How to Trap a Tycoon (9 page)

In spite of that, she asked her mother halfheartedly, "Why can't you be Lauren?"

Carlotta smiled a bit sadly. "Actually, there's nothing I'd enjoy more than being the center of attention with a book tour and network television," she began. "Especially if it was that nice Matt Lauer doing the interview. But as I said, there are two reasons why I can't."

"And they would be?"

She expelled a quick sigh. "Reason number one is that there are too many men out there who, were I identified as the source of the material, would recognize themselves in the book. And worse, whose wives would recognize them in the book. The lives of those men would be thrown into an uproar, should I come forward as the author. Those men have been good to me, Dorsey. I owe them discretion."

"You owe them nothing," Dorsey countered.

"I owe them more than you realize," Carlotta countered. "More than you will ever know." She paused only a moment before adding, "And even if I didn't, they all have battalions of attorneys at their disposal, attorneys who could ultimately claim every nickel from those piles of money Anita has promised."

"So you'd rather have your daughter's life thrown into an uproar?" Dorsey asked.

"No," her mother told her. "But I think that you would bounce back from uproar much more quickly than any of those men would. Men are such frail creatures, after all. We do so have to shelter them, Dorsey. And who knows?" she added with a smile. "You might just like uproar, if you'd only give it a chance. I don't know why your quiet, peaceful, academic existence is so all-fired important to you."

No, of course she wouldn't know that, Dorsey thought. Carlotta would never understand her need for quiet and permanence. But all she said was, "And the other reason?"

This time her mother's smile held resignation. "The other reason is that nobody wants Lauren Grable-Monroe to be a fifty-something woman who only has a few good years left in her."

"Oh, Carlotta, you don't honestly think—"

"What I know to be true, Dorsey," she said, "is that the American public would much rather see you as Lauren than they would me."

"A peace-and-quiet-loving academic who dresses like a lumberjack?" Dorsey asked. "I doubt it."

"Dorsey MacGuinness is the peace-and-quiet-loving academic who dresses like a lumberjack," her mother corrected her. "Lauren Grable-Monroe is no such thing. Lauren is a blond bombshell party girl who knows men. Or, at least, she will be when I get through with her. Through with you. Whatever."

Dorsey narrowed her eyes at her mother curiously. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

In response, Carlotta stood and extended both hands toward her daughter, silently bidding her to rise as well. Reluctantly, Dorsey did, then allowed herself to be guided over to the full-length mirror affixed to the closet door. Her mother positioned her to face it, then turned back to the bed and swept up the discarded dresses.

"We'll have to go shopping for a good wig and a few wardrobe pieces that don't scream Great White North," she said as she held up both dresses to inspect first one and then the other. "And it goes without saying, we'll also need to get you a Wonderbra."

"Carlotta…"

But her mother ignored what Dorsey had hoped was an unmistakable warning in her voice. "We will also," she continued, "without a doubt, have to make a rather substantial investment at the Lancôme counter. But we will pull this off, Dorsey. I promise you that. When you go out into the world as Lauren Grable-Monroe, no one will ever suspect Dorsey MacGuinness is hiding there."

"It'll never work," Dorsey told her. "There's no way we'll make it work."

Instead of commenting on Dorsey's conviction, however, Carlotta moved to stand behind her and placed first one dress and then the other in front of her. Then she grinned impishly. "So … what do you think, Lauren? The blue or the green?"

Chapter 4

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A
dam Darien had adopted a new role in life, but it wasn't one he could see himself adding to his resume any time soon. Because—call him unrealistic—Skulker just wasn't the kind of position that led to prodigious promotion. Not in any of the professional capacities in which he wanted to find himself, at any rate.

Yet here he was skulking. Skulking through a major retail establishment, at that, the Borders Books and Music on

The only thing that made Adam's new role tolerable was that he had drafted Lucas Conaway to man the position of Skulker's Assistant. Lucas, curiously, had no qualms whatsoever about skulking. In fact, he'd approached it with relish. Adam, too, found himself putting skulking in a whole new light, because in an effort to locate the best vantage point for Lauren Grable-Monroe's arrival, he had been forced to position himself in the psychology and self-help section of the store. Right in front of the books on—he tried not to look—impotence.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen. So to speak.

"Ooo, this one looks good," Lucas piped up from beside him, plucking a slender tome from a high shelf—where just about anybody could see him, for chrissakes.
"Me and My Penile Implant: One Man's Journey to Enlightenment and Self-Discovery.
I just don't think I can wait for this bad boy to show up in paperback. I think I'll have to take this home and start reading it tonight. Gosh, I hope it has a happy ending."

Adam rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw, then smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle out of his charcoal suit jacket. He'd come to Borders straight from the
Man's Life
offices, because he hadn't wanted to miss a minute of Lauren Grable-Monroe's
seven o'clock
debut. Now, however, in his three pieces of dark wool—even if he had unbuttoned two of them—and his discreetly patterned necktie—even if he had loosened it—he was feeling significantly overdressed among the shoppers. Lucas, naturally, in his rumpled navy sweater and khaki trousers, didn't seem at all out of place.

"Oh, just shut up and drink your Starbucks, will you?" Adam instructed the other man.

The Skulker's Assistant dutifully reshelved the book, but instead of sipping from the steaming cup in his hand, he scanned the titles for another.
"Know Your Scrotum,"
he read from one spine. "Gosh, now, there's a philosophical quandary for you. Can any man truly know his scrotum?"

"Lucas…"

"Oh, now, here's one that might actually have some potential," he said, reaching for yet another book.
"Love Me, Love My—"

"Lucas."

He shoved the book back into place and sighed heavily. "Boy, you are in some state tonight," he muttered irritably to Adam.

Yeah, and it wasn't the state of
Rhode Island
, either, Adam thought. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so agitated. And all on account of a woman he had yet to even see up close and personal. Though, certainly, over the past several weeks, he had seen more than his fill of her in just about every other context.

In the past month, Lauren Grable-Monroe had appeared on all of the morning news shows, in virtually each of the weekly news and lifestyle magazines, and on too many call-in radio shows to count.

She was saturating the market more pervasively than her book was. And that was saying something. Because in the few short weeks since the author had gone public, her book had blasted into the top ten of every nonfiction best-seller list in the country. At the rate it was selling, Adam thought, it would soon shoot right to number one.

Certainly the book had staying power. Because there were millions of potential buyers for it—all those women who fell into that "more likely to be abducted by a pack of kilt-wearing, spumoni-eating, Elvis-impersonating aliens than to be married after age thirty" statistic. And doubtless each new generation of females was going to want to know the whys and wherefores of trapping their very own tycoons. It wasn't a particularly cheerful prospect, as far as Adam was concerned.

Lucas continued to scan the shelves as they waited, but evidently nothing more came close to capturing his interest, because he finally gazed around the store. "She's late."

"She's a woman," Adam reminded the other man unnecessarily.

"A late woman," Lucas concluded.

"Which is redundant," Adam remarked.

"Not that I don't share your opinion of the fairer sex," Lucas said, "but I know why I feel the way I do. What's your excuse?"

The question brought Adam up short. Not so much the question itself, or even the speculative tone of voice in which Lucas had uttered it. No, it was the fact that the other man had put voice to it at all that gave Adam pause. Lucas's was a personal question, and Adam wasn't used to getting personal with people. It was something that his acquaintances understood, and was probably why he had so few true friends and so many acquaintances. He rarely moved beyond the introduction phase of any relationship.

Lucas, it would appear, had no such qualms. Then again, Adam reminded himself, Lucas was from a brave new generation, one that had come of age in a more cooperative social environment, overrun by MTV, Nike for Women, and Mars and Venus in Every Room in the House.

Still, that didn't mean that Adam had to cross the generational line. So all he said in explanation was, "I used to be married."

"Ah," Lucas replied.

And that, evidently, was all that needed to be said. Because, surprisingly, Lucas went back to sipping his Starbucks. And Adam, in turn, went back to trying to pretend that he had no idea the impotence books were shelved right in front of him, well, would you look at that, who knew?

"I see an entourage," Lucas announced suddenly. "I do believe Lauren Grable-Monroe has entered the building."

As, indeed, she had. Somehow, Adam sensed her presence before he even saw her. A quick frisson of heat swept through him, as if someone had applied a small electrical charge to the base of his spine. But what startled him more than anything was the realization that he suddenly felt very much as if he'd just been transported back to adolescence.

To be specific, back to the first day of ninth grade, when Mitzi Moran had been assigned the desk right next to his in Biology. And in honor of the opening of football season, Mitzi had worn her jayvee cheerleader uniform to school. The one with the microscopic red skirt. And the skintight yellow sweater. And those little cotton socks that to this day he found so inexplicably erotic.

Man, that had been a great day. And an incredible feeling Adam had never thought to feel again. But suddenly, right in the middle of Borders Books and Music on

He told himself it was only because he'd been anticipating this event for more than a month, ever since
Man's Life
had received a press release from Rockcastle Books that announced the great coming-out party of the illustrious Lauren Grable-Monroe. It wasn't the press release, however, that had most captured Adam's attention, teeming though it was with interesting—in a rabid, overblown, sensationalistic kind of way—tidbits about the author of
How to Trap a Freakin' Tycoon
.

Lauren Grable-Monroe, it seemed, was a resident of this very city, a factoid that had settled in the pit of his stomach like a piece of badly cooked veal. Rockcastle Books made no bones about the fact that the moniker Lauren Grable-Monroe was a pseudonym flagrantly lifted from the three actresses who had starred in the film
How to Marry a Millionaire
. However, they had made bones—really big ones, too—about divulging who, exactly, had adopted the pseudonym. They had insisted that to divulge Ms. Grable-Monroe's true identity would endanger her position in the social community she loved, not to mention open them up to defamation suits.

According to her bio, whoever Lauren Grable-Monroe was, she had grown up on
Chicago
's Gold Coast, the only child of a wealthy commodities broker and his socialite wife. Her parents had, however, lost their fortune some years ago after a hushed-up scandal, the details of which, at least in the press release, were sketchy, at best. Thus their daughter, a former debutante, had made her way in the world by "making herself available" to numerous and sundry tycoons whose fancy she had captured along the way. And now that her parents were no longer alive—and, presumably, couldn't be embarrassed by her antics—she was hoping to recoup her family's financial losses by offering professional tips in a runaway best-seller.