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

Why? He had no idea. All this time, he'd been thinking of her as Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm, a woman who was all sweetness and light, with no shadows or sharp edges to her at all. He'd been certain she was the perfect product of a perfect union in a perfect place, a woman incapable of knowing what it was like to feel pain or experience the cold bite of reality. To Lucas, Edie Mulholland had always been a one-dimensional icon of all that was good in the world.

With last week's episode, however, he had been forced to acknowledge that there were indeed some shadows in her life. There were sharp edges. Badness had soiled her goodness. Darkness had dimmed her light. Bitterness had tainted her sweetness. And that didn't seem fair at all.

Which was laughable, really, because Lucas Conaway was always the first one to eagerly opine that Life Is Not Fair. It was the banner behind which he stoically marched, the standard he held aloft for all to see. Life Is Not Fair, he gleefully proclaimed to anyone who would listen—and even to those who wouldn't. And that was always followed immediately by his other heartfelt declaration: Deal With It.

But he hadn't dealt with it. Not this time. Not with Edie. And hell, it wasn't even his life that wasn't fair these days. Sure, he'd had his setbacks in the past, too. Poverty, abandonment, despair. But then, life is not fair. He had dealt with it. In his own life, at any rate. Somehow, though, he couldn't accept it for Edie's.

Because with Edie, it just wasn't fair.

He pushed open his car door and unfolded himself from inside, then slowly approached her building. Normally, he'd be home by now, home to his empty apartment, his empty life. Normally, about this time, he'd be sitting down alone to eat dinner, wondering what to do by himself with the long, lonely night ahead. But he'd broken his vow to Edie and stopped by Drake's earlier in the day, only to find that she hadn't shown up for her shift.

Illness, Lindy had told him.

Right, Lucas had replied.

And then he'd gotten worried about her, so he'd decided to swing by her place on the way home to see if she needed anything. Chicken soup. Cuppa tea. Bitter blond guy who missed her.

He hesitated only a moment before rapping hard three times on her front door. He waited a minute before trying again, then another minute before trying a third time. He was about to give up, was about to turn away, when a muffled sound on the other side of the door caught his attention. That was followed by a soft swoosh of something brushing against the door on the other side, and then total silence.

"I know you're in there, Edie," he said, gazing directly at the peephole. "I can hear you breathing."

More silence was his only reply.

"Okay, so now you're holding your breath," he said. "I can wait. Bet you can't."

For another long moment, there was only silence. Then the soft thump-clunk of a deadbolt being slowly and reluctantly rotated. Little by little the front door eased inward until Edie's face appeared in the opening. She had obviously just risen from bed. Her hair was a tumble of blond curls that cascaded over her shoulders, and her eyes were rimmed with red and shadowed by dark circles. As she pulled the door open a bit more, Lucas saw that she was dressed in a silky robe that fell to her ankles in a riot of color, a purple background patterned with palm trees and volcanoes and words that seemed to spell out Aloha from Waikiki.

All in all, she looked to him like a fading thirties film star, blond and pale and tragic. And he really wished he knew what to say or do that would make everything in Edie Mulholland's life perfect.

She sighed with much defeat and took one more step backward. "If you're not going to go away, then you might as well come in. I don't want the neighbors gossiping."

"About you?" he asked. "Get real. If the neighbors gossip about you, it's only to talk about what a sweet, decent, courteous, nice, kind, polite, blond do-gooder you are."

She muttered a sound of dubious origin. "Yeah, well, you got the blond part right, anyway."

She closed the door behind him, then gestured vaguely toward the interior in what he guessed was meant to be an invitation. Whatever. He'd take what he could get.

"Look, I know you told me to leave you alone," he said as he followed her, "and you have to admit that I've done a pretty good job of it."

She paused just inside the living room and folded her arms over her midsection a bit self-consciously. "Yeah, you have," she agreed with what sounded like—dare he hope?—disappointment. Then, furthering his hopes, she added, with what was clearly not disappointment, "But you're here now, aren't you?"

"Yeah, well, I was kind of under the impression that your instructions carried an expiration date, even if you didn't say what it was."

"No, they don't," she said halfheartedly. "They don't expire at all. I want you to leave me alone forever."

Liar , he thought. Aloud, though, he said, "See, now that's going to be a problem for me."

"Why?"

"Because I can't stop thinking about you."

She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. So she snapped it shut again, turned her back on Lucas, and made her way silently toward the windows on the other side of the room.

Her apartment was small but tidy, an eclectic mix of secondhand castoffs and make-do pieces that combined to achieve a surprisingly pleasant effect. The sofa was actually a futon in a basic wooden frame, the mattress cover decorated with moons and stars. It was accessorized by an old steamer trunk tipped on its side to serve as a coffee table, and wooden crates plastered with paintings of fruit made up end tables on