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

on the expressway, and that was the end of that. It was also the end of the family fortune. After her funeral, I learned that everything was just … gone. Most of it, I'm sure, went right up my father's nose. He died of an overdose not long after that."

"So, uh … so then what happened?" Lucas asked stupidly.

Edie inhaled deeply and avoided his gaze. "I was supposed to go live with an aunt and uncle who were remarkably like my parents, so I took off," she told him. "It's a long story, but I'll be charitable and give you the condensed version, too. By the time I ran away, I was already a mess. I'd started drinking heavily when I was thirteen or fourteen and was using some pretty serious stuff by the time I turned sixteen. My father's stash was always easy to find. Once I hit the streets, my habit only got worse—and more low class. I pretty much became your garden variety, pathetic little junkie whose sole reason for living was to make that next score."

She paused to take another, less calming, breath. "I, uh … I did some things back then, Lucas, that I shouldn't have done. That I wouldn't have done, had I been clean."

Feeling a bit sick to his stomach at hearing such a dark tale about Little Edie Sunshine, Lucas told her, "Edie, if you don't want to talk about this, you don't have—"

"No, I want you to know," she said, snapping her head back up to meet his eyes. "I think it's important that you know." But her gaze wandered from his once more as she continued, "I, um … I made a few bucks as a prostitute from time to time. I, uh … I broke into people's houses and stole from them. Worse than that, though, as messed up as I was, there are memories of that time that I'll have to carry with me for the rest of my life. And that's a hell of a lot worse than jail. I know. Trust me."

"Edie…" he tried again to interject.

But she would have none of it. "You have to understand that people in that kind of situation … they aren't thinking straight. They're not thinking at all. They're like animals, driven by instinct—or, at least, driven by their addiction. But I'm not like that anymore," she hastened to add—as if Lucas needed the reassurance. "I haven't been like that for a long time."

He opened his mouth to speak, realized he had no idea what to say, and closed it once again.

"A couple of weeks before my eighteenth birthday," she said softly, still not looking at him, "I got beaten up really bad by a, uh … by a client," she euphemized. "The cops responding to the call took me to the hospital, and I met a social worker named Alice Donohue there who, God knows why, took a liking to me. She helped me out a lot, Lucas. Got me into some good programs, helped me get straightened out. It wasn't easy for me or her. But Alice stuck with me, so I stuck with me, too."

"Where is she now?" he asked quietly, a bit roughly, still trying to digest all this unpalatable information.

"She, uh … she died," Edie said. "A few years ago. She had breast cancer, and they didn't catch it until it was too late. It wasn't fair," she said a little more softly. "She saved my life, but nobody could save hers." She swallowed with obvious difficulty before adding, "I promised her before she died that I'd—"

When her voice broke off, Lucas encouraged her, "That you'd what?"

"That I'd, um … that I'd live a good life for her," Edie concluded quietly. "So that's what I've been trying to do. What I'm going to keep doing. I'm going to live a good life. For Alice . And for me."

Lucas shook his head slowly and wondered what on earth he could possibly say that might brighten her dark memories or lighten her burden. But there were no words that could possibly convey the tumult of emotions tumbling around inside him. He could only imagine the ones that must be tumbling around inside her. The thought that Edie, who was so decent and good and kind, had lived through that kind of hell… The knowledge that she had descended to such immeasurable depths, only to rise so high above them… The realization that she had witnessed so much badness and darkness and could still cloak herself in so much goodness and light…

It took a remarkable person to do that.

And all along, Lucas had been thinking what an easy life she must have had. He'd been convinced she'd never seen the rank underbelly of the beast. He'd been so sure he knew more about the bitterness of life and the grimness of reality than she did. But life didn't have to be bitter, and reality didn't have to be grim. Oh, certainly, it could be and had been for both of them. But Edie had put hers behind her, had risen above it, had gotten on with her life.

Edie, he thought, had dealt with it.

Lucas, however, clearly had not. Oh, he had almost convinced himself that he had. He had been so sure that by winning scholarships to college and achieving academic honors, by writing celebrated stories for a celebrated magazine like Man's Life, by geographically distancing himself from the place where he had grown up, by emotionally distancing himself from his sister and what few friends he'd ever had… By doing all those things, Lucas had been so sure he was dealing with it. But he still pulled out the distasteful memories of his past and relished their bitterness. He nurtured the wounds and savored the hopelessness, relived the torment and revived the pain.

Hell, he wasn't dealing with it, he thought now. He was succumbing to it. Little by little, a bit more with every passing day. By