She hadn't planned on leaving Adam Darien's place by herself, had figured she'd help Dorsey finish cleaning up, and then the two of them could walk out together. But Dorsey had insisted she could close things down by herself and had encouraged Edie quite adamantly to go on home. Had Edie explained the situation and said she didn't want to walk so great a distance by herself, Dorsey—and probably Adam Darien, too, for that matter—would have no doubt come to her aid.
But with one look at Dorsey and another at Adam, Edie had been reluctant to say another word. The tension in that room had been thick enough to hack with a meat cleaver. No way did she want to get caught in the downswing of whatever was coming next.
She never would have guessed anything was going on with those two. Not only because they didn't seem to have anything in common, but because Edie had always figured Dorsey was way too smart to get caught up in something like that.
Man, you never could tell with some people.
Still, it was none of Edie's business. Dorsey and Adam were adults, and they both knew what was what in this world. Besides, Edie had infinitely more pressing matters to attend to right now. Not the least of which was the source of the footsteps that were gradually beginning to catch up on her.
This part of Chicago , during the day, would be bustling with people, but at nearly one A.M. , it was pretty much deserted. Well lit, certainly, something for which Edie was grateful, but deserted. Still, there were a number of restaurants serving a few final customers, and she'd seen a lone police cruiser pass by shortly after leaving Adam's building. If she screamed horribly at the top of her lungs, she was sure someone would come running. Probably, anyway. Nevertheless, she wished she hadn't had to park so far away.
Why couldn't life be like TV? she wondered, not for the first time. On TV, people always got a parking spot right by the door. Of course, on TV, people found true love and profound happiness, too. Most of them had dream jobs and chic apartments and fabulous clothes and adoring families. TV was a fantasy, she reminded herself. Nobody in reality ever got what they wanted. Certainly not true love or adoring families. And not parking spots by the door, either.
Experimentally, she stopped walking, ostensibly to study a menu in the window of one of the restaurants she was passing. The footsteps shadowing hers stopped, too, not surprisingly. This was ridiculous, Edie thought. There was no way she was going to lead this person right to her car and invite him to commit whatever heinous acts he was intent on committing. And besides, she was feeling a little hungry.
The café she entered was charming, a little slice of the Mediterranean brought to the Midwest . Crisp, white linen tablecloths covered the crowded tables, and frescoes of olive groves and Greek villages splashed the walls. She smiled when she heard the voice of Pavarotti serenading her with a mellow, operatic rendition of La Vie en Rose.
The last thing she needed was to stay up late tonight, she thought. She'd already gone nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, and what sleep she'd had then had been anything but restful. Then again, her sleep was rarely good, even at the best of times. But she was still feeling anxious about being followed, and something about the little café called to her, cocooned her, made her feel safe.
"Are you still serving dinner?" she asked a bartender who was wiping down the bar. He was big and round and smiling, with arms the size of rain barrels, and Edie sensed in him immediately a brave and noble spirit.
"Only appetizers," he told her. "And only for another half-hour at that. We close at two."
"That'd be okay."
He waved a hand expansively at the otherwise empty room. "Have a seat anywhere. I'll get Margie to take your order."
"Thanks."
Edie chose a small table midway between the bar and the door—well, perhaps it was a bit closer to the bar than it was to the door—one that was well lit and set for two. Then she plucked the menu from between the salt and pepper shakers and gave it a quick perusal. A woman as big and round and smiling as the bartender came out to take her order, and since Edie already had her café au lait from the coffee shop, she ordered a baked Brie to go with it.
Hey, she had no romance in her life, she thought, and there would certainly be none forthcoming. Who cared if she ate an entire Brie and swelled up to the size of France ? At least she'd be happy.
Content with her decision, she unzipped the backpack that she carried with her everywhere and withdrew a battered textbook. If she was going to stay up too late and eat foods rich enough to keep her awake for hours, then she might as well get a little studying done.
She had just turned to the assigned reading on the Peloponnesian War when she felt someone watching her again. She glanced up just as the café's front door opened, and her mouth fell open in surprise when she saw who strode through.
Lucas Conaway was still dressed in the blue jeans, white oxford shirt, and black blazer he had been wearing at Adam Darien's party, but his necktie was loosened now, and he'd unfastened the top two or three buttons of his shirt. His icy blue gaze was fixed intently on hers, and Edie felt certain then that he was the one who had been following her.
How dare he? she wondered, outraged by the realization. How dare he scare the life out of her the way he had? What was the matter with him?
Without greeting her or awaiting an invitation, he walked purposefully to her table, pulled out the opposite chair with an ominous scrape, then dropped into it, landing in a careless sprawl. But he remained silent, only stared at her as if it were she and not he who had just committed some grievous sin.
"Well, gosh, just sit yourself down," she told him wryly. "Don't do something so crass as wait for me to invite you."
"Do you mind?" he said blandly.
"What if I do?"
His only response was a shrug, but there was nothing at all casual about the gesture.
"Fine," she conceded shortly. "Join me." Then, as rudely as he, she dropped her gaze back down to her textbook and pretended to read, pretended to dismiss him without another thought.
"Thanks," he said. "I think I will."
Before Edie could point out that her comment had been sarcastic—something she was certain he would be able to appreciate, seeing as how he was the reigning king of that particular realm—her server came back to take his order, too. Before she could stop him, Lucas asked for a cup of coffee but nothing more. And evidently realizing that the table was fully laden with tension and ill will, their server didn't suggest anything else and beat a hasty retreat.
Edie spared a glance back up at Lucas then, but she said nothing, silently indicating that it was up to him to go first and explain what he was doing here. For a moment, he only continued to stare at her in that plainly disgruntled way, then, very slowly, very intently, he bent his body forward, folded his arms one over the other on the table, and frowned.
"Just what the hell were you thinking to leave Adam's place all by yourself this time of night?" he demanded.
She arched her eyebrows in disbelief. "Excuse me?" she demanded right back. "What were you thinking to follow me and scare me half to death?"
"You should be scared to death," he countered. "A woman walking alone in a deserted city in the middle of the night. Anything could have happened to you out there."
"Hey, I can take care of myself," she told him.
His cool smile indicated just how seriously he took that assurance. "Yeah, right," he muttered.
"I can."
He looked nowhere near convinced. "Uh-huh. Sure. Okay. Whatever you say."
"And even if you don't believe that, it didn't give you any right to follow me," she told him.
He hesitated only a moment—a moment he used to glare at her even more—then said, "I wasn't the one who was following you. I was following the guy who was following you."
Okay, now she was really confused. "What are you talking about?"
He sighed heavily, then threw her another one of those looks that suggested she was responsible for ruining his whole eveni
ng. Hey, his whole life. "I was sitting in my car across the street from Adam's place, about to pull away, and—"
"You got a parking space that close?" she interrupted, unable to help herself. Figures a guy like him would get a break like that. Lucas Conaway was the kind of person who got every break life had to offer. Good looks, massive intelligence, expensive education, fabulous job right out of the gate. Of course, there was that small matter of him completely lacking a soul, she thought further. But then, nobody was perfect, right?
He eyed her in a way that made her feel like she was about two years old. "Ye-ess," he said, drawing the word out curiously. "I got a parking space that close. Is that a problem?"
She shook her head. She wanted to ask him if he'd found true love and profound happiness, too. She'd already seen for herself that he had a dream job and a chic apartment and fabulous clothes. He no doubt also had an adoring family and maybe even true love, as well. Then again, she didn't really want to know about it if he did have all those things. It would only reinforce her conviction that the universe was in no way balanced. Why should Lucas Conaway get all the breaks? she wondered. Especially since he obviously didn't appreciate them.
"No," she told him. "It's not a problem. Just interesting, that's all."
"In what way?"
In response, Edie only shook her head and told him to go on.
"Anyway, I was getting ready to pull away from the curb," he continued, "when I saw you leave the building. I watched you go, and—"
"Why?" she interjected, her curiosity getting the better of her.
He said nothing for a moment, then leaned forward again and fixed his gaze even more studiously on her face. And then, very softly, he told her, "Because I like the way you move."
When she noted the way he was looking at her—all hungry and agitated and intense—a strange heat circled up from her belly to coil around her heart. All she could manage in response to his revelation was "Oh," in a very small voice.
Thankfully, their server returned with his coffee then, giving Edie some small reprieve to collect her thoughts. Unfortunately, she discovered that she'd lost most of them. And she doubted she would be finding them anytime soon.
Lucas said nothing as their server set his coffee before him, only continued to study Edie's face as if it was something he honestly found worth studying. Hah. What a laugh. She knew she was in no way study-worthy, with her makeup long gone and the stain of embarrassment darkening her cheeks. She had to fight back the urge to lift a hand to her hair and brush back the straggling bits of blond that had escaped her topknot, faint tresses she could feel dancing around her face and neck. She'd tugged on a massively stretched-out, faded green Severn College sweatshirt before leaving Adam's, and she was certain the shapeless garment only enhanced her utter lack of appeal now.
Nevertheless, in spite of her certainty to the contrary, Lucas must have found her intriguing, because his gaze roved hungrily from her eyes to her hair to her cheeks to her mouth, where it lingered for some moments more. The heat that had flooded Edie's face moved lower then, to her heart, her belly, her womb, then exploded somewhere lower still, somewhere deeper, somewhere she hadn't felt heat ever before. And on the heels of that heat came a wanting, a needing, a desiring that was completely alien to her.
Never in her life had Edie desired a man. Never had she wanted one. She had certainly never needed one. And she was stunned to discover that, after all this time, after all her certainty to the contrary, her body would feel something like this and betray her so thoroughly. Especially now. Especially here. Especially with someone like Lucas Conaway.
"Anyway," he finally continued, scattering her thoughts again—for now. "I watched you go, and then, as I was getting ready to pull out, I saw some guy leave the building behind you and take off in the same direction."
"What made you think he was following me?" she asked.
Lucas smiled again, but, as usual, there was no happiness in the gesture. Such a bundle of contradictions he was, she thought, not for the first time.
"What can I say?" he muttered. "I always expect the worst from people."
"Yeah, well, I can't say that's exactly a surprise," she muttered back.
"I didn't like the thought of you being out there alone if this guy tried something," he went on, as if she hadn't spoken, "so I left my car where it was and took off after him. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, all right?" he added apologetically. But the apology seemed to come less because he had scared her and more because he was ashamed of himself for caring.
"I don't know who it was," he said further when she opened her mouth to ask him exactly that. "And when you ducked in here, he just kept on going. Probably because by then he knew he was being followed, too, by me. But he was following you, Edie. Not me. Him. I wouldn't do something like that to you. I wouldn't try to scare you."
You might not try , she thought, but you do a damned fine job of it anyway.
"I can't imagine why anybody would be following me," she said.
He chuckled low, without an ounce of humor. "You can't imagine," he repeated.
She shook her head slowly but said nothing.
"A beautiful woman alone on a deserted street in the middle of the night?" he cajoled. "And you can't imagine what it is about that scenario that would inspire a man to commit mayhem? Or worse?"
Well, of course she could imagine when he put it like that. In fact, she could do much more than imagine. She had, after all, lived the reality. She just didn't want to think about it if she didn't have to. And damn Lucas for making her recall it now.
But when she responded to his comment, all that came out was a very surprised, "You think I'm beautiful?"
The moment she said it, Edie wanted to crawl under the table and hide. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut tight and just hoped like crazy that Lucas hadn't heard what she said.
"For chrissakes, Edie," he countered, squelching her hope. "How have you made it through life this long without someone taking complete advantage of you?"
Her eyes snapped open again at the vehemence that had crept into his voice. He sounded like he wanted to hit something. Hard. "Who says no one's ever taken advantage of me?" she said softly.
The retort was out of her mouth before she could stop it, so rattled had she been by the anger in his delivery, so fast was her heart racing when she remembered how he'd called her beautiful. Immediately, she regretted giving voice to the comment and wished she could call it back. But it was too late. Lucas was looking at her in a completely different manner now, one full of startled surprise and newfound interest.
"I mean, uh…" She tried to backpedal. "That, um … that didn't come out right."
"Didn't it?"
"No."
But her voice shook a little when she spoke, and she could tell that he didn't believe her.
"Who's taken advantage of you, Edie?" he asked softly.
"Nobody," she replied.
He eyed her with much speculation. "The other night, when you took me home," he said, rousing more memories in her brain that she would just as soon not have roused, "I told you I was looking for someone. And then you told me you were looking for someone, too."
"No, I told you I wasn't looking for anybody," she countered quickly. A little too quickly. Even she could tell she was lying now.
"I didn't believe you then," Lucas told her. "And I don't believe you now." Before she had a chance to contradict him again, he hurried on, "So are you, by any chance, looking for the person who took advantage of you? Could Little Edie Sunshine be looking for something as nasty and cold-hearted as revenge?" He smiled grimly. "I didn't think you had it in you, sweetheart. Way to go."
She told herself to change the subject—now—to a safer, more mundane topic. What Edie was looking for was none of Lucas's business. For some reason, though, she found herself revealing, "I'm not looking for revenge." Not the way he thought, anyway, she added silently to herself. "I'm looking for my mother. My
biological mother."
At her revelation, his grin fell, but his expression remained totally impassive. "I didn't realize you were adopted," he said.
She nodded. "When I was an infant. My adoptive parents are both dead now." Somehow, she refrained from adding, May their putrid, disgusting, miserable souls rot in the coldest pit that hell has to offer, and continued, "I've just always been curious about my natural mother and the circumstances surrounding my birth and why she gave me up and where I come from and what kind of heritage I might have and if there are any medical conditions I should be aware of and—" She cut herself off when she realized she was beginning to sound hysterical. She cleared her throat indelicately and tried again. "Anyway, I've just always wondered where I came from."
Lucas nodded. "I take it you're not from Chicago ."
"I was born in Kentucky . I moved from Hopkinsville to Naperville with my adoptive parents when I was ten."
"So then you probably come from Kentucky ," he remarked blandly. "There. I've solved the mystery for you. Now you can stop wondering."
She emitted a soft sound of surprise at his easy conclusion. "Yeah, well, as much as I appreciate your, uh … your help, there's a little more to where a person comes from than the geographic location of their birth."
"Is there?"
She eyed him curiously. "Well, yeah. I mean, where are you from originally?"
He hesitated a moment before replying simply, "I was born in Wisconsin ."
"That's it?" she asked. "Just 'I was born in Wisconsin '? No town, no house, no family, no history?"
In a very low, very flat voice, he told her, "No."
"None?"
"None worth mentioning."
Gee, why all the melodrama? Edie wondered. From what she'd seen of Lucas Conaway, he seemed to have enjoyed every advantage life had to offer. Still, she knew it took more than financial stability and the presence of a family to make a person content. Boy, did she know that.
How to Trap a Tycoon Page 17