Dear Reader,

February, month of valentines, celebrates lovers—which is what Silhouette Desire does every month of the year. So this month, we have an extraspecial lineup of sensual and emotional page-turners. But how do you choose which exciting book to read first when all six stories are asking Be Mine?

Bestselling author Barbara Boswell delivers February’s MAN OF THE MONTH, a gorgeous doctor who insists on being a full-time father to his newly discovered child, in The Brennan Baby. Bride of the Bad Boy is the wonderful first book in Elizabeth Bevarly’s brand-new BLAME IT ON BOB trilogy. Don’t miss this fun story about a marriage of inconvenience!

Cupid slings an arrow at neighboring ranchers in Her Torrid Temporary Marriage by Sara Orwig. Next, a woman’s thirtieth-birthday wish brings her a supersexy cowboy—and an unexpected pregnancy—in The Texan, by Catherine Lanigan. Carole Buck brings red-hot chemistry to the pages of Three-Alarm Love. And Barbara McCauley’s Courtship in Granite Ridge reunites a single mother with the man she’d always loved.

Have a romantic holiday this month—and every month—with Silhouette Desire. Enjoy!

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

About the Author

ELIZABETH BEVARLY is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. “I really love to travel,” says this self-avowed beach bum. “To me, it’s the best education a person can give to herself.” Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband welcomed their firstborn, a son, three years ago.

Bride of the Bad Boy
Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Lucille Akin, the bravest woman I know.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Prologue

“I think I see him.”

“Where?”

“Up there. Just above the sycamore tree. About six inches to the left of the moon. See him?”

Fifteen-year-old Angie Ellison squinted hard and directed her gaze to the area of the night sky toward which her friend Rosemary March was pointing. All she saw was a big black smudge of darkness surrounding a silver sliver of moon, and a tiny little speck of white light that differed only marginally from the other stars in the sky.

“That little thing?” her other friend, Kirby Connaught asked incredulously. “That’s Bob?”

Rosemary nodded. “That’s him.”

“That’s nothing,” Angie countered in a tone of disgust that most fifteen-year-old girls had mastered without problem. “Frankly, I’m not impressed. What’s the big deal about Bob anyway? I mean he’s just a big, gaseous fireball, right?”

Angie, Rosemary and Kirby lay on their backs staring up at the sky, at the very back of Angie’s expansive suburban backyard, where there were no lights from the town to mess with the comet’s luminous glow. They formed an irregular, six-pointed star, the crowns of their heads touching at its center, their legs spread casually, their arms folded beneath their necks. It was 3:13 a.m., and they were waiting. Waiting to catch a glimpse of Bob.

Bob, or more specifically Comet Bob, was due to make his closest pass to the earth in the night skies above Endicott, Indiana, at precisely 3:17 a.m. For whatever reason, the comet returned to the planet like clockwork during the third week of every fifteenth September. And when it did, it always—always—made its closest pass at coordinates that were exactly—exactly—directly above the small town of Endicott.

It was an anomaly that many a scientist had tried without success to understand over generations, an enigma that brought them back like lemmings to the small, southern Indiana town every fifteen years—only to send them home again after Bob’s appearance and disappearance, scratching their heads in wonder. And because no one had been able to explain exactly what caused Bob’s regularity or his preference for Endicott, the comet’s celebrity had grown and grown, and the little Indiana town had come to claim him as their own.

The September night was hot and surly in spite of the summer’s end, and the scant breeze moving about the three girls’ faces did little but stir up more hot air. Although school had begun three weeks ago, the appearance of Bob—absent since the year of the girls’ births—and the subsequent Welcome Back, Bob Comet Festival for which Endicott, Indiana, became famous every decade and a half, called for a brief holiday. Schools were closed the following day, and all workers had been given an official holiday decreed by the mayor, just so everyone would have the opportunity to stay up late and get a good look at Bob.

But Bob seemed to have other plans this year. Although he was right on schedule, according to those with high-powered telescopes, unusually cloudy weather this year had kept him inaccessible to most casual observers so far. And the night was partly overcast, making identification of the comet even more iffy. Angie squinted harder toward the area the local astronomers had indicated would be Bob’s stage, but she still saw nothing more impressive than a vague dot in the dark sky.

“I think somebody goofed,” she said. “I don’t think Bob is coming tonight.”

“He’ll be here,” Kirby assured the others. “It’s been fifteen years. He’s never missed.”

“Bob is already here,” Rosemary insisted. “Up there above the sycamore tree, about six inches to the left of the moon. Look harder. It’s not much, but I’m telling you, it’s Bob.”

Comet Bob actually had a much more formal name, but virtually no one could pronounce it correctly. He was named after an Eastern European scientist who had few vowels, and even fewer recognizable consonants, in his name, and who had been dead for more than two hundred years anyway, and the general consensus seemed to be, What difference does it make?

Comet Bob was Comet Bob, famous in his own right and for a variety of reasons. He was always on time, he was visible to the naked eye once he drew close enough to the planet, and Endicott, Indiana grew rich off his exploitation every fifteen years.

Oh, yes, and there were the legends, as well. Anyone who’d been around for more than one appearance of Bob knew full well that he was responsible for creating all kinds of mischief. Because of the dubious honor Endicott, Indiana claimed for repeatedly sitting smack-dab beneath the comet’s closest pass to the earth, all sorts of local folklore had arisen over the years.

Some people said Bob caused cosmic disturbances that made the Endicotians—both native and transplanted—behave very strangely whenever he came around. Others thought Bob made people see the ghosts of their pasts. Then there were those who were certain that Bob was responsible for creating love relationships between people who would normally never give each other the time of day.

And, of course, there were the wishes.

It was widely believed by the townsfolk of Endicott that if someone in the small southern Indiana town was born in the year of the comet, and if that someone made a wish the year Bob returned, while the comet was making its pass directly overhead, then that someone’s wish would come true the next time Bob made a visit. Angie had barely a passing interest in the legend of the wishes. But clearly, it was on Kirby’s mind that night.

“Hey, do you guys believe that myth about the wishes?” she asked her friends.

“What?” Angie asked. “The one about them coming true if you’re born in the year of the comet?”

“Uh-huh,” Kirby replied. “Do you believe it?”

“Nah,” Angie told her. “Wishes don’t come true. Not by cosmic means or any other.”

Evidently, Rosemary was inclined to agree. “Yeah, I don’t think anyone in Endicott ever really got their wish.”

“Mrs. Marx did,” Kirby said. “She told me so. She was born in a year when Bob came around, and the next time he came by, she made a wish, and when she was thirty, when Bob came around a third time, her wish came true.”

Angie and Rosemary turned their heads to gaze at Kirby, clearly interested in hearing more.

“What did she wish for?” Rosemary asked.

Kirby looked first at one friend and then the other. Finally, she confessed, “She wouldn’t tell me.”

Angie nodded knowledgeably. “That’s what I figured.”

“But she swore her wish came true.”

Rosemary sniffed indignantly. “Yeah, I bet she did.”

“She did,” Kirby insisted. But when neither of the other girls commented further, she turned her gaze upward once more in an effort to locate the comet.

Angie did, too, noting that the nearly moonless sky was as black as she’d ever seen it, the almost utter darkness descending all the way down to the earth. Removed from the lights of civilization as the three girls were, they could scarcely see farther than each other’s faces, and the scattered billions of stars above them seemed very far away indeed. Angie stared as hard as she could in search of Bob.

And she thought again about wishes.

“Well, we were all born in the year of the comet, right?” she said, taking up where Kirby had left off, turning to each of her friends. “So if you did make a wish, and if you did think it would come true in fifteen years, what would you wish for?”

A moment of silence fell upon the three friends, until Rosemary, always the most vocal, spoke up. “I wish that pizzafaced little twerp, Willis Random, would get what’s coming to him someday.”

Willis was Rosemary’s lab partner in chemistry, the thirteen-year-old science whiz of the sophomore class, whose current focus in life seemed to be to make her life miserable. Rosemary had never much been one for scientific endeavors, and Willis had adopted a one-man—or rather, one-boy, as the case may be—campaign to belittle her and hold her in contempt for her egregious lack of understanding for his chosen field of study.

Angie nodded. The demand for Willis’s downfall seemed a suitable wish. “How about you, Kirby?” she asked her other friend.

Kirby emitted a single, wistful sigh and turned her gaze upward again. “I wish …” she began softly. Her voice trailed off, and just as Angie was about to spur her again, she said, “I wish for true love. A forever-after kind of love. Like you read about in books and see in old movies.”

Kirby’s entire life consisted of going to school and caring for her invalid mother, Angie knew, with virtually no time left for anything social or enjoyable or steam letting. And most of the boys in Endicott just thought she was much too nice a girl to ever want to ask her out on a date. So the wish for someone to come along and make her life more romantic was in no way surprising.

“That kind of love doesn’t exist,” Rosemary told her.

“Yes, it does,” Kirby objected.

“No,” Rosemary replied immediately. “It doesn’t.”

“Yes,” Kirby retorted just as quickly. “It does.”

Knowing the two girls would argue all night if given the opportunity—Bob was making everyone in Endicott behave abnormally these days—Angie cut them both off by interrupting, “Maybe we’ll find out in fifteen years.”

“I doubt it,” Rosemary muttered.

“How about you, Angie?” Kirby asked. “If you could wish for something, what would it be?”

“Yeah, what would you wish for?” Rosemary echoed, joining in.

“Me?” Angie asked thoughtfully. “I dunno. I guess I just wish something—or somebody—exciting would happen to this stupid town sometime.”

“Riiiight,” Rosemary said. “Something or someone exciting. No problem.” She propped herself up on one elbow and turned to study her friend with a knowing expression. “Angie,” she began patiently, “this is Endicott. Nothing exciting ever happens here. Even Bob can’t work miracles.”

“Well, that’s what I wish anyway,” Angie said.

“Fine. Hear that, Bob?” Rosemary shouted up to the sky. “My friend here, Angie Ellison, wants something or someone exciting to happen to Endicott the next time you come around. Write it down, will ya? Just so you don’t forget.”

And way up high, in the black night sky above Endicott, Indiana, Bob tilted and winked as he passed directly overhead. Then he began his departure from the earth to make his way toward the sun. He would be back, after all.

In exactly fifteen years.

One

Angie Ellison couldn’t believe she was going to do what she was about to do. It was dangerous. It was immoral. It was illegal. It was downright wrong. But it was her only choice if she had any hope in the world of saving her father’s livelihood, perhaps his very life.

She crouched behind a massive crepe myrtle that was still in full flower, scrubbed a finger under her nose to keep in the sneeze that threatened and stared up at Ethan Zorn’s bedroom window. At least, she thought it was his bedroom window. She’d been in the house on only two occasions—first as a second grader on a field trip to what had then been a historic attraction known as the Stately Randall House, and again last week, when she’d been posing as a Junebug Cosmetics representative specifically so she could scope the place out.

On the first occasion, Ethan Zorn hadn’t even been living in Endicott, Indiana, and his shadowy specter hadn’t been a threat to Angie’s family. On the second and much more recent occasion, the illustrious Mr. Zorn—who was now renting out what had become the Stately Randall Guest House once the Randalls had run through the Stately Randall Inheritance—hadn’t been home.

Of course, she’d known he wouldn’t be home when she’d lifted the big brass knocker on the front door. That would have interfered with her plan. Instead, she had opened her phony sample case for his housekeeper, had faked an upset stomach and had fled to the bathroom—where she’d managed to hack out some pretty convincing retching sounds, she recalled with some pride now.

The housekeeper had run to the kitchen for a glass of water and an antacid, and Angie had run upstairs to get a quick look around. And as best as she could remember, the window directly above the crepe myrtle should be the master bedroom. She was pretty sure it was, anyway. At least, she thought it was. In any case, she hoped it was, because that was where she was going in.

A damp blond curl escaped from the black baseball cap she’d crammed backward on her head, and she tried without success to blow back the unmanageable tress that plastered itself to her forehead. She was more than a little uncomfortable in the long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans, with the heat of an extended summer breathing down her neck.

September in southern Indiana might as well have been July in the Amazon jungle, she thought. The air was oppressive, unruly and hot, and in no way conducive to breaking and entering. But she’d had to wear something to cover up her dark gold hair and ivory skin; otherwise she would have reflected the scant moonlight better than a mirror.

She rose quietly and began to make her way around the circumference of the big brick mansion, her black Reeboks whispering softly on the dry grass, her breathing thready and irregular. Belatedly, she realized there was probably an alarm system that she would have to contend with, then decided that no, people never even bothered to lock their doors in Endicott, because nothing ever happened here. Even big-time crooks like Ethan Zorn probably wouldn’t worry about someone coming in uninvited. Those things just didn’t happen in Endicott.

Not even to mobsters.

So Angie decided her chances were fifty-fifty that she would be successful in her first, and without question last, attempt at tangling simultaneously with the law and the criminal element. All in all, they weren’t bad odds, she decided. They were certainly better than the ones that awaited her if she didn’t succeed in her quest. Because if she couldn’t uncover proof that Ethan Zorn was the low-life scumbag, murdering slug she knew him to be, then her family could lose everything.

As she drew near an open window, she heard the sound of music tumbling from inside—The Brandenburg concerti. Having minored in music, she would have recognized the lush, raucous compositions anywhere. Of course, such studies hadn’t helped Angie further her career in journalism. She was, after all, still working for the Endicott Examiner. And even at that, she still hadn’t won a front-page byline. Not that working the crime beat was so bad. She had wanted to be a crime reporter, after all. She just wished there were some crime in Endicott to report. It would make her job infinitely more interesting.

Not for the first time, she hoped that her escapade tonight, in addition to helping out her family, might result in a really, really good story, too. And then the Examiner’s editor, Marlene, would have to reward Angie’s journalistic integrity and spunk. Maybe the story would even be syndicated, she thought further, fairly drooling over the fantasy. She could already see her name on the front page of the New York Times.

Of course, then mobsters everywhere would know where to find her. She frowned at the realization for a moment, wondering yet again if she was doing the right thing. Then the music ended abruptly, and she had no more time to think. She hurled herself against the cool brick building behind her, flattening herself against the wall, fading into a shadow. She told herself not to panic—Ethan Zorn was still out of town. She knew that, because she’d called her friend Rosemary, who worked as a travel agent—and who owed Angie more favors than she would ever be able to repay—to find out his itinerary. So it must have been the housekeeper who had switched off the concert.

Angie braved a quick dip of her head toward the window, gazed into a room furnished in Early Conspicuous Consumption, and saw that it was indeed the white-haired, mild-mannered Mrs. MacNamara who was fiddling with the stereo dials. And she kept fiddling for a good three minutes until she located the alternative station operated by the local high-school communications class. Only when the boom-boom-boom of Nine Inch Nails slammed against the walls did Mrs. MacNamara move to a chair by the grand piano and pick up her knitting.

It’s that damned comet, Angie thought, shaking her head in wonder. It would be passing directly above Endicott in a week and a half, and everyone always said it made people do things they’d normally never do.

Like break into a house one had no business breaking into, she thought further, dropping to her hands and knees to crawl beneath the open window. Like risk the wrath of a malevolent killer like Ethan Zorn to keep her family safe.

Actually, Angie didn’t know for sure that Ethan Zorn had ever killed anyone. She simply assumed that he had, given his line of work. Mobsters were always killing people, weren’t they? Or at least they were hiring assassins or others of such ilk to do the killing. Until recently, there had never been any mob activity in Endicott. Not until Mr. Zorn had come to town. But now there was all kinds of talk of illegal goings-on. Well, some talk anyway. A little. Angie just wished she could pin down exactly what those illegal goings-on were. She was the crime reporter, after all.

She moved around the perimeter of the house in silence, and when she was satisfied that Mrs. MacNamara was in fact the only person home, Angie made her way back to the area below the alleged master bedroom window. Two stories hadn’t seemed all that high in broad daylight. But now as she squinted into the darkness above her, that window seemed a pretty fair climb.

She filled her lungs with the hot September night and released the breath slowly. There was nothing else for it—she had no choice. Besides, the waterspout was so conveniently located at that corner of the building—and directly beside Ethan Zorn’s bedroom window—that she just couldn’t resist.

Gripping the metal spout firmly with one black leather-gloved hand, Angie dug the toe of her black high-top sneaker into the wide space between the bricks and heaved herself upward. Slowly, steadily, clawing first the bricks and then the drainspout, she made her way up the side of the building, feeling oddly exhilarated, like some nuclear-age superhero in a garishly painted comic book.

It wasn’t until she reached the bedroom window that Angie began to panic. Because she realized then that deep down in her heart, she had been hoping the window would be locked and impassive, so that she could scrap this whole silly plan and go home for a good, long, helpless cry. Unfortunately for her, though, the window was not only unlocked, but open wide to allow in the warm, early-autumn breeze. It was going to be a piece of cake to break into Ethan Zorn’s house.

Dammit.

With one final, heartfelt sigh, she reached for the concrete windowsill and swung her body toward it. For a single, brief moment, she hung there by both hands, berating herself yet again for doing something so incredibly stupid. Then she inhaled a deep breath, pulled herself upward and rolled herself over the sill and into the house.

Ethan Zorn rolled his itty-bitty, outrageously expensive car to a halt in front of his rented house and swore yet again that he would never, ever, not even if his life depended on it, fly standby again. It was too stressful, too unpredictable, too plebeian and too crowded.

Of course, he reminded himself, there had been a time in his life when he’d loved crowds and unpredictability, not to mention acting plebeian. But he’d never much cared for stress. Funny, how over the last decade he’d managed to completely banish from his life the things he had always loved, and nurture the one thing he had always hated. Or maybe it wasn’t so funny after all, he thought further with a frown. Certainly, it hadn’t been fun.

He pushed the troubling thoughts away as he shoved his car door open. Then he unfolded himself from inside, arched his body into a long, lusty stretch on the pavement and reached back toward the passenger seat for his briefcase and garment bag. The two items seemed to be his constant companions these days, and he noted absently that both were starting to show signs of fatigue and wear.

Much the way he was himself, he ruminated almost whimsically. But then, in his line of work, men like him never lasted long.

After kicking the car door closed with his heel, Ethan activated the alarm, wondering why he bothered. His newly adopted headquarters—he hesitated to consider the small town of Endicott, Indiana his home—was a place rife with decency and wholesomeness, more’s the pity. But he was accustomed to watching his back in all areas of his life, and wasn’t about to stop now.

His house keys jangled lightly as he ascended the steps and crossed the wide porch, and as an afterthought, before inserting the key into the lock, Ethan tried the front door. Unlocked. Again. He was going to have to have yet another chat with his housekeeper, Mrs. MacNamara.

Of course, Mrs. Mack had grown up in Endicott, so she couldn’t possibly understand what dangerous elements existed out there in the big, bad world. Endicott was the heart and soul of midwestern America, a place where dreams and wishes actually still had the potential to come true.

It was almost laughable, really, Ethan thought, the naïveté and blissful ignorance of this town. If people had any idea what he was really doing here, they’d pack up their children and pets and run screaming for the safety of the shallow green hills outside town. Fortunately for Ethan, he’d covered his tracks well. But then, that was absolutely essential in his line of work. One misstep, and he could be dead.

The front door creaked comfortably as Ethan opened it, and he was assaulted by the unlikely percussion of hard-rock music. Following it to the sitting room, he saw Mrs. Mack sound asleep in a chair beneath her knitting, and the stereo speakers fairly dancing on the bookshelf with every thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of a bass guitar. He crossed to the receiver and switched it off, and glorious silence descended to awaken the elderly woman.

She blinked at the soft light enveloping her like a shawl and met Ethan’s gaze. “Oh. Mr. Zorn. You’re home early. I wasn’t expecting you back until tomorrow night.”

Ethan swiped a hand wearily over his face and rubbed his forehead hard. “My business concluded earlier than I thought it would, so I went ahead and came back. Everything okay?”

His housekeeper nodded. “As well as can be expected with Bob on the horizon.”

He shook his head. So she had been sucked in by all that comet garbage, too, he mused. That was the only thing about this town that Ethan found disturbing. This comet hysteria that seemed to have been affecting everyone since the day he’d arrived a couple of weeks ago. Comet Bob had been blamed for everything from missing pets to power outages to slow mail delivery. And every time local citizens did something stupid—whether it was speeding right by a traffic cop or getting caught in the act by one’s spouse—they conveniently blamed it on Bob.

“Fine,” Ethan said, dismissing the comet talk before it could begin. Suddenly, he was too tired to berate his housekeeper about the front door, so he ran a big hand wearily through his black hair and told her, “I’ll just turn in, then.”

Mrs. MacNamara nodded again. “Me, too. Ever since Bob was first spotted out there last month, I’ve been completely sapped of energy.”

Of course, Ethan thought, that would have nothing to do with the fact that the woman was nearly eighty years old and had recently taken on the total responsibility for her fourteen-year-old great-grandson, who was, if nothing else, a juvenile delinquent. No way could it be that. It must be Bob who was responsible for her sudden weariness.

“You do that, Mrs. Mack,” he said, keeping his thoughts to himself.

He waited until his housekeeper was out of sight, then shrugged out of his Brioni suit jacket and tossed it over his arm, rolling his shoulders against the pressure of the holster strapped across his back. The big MAC-10 pistol tucked inside had traveled in pieces from Philadelphia in the overstuffed garment bag Ethan had checked for the flight. But the moment he’d collected the bag from the luggage carousel, he had ducked into the nearest men’s room to quickly reassemble it, fastening the gun back in place. He felt far too vulnerable without it.

After loosening his Valentino necktie until it hung unfettered beneath his collar, Ethan hoisted his garment bag over his shoulder, gripped his briefcase more firmly and headed upstairs to his room. As he silently ascended the plushly carpeted steps, he switched his briefcase to his other hand and began unfastening the buttons on his Versace dress shirt, pulling it free of his trousers.

Comfort. That was all he wanted at the moment—comfort and relaxation. He paused outside his bedroom door to toe off his Gucci loafers, and was about to reach into the room to switch on the light, when he heard a strange, soft sound whisper through the darkness on the other side. The squeak of a bedspring, he realized immediately. Someone was in his room, squeaking his bedsprings, no less.

He took a single, silent step backward and lowered his burdens to the floor without a sound. Then he plucked the MAC-10 from his holster and flicked off the safety. The balmy night was suddenly suffocating, and he swiped at a thin sheen of perspiration that dampened his upper lip. Then he stepped toward the bedroom door again, pressed his hand flat against the wall and reached around to flick on the light switch.

As the bulb burst into bright white light overhead, Ethan moved into the doorway with his gun drawn before himself, his legs braced, with feet planted firmly against each side of the doorjamb. He had expected to see any number of people greeting him just as menacingly on the other side.

What he didn’t expect to see was a petite blonde dressed completely in black, standing on tiptoe at the head of his bed with the pillows piled beneath her feet, a position that almost gave her the additional leverage needed to reach the painting of Moby Dick overhead. She spun around at the intrusion of light and promptly lost her footing, falling hard on her fanny at the center of the mattress.

When she saw Ethan’s menacing stance behind the big, black gun, she gasped and slapped both gloved hands over her mouth, as if she were trying to stifle a scream. Her dark eyes widened in terror, but she uttered no further sound. Her body seemed to tremble all over, and her chest rose and fell erratically as she struggled to take in enough breath.

Instinctively, Ethan knew that she had broken into his house for some reason other than harming him physically. What on earth that reason could possibly be, however, had him totally mystified. Although he’d been living in Endicott for two weeks now, he couldn’t recall ever having seen the woman who had invaded his house. Because he definitely would have remembered a woman like that. Not to mention eyes like those.

A brown-eyed blonde, he marveled. He’d always had a major thing for brown-eyed blondes. How very fortunate to find one in his bed now.

When he realized how frightened she was of him, he knew he had the upper hand, and he was helpless to prevent the smile that curled his lips. Tightening his grip on the gun, just to make her even more frightened—and therefore more amenable to answering his questions—Ethan took a few steps into his room, kicked the door closed behind him and reached quickly back to twist the key in the lock. Then he withdrew the key and tossed it carelessly to the other side of the room.

Still cupping her hands tightly over her mouth, the woman watched the slim length of metal arc delicately into the air, and took note of its descent and landing behind the Queen Anne chair in the corner by the fireplace. Her gaze moved from there to the open window opposite the bed, and Ethan could see that she was already weighing her chances with both escape routes, wondering which might provide the best alternative.

Nice try, he thought. He wasn’t about to let her get away that easily. Maybe not at all.

He took a few more steps toward the bed, the slight movement enough to bring the woman’s head whipping back around, her gaze locked on his. She finally dropped her hands from her mouth, but she still seemed unwilling—or unable—to make a sound. And she still didn’t make a move from the bed.

As Ethan drew nearer, he realized she was even smaller than he’d originally estimated, and he wondered what the hell she thought she was doing breaking into the home of a man twice her size and weight. She must love to live dangerously, he decided. So danger was exactly what he would give her.

She remained motionless as he completed his approach, and he had to force himself to stop at the edge of the mattress and not crawl into bed beside her. Instead, he fastened his gaze to the black baseball cap that sat backward on her head, and the spray of loosely curled dark gold hair springing from the opening that normally would have been in the back. Then, as salaciously as he could, he skimmed his gaze downward, meeting her eyes levelly before turning his attention to her mouth, her breasts, her body.

“Well, well, well,” he said softly after completing his inventory. When the woman edged backward to press herself against the headboard, he broadened his smile to bare his teeth, held his gun level and perched on the edge of the mattress. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” he wondered aloud. “And, more important than that, why is she still here?”

Hoo, boy, Angie thought with only a vague sense of reality. She was in it now. Deep. As she met the gaze of the big, lethal-looking man who had caught her searching his bedroom—because it was way preferable to staring down the muzzle of the big, lethal-looking gun he had trained between her breasts—she wondered what exactly she was going to do now.

Thinking back, she supposed it might have been a good idea to plan an escape route in case Ethan Zorn discovered her presence in his home. But at the time, being discovered just hadn’t seemed likely. And besides, at the time, she’d been too busy trying to decide what to wear.

Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, she thought now.

She supposed, if she tried really, really hard, she could convince herself that the menacing Mr. Zorn wasn’t planning to shoot her. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have locked the door and thrown away the key—it would only hinder him in the speedy disposal of her body. Not to mention the fact that if he had planned to shoot her, he probably would have pulled the trigger by now. So maybe all this business with the gun was just a little something he did to scare people.

As far as Angie was concerned, it worked.

“You’re not going to tie me up, are you?”

The question was out of her mouth before she even realized she was thinking it. She squeezed her eyes shut tight. Idiot, idiot, idiot, she berated herself. Why on earth had she asked him such a thing?

When she opened her eyes again, Ethan Zorn was gazing at her with one eyebrow arched in speculation, as if he would like very much to take her up on her offer.

“Do you want me to tie you up?”

Instead of saying anything else that might make her sound as stupid as she felt, Angie clenched her teeth together hard, to keep her mouth firmly shut. Then she drew in a deep breath and held it, and waited to see what he would do.

“I guess I could scare up some rope from somewhere in the house.” He smiled. “If it means that much to you. Then again,” he added, his smile growing lascivious, “maybe you’d like it better if I used some of my neckties. They’re silk, you know. Much less likely to leave marks.”

Still Angie only continued to stare at him, unable to make a sound.

“Well, maybe some other time,” he said, clearly sorry she hadn’t responded more enthusiastically. He eyed her more intently. “So if you’re not here looking for some cheap thrills—which, incidentally, I’d be happy to provide—then what are you doing in my bedroom?”

Angie didn’t—couldn’t—say anything in response.

“Well?” he asked.

She bit her lip and finally managed to find her voice. It was barely a squeak, granted, but at least she was able to chirp, “Well, what?”

He waggled the gun a little, a silent indication that he thought she should already know what he was talking about.

Angie scrunched up her shoulders and pretended not to understand, hoping for some kind of divine inspiration or medical intervention to offer an opportunity for escape. She was working on a good heart attack as it was. Maybe, if she could just buy herself a few more minutes, it would become a full-fledged coronary arrest, and she’d be saved the messy outcome of a shooting death.

Ethan Zorn eyed her curiously. “I’m waiting for an explanation, Goldilocks.” His voice was low and level and redolent of the blue-collar accent one found so prevalent in the northeastern part of the country. “What are you doing in my house?” he added. “My bed? Your porridge been kind of cold lately? You looking to warm things up a bit?”

For one very brief instant, it occurred to Angie that Ethan Zorn had the most beautiful, bottomless, benevolent brown eyes she’d ever seen. Like Bambi’s mother. Or even Bambi himself. Then she shook the sensation off and reminded herself he was a killer. Well, probably a killer, anyway. And killers didn’t have benevolent Bambi brown eyes.

“Oh, is this your house?” she asked, feigning surprise, still hoping to buy herself some time.

He didn’t look anywhere at all convinced by her phony confusion. “It’s one my employer is renting for me while I have business here, yeah,” he told her.

She glanced quickly around at her surroundings, pretending to see them for the first time, then smacked her palm soundly against her forehead. “Oh, wow, am I embarrassed. I thought this was Bumper Shaugnessy’s house. You know Bumper, of course, don’t you?”

Ethan Zorn continued to study her through narrowed eyes, and didn’t respond at first. Angie kept silent, though, thinking every minute she could stall would bring her one step further away from winding up a tidbit in the Examiner’s obits later in the week.

“Uh, no,” Zorn finally said. “Can’t say as I’ve made Bumper’s acquaintance.”

She pretended to be amazed. “But everyone in Endicott knows Bumper. Ever since that incident with the Indiana Corn Queen at the Madison County Fair. Now, surely you heard about that.”

Again the big man sitting on the bed beside her narrowed his eyes at her. “Um, no, sorry. Missed that one, too.”

Angie waved her hand spiritedly. “Oh, this is a great story. You’re gonna love it. See, what happened was that Boomer was actually dating Dierdre’s twin sister, Daphne—Dierdre being the Indiana Corn Queen, of course—and he didn’t realize—”

“Who are you?”

Angie blinked quickly, and once again found herself pinned to the spot by Ethan Zorn’s espresso gaze. “I’m Angie,” she replied automatically, wondering when she had chosen to speak. “Angie Ellison.”

He shook his head, clearly confused. “Why are you in my house? In the dark? Dressed in black? As if you were trying to …oh, say …rob the place?”

Once more, she shook off the odd sensation that the man sitting beside her—the man holding a gun on her, the man who was a threat to her entire family—was really just a cream puff deep down inside.

“I told you,” she said softly, forcing the words out of a mouth suddenly gone dry. “I thought this was Bumper Shaugnessy’s house.”

Ethan Zorn shook his head. “Uh-uh. No way, sweetheart. I ain’t buyin’ it.”

In one swift, deft move, he pointed the gun toward the ceiling, ejected its clip with a loud ka-thwack, checked it and tucked it back into the grip. Then, when the cacophony of scraping metal fell silent, he trained the ugly weapon on Angie once more.

“Now, then,” he said. “Let’s try this again. Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

“I’m Angie,” she repeated. “Angie Elli—”

“I got the name down fine the first time, honey. I just don’t recognize it.” He dropped his gaze briefly to her mouth, then brought it quickly back up to her eyes. “Help me out here, or I’m going to have to resort to doing something I don’t wanna have to do.”

She inhaled a deep breath and scrambled for something that might explain her presence in a halfway plausible fashion. “Um…would you believe I’m…uh…delivering some Junebug cosmetics that your housekeeper ordered last week?”

Ethan Zorn shook his head very slowly. “No, I don’t think I believe that. Try again.”

Angie bit her lip. “Um…would you believe I’m working for ‘Bugs’ Burger’s Extermination—at ‘Bugs,’ we think the only good bug is a dead bug—and have reason to believe that a rare breed of night-crawling cucaracha is infesting your walls?”

Again, that slow shake of his head. “Nope.”

Angie gave it one last shot. “Would you believe, um…that I’ve been admiring you from afar for some time now and just wanted to make your acquaintance?”

That, at least, brought forth a smile from the inimitable Mr. Zorn. Unfortunately, it was a decidedly lascivious smile, and Angie began to think maybe that last attempt at explanation might not have been such a good idea after all.

“Although I think I like the idea of being…admired from afar,” he began, “something tells me that’s just not quite it, either. Three strikes, Goldilocks,” he added, lifting the gun that had begun to droop. “Unless you wanna give it one last shot—no pun intended—and tell me the truth this time, then you’re outta there.”

Two

Ethan Zorn had been in the business a long time, and he’d met more than his fair share of characters along the way. Manny “The Meat Hook” Moran, for instance, came quickly to mind. And Two-Fingers Nick. Joey the Knife. Goosey Lucy…or something like that—Ethan could never quite remember that guy’s name. And then there was that South Philly boy whose name had always come out sounding like “Lenny Bagagroceries.”

But he’d never encountered anyone quite like Angie Ellison. Angie “The Angel” Ellison, he decided. Somehow, the name fit her. There was something about her that reeked of a higher existence, a higher standard. In addition to being beautiful in a way that Ethan could only describe as ethereal—yeah, that was a good word for it—there was an innocence and beatitude about her that was unmistakable. And although just about everyone in this hick town seemed naive to a fault, on this woman, it was carried to new heights.

He just wished he knew who the hell she was and what the hell she was up to.

She should be terrified of him, he told himself. He was twice her size, armed, and she was locked in a bedroom with him. For all she knew, he intended to kill her. Any other woman would have been scared speechless. But Angie Ellison was actually flirting with him. Flirting, for God’s sake. That was the only way Ethan could interpret the look on her face, the timbre of her voice, the playfulness behind her words. Yeah, she was trying to save her life—it didn’t take a genius to figure that out. But she was doing it so…so…lightheartedly.

It was giving him the creeps.

Okay, so maybe he could ascribe her relative easiness at being made a hostage to the fact that she was obviously a native of Endicott. One thing Ethan had learned since locating here, the people in this community had clearly been living in some kind of Eisenhower-era vacuum all their lives and didn’t have even the vaguest concept of what real life was all about. They still celebrated Founders’ Day here. They had a pumpkin festival coming up next month wherein they were holding a Sweetheart’s Dance. That’s actually what they were calling it—a Sweetheart’s Dance.

Living in Endicott, he had quickly decided, was like being trapped forever in a Hayley Mills movie.

So, clearly, Angie Ellison couldn’t possibly fully appreciate the precariousness of her situation. Which meant maybe Ethan ought to turn up the steam some.

“Angel,” he began.

“‘Angie,’” she corrected him quickly.

“Angel,” he assured her with a confident nod. “We have a couple of ways we can go here.”

She arched her brows in what he could only liken to curiosity, as if she were genuinely interested in hearing his suggestions. They might as well have been taking tea together, for all the concern she seemed to have for her imprisonment.

“Now, I know you didn’t mistake my house for this Boomer whoever’s place,” he began again.

“Bumper,” she interjected. “Bumper Shaugnessy.”

“Whatever,” he said wearily, feeling the gun in his hand begin to sag again. This time, he didn’t bother to correct his aim. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m sure it has something to do with me.”

She inclined her head forward. “And your name is…?” she asked.

He parted his lips slightly with his tongue and watched her thoughtfully. “Zorn,” he finally told her. “Ethan Zorn.”

She nodded, but seemed more fixed on what his mouth was doing than on what he was saying. He smiled. This was definitely getting interesting.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” she told him, sounding genuinely pleased to make his acquaintance. “Are you only visiting in Endicott? Do you have relatives here?”

“What I’m doing here, Angel—”

“‘Angie.’”

“Angel, is really none of your business. However,” he continued quickly when she opened her mouth to interrupt him again, “what you’re doing in my house is very much my business. Especially since you keep avoiding the question.”

“I’m not avoiding it,” she told him. “I was just trying to make polite conversation.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather make sense of this whole situation.”

He edged closer to her on the bed, until his thigh was pressed against hers. Then he reached behind her to grab the bill of her cap, yanked it from her head and tossed it to the floor. A rich, rowdy stream of gold, copper and silver spilled down around her shoulders in loose spirals of curls, and she expelled a tiny, hiccuping sound of surprise. He smiled his most sinister smile as he reached for a handful of the soft, silky tresses at her nape, then wrapped them loosely in his fist.

He had no desire to get ugly. Angie Ellison seemed like a nice person, and he always did his best to refrain from roughing up nice people. Unfortunately, for the line of work he had chosen, roughing people up was near the top of requirements in his job description, and every now and then those people seemed perfectly nice. He hoped this wouldn’t be one of those times.

“Now then,” he said, trying once more, not quite able to ignore the softness of the hair he had wrapped around his fingers and the scent of spring flowers that had suddenly surrounded him the moment he’d freed the tangle of curls. “What are you doing in my house?”

The jig was up, Angie thought. Or whatever it was they said in those gangster films she used to sit through at the Roxy Theater on Willow Street when she was a teenager. Stalling wasn’t working, and frankly, her brain was spinning from trying to make chitchat a viable source of survival. Ethan Zorn was starting to get impatient. And although she wasn’t entirely sure what impatience did to mobsters, it was probably a safe bet to assume that it didn’t much become them.

That assumption was reinforced when he bunched a fistful of her hair in his palm and tugged her head backward, then settled the muzzle of the gun against her throat.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“Oh,” she gasped, her heartbeat hammering double time at the feel of the cool, hard metal nestled against her tender flesh.

This was not the way she had envisioned the evening turning out. When he tugged on her hair again, harder this time, Angie finally, finally began to understand exactly what she was up against. Not only had she gotten in way over her head, but she was about to be sucked down into a vast whirlpool of dark water unlike anything she’d ever encountered before.

“Please…” she petitioned softly, “you…you’re hurting me.”

To her complete mortification, tears sprang to her eyes—more a result of her fear than anything physically painful—and she bit her lip hard to prevent them from spilling. She did not want this man to see her cry. Crying was a sign of weakness, and she didn’t want to appear weak to Ethan Zorn.

His hold on her hair loosened some at the sight of her tears, and his expression actually seemed to soften. Strange, she thought, that a gangster could look guilty and remorseful over something as simple as a woman’s tears. But Ethan Zorn looked exactly that. After a moment, he removed the gun’s muzzle from her neck, clicked on the safety and returned the weapon to its holster. But he continued to hold on to a handful of her hair, stroking a curl between thumb and forefinger, as if he’d discovered a magic talisman of some kind.

“Last chance,” he told her, his voice low, but lacking in some of the menace it had carried earlier.

“All right,” she ceded, finally understanding that there was no way he was going to let her go until she answered his questions. “Like I said, I’m Angie Ellison. And I…I work for the Endicott Examiner.”

“The newspaper?” he asked, seeming genuinely stunned by her revelation.

She nodded quickly. “I broke in here on purpose, knowing full well that this is your house.”

He eyed her thoughtfully for a moment, then murmured, “Why?”

She swallowed hard and met his gaze, again surprised by the depth of the intelligence and emotion so evident there. Once again, he actually looked sorry to have manhandled her so, she marveled. He honestly seemed pained to have hurt her, however mildly.

“Because I know who you are,” she told him.

He grinned, the crooked set to his mouth making him look oddly appealing. “And just who am I?”

Angie’s heart began to beat more quickly. “You’re Ethan Zorn. And you…you work for the mob.”

His only reaction to her charge was a slight twitch to one cheek, and a vague darkening of his eyes. If she hadn’t been as close to him as she was, she probably wouldn’t have even noticed it. For a single, taut moment, he seemed frankly amazed by her assessment of him. Then, just as quickly, he became amused.

“The mob?” he repeated with a chuckle. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I know.”

“Angel, you have got one vivid imagination, I’ll give you that.”

“It’s ‘Angie,’” she corrected him irritably. Gun or no gun, she really hated being called “Angel,” especially in the sexually charged, way-too-familiar manner in which Ethan Zorn said it. “And you do, too, work for the mob,” she continued assuredly. “Don’t bother to deny it, because I know you do.”

He shook his head lightly. “I work for the Cokely Chemical Corporation,” he told her. “I’m here on business for a few weeks. I’m a sales rep trying to drum up some new accounts.”

“Riiiiight,” she said, feeling a bit of her nerve return, now that he seemed to be relaxing some. “And Cokely always sends its sales reps out with big guns. I guess that’s to guarantee winning over the potential client, isn’t it?”

He glanced down at the gun, then back at Angie. “Traveling businessmen are easy targets,” he told her. “I don’t like to get caught off guard.”

“Or maybe you just never know when you’re going to have to off a snoopy journalist,” she countered before she could stop herself.

“‘Off a snoopy journalist’?” he echoed with a chuckle. “Angel, you’ve been watching too many Humphrey Bogart movies. I’m a sales rep for the Cokely Chemical Corporation. That’s all there is to it.”

“Oh, sure, that’s your cover,” she said with a nervous nod, wincing when she recalled, too late, that he continued to hold a fistful of her hair. “Look, my father owns a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant here, and you haven’t called on him yet. Now, why would a sales rep overlook what would be his most lucrative client in town for more than two weeks? He wouldn’t. My father’s company would have been your first stop. It doesn’t make sense. You don’t work for Cokely.”

“Okay, let’s assume for a minute that I don’t work for Cokely. Just how did you come to this conclusion that I work for the mob?”

“I have my sources.”

“Yeah, well, obviously Cokely isn’t one of them. If you’d bothered to ask them, they would have told you I’m on their payroll and have been for years.”

“Yeah, they did tell me that, as a matter of fact.” She paused for only a moment, then added, “But like I said—I have other sources. And you could have just paid off someone in personnel to verify your employment, should someone ask about it.”

Ethan Zorn eyed her with much consideration, then freed the hair he had wound in his fist. Without speaking, he rose from the bed, strode carelessly to the desk on the other side of the room and retrieved a large white envelope from the blotter. Then he removed his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open. He tossed that to the middle of the mattress, then lifted the envelope and spilled its entire contents beside it.

“My credentials,” he said. “Knock yourself out.”

Angie eyed him back warily, but she wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to see what he had to offer. Gingerly, as she would a ticking bomb, she picked up his wallet and inspected his driver’s license through the little plastic window that housed it. Pennsylvania. His address was a Philadelphia one that told her absolutely nothing, seeing as how she’d never been to Philadelphia before. But she memorized it quickly, knowing she could run a check on it tomorrow morning.

A number of credit cards—all of them gold—were tucked casually into each of the slots provided for such, and she inspected them one by one, noting that they were all stamped with the same name: Ethan Zorn. Feeling bolder, she started to peek into the money compartment, then lost her nerve and glanced up at him to silently ask permission first.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I told you. Knock yourself out.”

Oh, sure, she thought. That way, he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

She tucked her thumb into the money section, fingering each of the neatly lined-up bills as she added them, noting vaguely that they were all in order of descending amount, and that each of the presidents was right side up and facing forward.

An anal-retentive mobster, she thought mildly. Now, that was a good one.

Three hundred seventy-eight dollars, she tallied, and, presumably, change. Now, what kind of person walked around with that kind of money in cash? Immediately, she answered herself: mobsters, that’s what kind. She glanced up at him again and saw that he was smiling.

“I don’t like to use traveler’s checks,” he said, clearly understanding her unasked question.

“Why not? Because they can be traced?”

“Credit cards can be traced, too,” he stated, nodding toward his collection.

“Yeah, if you use them,” she said. “Who says these aren’t just for show?”

He shook his head, clearly thinking she was an idiot. Angie frowned.

“Let’s just say I don’t like having my name bandied about,” he told her.

“A private person, are you?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“I suppose I could, but I bet you don’t use traveler’s checks—or credit cards—for another reason entirely.”

He sighed. “And that reason would be?”

“Because you’re connected.”

He laughed, a dry, eerie sound that was in no way convincing. “And what would a mobster like me be doing in a place like this?”

She met his gaze with what she hoped was steely-eyed determination. “To get your dirty hands on my father’s pharmaceutical company.”

His smile was smug and indulgent, the kind a resigned mother might offer a two-year-old who was turning blue from holding his breath for the hundredth time. “I see. And why would I want my hands on your father’s pharmaceutical company?”

“So you—and the mob—can use it to further your filthy drug trade.”

This time his laughter was an out-and-out bark of disbelief. “You have got to be kidding.”

“Don’t bother to deny it,” Angie told him, irritated at his light mood. “I know that’s why you’re here.”

“Angel, I’m here trying to expand Cokely’s business, that’s all. This town is perfectly situated for me to hit a lot of small communities in three states in one trip.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “You say your father owns a pharmaceutical company? Could you give him my card?”

“Very funny.”

“Hey, I’m serious. I need all the help I can get here. And for all you know, Cokely could give him a much better deal than his current chemical supplier.”

“Thanks anyway, but my father doesn’t deal with criminals.”

Ethan Zorn shook his head and pointed toward the pile of information scattered on his bed. “Will you just have a look at all that? I’m exactly who I say I am. Trust me.”

Oh, sure, Angie thought. The last guy who had asked her to trust him had had her flat on her back in the front seat of his car in about thirty seconds. Fortunately for her, that self-defense course had paid off, and she’d planted her knee in his groin with fairly little effort. Something told her, however, that Ethan Zorn was more than prepared for such a maneuver, should she try it on him.

Nevertheless, she gazed down at the multicolored, variously sized scraps of paper and plastic that dotted the bedspread. A corporate ID from Cokely that looked to be authentic, various work orders, maps of Endicott and its surrounding communities, invitations to call on local businesses and representatives from the chamber of commerce, even a letter from the mayor oozing with compliments and boasts of how business friendly the little town of Endicott, Indiana, could be.

Okay, so a lot of this stuff made Ethan Zorn seem that he was nothing more than a sales rep for the Cokely Chemical Corporation. Angie was still suspicious. As she’d told him a moment ago, she had her sources. And she’d done some sleuthing of her own. And she had good reason to believe he was, in reality, exactly who she’d accused him of being.

“Satisfied?” he asked when she looked up at him again.

She began to slide all his credentials back into the envelope from which they had spilled, and avoided meeting his eyes. “No,” she told him simply. “It’s not difficult to forge these things.”

“You think I’d forge a letter from your mayor?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Then why don’t you give her a call and ask her if she’s been in contact with me about local business?”

“Maybe I will.”

“Ms. Ellison—” he began.

When he stopped abruptly and said nothing else, Angie halted her own activities and looked up at him. His expression changed drastically then, and this time he was the one to smack his forehead soundly with his palm. She hoped her own earlier effort had been a bit more convincing than his was.

“Wait a minute,” he said with a laugh. “Sure. Now I know. You say your last name is Ellison?”

She nodded tightly.

“Ellison Pharmaceuticals,” he stated knowledgeably. “I’m calling on them Friday.”

“You’ve been in Endicott for more than two weeks, and you’re just now getting around to calling on my father?” she asked, reiterating her earlier doubt.

Her question seemed to stump him for a moment, but he covered admirably. “I’ve had a lot of preliminary legwork to do. Plus, I had to go back to Philadelphia briefly. Just got back tonight, in fact.”

“Uh-huh.”

Instead of responding to her murmur of doubt, he extended a hand harmlessly toward her, as if he were doing nothing more than reaching forward to help her out of a car. And Angie took a good look at him for the first time since being discovered in his room—a good look.

His shirt hung open over a broad chest, liberally dusted with dark hair that disappeared below the waistband of his trousers. His legs were long, and despite the baggy trousers, she knew somehow that they’d be spectacularly formed. The forearms visible beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt were truly works of art, ridges of muscle corded with strong veins. And his hands… Angie bit back a sigh. Who would have suspected a killer could have such incredibly sexy hands?

An odd heat wound through her as she processed the information she’d collected about his physique, and she suddenly became aware of him as a man instead of a threat. Since he’d come to Endicott, she’d viewed him only from a distance. Now, up close and personal at last, she realized that she was out of her league in more ways than one.

He had the face of an angel, she decided as her gaze lingered there. A fallen angel, granted, but an angel nonetheless. His wasn’t the kind of face she associated with the mob. His eyes were dark and dreamy and beautiful, his nose straight and narrow and obviously never broken in a fistfight—something she might have expected of a man like him. His mouth was full and utterly masculine, bracketed by deep slashes she normally only associated with movie stars. His lashes were thick and even blacker than his hair somehow, his jaw lean and cleanly defined.

All in all, with his expensive Italian clothes so casually thrown askew and his heavy-lidded, deeply sultry gaze, he looked like an ad for Versace in GQ. There was no way—no way—anyone would ever convince her that this man was a sales rep. With all due respect to sales reps everywhere, this guy was just too…too…too…

Too.

That’s all there was to it. But somehow, now that she’d actually interacted with him on a personal level, he didn’t seem like a mobster, either. What exactly he was, she honestly didn’t know, but… Could she possibly be mistaken about him? she wondered. Could there be any way her sources were wrong?

He was still standing before her, silently reaching out to her, and without even thinking about what she was doing, Angie lifted her hand to place it in his. Immediately, he folded his fingers over hers, and her pale, delicate hand was completely swallowed by his dark, rawboned one. His skin was warm and rough, his grip confident and possessive. And it occurred to Angie then that if he ever set his mind to it, he could do or be whatever he wanted in this world.

“Thanks,” she muttered absently as he gave her a gentle tug.

He hauled her easily off the bed, but when she would have halted her progress on the spot where her feet first hit the floor, Ethan Zorn continued to pull her forward, propelling her against his chest.

“Oops,” he said blandly, catching her capably in his arms.

He folded them over her back with much familiarity, and tilted his head down toward hers with what she could only liken to intent. Intent to do what, she hesitated to consider, but intent nonetheless.

“Do you mind?” she muttered as she tried to squirm out of his embrace.

“Not at all,” he assured her, tightening his hold.

She doubled up her fists against his bare chest, trying not to notice the warm vitality and rigid definition of the numerous and well-formed muscles she encountered. Trying, and failing miserably.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said as she began to push herself away again.

But he continued to hold her easily in place, even managed somehow to pull her a bit closer. “Hey, you’re the one who climbed into my bed,” he noted. “I’m just moving things along to their logical conclusion. Shouldn’t I assume you’re as interested in something like this as I am? You yourself said you’ve been admiring me from afar. And you know, it gets pretty lonely sometimes when you’re a traveling sales rep.”

She ceased her struggles for a moment and tipped her head back to glare at him. “You should assume nothing,” she told him. “I have not been admiring you from afar, and I don’t care how lonely you get.”

“But you said you’ve been admiring me from—”

“I lied, okay? Big surprise, right? You admitted yourself you didn’t believe me when I said it.”

He dipped his head lower toward hers and murmured, “I think I’ve decided now that I will believe you after all. You just don’t seem like the dishonest type.”

Angie ignored that, countering instead, “And I did not climb into your bed.”

He cocked one eyebrow in a silent request for clarification, and seeing as how he had sort of found her where he had, Angie supposed she owed him at least some small explanation.

“I climbed onto your bed,” she told him. “Big difference.”

“Not to my way of thinking.” He tightened his hold on her even more and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side, as if he fully intended to kiss her. “You sure you don’t want me to tie you up?” he asked, his voice low and level and completely serious.

Angie’s heart began to beat faster, rushing blood to warm parts of her body that in no way needed warming. His breath fanned her forehead, and his muscular arms were draped around her shoulders and down her back with a familiarity suggesting that was precisely where they belonged. His fingers skimmed against her fanny in a way that might have been casual, but then again, might not have been. And all she could do was stand there letting him get away with it, wondering what it would be like to be very casual indeed with the man.

God help her, she was actually turned on by him, she realized with no small amount of shock. Utterly, irrevocably, turned on. By a mobster. She was responding with a needful, almost visceral desire to mate with a man who—although incredibly good-looking, sexy even, in a strange, he-man kind of way that most self-respecting women would never admit to finding attractive—would just as soon shoot her as make love to her.

She had to start getting out more—that was all there was to it.

“No,” she assured him, only half remembering what it was she was objecting to. Boy, his eyes were amazing.

“No, you don’t want me to tie you up?” he asked softly. “Or no, you’re not sure? Because if you’re not sure, Angel, then maybe we should—”

“No, I don’t want you to tie me up,” she quickly cut him off, the assurance sounding less than convincing, even to her own ears. “And it’s Angie, not Angel.”

He smiled, but made no other concession to her correction. “Well, like I said. Maybe some other time.”

But he still didn’t release her. And for one long, lingering moment, Angie didn’t even try to struggle or insist that he let her go. In fact, for one long, lingering moment, all she did was stand there letting him hold her, wishing way back in the very back of her brain that he really was a sales rep for the Cokely Chemical Corporation, and that she was head of the Endicott Chamber of Commerce.

Then she could do something with him right now that some dark, delirious part of her really wanted to do, and she could tell herself it was only for the good of the community, something that would create jobs and boost the local economy, something that was in fact her civic duty.

And that was when it occurred to her that there really must be something to that one myth about Bob. Naturally, she’d witnessed for herself that the comet made people say and do things they’d never do under usual circumstances. But now, as ridiculous as it seemed, she was beginning to believe that other myth, too, and thinking that maybe Bob really did create love relationships between people who would normally never be attracted to each other.

Damned comet.

While Angie was still pondering that, Ethan Zorn dipped his head lower to rest his forehead against hers. “You know,” he murmured, his voice a quiet caress, “I oughta call the cops and have you arrested for breaking into my house.”

Helplessly, Angie slanted her own head so that her mouth lay only inches away from his. “But you won’t,” she said with a soft sigh, “because you’re connected to the mob, and you don’t want to have any more to do with the cops than you have to. Even the local boys.”

He shook his head slowly, a gesture that brought his lips even closer to hers. “No,” he whispered, “I won’t call them because it’s just not worth my time.”

“Oh, sure, that’s your excuse.”

“For that, maybe,” he said. “But I have no excuse for this.”

And before Angie could object—not that she necessarily wanted to, anyway—Ethan Zorn kissed her. Just lowered his head to close up those last few millimeters that separated them, and covered her mouth with his.

She responded instinctively and without thinking, tipping her head back to afford him better access, lifting a hand to thread her fingers easily through his hair. For a single, thoughtless instant, she succumbed to her feelings instead of her reason, and in that single, thoughtless instant, she got the ride of her life.

A hazy, liquid warmth filled her, traveling to every extreme in her body, bubbling through her veins to effervesce in her heart like a natural spring of emotion. His lips barely grazed hers, a soft brush of heat against heat, over and over and over, but Angie felt the repercussions of his caress to the very depth of her soul. And all she could do was marvel that such a man could be so utterly gentle, so tentative and tender.

And then she ceased to wonder at all, because she wanted to focus instead on the feel of him surrounding her.

Ethan was too busy enjoying himself to wonder much about anything, especially about what had come over him to kiss Angie the Angel the way he had. Although some vague part of him knew that what he was doing was the height of stupidity, he simply couldn’t quite bring himself to put an end to it just yet. She responded to him in a way that no other woman had before, opening to him completely, fully trusting him to do the right thing.

Bastard, he berated himself. You should be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of a nice girl like her.

But his conscience was in no way chastised. It simply reminded him that Angie the Angel had been in his bed, after all, and she wasn’t exactly shoving him away and shouting, “Masher!” now, was she?

Nevertheless, he forced himself to end the kiss before they could carry it too far, then made himself take a step away from her. He watched as she blinked a few times, then seemed to adjust her focus back to the task at hand. He had expected her to be outraged by what he had done. Instead, she seemed to be disappointed that he had stopped. But she said nothing to confirm either reaction.

“Yeah, maybe next time,” he said softly, “we can try that tying-up business. For now, though…” He paused meaningfully, took a step forward again to bring his body up flush with hers and lifted his hand to trace her lower lip with his thumb. “For now, maybe we should just get to know each other a little better.”

Angie Ellison only stared at him in complete bemusement for a moment, then he thought she nodded just the tiniest bit.

“I need to get going,” she finally said, as if the two of them had just been out on a date, and she hadn’t, in fact, been breaking and entering and accusing him of being a mobster looking to further his drug trade.

Ethan nodded. “I’ll call you.”

She nodded back. “Okay.”

And then she crossed the room in total silence, to where he had tossed the door key earlier. But instead of picking it up to unlock the door and let herself out, she hoisted herself up onto the window ledge and straddled it. Briefly, she looked over at Ethan, and he would have sold his soul—what little he hadn’t bargained away already—to know what she was thinking. If she was even half as foggy-headed and befuddled as he was right now, it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to be dangling from a second-story window.

But before he could stop her, and with an expertise that surprised him, she twisted and dropped from the window. For a moment, all he could see were two sets of black-gloved fingers gripping the windowsill. Then one of those disappeared, followed by the other, and he was left alone in the room to wonder if he hadn’t just dreamed the entire episode.

He’d only half listened to the rumblings in town about the comet whose regular fifteen-year return Endicott was now celebrating. He’d heard ol’ Bob was responsible for a number of odd developments, not the least of which was making people do the most unusual, extraordinary things, things they would never, not in a million years, do otherwise. At the time, however, he’d thought the locals were just feeding him a line, hoping he’d buy into the myth, and therefore the celebration, and spend a lot of his tourist dollars to hang around for the comet’s climax.

Now he was beginning to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something to all the comet mumbo-jumbo after all.

Because try as he might, he sure as hell couldn’t think of a single reason for why he had done what he’d just done. Why he had kissed Angie Ellison, nosy journalist, daughter of the man he was there to check out, all-around decent woman and upstanding citizen. It was almost as if in kissing her, he had been trying to save himself from eternal perdition. If his superiors ever got wind of this, they’d kill him.

But of all the crazy ideas speeding pell-mell through Ethan’s head at the moment, one thought alone kept circling above the others with alarming regularity.

How could she possibly have known that he was here at the behest of the mob, and that he had come to Endicott to scope out her father’s pharmaceutical company and its potential to further their drug trade?

Three

Angie woke up the next morning with the oddest sense of well-being. Her pillow and mattress felt softer than they ever had before, and her cotton sheets seemed to have somehow turned to silk. A subtle breeze, redolent of freshly mown lawn and the onset of autumn, nudged aside the curtains of the open window above her head, and a purple finch sang happily nearby. Even at such an early hour, children were laughing in the playground of the school across the street, and she could hear the sound of jazz music tumbling from the window of a neighboring apartment.

What an absolutely delicious way to wake up, she thought as she stretched her arms above her head and flexed every muscle from shoulder to toe. And what a supremely glorious day. The sun was shining, the air was warm and welcoming, children were laughing, the birds were singing and—

—and she’d kissed a mobster last night.

The realization exploded in Angie’s brain with the force of an atomic bomb. She froze in midstretch, snapped her eyes wide open and gazed panic-stricken at the ceiling overhead. With agonizing clarity, she replayed in her head every tempestuous moment following her discovery by Ethan Zorn, culminating in that single, delirious kiss just before she let herself out through the bedroom window.

Oh, God, had she actually done that? she thought frantically as she squeezed her eyes shut once again and tried fruitlessly to bury herself in the mattress. Had she actually let him kiss her? Had she actually kissed him back? And, oh, no, had she actually insinuated that she wanted him to tie her up?

Angie expelled a long, heartfelt groan and covered her eyes with loose fists. She’d ruined everything. In addition to making a complete fool of herself, Ethan Zorn was onto her now, and he was going to be watching his back. Any opportunity she’d had to catch him off guard, to trip him up and expose him for the low-life, scumbag, murdering slug that he was, she’d blown.

He was trying to take her father’s company, she reminded herself. Confiscate it for the mob. For all she knew, part of his plan was to put her father—her entire family, even—on ice to get his grubby paws on Ellison Pharmaceuticals.

And she’d kissed him, she recalled yet again. She’d pressed her lips hungrily against those of a man who was probably more familiar with kisses of death than kisses of passion. Ick. Worse than that, she hardly knew him. What on earth must he think of her?

Ethan Zorn was a criminal, for God’s sake, she reminded herself. And she was worrying about what he was going to think of her morals? Nevertheless, she found herself honestly concerned that he probably considered her to be a simple-minded, sex-starved journalistic dilettante. After all, she certainly felt like one at the moment.

“I am not a dilettante,” she asserted out loud. She dropped her hands from her eyes and jackknifed up in bed, deciding not to evaluate her other dubious self-professed traits at the moment. “I am a serious journalist who’s hot on the trail of a story that’s going to blow the lid off this town.”

If Ethan Zorn didn’t blow her lid first.

She groaned again. Not just at the knowledge of what she’d done the night before. But at the realization that she’d enjoyed it so much. That damned comet, she tried to console herself. It was all Bob’s fault. Under normal circumstances, she’d never look twice at a man like Ethan Zorn. Bob always messed with the citizens of Endicott when he came around.

If she tried hard, she could almost make herself believe that Bob was the reason she’d succumbed to a criminal the night before. Unfortunately, a not-so-little part of her was still too busy being preoccupied by what it had felt like to be wrapped in the cocoon that was Ethan Zorn. She recalled the strength in the arms that had pulled her close, remembered the soft brush of his lips as his mouth claimed hers, replayed every erratic thump of her heart and the way it had rushed heat to every body part.

She groaned a third time. How could such an evil man have made her feel so good?

“Just don’t think about it, Angie,” she instructed herself.

Then she responded to herself immediately, Oh, sure. That ought to be no problem at all. Kiss a felon, embrace a guy with blood on his hands and probably in the trunk of his car, and just forget all about it. Yeah, right. Uh-huh. Okeydokey. Whatever.

She shoved herself out of bed and quickly showered and dressed for work, opting to look halfway professional today in a pair of baggy beige trousers and a sleeveless coral pink blouse. As an afterthought, she yanked an ivory blazer from the closet, just in case it cooled off some. September in southern Indiana was iffy. And living right on the river, it was impossible for anyone to tell what the weather would bring from one day to the next.

As she passed through the kitchen, she snagged a box of Pop-Tarts from the cupboard and shook a couple free to have for breakfast. She was still clutching half of the second one between her teeth when she exited her front door, making sure to lock it behind herself, because you just never knew about some people. Then she turned toward the elevators across the hall and halted in her tracks.

Ethan Zorn was standing there waiting for her.

The pastry in her mouth turned to paste, and although she swallowed, she felt it lodge halfway down her esophagus. She swallowed again—several times, in fact—and after some difficulty, she finally managed to free the clump of dough. Then, as unobtrusively as she could—which really wasn’t very unobtrusive at all—she quickly tucked the rest of the Pop-Tart into the pocket of her trousers.