How to Trap a Tycoon

necessarily because of her reaction to the book. He'd been wanting to do that since the day he'd walked into the club and seen her standing behind the bar, splashing Courvoisier into a snifter for Lindy Aubrey. The first thing Adam had noticed about Mack was that she had excellent taste in neckties. The Hermès silk she'd been wearing that day was one he'd nearly bought for himself a few months before. The second thing he'd noticed about Mack was that he was noticing a beautiful woman's midsection for the first time and wasn't noticing what he usually noticed when noticing a woman's midsection for the first time.

It rather took his notice.

In the month that had passed since Mack had started working at Drake's, there hadn't been a single day go by that Adam hadn't considered asking her out. But the slim gold band encircling the fourth finger of her left hand had been a pretty effective deterrent in that regard.

So far.

Not that Adam was the kind of man to go after a married woman. There were far too many moral, ethical, and philosophical considerations with regard to such an endeavor—not to mention a real problem with timing. But in some ways, flirting with a married woman was more fun than flirting with a single woman, because there was little chance of anything materializing. And Mack did return his flirting, outrageously at times. It was fun. That was all. And Adam had so little fun in his life. What was the harm in enjoying it with Mack?

Even if she was a married woman.

"You hate that damned book?" he echoed incredulously, nudging aside his other, less comfortable thoughts. "How can you hate that damned book? Every woman in America is reading and loving that damned book."

Mack's expression would have been the same if he had just slapped her with a big, wet fish. "Excuse me?" she said, genuinely puzzled and surprised.

"That damned book," he said again, gesturing impatiently toward where she had thrown it. "I can't believe you just said you hated it. I can't go anywhere these days without that damned book being the topic of rabid conversation among whatever women happen to be present."

She glanced over her shoulder at where she'd thrown the paperback, then back at Adam, her expression bemused. "It has a title, you know," she pointed out.

"I know," he conceded grudgingly. "But I can't say it out loud without gagging."

"You should see a doctor," she told him.

"I'm sure it's just a natural reflex to an unnatural phenomenon. Every woman in America seems to be adopting that damned book as her bible. It's not surprising that, it would wreak indigestion on most men."

Mack's gaze fell some. "Well, not quite every woman has adopted it as her bible," she said dryly.

Adam bit back a chuckle of delight. She really was too good to be true. He'd suspected as much since the day she'd started working at Drake's, and now he was positive of the fact. Mack was more like one of the guys than she was … one of them. Recollections of her midsection aside—which, of course, he had noticed eventually, several times, in fact—Adam could talk to Mack. Really talk to her. They were on the same wavelength. She was as straightforward as they come. She didn't have any secrets at all.

"But you have read it, yes?" he asked her. "I mean, you would have had to, if you hate it."

"Um, yeah," she told him, sounding a little uneasy for some reason. "I've read it. Have you?"

He shook his head vehemently. "To put it succinctly, hell, no, I haven't read that damned book. It's a crime against nature and society and the way things are."

She narrowed her eyes at him thoughtfully. "Actually, that wasn't very succinct," she observed. "You could have just replied, 'No.' That would have been succinct. What you said was actually kind of—"

"No."

"Well, that was certainly succinct."

"So you read it and didn't like it?" Adam asked again.

She sighed heavily, and again he got the impression that she was uncomfortable about something. "Let's just say I don't like the way it's been received by the general public," she told him.

He eyed her thoughtfully in return for a moment, then pushed his empty glass forward in a silent request for another drink. "That's an interesting way to put it. What don't you like about its reception?"

She went about the motions of her job automatically as she replied, "It seems to be conducive to mass hysteria, that's what. And mass hysteria leads to everything from nihilism to jingoism."

Immediately, he began to feel wary. "Uh-oh," he said.

She glanced up curiously from her task, the bottle of Oban suspended above his glass. "Uh-oh?" she echoed.

"Nihilism," he repeated. "Jingoism. That's the sociology student in you talking, isn't it? You're about to go off on another one of your sociological tangents, aren't you? You're going to start using words like 'esoteric' and 'exegesis' and 'dogma.' I hate it when you do that."

Mack chuckled as she went back to pouring his drink. "Oh, come on. You know your cocktail party chitchat quotient has gone sky high since you met me. Admit it."

"That's beside the point."

When she glanced up to look at him again, there was a flicker of humor sparking in her eyes. Not for the first time, he marveled at how green the irises were, how they were a color he'd never quite seen anywhere before. It was a color that reminded him of the waters lapping at a certain Caribbean island of his acquaintance and he was tempted to invite her to accompany him there for a very intimate visit sometime.

And it bothered Adam a lot to realize he had the capacity to entertain ideas like that about a married woman. Hell, about any woman. The last thing he needed in his life was a very intimate visit with someone, married or otherwise. Intimate visits had a habit of turning into permanent conditions. Or, rather, in his case, semi-permanent conditions.