How to Trap a Tycoon (22 page)

"They want to be taken care of. By men. They want to be protected. By men."

She lifted a hand to her forehead and shook her head slowly, as if she was having trouble processing the words he was saying. "Oh, please," she finally replied. "You have no idea what women want. You have no idea what it's like being a woman in a man's world, nor do you have any idea what it's like to
not
have money. Not only have you been wealthy from the day you were born, but, well…" She shrugged. "You're a guy."

Adam eyed her thoughtfully for a moment, thinking that the two of them were finally getting around to something they should have gotten around to a
loooong
time ago. "Gee, Mack, I thought you'd never notice."

"Adam…" she murmured, the warning in her voice unmistakable.

He held up his hands, palm out, in surrender and returned to the matter at hand. "And you do, I assume," he said. "Know what it's like to do without money, I mean," he quickly clarified. "The being a woman in a man's world part, well…" He couldn't help making a slow perusal of her person, taking in the loosened necktie, the open collar of her man-style shirt, and all the soft, round places of her body that her masculine attire did nothing to hide and everything to enhance. "Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?" he concluded.

She pretended to ignore his perusal, then, just when he thought she was going to ignore that comment, too, she told him, "Yeah. I know what it's like to do without money. I'm a woman, after all."

"So I've noticed."

"Adam…"

"Is that why you majored in sociology?" he asked, this time ignoring her—or, at least, her warning. "Because of your economic disadvantages?"

He was honestly curious about her answer. He really had always wondered why Mack had chosen the major she had. She was a smart woman, certainly capable of excelling at whatever topic she decided to study. Why sociology? Why not something that would enable her to, oh …
make a living
, perhaps? Just a thought.

She shook her head. "No. I chose sociology because of my own gender disadvantages."

He threw his hands up in mock surrender. "Oh, boy. Here we go again."

"Hey, you asked."

"So I did," he conceded, dropping his arms to fold them back over his midsection. "And I suppose the least I can do is allow you to respond."

Dorsey eyed Adam with a mixture of longing to be close to him and a desire to escape him. How on earth had they wandered down this road? The last thing she wanted to talk about was why she'd chosen her field of academic study.

She sighed fitfully and shoved a handful of curls off her forehead as she propped an elbow on the back of the couch. It really was much too late to get into this tonight. She should just go home and forget about how nice it felt to be with Adam again. Forget about how much she had missed being with him this way, just talking. Forget about how much she wanted to be with him in another way, too. Forget about how wonderful it would be to sit here all night with him, just talking. Or … something.

Instead of forgetting all that, though, she heard herself saying, "You know my mother, of course."

Adam nodded. "She's a charming woman."

"Yes, Carlotta is that," Dorsey agreed.

He considered her with much interest. "Why do you call her Carlotta?" he asked.

"Oh, gee, I don't know," she replied mildly. "Maybe because that's her name?"

He chuckled. "No, I mean, why don't you call her Mom?"

She grinned. "Does Carlotta honestly seem like a Mom to you?"

He thought about that for a moment. "Well, no, now that you mention it, I suppose not. But it's still kind of unusual."

"Maybe. But I've never called her anything else. I guess she just always referred to herself as Carlotta when I was a very young child, so I learned to call her that, too. But we digress," she said pointedly.

"Yes, we were talking about how charming your mother is."

Dorsey nodded. "That's because being charming is Carlotta's life's work."

"And why is that?" he asked.

She sighed heavily, set her drink on the end table beside her, and dropped her hand into her lap. "Because being charming—among other things—is pretty much how my mother makes her living."

A flare of bewilderment crossed Adam's face. "What do you mean?"

Dorsey inhaled deeply again before continuing very carefully, "My mother has … made her way in the world by … being kept. By whatever man will have her, whatever man can afford to keep her for any length of time."

"Kept," Adam repeated, his expression clouding a bit more. "I'm not sure I follow you."

Dorsey smiled benignly. "Oh, I bet you do. You're a smart guy. Think about it."

He opened his mouth to speak, said nothing for a moment, then ventured, "Are you saying that your mother has spent her life as a man's mistress?"

Dorsey smiled again, though it wasn't as happily as before. "Actually, I think Carlotta prefers to think of herself as a courtesan, and she's actually been more than one man's mistress, but… Yes. For the most part, my mother"—she adopted her best Blanche Dubois, crushed-magnolia voice—"has always depended on the kindness of strangers."

Adam said nothing for a moment, just seemed to mull that over for a bit before continuing. Dorsey let him mull, because she knew it wasn't every day that a man found himself chatting with the product of an illicit love affair. If, of course, one could call Carlotta's relationships love affairs. Which, of course, Dorsey didn't. Had there been love involved in any of them, neither she nor her mother would be alone these days. Carlotta's relationships had been founded for economic reasons, at least on her part. As to why her benefactors had entered into the union, well…

Dorsey still wasn't quite sure what they'd gotten from the arrangement, other than the obvious—sex. They certainly hadn't entered into the relationships out of love.

"Your mother mentioned that night at your house that she had never been married," Adam said, stirring her thoughts.

"No, she hasn't been," Dorsey agreed.

He hesitated a moment before continuing, "Even so, I assumed that she and your father…" But he left the statement unfinished.

Not that it needed finishing, she thought. She had known this was coming, had set herself up for it. It made sense that Adam would be curious about such a thing, and neither Dorsey nor her mother had ever tried to hide the circumstances surrounding her birth, though they never named Reginald Dorsey specifically as her father.

And it wasn't like this was the first time Dorsey had had to explain to someone the absence of a father in her life. Ever since she was six years old—the last time she'd spoken a word to her father—she had been spinning one tale or another to explain why he wasn't around. First for her friends, then for herself. Somewhere along the line, though, she'd forgotten which of those tales was true and which were wishful thinking.

What it all boiled down to was that Reginald Dorsey had been one of her mother's patrons for almost ten years. It was evidently as close to a love affair as Carlotta had ever come. During that time, she had become pregnant with Dorsey. Reginald had been attentive enough to his daughter those first six years—when he'd been around—but once he'd tired of Carlotta, he had, of necessity, shed his daughter, too. Since then, Dorsey hadn't exchanged a single word with him.

Oh, she knew quite a bit about him, and not just through Carlotta's recounting of the past. He was a prominent local businessman who had been happily—to the outside world, at least—married until his wife's death more than a year ago. He claimed three grown legitimate children, all older than Dorsey, and lived alone now save the servants in a big, beautiful Tudor mansion in
Hinsdale
.

In fact, since he and Carlotta traveled in the same social circle, her mother still ran into him from time to time. On those occasions, according to Carlotta, the two of them would exchange polite conversation for as little time as they could manage. Rarely, though, did he ask about his—other—daughter.

Dorsey's social circle was considerably less affluent than Reginald's and Carlotta's was, so she never ran into the man. Nor did she ever ask after him, either. Carlotta had forgiven him for his abandonment of her two decades ago, ascribing it to hazards of the job. Dorsey, however, had never been employed by Reginald. Therefore, she had always reasoned, she didn't have to forgive him.

"My father," she told Adam, "was one of my mother's benefactors. Many, many years ago," she added unnecessarily.

"You say that in the past tense," he noted.

She nodded. "That's because all of it is in the past."

"He's not a part of your mother's life anymore?"

"No."

"Not a part of your life?"

"No."

"Do you know who he is?"

Dorsey felt herself coloring and fought the heat back down. She had no reason to feel embarrassed, she told herself. She wasn't responsible for her illegitimacy. And these days, there was little stigma attached to such a birth. Had it only been that way when she was a child, too, things might have been a little easier.

"Yes," she told Adam. "I know who he is."

"And he knows about you?"

"Yes."

"Yet he's not a part of your life."

"No."

"Nor your mother's."

"No."

His interrogation having evidently concluded with that, Adam studied her in silence for a long moment, his focus never wavering, his posture never changing, his eyes fixed intently on her face. Dorsey, too, said nothing, waited to hear what his reaction would be before acting one way or another. Finally, just when she thought he would never speak again, he did respond, in a very, very soft voice.

But all he said was, "Ah-hah."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Ah-hah?" she echoed, just as quietly. "What does that mean?"

"It means, my dear Mack, that you're finally beginning to make sense to me."

Gee, that makes one of us,
Dorsey thought. She decided not to ponder how his casually offered endearment punched the puree setting on her pulse rate. Best not to think about that right now, she told herself. So instead of pursuing his odd statement, she decided to answer the question he had asked her what seemed now like a lifetime ago.

"And that's why I chose to major in sociology," she told him. "Because, having grown up watching my mother's … social habits, I've always been fascinated by the dynamic between men and women. As much as I've spouted off about men ruling the world—and I do believe they rule it—it often seems to me that there's a pretty blurry line between who really controls whom."

Adam's features knitted in puzzlement once again. "Don't you mean who really controls what?" he asked.

Dorsey shook her head. "No. Men control the world. There's no question there. But so many men in positions of power have risked it all or lost it all or thrown it all away because of some indiscretion or obsession with a woman. It makes for a fascinating paradox," she said, warming to her subject. "If men control the world—which they do—and women control men—which they do—then doesn't that put women in the position of supreme power? And if it does, then why haven't women made the most of it? Why are we still second-class citizens?"

Adam gazed at her blandly now. "That's an easy one, Mack."

She gazed blandly back at him. "Then tell me the answer."

"Because women don't control men," he said simply. "Your whole hypothesis is skewed."

"Is it?"

"Of course it is. You yourself just said that your own mother has only survived in this world by depending on men. She didn't control them. They controlled her."

"I'm not necessarily arguing with you," Dorsey said. "But think about it. Who really controls whom in a relationship like that? It's generally men who are in the highest positions of power who indulge in this kind of relationship. Yes, the man provides the woman with compensation for her companionship. But he wouldn't be involved in that relationship with her—often an extramarital one, I might add—if the woman didn't have some kind of power over him, some kind of control. Something that he needs and can only get from her."

Adam sat up straighter, his interest clearly more than piqued. "You're a Ph.D. candidate, and you can't figure that one out?" he asked her, smiling in a way that made her insides go slack with heat.

"No, I can't," she told him frankly. "Not really. Not sufficiently. Even after writing my master's thesis on the topic, I'm not satisfied with the conclusions that I drew."

He shook his head in clear disappointment. "All that research, and you still don't see the most obvious thing in the world," he said. His smile grew broader, and somehow she got the feeling that he was laughing at her. "I think you need a study partner."

"No, I don't," she countered, battling a sudden rush of heat and wanting that came out of nowhere and threatened to run rampant through her body. "I have all the sources and resources that I need right at my fingertips."

"Mm," he replied. "Wish
I
had all your sources and resources—among other things—at
my
fingertips. And other places, too," he added before she could stop him.