Bride Of The Bad Boy. Elizabeth Bevarly

      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