"What?" the rambling woman asked.
"Um, we were talking about something else?"
"So we were." She smiled at Adam again, but her words were clearly offered to Mack. "You were about to introduce your little friend to me."
Actually, Adam recalled, they'd been talking about cats, but he sure as hell wasn't going to put them back on that track.
Mack sighed in a martyred, taxed-patience sort of way, and Adam got the feeling that this was a scene the two women had played out before. Too often, if Mack's pained expression was any indication.
"Carlotta, this is Adam Darien," she introduced him halfheartedly, as if she were unwilling to give Carlotta that information. "Adam, this is … this is my mother. Carlotta MacGuinness."
So Mack lived with her mother, did she? Adam thought. A mother who had a tendency to switch on the porch light just when things were starting to get good. Well, well, well. That had no doubt hampered Mack's past dating habits a bit. For some reason, the realization reassured him—until he realized it would also hamper her future dating habits a bit, as well.
"How do you do?" Mack's mother greeted him pertly.
"Mrs. MacGuinness," he returned. "It's nice to meet you."
"Oh, it's Miss MacGuinness, dear," she corrected him mildly. "I've never been married."
Well, well, well, Adam thought again. There was just no end to the surprise package that Mack presented. "Miss MacGuinness," he amended. "It's nice to meet you."
"Dorsey, of course, is Ms. MacGuinness," her mother continued. "And I don't guess I need to tell you how embarrassing that is for a mother to acknowledge."
"Carlotta…" Mack groaned.
Her mother waved another airy hand, this time evidently in surrender. "Are you coming in, dear?" she asked her daughter.
Mack nodded obediently, but she made no real effort to move forward.
"Anytime soon?" her mother asked further.
Mack sighed in that martyred way yet again, then turned to Adam. She still looked a little dazed and confused by the evening's events and not a little wary. "Thank you for diner," she told him.
"Thank you," he countered.
She offered him a puzzled smile. "For what?"
He leaned forward, lowering his voice as he spoke, shamelessly excluding her mother from the conversation. "For everything else," he murmured softly close to her ear. And then, because he couldn't quite help himself, he brushed a quick, chaste kiss along her neck.
Okay, so it wasn't so chaste, he thought. Not when he took into account the way his groin ached as he performed the gesture. It was quick. Just not so quick that Carlotta MacGuinness didn't see it. He was also reasonably certain that she'd seen him out here on the front stoop trying to consume her daughter in one big bite a few minutes ago and that—not the impending starvation of poor Moochie and Jester next door—was why the porch light had snapped on when it did.
Instead of calling Adam on the fact that she'd just caught him mauling her daughter, however, Carlotta MacGuinness only inspected him for a moment in thoughtful silence. " Darien ," she finally said. "You're Nate and Amanda's boy, aren't you?"
Adam couldn't mask his surprise. "You know my parents?" he asked.
"Well, perhaps I know your father a little better than I know your mother…" she said, her voice trailing off cryptically as she completed the remark.
"Carlotta."
This time there was no taxed patience or martyrdom in Mack's voice. This time she was spitting fire.
"Oh, Dorsey," her mother replied indulgently. "Not like that."
"Like what?" Adam asked.
"Nothing," Mack assured him, the word coming out clipped and cool. "I have to go," she continued hastily, before he had a chance to challenge her. "Thanks again for dinner, Adam. I'll see you at Drake's."
And then she slipped through the door past her mother without a single glance back in his direction. Adam was left standing alone on the porch with Miss Carlotta MacGuinness, having no idea what to say or do next.
Fortunately, she seemed to have no such problem. "It was lovely meeting you, dear," she said sweetly. "Thank you for bringing Dorsey home safely." And then, without further comment, she closed the front door and switched off the porch light, effectively—though very politely—communicating her desire that he scram.
Bringing Dorsey home safely , he echoed to himself as he turned toward the steps and began to make his way back to his car. That, he decided, was open to debate. Certainly he had brought Mack home tonight. As to her safety, however…
Well. He supposed he was just going to have to wait and see what happened there.
Chapter 7
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L ucas Conaway was in a worse than usual mood by the time he arrived at Drake's—and that was saying something, because even his good moods were generally pretty lousy. His most recent irritation had been stirred up at the bookstore, generated by Lauren Grable-Monroe's incessant—and pretty damned effective—sexual innuendo. It had only grown—his irritation, that is … although that wasn't the only thing that had grown, now that he thought about it—when he'd realized there was no outlet in sight for his current state of … irritation.
As a result, he was kind of irritable.
Add to that the fact that he still hadn't found a female tycoon to trap for his Man's Life story, and the combination made for one sulky guy.
Man. What was it with wealthy women? he wondered. All modesty—what little he had—aside, Lucas knew he was a reasonably good-looking guy of higher than average intelligence. He wasn't socially embarrassing or medically contagious. He could be charming when the occasion called for such nonsense, and he waded through the minefields of society bullshit and cocktail party chitchat better than most men. So why the hell hadn't he been able to trap himself a tycoon?
He'd been following the rules of Lauren Grable-Monroe's book to the letter—well, except that stuff about diaphanous gowns and Chanel suits; there was, after all, only so much a man could be expected to do to get his story, regardless of how dedicated
