How to Trap a Tycoon (16 page)

Thankfully, another one of Drake's members summoned her from the other end of the bar then, and Lucas glanced up to see …
Davenport
, he thought the guy's name was … beckoning to her. Funny, but he'd never seen the guy in here at night before, only in the afternoons … when Edie was working.

So he was one of those, was he? A man who lusted after his bartender. Nothing so unusual about that, though, Lucas conceded. Hell, he himself lusted after most of the women who worked at Drake's. Except for Little Edie Sunshine, of course.

Who could possibly lust after someone who was so sweet and nice and kind and happy and blond and nauseating? Not Lucas. No way. She wasn't his type at all. He liked his women dark and brooding and convenient and temporary. Edie, he was certain, was the kind of woman who pined for wedding cakes and rugrats and white picket fences.

He shrugged off his ruminations before they could wander into the realm of forbidden fantasizing, then went back to moping in silence. Unfortunately, his moping was shortly interrupted by Edie's lyrical and, inescapably, happy laughter.

Involuntarily, he turned his attention to the end of the bar, where she was laughing at something
Davenport
had said to her.
Davenport
was laughing, too, then he uttered something that Lucas had heard him say a million times before: "Edie, you need someone to take care of you." And then it was with no small amount of surprise that Lucas watched the man reach over the bar and run the pad of his thumb lightly and with great affection—or something—over Edie's cheek.

And it was with no small amount of astonishment that Lucas watched Edie jerk her entire body back in response out of
Davenport
's reach, lifting her own hand to her face as if she'd just suffered a bad burn.

She recovered quickly, seeming to realize how much she'd overreacted—at least,
Davenport
seemed to think she'd overreacted, judging by the stark surprise etched on his face. Lucas, on the other hand, was thinking she should have heaved a coffeepot at the guy. But she forced a quick smile and mumbled something Lucas couldn't hear, something that made
Davenport
smile in return. Nevertheless, Edie, Lucas could tell, was still pretty shaken by the man's action.

Something inside him tightened coldly at witnessing the episode. Not just because
Davenport
had broken one of Lindy Aubrey's clear but unspoken rules of Drake's membership—nobody, but nobody, touched her employees—but because of the way the man continued to look at Edie. As if he knew something she didn't know. As if he planned to act on whatever that something was. As if he intended to make Edie his own, in whatever way he could.

It gave Lucas the creeps.

And it took a hell of a lot to give Lucas Conaway the creeps.
Davenport
, with one simple action, had set off every alarm bell Lucas possessed. And hell, it wasn't even Lucas the man was bothering.

"Hey, Edie, come here," Lucas called out, unsure when exactly or even why he had decided to divert her attention that way.

Clearly puzzled, but seeming nonetheless grateful, she excused herself to
Davenport
and carefully made her way back down to where Lucas was holding his—he just now realized—barely touched drink. Well, hell, now what was he supposed to say when she got there? What other reason would he possibly have for catching her attention, if not because he wanted another drink? Without thinking, he lifted the glass to his mouth and tipped it back, consuming the entire contents in three hasty gulps.

If Edie's expression had been puzzled before, now it was absolutely flummoxed. Flummoxed also described how he felt when two ounces of good gin splashed hotly into his belly.
Wow
. That was actually kind of cool. He should do that more often.

"Yes, Mr. Conaway?" Edie asked as she approached him.

For the first time since he'd met her, she wasn't quite so annoyingly chipper. But she was still smiling, he noted. And really, he supposed, when he got right down to it, it wasn't such a bad smile after all. Not nearly as irritating as he'd initially thought it. Of course, the fact that he currently had two ounces of good gin buzzing into his system might have something to do with taking the edges off Edie. It was certainly taking the edges off him.

"I'm ready for another drink," he told her.

She eyed him a bit cautiously, and he really couldn't blame her for that. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I mean, that first one—"

"Is gone," he finished for her. "Which is a very good reason for me to have another one."

She arched her eyebrows in idle speculation, then capitulated. "Okay," she said as she reached for his empty glass.

And as she fixed him another drink, as he watched her small, delicate hands move so gracefully over glass and bottle, Lucas turned his attention to the man seated at the other end of the bar. Now
Davenport
was eyeing
him
cautiously, clearly as unconvinced of Lucas's motivation in summoning her as Edie was.

Too bad, old man
, Lucas taunted him silently, having no idea why he should suddenly be feeling so combative, so strangely protective. Nevertheless, part of him wanted to stick out his tongue at the other man and sing, "I've got her no-ow, you ca-an't have her, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah."

He glanced back at Edie, feeling oddly triumphant for some reason. Then he heard himself say, "And tell me something, Edie. Just how do you know so much about the Romans, anyway?"

* * *

Edie Mulholland was just finishing up her lecture on the Pax Romana when Lucas Conaway fell off of his bar-stool. She shook her head in bemusement and leaned over the bar to evaluate the outcome of his tumble, hoping he hadn't hit anything important. Fortunately, he appeared to have landed on his ego, and with all that padding, she was more than certain he was okay.

What on earth had come over him tonight? she wondered. He never drank to excess, rarely even ordered a second drink. Yet every time she'd turned around tonight, he'd been calling her over to fix him another one, then asking her some question like, "So those aqueducts—what's up with that?" or "Remember Appian Way Pizza? Man, I loved that stuff."

Actually, it wasn't every time she'd turned around that he'd claimed her attention, she thought as she watched him brush off his ego and climb back aboard his stool. It was only when he'd seen her talking to Mr. Davenport. Then again, Mr. Davenport had left Drake's a half-hour ago, and Lucas hadn't stopped talking. On the contrary, over the last thirty minutes, their conversation had taken a few, not particularly welcome, turns toward the personal.

Of course, she had easily sidestepped those personal questions by returning to the topic of the Romans. Because there was nothing like dry, dusty history to put a damper on a man's—even an intoxicated man's—ardor, however dubious. Men hated rehashing stuff, after all. History was something they very seldom remembered. It was something that Edie, however, could never forget. And not just because it was her major, either.

"Are you okay, Mr. Conaway?" she asked as politely as she could, watching with some concern as he righted himself and folded his arms and hands very carefully over the top of the bar. Clearly, he was not okay. Clearly, he was three sheets to the wind. But Edie was much too courteous to call him on the fact. Besides, Lindy would fire her like
that
if she told a member to his face that he'd had a snootful.

"I'm fine, Edie," he insisted. "And please, call me Lucas."

Oh, yeah, right
, she thought. It was one thing to think of him as Lucas in her head, quite another to address him by his first name here in Drake's. Hey, if she was going to do that, then while she was at it, she might as well just tell him he was three sheets to the wind, too. And then she should empty all the cash registers and stuff her pockets with the evening's receipts. Then, as a final farewell, she could jump up on the bar and dance La Vida Loca while she quoted Goethe. If she was going to get fired, she ought to at least go out memorably.

She knew she should alert Lindy that Lucas Conaway was snookered, because Lindy insisted on being informed of such things. She absolutely did not tolerate overly inebriated members in Drake's. But something prevented Edie from doing so. Unlike some of the other members of Drake's—drunk
or
sober—Lucas Conaway was harmless. And it wasn't like this had happened before. Everybody had days when they felt the need to tie one on. Well, everybody except Edie, of course. But that was only because she couldn't afford to tie one on.

So instead of telling Lindy, she told Lucas, "I'm going to call you a cab."

He smiled, not a little seductively. "I'd rather have you call me sweetheart," he murmured, slurring the last word a bit before breaking up in hysterical laughter and slapping his open hand against the bar.

Edie shook her head but couldn't help smiling back. At least he wasn't a mean drunk. She'd seen more of those in her day than she cared to think about.

"Maybe some other time," she told him. "Right now, you need a cab."

"I need you more," he told her. This time, however, there was no laughter, no slapping the bar. This time his eyes darkened dangerously, and he seemed completely focused, completely sober.

Edie expelled a quick, unexpected breath and wondered why her heart was suddenly racing so. Lucas Conaway had never once flirted with her. On the contrary, he seemed to go out of his way to make sure she knew he didn't much like her. Not that he'd ever been mean or snide to her, but she knew he called her Little Edie Sunshine and Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm behind her back.

Not that such labels bothered Edie. She'd worked long and hard to become a sappy sentimentalist, dammit. She wore her bleeding heart proudly on her sleeve as a badge of honor, by God. She hadn't always been Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm. Oh, no. She'd clawed her way up from the very dregs of despair to be as abominably happy and as nauseatingly cheerful as she possibly could be. Nobody—but
nobody
—was going to take her good will and contentment, her sappy sentimentality, away from her. Nobody. Certainly not some sarcastic little pessimist like Lucas Conaway.

She didn't care how cute he was.

Which still didn't explain why she was suddenly so overcome at the sight of him intoxicated and tempting and … and… Reluctantly, her smile returned. And
happy
, she realized. Even if it had been brought about by the contents of a bottle, Lucas Conaway was honestly, genuinely happy. She'd never seen him in such a state. And she could only wonder why he became this way when his guard was down.

Best not to think about it, Edie
, she told herself.
It's none of your business. He's none of your business.

"What you need is a cup of hot coffee and a cold shower," she told him, assuring herself that was not affection she saw glittering in his eyes.

He smiled again, the fuzzy, dreamy little smile of a man who was much too inebriated for his—or her—own good. "Why, Edie," he murmured in that fuzzy, dreamy voice again, "you little vixen, you little minx, you little spitfire, you little tigress, you little … little…" His pale-blond brows arrowed downward in confusion for a moment. "Where was I? Oh, yeah. You little firebrand, you. If you want to take a shower with me, just come right out and say so."

Okay, time to call Lindy
, Edie thought.

But he seemed to realize he'd gone too far. "I'm sorry," he told her. He leaned back a bit, lifting his hands lightly in surrender, seeming genuinely chastened. "You're right. I've had far too much to drink, and there's no way I can drive myself home. Here," he added further, reaching into his trouser pocket. "Here are my keys. You take them."

Before she could decline and before she realized what he intended to do, he reached across the bar and took her hand gently in his. Instinctively—because she simply could not tolerate the feel of a man's hands on her—Edie jerked her own hand back out of his grasp. He looked as startled by her reaction as Mr. Davenport had earlier that evening, and she felt as angry now at Lucas as she had then at the other man. Now, however, for some reason, she was less inclined to cover her feelings, and she glared at him openly if silently.

Dammit, why did men feel like they could just reach out and take whatever they wanted, without so much as asking first? she wondered, not for the first time in her life. And why did they have to take more than a person was willing to give?

"I'm sorry," Lucas said, clearly dumfounded by her sudden and vehement withdrawal. "I didn't mean … I mean, I know Lindy forbids… That is, I know I'm not supposed to touch you, but…"

"Then why did you?" Edie demanded.

He blinked once, his blue eyes reflecting his puzzlement at her reaction. "I was just … I was going to give you my keys, that's all."

Her heart still racing, Edie nodded once. "Fine," she told him. "Just set them on the bar then."

Without comment, Lucas did as she'd requested, and it was with no small effort that Edie hid her surprise. He didn't seem like the kind of man who would obey a woman's command without grumbling something snide in response. Hey, he didn't seem like the kind of man who would obey a woman's command, period. Even when he was slightly intoxicated, she was no match for him, and they both knew it. If he wanted to give her a hard time, he could do it very easily.