Bride Of The Bad Boy. Elizabeth Bevarly
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