Bride Of The Bad Boy

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

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.