How to Trap a Tycoon, Elizabeth Bevarly [best smutty novels txt] 📗

was about to consume one of its own. "Funny," she said, "but I find that hard to believe, seeing as how authors of sensationalistic, potboiling best-sellers tend to want to follow up with yet another sensationalistic, potboiling best-seller."

Wow . Had Dorsey been thinking that she was panicked a few moments ago? She'd had no idea what panic was then. Because at hearing Lindy's latest charge, what Dorsey had thought was panic surged right into utter and complete tenor.

"I … I don't know what you're talking about," she lied.

"Oh, don't you?" Lindy asked.

Even though she knew it was probably pointless to deny it any longer, even though she'd just promised herself she was going to come clean and tell the truth, even though she'd just felt liberated by that decision to be honest, Dorsey shook her head. But she couldn't quite give voice to her denial, couldn't quite make herself speak the words that would only wind up being yet another lie.

"Lindy, what the hell is going on?"

Dorsey had all but forgotten Adam's presence until she heard his impatiently uttered demand. And what had started off as concern, then apprehension, then panic, then terror, segued now into stark, stampeding horror. Because Dorsey realized then that nothing was going to work out. Nothing would be all right. She would never be able to make Adam understand. The way Lindy was about to interpret things, there was no way Dorsey would be able to make an adequate explanation of her actions. Once Lindy planted the seed in his brain that Dorsey was going to write a tell-all book about her experiences at Drake's, then Adam would be fully capable of nurturing that idea into fruition all by himself. He would be fully capable of believing that Dorsey was nothing but, well, an opportunistic floozy who cared only for her own success.

Impulsively, she tried to intercept her employer, spinning around to meet Adam's gaze beseechingly. "Adam, we have to talk," she told him.

"Too late," Lindy said from behind her.

"It's not what she thinks."

"Nice try, Dorsey."

"Let me explain."

"No, let me explain."

"Somebody had better explain something," Adam ground out roughly, his gaze ricocheting from one woman to the other. "Because I'm completely lost here."

"Adam—" Dorsey began.

But Lindy cut her off with a more loudly offered, "Do you know you've been sleeping with the enemy, Adam?"

And naturally, that announcement would be what caught his attention. Because instead of looking at Dorsey, he shifted his gaze quickly to Lindy. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

Lindy smiled, a brittle, bitter little smile. Never one to mince words, she said, "We have a celebrity in our midst, Adam. Because Dorsey MacGuinness is none other than Lauren Grable-Monroe."

He expelled a single humorless chuckle. He gazed first at Lindy, then at Dorsey, then back at Lindy again. "You're out of your mind, Lindy," he said softly.

Lindy shook her head slowly, almost sadly. "Although there may have been a time in my life when that was true," she said, "I assure you that these days I never make mistakes. Would that the rest of the world followed my example. We wouldn't get into binds like this one."

"Lindy," Dorsey tried again.

But her employer ignored the petition and continued, "I got suspicious of these little notebooks some time ago," she said, nodding again at the stack on her desk. "So after you left one night, I read them."

Dorsey gaped at her. "You read my work? You violated the privacy of my locker? And you call me deceptive?"

"I watch over what's mine, Dorsey. I've worked too damned hard to make Drake's—hell, to make my life—what it is. I've made sacrifices and deals you can't begin to understand. And I'm going to make sure no one ever takes all this away from me. I'll do whatever I have to do to protect what's mine. And I'll do whatever I have to do to survive. I always have. I always will. If that means I search a locker or two along the way, when compared to some of the other things I've had to do, you can bet your ass I don't lose any sleep over it."

"But—"

"And when I read those notebooks and realized you were keeping tabs on me and some of the other employees—not to mention the clientele of Drake's—I had you investigated. Thoroughly."

Dorsey shook her head in silent disbelief. She'd been investigated? Without her knowledge? That was so… It was so… So … gross.

"And imagine my surprise," Lindy continued, "when my investigator came to me this afternoon and told me who you really are. Lauren Grable-Monroe. I must admit, it blew me away." She turned to Adam then. "I didn't believe it, either, at first. But my man had evidence that was indisputable."

"What kind of evidence?"

The question came not from Dorsey, but from Adam. When she turned to look at him, his expression was as blank and guarded as Lindy's usually was. She had no idea what he was thinking. And that, she decided, couldn't possibly be good.

"Photographs," Lindy told him. "Video tape. Audio recordings. And some copies of documents from her publisher."

The revelation made Dorsey's stomach pitch. The realization that she had been followed, photographed, recorded without her knowledge… The idea that someone at Rockcastle had betrayed her identity… The knowledge that what she had thought was her private life had been invaded and made available to someone else, that it could even be made public…

She understood then better why her employer was so outraged. Lindy feared that Dorsey was about to expose her and Drake's in exactly the same way, that she would take what she had recorded in those notebooks and follow up How to Trap a Tycoon with a similarly titillating book about private men's clubs in general and Drake's in particular. If Dorsey hadn't already been determined to keep identities confidential in her dissertation, she was certainly going to make sure no one was exposed now. There was little that could make her feel more demeaned or hurt than