How to Trap a Tycoon Elizabeth Bevarly (year 7 reading list txt) 📖

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.

"Unhappy childhood?" she asked mildly.

"Slightly," he told her, the word coming out cold and clipped.

She nodded her understanding. "I know the feeling."

"Oh, I sincerely doubt that."

Edie wasn't about to sit here and play What's My Whine? with Lucas Conaway. Not just because it was much too late for that kind of thing, and not just because the two of them would look pathetic, and not just because she had no desire to rehash her past history with him—or to learn more about his, for that matter. No, the reason Edie didn't want to compete with Lucas in the I've-had-it-rougher-than-you-have department was simply because she knew she would win, hands down.

Such a conclusion had come about because it was a simple statement of fact and was in no way inspired by an immersion in self-pity. On the contrary, she had long ago turned loose the resentment she'd once had about how the capricious fates had dealt her such a god-awful hand in the game of life. Because if she didn't turn it loose, she knew she would become one of those stark, ugly creatures who ate out of trash cans and slept in society's refuse. And she'd seen enough of those people during her months living on the streets that she didn't want to become one herself.

So she said nothing to start such a disagreement. Instead, she turned the tables on Lucas. "So who are you looking for?" she asked.

He expelled a few more of those dry, humorless chuckles and deflected his gaze from hers, staring at some point over her left shoulder. "A tycoon," he finally mumbled. "I'm looking to trap myself a tycoon."

Lucas had no idea what provoked him to reveal his professional quest to Edie Mulholland. What was the point of talking to such a raging goody-two-shoes about anything other than the most mundane superficialities? Even if what they'd discussed over the last several minutes had been anything but mundane or superficial, never mind goody-two-shod.

What the hell had he been thinking to follow whoever had been tailing