How to Trap a Tycoon (25 page)

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?"

Well, of course she could imagine when he put it like that. In fact, she could do much more than imagine. She had, after all, lived the reality. She just didn't want to think about it if she didn't have to. And damn Lucas for making her recall it now.

But when she responded to his comment, all that came out was a very surprised, "You think I'm beautiful?"

The moment she said it, Edie wanted to crawl under the table and hide. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut tight and just hoped like crazy that Lucas hadn't heard what she said.

"For chrissakes, Edie," he countered, squelching her hope. "How have you made it through life this long without someone taking complete advantage of you?"

Her eyes snapped open again at the vehemence that had crept into his voice. He sounded like he wanted to hit something. Hard. "Who says no one's ever taken advantage of me?" she said softly.

The retort was out of her mouth before she could stop it, so rattled had she been by the anger in his delivery, so fast was her heart racing when she remembered how he'd called her beautiful. Immediately, she regretted giving voice to the comment and wished she could call it back. But it was too late. Lucas was looking at her in a completely different manner now, one full of startled surprise and newfound interest.

"I mean, uh…" She tried to backpedal. "That, um … that didn't come out right."

"Didn't it?"

"No."

But her voice shook a little when she spoke, and she could tell that he didn't believe her.

"Who's taken advantage of you, Edie?" he asked softly.

"Nobody," she replied.

He eyed her with much speculation. "The other night, when you took me home," he said, rousing more memories in her brain that she would just as soon not have roused, "I told you I was looking for someone. And then you told me you were looking for someone, too."

"No, I told you I
wasn't
looking for anybody," she countered quickly. A little too quickly. Even she could tell she was lying now.

"I didn't believe you then," Lucas told her. "And I don't believe you now." Before she had a chance to contradict him again, he hurried on, "So are you, by any chance, looking for the person who took advantage of you? Could Little Edie Sunshine be looking for something as nasty and cold-hearted as revenge?" He smiled grimly. "I didn't think you had it in you, sweetheart. Way to go."

She told herself to change the subject—now—to a safer, more mundane topic. What Edie was looking for was none of Lucas's business. For some reason, though, she found herself revealing, "I'm not looking for revenge." Not the way he thought, anyway, she added silently to herself. "I'm looking for my mother. My biological mother."

At her revelation, his grin fell, but his expression remained totally impassive. "I didn't realize you were adopted," he said.

She nodded. "When I was an infant. My adoptive parents are both dead now." Somehow, she refrained from adding,
May their putrid, disgusting, miserable souls rot in the coldest pit that hell has to offer,
and continued, "I've just always been curious about my natural mother and the circumstances surrounding my birth and why she gave me up and where I come from and what kind of heritage I might have and if there are any medical conditions I should be aware of and—" She cut herself off when she realized she was beginning to sound hysterical. She cleared her throat indelicately and tried again. "Anyway, I've just always wondered where I came from."

Lucas nodded. "I take it you're not from
Chicago
."

"I was born in
Kentucky
. I moved from
Hopkinsville
to
Naperville
with my adoptive parents when I was ten."

"So then you probably come from
Kentucky
," he remarked blandly. "There. I've solved the mystery for you. Now you can stop wondering."

She emitted a soft sound of surprise at his easy conclusion. "Yeah, well, as much as I appreciate your, uh … your help, there's a little more to where a person comes from than the geographic location of their birth."

"Is there?"

She eyed him curiously. "Well, yeah. I mean, where are you from originally?"

He hesitated a moment before replying simply, "I was born in
Wisconsin
."

"That's it?" she asked. "Just 'I was born in
Wisconsin
'? No town, no house, no family, no history?"

In a very low, very flat voice, he told her, "No."

"None?"

"None worth mentioning."

Gee, why all the melodrama?
Edie wondered. From what she'd seen of Lucas Conaway, he seemed to have enjoyed every advantage life had to offer. Still, she knew it took more than financial stability and the presence of a family to make a person content. Boy, did she know that.

"Unhappy childhood?" she asked mildly.

"Slightly," he told her, the word coming out cold and clipped.

She nodded her understanding. "I know the feeling."

"Oh, I sincerely doubt that."

Edie wasn't about to sit here and play What's My Whine? with Lucas Conaway. Not just because it was much too late for that kind of thing, and not just because the two of them would look pathetic, and not just because she had no desire to rehash her past history with him—or to learn more about his, for that matter. No, the reason Edie didn't want to compete with Lucas in the I've-had-it-rougher-than-you-have department was simply because she knew she would win, hands down.

Such a conclusion had come about because it was a simple statement of fact and was in no way inspired by an immersion in self-pity. On the contrary, she had long ago turned loose the resentment she'd once had about how the capricious fates had dealt her such a god-awful hand in the game of life. Because if she didn't turn it loose, she knew she would become one of those stark, ugly creatures who ate out of trash cans and slept in society's refuse. And she'd seen enough of those people during her months living on the streets that she didn't want to become one herself.

So she said nothing to start such a disagreement. Instead, she turned the tables on Lucas. "So who are you looking for?" she asked.

He expelled a few more of those dry, humorless chuckles and deflected his gaze from hers, staring at some point over her left shoulder. "A tycoon," he finally mumbled. "I'm looking to trap myself a tycoon."

Lucas had no idea what provoked him to reveal his professional quest to Edie Mulholland. What was the point of talking to such a raging goody-two-shoes about anything other than the most mundane superficialities? Even if what they'd discussed over the last several minutes had been anything but mundane or superficial, never mind goody-two-shod.

What the hell had he been thinking to follow whoever had been tailing her? he wondered. Okay, some misguided sense of chivalry, maybe. He could live with that. He could accept that somewhere deep down inside himself, there still flickered some small gasp of decency, however remote. But once the guy following Edie had sensed Lucas's presence and kept walking past the café, why had Lucas gone inside? Why had he sat down—uninvited, no less—with Edie? And what had possessed him to tell her he was looking for a tycoon?

He supposed he'd just wanted to say something—anything—that would banish that haunted, hungry look from her eyes. Man, for a minute there, perky, cheerful, genial, blond Edie Mulholland had actually looked unhappy. Morose. Bitter. And it was because of something he'd said. As many times as Lucas had been nauseated by her blind sweetness, he hadn't necessarily wanted to see her lose it. Not really. Yeah, putting up with her being chipper and happy and blond all the time was certainly depressing, but now he realized it was worse to see her sad.

You are such a sap, Conaway,
he chastised himself. And hell, he hadn't even been drinking this time.

He remembered again how much he had revealed that night he'd gotten drunk at Drake's when she'd had to take him home. He remembered telling her that he wanted her, remembered asking her—no, begging her, he reminded himself ruthlessly—not to leave him alone in his apartment. Worse, he remembered how much he had wanted her to stay. He remembered how much he had needed her. And he remembered how much it had hurt to hear his front door click shut softly behind her when she left.

And Lucas didn't like it that he had felt hurt. He liked it less that he had felt need. He didn't need anybody, he told himself now. And he sure as hell wasn't going to let anybody hurt him ever again.

"A tycoon," Edie repeated, bringing him back to the present. "Um, aren't you surrounded by them every day at Drake's?"

"Not the kind I need."

Their server returned then with a massive wheel of baked Brie surrounded by slices of apple and pear and a small bunch of grapes and accompanied by a big basket of baguettes and brioches. And Lucas decided right then and there that there was no way he could allow Edie to consume all that by herself.

"This is an appetizer?" she asked their server, her thoughts clearly mirroring his.

She nodded as she told them,
"Bon appetit."

"Let me help you with this," Lucas offered magnanimously as he plucked a grape from its stem. "It's the least I can do."

"Yeah, the very least," Edie murmured—dryly, if he wasn't mistaken.

"Hey, you can't eat baked Brie alone," he told her. "It's a fact of life."

She eyed him dubiously. "You learned this fact of life on your fictional trip to
Paris
, I assume."

"Touché,"
he said.

She smiled. "I forgot you speak the language fluently."

"Mais, oui,"
he told her.

"Can you say anything that's not a cliché?" she challenged him.

"There, see?" he countered. "You speak French, too. You said
cliché
like a native."

"But then, we were talking about some tycoon you're looking to trap," Edie said, spoiling what had promised to be some pretty righteous chitchat.

Lucas sighed his resignation. "Yeah," he said, reaching for a slice of apple to dip in the soft, fragrant cheese. "Adam wants me to find a rich woman to take care of me."

Edie had just swallowed a bite of Brie-laden brioche when Lucas tossed off his careless announcement, and it must have gotten lodged somewhere on the way down. Because suddenly, she went still. Then she made a very unladylike sound, and then she began to hack. A lot. Lucas stood quickly and moved around the table, ready to administer the Heimlich on her if he had to. At least, he would have administered the Heimlich on her … if he'd ever bothered to learn how to perform it. Since he hadn't, he opened his hand over the center of her back instead and began to pat her with some vigor.