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

Her mother waved a hand negligently before her. "Oh, not really," she said. "Anybody who's anybody comes to the Dariens' annual holiday party. Hello, Adam, how are you?" she quickly added, pushing herself up on tiptoe to brush a swift kiss—the kind of kiss any mother-in-law might bestow upon her son-in-law … dammit—over his cheek, as well. "Isn't that true?" she added after completing the gesture. "Everyone comes to your parents' party."

He nodded. "I told Mack that very thing myself when we arrived. Which is why I'm not surprised to find you here at all."

Carlotta smiled. "Darling boy," she murmured. Then, "Be a love and fetch me a champagne cocktail," she told him. "I seem to have misplaced my companion."

Adam dipped his head forward in ready and complete obeisance, something that frankly amazed Dorsey. Men just dropped like flies around Carlotta, she thought. She had no idea how her mother managed to so thoroughly and immediately captivate them the way she did, not even after writing a book on the subject, but even Adam wasn't immune. Carlotta just had it. Whatever it was. And Dorsey was surprised by the faint thread of envy that wound through her at realizing she'd never master it herself.

"One champagne cocktail coming up," he said. "Mack? What can I get for you?"

"Just a glass of wine would be fine," she told him.

He nodded again—with much less obeisance this time—and headed off on his quest.

"Stand up straight, dear," Carlotta whispered to Dorsey the moment he was out of sight. "Men don't like to see a woman slouching."

Dorsey frowned but obediently squared her shoulders. "Yeah, well, at least for once I am a woman tonight," she told her mother. "Usually, when I come to something like this, I'm a bartender."

Her mother made a soft tsking sound. "Darling. To a man, you're always a woman. So long as your body has produced estrogen at some point in your life, it doesn't matter if you're dressed as a bartender or a nun or a sheep or a dairy maid or a Marine Corps drill instructor." She paused for a thoughtful moment, then added, "All the better if you're dressed as one of those, actually. You'd be amazed at some of the things I've worn over the years. Why, I remember one time when the president of a local bank asked me to dress up like his fourth-grade teacher, Miss Applebee, and spank his—"

"Carlotta," Dorsey interrupted, dropping her voice to a nervous whisper. "This is not the kind of conversation you should be having with your daughter. Or any other human being we might claim as a mutual acquaintance," she added further.

Carlotta ran a few fingers over the sparkling gems that encircled her throat. "Actually, darling, I think it would have simplified things enormously if we'd had more conversations like this a long time ago. You have so many strange hang-ups about sex."

"Carlotta," Dorsey hissed again. "Keep your voice down."

"Well, you do."

"Yeah, well … it is … you know … sex," Dorsey said—very quietly—in her own defense. "It's kind of important, after all. Who doesn't have hang-ups?"

Her mother exhaled that quiet sound of disappointment again. "Sex is nothing," she told her daughter. "I can't imagine where you get the idea that it's important."

Dorsey gaped at her. "How can you, of all people, say that? You've made your living with sex."

Her mother eyed her with much disenchantment. "Sex is not how I've made my living," she denied coolly.

"Oh, please. Carlotta, I know exactly what goes on in a relationship like that. And you've never bothered to hide it. Don't even try to tell me you didn't have sex with the men who kept you."

"Well, of course I had sex with them, darling. Don't be an imbecile."

"Hey!"

"But sex isn't why I stayed with them."

"Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?" Dorsey remarked.

"And sex wasn't why they stayed with me, either."

Now Dorsey eyed her mother with much confusion. "Then why did they?"

Her mother sighed heavily, shaking her head in maternal disapproval at her daughter. "Oh, Dorsey. You just don't get it, do you?"

"Obviously not."

Suddenly, Carlotta smiled, a wicked, playful, salacious little smile. "Then again, you have been getting it more than usual lately, haven't you?" she fairly purred. "And from that nice Adam Darien, too."

"Carlotta."

As always, her mother ignored the admonition. "You'd do well to rein him in, dear," she said instead. "And I can tell you how to do it. I didn't reveal all of my secrets in How to Trap a Tycoon, you know. I kept the best ones to myself. Not every woman would be able to handle them. I think you would, though. You are, after all, my daughter."

As if Dorsey needed reminding. "Thanks, Carlotta, but I don't think there will be any reining in going on in my relationship with Adam." Mostly, she added to herself, because that relationship was about to go careening off a cliff, and any reining one way or another would be pretty much pointless after that.

Carlotta sighed again. "Oh, well. Easy come, easy go," she philosophized.

"Easy is as easy does," Dorsey countered, unable to help herself.

But instead of being offended, Carlotta only smiled brightly. "Now you're getting it. Or, at least, you could be. On a much more regular basis than you are now, at any rate. Have you even tried the crème de menthe thing with Adam yet?"

Dorsey squeezed her eyes shut tight. Why, she wondered, did these society parties always seem to go on forever? As usual, it was going to be a long night.

Chapter 13

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"You are a total disgrace to your gender, you know that?"

Edie muttered the words with frank disappointment, shook her head dismally at Lucas, and wondered what on earth had possessed her to think she could help him in his quest to trap himself a tycoon.

Oh, sure, he looked gorgeous and yummy and totally edible in the charcoal, pin-striped Brooks Brothers suit