Bride Of The Bad Boy

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?