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

either side of the futon. The hardwood floors were bare, the walls painted a functional beige. They were brightened, however, by Art Institute posters advertising various exhibits and offerings. She seemed to like Paul Klee and Gustav Klimt a lot.

"You have a nice place, Edie," he said as he folded himself onto the futon.

"Thanks," she replied as she pulled aside a lace curtain to gaze down at the street. When she dropped it again and turned to face Lucas, she seemed a bit distracted somehow. "It's not much, but I call it home."

It felt like a home, he thought. Whereas his own place was artfully arranged and decorated—thanks to a friend of a friend who did that kind of thing for a living—it didn't feel or look much like a home. Edie's place, for all its lack of sophistication, was warm and comfortable and lived in. Plants tumbled from bookcases near the windows, throw pillows had been cast onto the floor, magazines spilled across the steamer trunk, and framed photographs were scattered about everywhere. Whereas Lucas's apartment looked like something from a magazine, Edie's looked like something from real life. It was yet another indication that she did indeed have a nodding acquaintance with reality.

"So how come you missed your shift at Drake's this afternoon?" he asked in as offhand a manner as he could manage.

She didn't answer right away, but he knew it wasn't because she hadn't heard him. She did offer a response in the form of another one of those heavy, resigned sighs. Then she sat down in a bentwood rocker near the window—a solid ten feet from where Lucas had seated himself—and said, "I missed my shift because I haven't gotten much sleep this week, and today it just all caught up with me."

When she sat, her robe fell open above her knees, exposing bare calves and feet beneath. Lucas tried really hard—okay, maybe not so hard—not to notice. "Not, uh, not sleeping, huh?" he echoed—sort of. "Seems to be a lot of that going around. I've been having a rough time of it myself in the sleep department lately." He held her gaze levelly as he added, "I can't imagine why."

Her expression remained impassive as she told him, "Not sleeping usually isn't a problem for me."

"Me, neither," he agreed. "I generally sleep like a rock."

"No, I mean not sleeping doesn't usually bother me," she clarified. "I've always been a bad sleeper. This week, though, for some reason, it's just taken a toll."

He eyed her thoughtfully as he asked, "How come you're a bad sleeper?"

She eyed him not at all as she replied, "I just don't like to sleep, that's all."

"Why not?"

"It's a waste of time."

"Mm."

"You, uh, you're not going to leave me alone until I tell you why I reacted the way I did last week, are you?" she asked pointedly.

No reason to dance around that one, Lucas thought. So, "Nope," he told her frankly. "I'm not going to leave you alone."

She nodded. "Okay, fine. It's not like it's any big secret, anyway. Even Lindy knows about my past. I felt obligated to tell her about my arrest record when she hired me. It was the decent thing to do."

Well, that certainly got Lucas's attention. "You have an arrest record?" he asked, not bothering to mask his surprise. "For what? Jay walking? Double parking? Failing to curb your dog?"

She shook her head, but her expression was inscrutable as she told him, "For prostitution. Burglary. And trafficking in controlled substances."

Lucas's jaw dropped open at her admission. He knew he must look foolish, but it was the only reaction that seemed appropriate. Mulholland of Sunnybrook Farm was suddenly the estrogen-producing half of Edie and Clyde . And that was a crime against nature.

Taking advantage of his silence, Edie jumped right to her story. "We talked once, you and I, about having a lousy childhood. You remember that?"

He nodded. And somehow found the wherewithal to finally close his mouth.

"So why was yours so … unfulfilling?" she asked. Before he could object to the question, she added, "Hey, if I'm going to spill my guts to you, the least you could do is return the favor."

Okay, so she had a point. Reluctantly, and as quickly as he could, Lucas said, "I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin that never quite turned a profit. Or broke even, for that matter. My father was a dairyman who spent every waking hour trying to eke out a living that never materialized. My mother was an alcoholic who spent every waking hour complaining about her rotten life. She was a mean mom when she was drinking," he said with eloquent understatement, "but my father was never in the house often enough to intercede. One day, when I was eleven, just when I was getting big enough to fight back, she took off and never came back—said she was going to find a man who could afford to keep her. She died three years later—alone—in a Detroit hospital. A few years after that, my father collapsed in one of the barns after a heart attack. The United States government took everything that was left for back taxes. And then my older sister and I pretty much took care of ourselves. Mostly by going hungry in our struggle to survive.

"There," he concluded. "The Lucas Conaway Story, all nice and neat. Not the greatest Movie of the Week ever made, but, save the absence of a lingering illness or two, not bad. How about yours?"

Edie studied him with much consideration before beginning her own sentimental journey. Finally, she observed, "Interestingly, we seem to have a few things in common. Only it was my father who had the addiction—cocaine, in his case—and walked out on the family. Not that my mother was any prize herself, but she was sober most of the time and had no excuse for her behavior. Then one day, when I was sixteen, she wrapped her Mercedes around a concrete pylon