take care of her," Straight-Shot said, as he always did the moment Edie was out of sight.

But this time, his words carried more concern than they normally did. And this time, Dorsey realized she was in total and unequivocal agreement.

When she turned back around, her concern for Edie was immediately replaced by concern for herself. Because Adam was gazing at her quite openly, hiding none of what he clearly felt for her. And all Dorsey could do was hope that nobody else in the bar could see what she saw so plainly etched on his face—desire, need, affection, perhaps even…

Well. At any rate, it was all written there, for all the world to see, and Adam clearly didn’t care who saw it.

"Hi," he said as she approached him. Some of her anxiety must have shown on her face, because he added softly, "Rough day?"

"Not really," she said.

Not unless she included the discussion in her eight o’clock Soc. 101 class, anyway. The one where each and every one of Lauren Grable-Monroe’s earlier proponents—led by none other than Ms. Tiffany Jennings herself—had proclaimed the author to be a writer of sensationalistic claptrap that pandered to the masses. And an opportunistic floozy. And an adulteress. And a Jezebel.

And then they’d gotten ugly.

On one level, her students’ impassioned proclamations had actually restored some of Dorsey’s faith that they wouldn’t be easily misled by media hype—well, not after a couple of months of behaving like lemmings, at any rate. On another level, their vocal pronouncements concerned her that they would be easily misled by angry, torch-bearing mobs. On yet another level, they had offended her intensely as the author of the book they were maligning. And on another level still, she realized they were only echoing some of the very things she had said herself that day in class.

And on a last, very high altitude level, they made her head spin and her stomach hurt. Real bad.

The tide—among other things—had definitely turned against Lauren Grable-Monroe. In her panic, Dorsey had tried to call her editor that afternoon, but Anita had already left for the day. Tomorrow morning, however, first thing, Dorsey intended to pin Anita down, to chat about this matter of turning tides, and to discuss the possibility of having Lauren Grable-Monroe go gracefully into that good night, to get herself to a nunnery, to crawl back beneath the rock whence she had come. Soon.

It was the only feasible thing to do now. Clearly, How to Trap a Tycoon had run its course. It was time for the next icon of contemporary American culture to step up to the—admittedly unstable—pedestal. Lauren Grable-Monroe, Dorsey was certain, would be more than happy to surrender her spot. The sooner, the better.

"So then, it was a good day?" Adam asked, bringing her thoughts back to the present—and none too soon.

"Yeah, I guess so," she said. "Good enough, anyway."

"I’ve had a good day, too," he told her with a smile. Then, dropping his voice a little, he added, "Because I spent most of it thinking about you."

A wisp of something warm and wonderful wrapped itself around her heart and squeezed hard. He was just so … so cute, she thought. During all the weeks since Dorsey had met him, Adam had seemed like both the irresistible force and the immovable object. He had come across as such an indomitable creature, such a rock-solid wall of conviction.

But tonight he was just … cute. Really, really cute. And something inside her turned all warm and fuzzy at the realization that she was at least partly responsible for his transformation.

"What a coincidence," she told him, leaning forward over the bar to draw as close to him as she dared. "I just so happened to spend a good part of my day thinking about you, too."

Her smile, she was sure, was identical to his, because she was experiencing her own share of desire, need, affection, perhaps even… Well. At any rate, she didn’t doubt that her own feelings were all written on her face for all the world to see, and oddly enough, like Adam, she didn’t care who saw them.