How to Trap a Tycoon (39 page)

"And what, may I ask, is so terrible about that?" Dorsey asked.

Carlotta rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. For me, that kind of man is fine. But he's not for you. You're a strong woman. You need a strong man. You need someone who will be both a worthy adversary and an equal partner. You're not going to find that in Ken. Yet Kens were all you ever dated. Until Adam."

"Ken is
not
that bad," Dorsey defended.

Carlotta sighed. "Dorsey, you always dressed Barbie in career coordinates, yet you always dressed Ken in tennis togs. And you still do. Do you realize that?"

Dorsey looked down at the two dolls she had just dressed, and sure enough, Barbie looked ready to take on the stock market, while Ken was prepared for game, set, match.

"Yeah. So?" she asked her mother. "Ken looks good in shorts."

"So you've never taken Ken seriously, that's what," Carlotta told her. "He's always just been a plaything to your Barbie. GI Joe, on the other hand—" Her mother held up the other doll. "Now
he's
a force to be reckoned with."

She snatched grinning, tawny-haired, totally harmless Ken away and settled intense, stoic, facially wounded GI Joe in his place. "Now look at that," Carlotta said with a smile. "That's what I call a power couple. Barbie has to take GI Joe seriously. He'd never stand for being dismissed the way that lame Ken just was. Ken belongs with my Barbie," she added, setting him down beside her peignoir-wearing doll. Dorsey had to admit that the pairing seemed much more appropriate. "My Barbie will be gentle with him," Carlotta concluded. "She'll take good care of him.

"You, Dorsey, you wouldn't be gentle with Ken. And you shouldn't have to take care of anyone, if it's not in your nature. You're a strong woman," she reiterated. "You have power. You have focus. You have drive and ambition. You have complete self-knowledge and self-confidence. You deserve to find someone like that, too."

Dorsey smiled halfheartedly. "I deserve GI Joe, huh?"

Instead of answering, Carlotta studied each of the male dolls for a thoughtful moment. "Then again," she finally said, "Ken and GI Joe are both eunuchs, aren't they? Hmm…" She snatched GI Joe away from Dorsey's Barbie, too. "Oh, dear. Look at that. Now Barbie's all alone. She's still smiling, but you can tell she's not really happy. I suppose she couldn't be happy with some boring, emasculated piece of plastic." She paused until Dorsey glanced up to look at her again. "She deserves a man.
You
deserve a man," she said pointedly. "A real man. One's who's like you."

"Adam Darien," she guessed.

Carlotta nodded. "He's a worthy rival for you, Dorsey, and a worthy companion. Strong women, I think, need both." She sighed heavily. "You aren't like me, darling. You never have been. And I'm glad of that. The one lesson I wanted you to learn, growing up, was that you are your own person. We are entirely different beings, you and I. We want entirely different things. But that's not a bad thing, Dorsey. It doesn't mean we don't care about each other. It only means that we are different."

"I think we want a lot of the same things," Dorsey objected.

"Name one," Carlotta charged.

"Security," Dorsey said immediately. "That was the whole point to writing
How to Trap a Tycoon
."

Carlotta shook her head. "That wasn't for security. That was for a financial nest egg."

"What's the difference?"

Carlotta smiled a cryptic little smile. "You'd never understand," she said without a bit of malice. "And just for the record, I don't want security. I want a steady income to get me through my golden years. If security was what I wanted, I would have accepted one of the marriage proposals I received along the way. But I didn't want—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dorsey interrupted. "Marriage proposals? Marriage propos
als?
As in plural? As in more than one? As if one wouldn't have been enough to set you up the way you wanted to be set up? For life?"

Carlotta gaped at her in clear disbelief. "Marriage would
not
have set me up," she stated indignantly. "A husband is the last thing I want."

"Carlotta!" Dorsey exclaimed. "What are you talking about? How could you have received marriage proposals over the years and never accepted one? And how could you have never told me about them?"

There was a moment of silence, then, "Well, no offense, Dorsey," Carlotta said, "but the reason I never told you about them was because, quite frankly, they were none of your business."

"What?"

"They were none of your business," her mother repeated softly.

"But…"

Dorsey told herself to let it go, to just be satisfied with Carlotta's explanation, even if she didn't understand it for a moment, and move on. But one question kept circling around and around in her head. And she simply had to know the answer. There was no way she'd be able to leave it behind until she found out for sure.

"Was one of those marriage proposals," she began carefully, "from my father?"

For a moment, her mother didn't reply, only arranged and rearranged her Barbie's lace-trimmed robe until she had it draping dramatically over one shoulder. Just when Dorsey thought she would have to ask the question again—because she intended to keep asking it until she received an honest answer—Carlotta glanced back up again and met her gaze levelly.

"Yes," she finally said. "One of those proposals came from your father."

Dorsey swallowed hard but said nothing, waiting to hear the rest.

"The first time he asked me was when he found out I was pregnant with you," Carlotta said. "I adamantly refused."

"Why?"

"Dorsey, the man was married to a woman who was completely reliant on him, a woman who had no idea how to take care of herself, a woman who would have been left with three young children to raise alone. His primary obligation was rightfully to his family. Not to me."

"What about me?" The question popped out of Dorsey's mouth before she could stop it. She knew it sounded selfish and cold, but she couldn't help it. She wanted to know.

"You,"
Carlotta said, "were
my
responsibility. And I made that clear to Reggie."

"But—"

"No buts," her mother interjected. "The world was a different place then, Dorsey. Your father wasn't a strong man, and although his intentions were good, he wouldn't have been able to withstand the consequences of leaving his wife and children to marry his pregnant mistress. It would have ended between us eventually, and it would have ended badly. For all of us."

"But he stayed with you for years after I was born. I remember him."

"Yes, he wanted to be a part of both our lives, and I didn't object to that. But he kept asking me to marry him, kept saying he would leave his wife and children for me and you. I told him no every time. He kept asking, anyway. Finally, I told him that if he asked me again, I'd stop seeing him. He asked again. So I stopped seeing him."

"Oh, Carlotta…"

"I didn't love him. I didn't want him forever. I never wanted anybody forever. I know you can't possibly comprehend that, but for my sake, please try. I like men, Dorsey. All men. I like the way they talk and the way they move and the way they smell and the way they feel curled up next to me in bed. I like chatting with them, dining with them, flirting with them, being with them, in every way imaginable. But I don't want to keep one forever. I don't want to give up that much of myself to a man."

In a way, Dorsey did understand and she respected her mother's conviction. Her mother was right—they were two totally different creatures. And she would never, ever be like her mother. Because she did want to keep a man forever. She did want to give up that much of herself to one. Provided that man was Adam Darien, and he would give as much of himself to her in return.

Then she realized that he already had given as much of himself to her in return, maybe more, because he'd never held any part of himself back from her. He hadn't kept any secrets. He hadn't pretended to be something he wasn't. And he hadn't lied to her about anything.

Dorsey gazed down at her solitary Barbie lying alone in her career coordinates. Carlotta was right. Despite the little plastic smile, she didn't look very happy. And a great career and a social conscience weren't going to be enough keep her warm at night.

"Oh, Carlotta," Dorsey murmured. "What am I going to do?"

* * *

By the time Adam had finished examining Lindy's collection of information relating to Mack and Lauren Grable-Monroe, Drake's had been closed for three hours. Lindy sat at the table across from him—where she had been for the last ninety minutes of those three hours—smoking a cigar and nursing her second snifter of
Armagnac
, lost in a paperback copy of
Dr. Zhivago
. He'd heard her sniffling and figured she'd gotten to the part where Lara tells the good doctor to take a hike. It had been reassuring to realize that Lindy was capable of feeling something for
some
body.

Her investigator had definitely been thorough. He'd all but recorded Mack's underwear size. Then again, Adam already knew she was size six in panties, size 36B in bras. Happily, he had
some
information that the investigator didn't.

Contrary to what he'd told Lindy, Adam didn't actually read every word of Mack's notes. He wanted to, and he'd intended to, but the majority of those words were so erudite and academic, so theoretical and analytical, that he had trouble following much of what was written. And he might as well admit it—he'd found the material to be pretty damned boring, too. Leave it to a sociology student to take a nice place like Drake's and reduce it to a scholarly dissertation.

Then again, that was exactly what Mack had said she planned to do, wasn't it?

And contrary to what Lindy had said, Adam didn't see himself figuring all that prominently in the notes. At least, he didn't think he did. No one had been identified by name, only with labels like Gray Eminence, Apologist, Wannabe, and Sacred Cow. Then there was the one referred to as Pack Leader, which, he had to admit, he liked to think was him. It must be, he decided, because there wasn't anyone she had termed Hot Stuff.

But if Lindy saw Adam as a major part of this study, then she understood it with far greater insight than he. Because not only could he not see himself threatened by anything that was written there, he sure couldn't see a sensationalistic, potboiling best-seller emerging out of it, either. A sleep aid, certainly, but not much else.

What had actually piqued his interest most were the documents from Rockcastle Books. Sure enough, it was Dorsey MacGuinness's signature that appeared on each of them. First on the book contract, whose advance had been impressive but by no means astronomical. Then on the confidentiality agreement, stating that her identity would be closely guarded by the publisher. And most interesting of all, on the payment agreement stating that all funds generated by the sale of the book would be paid not to Dorsey MacGuinness but to her mother.

That, more than anything else, had convinced Adam that Mack wasn't the soulless, flagrant opportunist that Lindy had assumed her to be. Because even if Mack had done this for the money, it hadn't been for personal gain. She was doing it for her mother. And hell, what could be more noble than that?

All right, so maybe it was still opportunistic. It wasn't selfish. And that was in keeping with the Mack that Adam had come to know and love. Because he did love Mack. He'd figured that out tonight if nothing else. In spite of everything he'd found out about her, in spite of the way she'd misled him, in spite of the fact that she had kept so many secrets…

Despite everything, he still cared about her. A lot. And he didn't want to lose her.

He didn't kid himself that there were smooth seas ahead. She had a lot to answer for and a lot of explaining to do. And God alone knew what her life was going to be like for the next several weeks if Lindy made good on her threat to out Dorsey MacGuinness as Lauren Grable-Monroe. But whatever pitfalls and potholes he and Mack encountered on the road ahead, he was fully confident they could repair them and move forward.

But that wasn't his greatest concern at the moment. Because at the moment, Lindy was still convinced that Mack intended to take Drake's down. And at the moment, Lindy intended to take Mack down first. Adam could try to talk her out of it, but she seemed determined. She had plenty of contacts of her own to spread the word that Lauren Grable-Monroe was really Dorsey MacGuinness, and hey, here's her address and her phone number, and you can find her at
Severn
College
teaching on these days in these classrooms, and here's where she catches the El.

As if Lindy sensed his thoughts, she glanced up from her book and met his gaze. "So?" she asked.

"So what?" he stalled.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know, Lindy," he told her. "I honestly do not know."

She puffed a few more times on her cigar, then placed it carefully on a crystal ashtray bearing the Baccarat insignia. "Fine," she said. "You think about it. In the meantime, I know exactly what I'm going to do."

Adam nodded without much enthusiasm as he pushed the materials across the table toward Lindy and wondered what he might say that would possibly talk her out of doing what she'd threatened to do. But all he could think was,
Poor Mack
. Lauren Grable-Monroe's days were definitely numbered. And the number he saw most was, unfortunately, one.