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

gave him the impression that she was looking down her nose at him. "I suppose there was," she conceded. "But where would be the fun in that?"

A couple of months ago, Adam would have probably responded to such a question in exactly the same way. A couple of months ago, he would have drawn his conclusions to Lindy's allegations with a terrible, swift sword. A couple of months ago, he wouldn't have thought twice about hanging Mack out to dry for what she appeared to have done. A couple of months ago, he would have gotten right on the phone to tell all his media colleagues that Lauren Grable-Monroe was actually a young sociology professor at Severn College named Dorsey MacGuinness—pass it on. Of course, a couple of months ago, he'd been a ruthless, heartless sonofabitch. Now…

Well.

Now he didn't feel quite so ruthless. Now he didn't feel quite so heartless. In fact, whereas a few months ago he'd been certain his heart was gone for good, over the last few months he'd somehow managed to recover a good portion of it. It hadn't been easy, of course. He'd had to have some help, some guidance. And the search was by no means over. Right when he'd started gathering up the remaining bits and pieces, his guide had jumped off the beaten path and disappeared into the underbrush. And, he wasn't sure now if he would ever see her again.

So that kind of sucked.

He supposed now that there was only one thing for him to do. He'd have to figure out exactly where his guide had gone, exactly what her intentions were, exactly where her origins lay. He'd have to decide for himself whether she had been in it only for herself, or if she'd truly found the same thing he had along the way. And then…

Well. He'd cross that bridge—or machete down that jungle—when he came to it.

He gestured toward the pile of papers and photos fanned across Lindy's desk. "Mind if I take all this and a pot of coffee out to the salon?" he asked her. "I have a lot of reading to do tonight."

"Not at all," she replied. "But I think you should know, Adam, that if you don't expose Dorsey for the conniving little fraud that she is, I plan to do it myself. In spades."

Adam sighed wearily. That, he thought, was exactly what he had been afraid of.

Chapter 15

« ^ »

I t was after dark by the time Dorsey arrived home. Not that she noticed. Not that she cared. Not that the sun would ever rise in her personal reality again. She might as well get used to the total absence of light, she told herself. Because the only plans she had for the immediate future—or the long-range future, for that matter—involved going to bed and pulling the covers up over her head.

As if in anticipation of her dark arrival, no lights had been lit inside the townhouse she shared with her mother. Which was odd, Dorsey thought, because when she'd come home to eat lunch and change clothes that afternoon, Carlotta had been hip-deep in cleaning out closets, and it had been clear that she would be shoulder-deep by nightfall. And even cleaning out closets, her mother had, as always, looked elegant and sublime, dressed in Ralph Lauren blue jeans and chambray shirt, her platinum hair tied back with a Laura Ashley scarf.

In spite of her melancholy humor, Dorsey smiled at the memory. How on earth had she turned out so differently from her mother? She supposed that was one of those mysteries of the universe that no one would ever be able to solve.

"Carlotta?" she called out to the house at large.

"I'm up here, Dorsey!" came her mother's reply. "In the attic!"

Well, that would explain the absence of light, she thought. No telling how long Carlotta had been up there.

Contrary to her mood, Dorsey did deign to switch on a Tiffany lamp as she dropped her backpack onto the plum-colored velvet sofa. Then she made her way across the living room—as posh and feminine as Carlotta's bedroom was, with purples replacing the pinks—and up the stairs. She paused beneath the rectangular opening in the hallway ceiling above. The stairs had been unfolded into the corridor, and a faint yellow light spilled down over them.

"Hel-loooo up there," she called.

There was a rustle of sound in response, then her mother's head appeared over the opening. "Come on up. You'll never guess what I found when I was cleaning today."

Without hesitation, Dorsey pulled herself up the collapsible stairs and found her mother sitting on the attic floor with a flurry of dust motes dancing around her. The minute particles caught and refracted the pale light from a single naked bulb overhead, giving Carlotta the appearance of an enchanted maiden encircled by fairies. Baskets and trunks and cartons containing no telling what surrounded her, and familiar pink lacquer boxes sat open on the floor in front of her.

"Oh, wow," Dorsey said with a smile as she crossed to where her mother sat. "You found my old Barbies."

Genuinely delighted by the discovery—and not just because it gave her something to focus on besides Adam and Lauren and Lindy and disaster—she sat down beside her mother and ran a finger through the thin film of dust that coated one of the bright-pink box tops.

"I can't remember the last time I looked at these," she said wistfully. Oh, to be a little girl again, she thought, and have to worry only about which plastic shoes to put on Barbie's rubber feet before she went out adventuring with Skipper and Christie and Ken.

"I remember," Carlotta said. "It was the summer before you started seventh grade. You put them away just before junior high school, because you insisted you were much too old for things like Barbie."

Dorsey nodded, her smile broadening. "That's right. I remember. I was just so mature at twelve."

"I, of course, thought you were being silly,