Free A Self-Made Man by Kathleen O`Brien Page B

deep throaty sound just under his breath that somehow seemed to take the air neatly from her lungs. Oh, how she had once loved that laugh!
    â€œGo on, Lacy, and take your bath.” His eyes glimmered. “Unless you’d like me to help?”
    Cheeks flaming, she fled.
    Â 
    S HE DIDN’T KNOW whether he’d still be waiting when she finally came downstairs again. She didn’t even know whether she wanted him to be.
    Though she’d hurried, it had taken her at least twenty minutes to clean up. It was almost eleven-thirty. Quite late for… For what? Why had Adam come by tonight?
    Perhaps he’d already given up and gone home. Half of her hoped so. However, as she pulled on a pair of gray leggings and an oversize T-shirt that would look presentable now and double as her nightshirt later, she realized that the other half of her was hoping he had stayed. She was suddenly quite curious about why he had chosen to visit her tonight. And, if she were being perfectly honest, she was also eager to know why his dinner with Jennifer Lansing had ended so early. Lacy was sure that Jennifer had expected to stretch dinner out until it ended with a cozy breakfast in bed.
    Besides, Lacy told herself, piling rationalization upon rationalization, the champagne fog had finally cleared, and she would love to show him that she had pulled herself together.
    Leaving Hamlet curled up in a fluffy towel to sleep off the excitement, she made her way down the curving staircase.
    Adam was still there.
    He sat in the library, comfortably ensconced in Malcolm’s gold-upholstered Queen Anne wing chair. The sight shocked Lacy so thoroughly that she froze on the bottom step. In the five years since Malcolm’s death, she’d had very few dates, but all of them had been Pringle Island men who held Malcolm Morgan in such awe that they wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting in his chair.
    In fact, they had treated this whole house like a shrine to his memory. Mostly they had treated Lacy that way, too.
    Adam couldn’t have known about that, of course. But even if he had known, Lacy suspected he would laugh out loud at the idea of sanctifying a chair. Besides, he had always resented Malcolm, the way any poor-but-proud teenage boy resented an arrogant, middle-aged millionaire. Malcolm had gone out of his way to demean Adam, and, posturing as the sympathetic employer who had Lacy’s best interests at heart, had often advised her to unload the boyfriend who could only drag her down.
    No… Adam had more than resented Malcolm. He had hated him. He might not realize that this particular chair had been Malcolm’s throne, but she knew that Adam would still be quite happy to trample all over the older man’s memory any way he could. The only real shock was her reaction to the sight. As she watched Adam sitting there, leafing through her latest copy of Cuisine, Lacy discovered that it felt surprisingly good to see the stupid taboo casually broken.
    When Adam sat in that chair, it left no room for Malcolm’s ghost.
    She breathed deeply, letting tension flow out of her on the exhale. Smoothing her tightly banded ponytail and tugging the neckline of her T-shirt into alignment, she hurried across the front foyer, into the library.
    â€œI’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said brightly. “It took longer than I’d expected. Hamlet wasn’t particularly cooperative.”
    â€œI’ll bet.” Adam looked up from the magazine. “But that’s okay. I just finished ‘Thirty-seven Ways To Mistake-Proof Your Kitchen.’” He raised one brow. “It didn’t mention cats.”
    â€œNo,” she agreed politely, trying to meet his smile. “It probably wouldn’t.”
    He closed the magazine, waiting. But she didn’t know what to say. As he had pointed out last night, so many subjects were off-limits between them. And it seemed too ridiculous to try to