How to Trap a Tycoon by Elizabeth Bevarly (thriller books to read txt) 📕

He seemed unconcerned. Leaning back again, he muttered, "It doesn't matter. I'm going to lose my membership soon, anyway."

"Why?" she asked, telling herself she really didn't care. Honest. She didn't. She was just curious, that was all.

He expelled an impatient sigh, one that bordered on a growl. "Because I'm having a damned problem writing a damned story for my damned magazine about a damned book that's been no damned help at all," he told her. Then, to punctuate his frustration, he concluded, "Dammit."

Still assuring herself that her interest was only casual-honest, it was—Edie asked further, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm having trouble finding someone," he told her cryptically.

"Oh, well, aren't we all?" she replied before she could stop herself.

He eyed her with some confusion. "I don't know. Are we all?"

She said nothing more, hoping he'd move on to something else. But of course, being Lucas Conaway, he leaped on that little tidbit like a rabid Great Dane on a bone.

"Who are you looking for?" he demanded.

She shook her head quickly. "Nobody," she told him.

"Well, you must be looking for somebody," he countered, "otherwise you wouldn't have answered the way you did."

"I was just making conversation," she hedged. "I'm not looking for anybody."

He obviously didn't believe her, but, surprisingly, he said nothing more about it. In an effort to change the subject and get on with her life, Edie held his keys aloft and gave them a single meaningful jingle.

"Oh, all right," he finally relented. "Call me a cab, if you must. God knows I've been called worse things in my life."

So Edie did. She did call Lucas a cab. Twice, as a matter of fact. But by the time Lindy closed the bar, no taxi had shown up to take him home. In the meantime, she fed him a steady diet of black coffee, and he seemed to be coming around a bit. He still wasn't fit to drive anywhere, but he had at least eased up on his dubious flirtation. And he'd finally stopped asking her who she was looking for.

"Edie, you're a flower, you are."

Okay, so he hadn't stopped his flirtation completely, she amended. At least he was calling her a flower now instead of minx or vixen or spitfire. Honestly. She hadn't been any of those since she was seventeen.

Still, she had rather liked the way he'd said "minx" and "vixen" and "spitfire." She couldn't recall any man ever using those specific words to describe her. Others, certainly, none of them worth repeating, but never in such an affectionate tone of voice. And never with a smile that had curled her toes and warmed her all over in a way that she'd never felt warm before.

She noticed that Lindy was watching them and was clearly going to ask Lucas to leave—or rather, demand that he leave … or else; Lindy Aubrey never asked anyone to do anything. So before her employer had the chance to put Lucas out on the street—literally—Edie leaned forward, ostensibly to take his coffee cup from the bar, and said very softly so that Lindy couldn't hear, "Meet me downstairs in the lobby in fifteen minutes, and I'll drive you home myself."

He snapped his head up at that, his lips parted in obvious surprise.

"To your place?" he asked hopefully.

"To your place," she corrected him.

He smiled lasciviously.

"But only as far as the front door," she hastened to add. "Don't be getting any bright ideas, Romeo."

"Oh, trust me, Edie," he said, "the ideas I'm having right now are anything but bright."

* * *

Lucas's apartment, when they arrived there a half-hour later, wasn't at all what Edie had expected it to be. Lucas, on the other hand, behaved pretty much as she would have expected him to. As she pushed the front door open, he shoved past her without warning—it was only at the last minute that she leapt aside and avoided touching him—and without an acknowledgment or thanks. And he didn't stop moving until he'd crossed the room to his couch and promptly collapsed onto it.

She frowned as she watched him go, then wrestled the key from the lock so that she could pitch it to him and be on her way. Momentarily intrigued, however, she couldn't quite bring herself to leave. Lucas seemed like the kind of man who would go for minimal, functional, no-frills living, and not warm and cozy. Yet the place looked like something out of Martha Stewart Living. Certainly it was a masculine domain, but the colors were softer than she would have expected, the furnishings less boxy, the accessories less obnoxious.

The walls were the pale-yellow color of butter, countered by an overstuffed sofa of Wedgwood blue. Two fat club chairs were printed with a wide plaid that mingled the two colors, and a plush area rug of the same hues and geometric design spanned much of the hardwood floor. On the walls were Art Deco prints of what appeared to be famous Caribbean hotels, mixed with brightly painted posters of Spanish bullfights. The mantelpiece boasted a few odds and ends from his travels abroad, and two largish bookcases were crammed with books.

Not surprisingly, however, there were few personal touches. Actually, she realized, there were no personal touches. No framed photographs, no comfy throws crocheted by Grandma Conaway, no athletic trophies or educational citations, no tumbling plants—nothing that needed nurturing or tending or noticing. And nothing that offered any insight into the man. Really, the place was almost too tidy. Lucas Conaway obviously took great care to maintain his home.

"Bienvenue à chez Lucas," he mumbled from where he had sprawled himself comfortably on the couch.

He threw one arm upward against the sofa's back and rested it in an arrogant arc above his head. The action caused his dark-blue sweater to ride up above his khaki trousers, and Edie couldn't stop herself from fixing her gaze on the brief ripple of naked, rock-hard