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

exclude reasons number four and five until she had more to go on. Which left her with only, gosh, two reasons not to go through with it.

And, hey, two wasn't so many.

"Okay," she told him softly. "We'll talk later."

He didn't drop his arm right away, however, and as she turned to squeeze past him, Dorsey bumped into him instead, breast to biceps. Touching him that way was, she decided, a very nice feeling, one she wished other parts of her body could experience, too. Adam seemed to agree, because instead of pulling away from her, he uttered a low sound of wanting, and his entire body began to draw nearer.

"Later," she repeated reluctantly. "We'll talk later."

"Talk," he reiterated blandly. "Yeah, we'll do that, too." Then, with obvious unwillingness, he dropped his arm and let her go.

* * *

Unfortunately, Adam thought, as he watched Mack cross to the bar on the other side of his library, between now and later he had a cocktail party to get through. Damn. He hated hosting parties to begin with, but it was a good way to conduct business in a laid-back atmosphere, to learn things about both his colleagues and competition that he might not learn in professional surroundings. And because the guest lists of his parties generally consisted of a pretty eclectic assortment of people, it wasn't uncommon for Adam to get a nice story for Man's Life here and there in the process.

He'd always hired Drake's to cater the things because it was convenient and by now Lindy knew how he liked things done. But it had never occurred to him that Mack would work as one of the bartenders, because Mack didn't normally work weekends. Now, suddenly, here she was, in his home, a place he'd fantasized having her on more than one occasion. "Having," of course, being a relative term in this case, because he'd also fantasized having her in a variety of other places as well—including, but certainly not limited to, the top of his desk at the Man's Life offices, the deck of his sailboat, the back seat of his car, a Ferris wheel, a canoe, and one of the fitting rooms at Carson Pierie Scott. And now … and now…

Damn. He'd lost his train of thought. Something about having Mack…

Oh, yeah. Here he finally had her in the privacy of his own home—relatively speaking—and she was working for him, for God's sake.

This wasn't how he'd planned for their first encounter in his home to unfold. He'd rather hoped to have her as a guest. And he certainly hadn't pictured her here dressed in her bartender uniform. He'd had her wearing something considerably more revealing and infinitely more feminine.

Stop it , he ordered himself. If he kept this up, he was going to be so focused on Mack tonight that he would forget all about the people—who was it he had invited again?—who were coming to his party. Including—

Oh, no. Oh, man. Oh, jeez.

Desiree.

Adam had been so wrapped up in his thoughts, or rather fantasies, or maybe plans—hey, a guy could dream, couldn't he?—for Mack that he'd completely forgotten that he would have a date for his party tonight.

This, he thought, might pose a problem. Especially if Desiree got it into her head that she would be spending the night after the party. Which wasn't entirely unthinkable, because the last time he'd had her at his place—wow, had it been almost two months ago?—he had, well … had her at his place.

What the hell had he been thinking to invite her tonight? he wondered now. Then he recalled the last night that she'd spent here and what she'd—almost—been wearing under her dress. Oh, yeah. He remembered now. He'd been thinking about her—

Well, that really wasn't important at the moment, was it? he told himself. Because what he hadn't been thinking when he'd invited Desiree tonight was that he would, at some point, discover that not only was Mack a single woman, but that she felt damned nice to hold in his arms. And once those little revelations about Mack had started playing out in his mind—over and over and over again, too, dammit—the last thing Adam had thought about was Desiree. About Desiree coming over tonight. About Desiree's probable expectation that she would be staying until dawn.

And now Adam was going to have his work cut out for him trying to figure a way to juggle two women without hurting either of them—or himself, for that matter, seeing as how one of those women had such sharp fingernails and the other had such a sharp tongue.

As if to punctuate his dilemma, the doorbell rang rather ominously. With one final, longing look at Mack, he forced himself to go and answer it.

Oh, man , he thought again. It was going to be a loooong night.

* * *

As a clock somewhere behind Dorsey chimed softly nine times, she concluded that this was going to be the longest night of her entire life. Although only two hours had passed since Adam's guests had begun to arrive, the evening had seemed interminable. Of course, that was probably because one of the first of those arrivals had been Adam's date. His date, for crying out loud. This after he had asked Dorsey—no, commanded her—to remain after the party. To do what? she wondered now. Make cocktails for Emperor Odious the First and Princess Dainty during their romp in the royal love shack?

It didn't help at all that Adam's—she tried not to choke on the word—date was a pink, poofy powder puff of a woman, nor was it at all heartening to overhear an introduction of her and find out she was named Desiree. Truly. Desiree. What was worse, she was tiny and trim and bubbly, with elfishly cut, pink-tinted—I mean, really—blond hair. Still worse, she was dressed in a cute little Chanel suit the color of blush wine.

A Chanel suit , Dorsey reflected again. A cute little Chanel suit, too, exactly the