Bride Of The Bad Boy

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.