Bride Of The Bad Boy. Elizabeth Bevarly

      Ethan Zorn had been in the business a long time, and he’d met more than his fair share of characters along the way. Manny “The Meat Hook” Moran, for instance, came quickly to mind. And Two-Fingers Nick. Joey the Knife. Goosey Lucy…or something like that—Ethan could never quite remember that guy’s name. And then there was that South Philly boy whose name had always come out sounding like “Lenny Bagagroceries.”

      But he’d never encountered anyone quite like Angie Ellison. Angie “The Angel” Ellison, he decided. Somehow, the name fit her. There was something about her that reeked of a higher existence, a higher standard. In addition to being beautiful in a way that Ethan could only describe as ethereal—yeah, that was a good word for it—there was an innocence and beatitude about her that was unmistakable. And although just about everyone in this hick town seemed naive to a fault, on this woman, it was carried to new heights.

      He just wished he knew who the hell she was and what the hell she was up to.

      She should be terrified of him, he told himself. He was twice her size, armed, and she was locked in a bedroom with him. For all she knew, he intended to kill her. Any other woman would have been scared speechless. But Angie Ellison was actually flirting with him. Flirting, for God’s sake. That was the only way Ethan could interpret the look on her face, the timbre of her voice, the playfulness behind her words. Yeah, she was trying to save her life—it didn’t take a genius to figure that out. But she was doing it so…so…lightheartedly.

      It was giving him the creeps.

      Okay, so maybe he could ascribe her relative easiness at being made a hostage to the fact that she was obviously a native of Endicott. One thing Ethan had learned since locating here, the people in this community had clearly been living in some kind of Eisenhower-era vacuum all their lives and didn’t have even the vaguest concept of what real life was all about. They still celebrated Founders’ Day here. They had a pumpkin festival coming up next month wherein they were holding a Sweetheart’s Dance. That’s actually what they were calling it—a Sweetheart’s Dance.

      Living in Endicott, he had quickly decided, was like being trapped forever in a Hayley Mills movie.

      So, clearly, Angie Ellison couldn’t possibly fully appreciate the precariousness of her situation. Which meant maybe Ethan ought to turn up the steam some.

      “Angel,” he began.

      “‘Angie,’” she corrected him quickly.

      “Angel,” he assured her with a confident nod. “We have a couple of ways we can go here.”

      She arched her brows in what he could only liken to curiosity, as if she were genuinely interested in hearing his suggestions. They might as well have been taking tea together, for all the concern she seemed to have for her imprisonment.

      “Now, I know you didn’t mistake my house for this Boomer whoever’s place,” he began again.

      “Bumper,” she interjected. “Bumper Shaugnessy.”

      “Whatever,” he said wearily, feeling the gun in his hand begin to sag again. This time, he didn’t bother to correct his aim. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m sure it has something to do with me.”

      She inclined her head forward. “And your name is…?” she asked.

      He parted his lips slightly with his tongue and watched her thoughtfully. “Zorn,” he finally told her. “Ethan Zorn.”

      She nodded, but seemed more fixed on what his mouth was doing than on what he was saying. He smiled. This was definitely getting interesting.

      “It’s very nice to meet you,” she told him, sounding genuinely pleased to make his acquaintance. “Are you only visiting in Endicott? Do you have relatives here?”

      “What I’m doing here, Angel—”

      “‘Angie.’”

      “Angel, is really none of your business. However,” he continued quickly when she opened her mouth to interrupt him again, “what you’re doing in my house is very much my business. Especially since you keep avoiding the question.”

      “I’m not avoiding it,” she told him. “I was just trying to make polite conversation.”

      “Thanks, but I’d rather make sense of this whole situation.”

      He edged closer to her on the bed, until his thigh was pressed against hers. Then he reached behind her to grab the bill of her cap, yanked it from her head and tossed it to the floor. A rich, rowdy stream of gold, copper and silver spilled down around her shoulders in loose spirals of curls, and she expelled a tiny, hiccuping sound of surprise. He smiled his most sinister smile as he reached for a handful of the soft, silky tresses at her nape, then wrapped them loosely in his fist.

      He had no desire to get ugly. Angie Ellison seemed like a nice person, and he always did his best to refrain from roughing up nice people. Unfortunately, for the line of work he had chosen, roughing people up was near the top of requirements in his job description, and every now and then those people seemed perfectly nice. He hoped this wouldn’t be one of those times.

      “Now then,” he said, trying once more, not quite able to ignore the softness of the hair he had wrapped around his fingers and the scent of spring flowers that had suddenly surrounded him the moment he’d freed the tangle of curls. “What are you doing in my house?”

      The jig was up, Angie thought. Or whatever it was they said in those gangster films she used to sit through at the Roxy Theater on Willow Street when she was a teenager. Stalling wasn’t working, and frankly, her brain was spinning from trying to make chitchat a viable source of survival. Ethan Zorn was starting to get impatient. And although she wasn’t entirely sure what impatience did to mobsters, it was probably a safe bet to assume that it didn’t much become them.

      That assumption was reinforced when he bunched a fistful of her hair in his palm and tugged her head backward, then settled the muzzle of the gun against her throat.

      “Tell me,” he demanded.

      “Oh,” she gasped, her heartbeat hammering double time at the feel of the cool, hard metal nestled against her tender flesh.

      This was not the way she had envisioned the evening turning out. When he tugged on her hair again, harder this time, Angie finally, finally began to understand exactly what she was up against. Not only had she gotten in way over her head, but she was about to be sucked down into a vast whirlpool of dark water unlike anything she’d ever encountered before.

      “Please…” she petitioned softly, “you…you’re hurting me.”

      To her complete mortification, tears sprang to her eyes—more a result of her fear than anything physically painful—and she bit her lip hard to prevent them from spilling. She did not want this man to see her cry. Crying was a sign of weakness, and she didn’t want to appear weak to Ethan Zorn.

      His hold on her hair loosened some at the sight of her tears, and his expression actually seemed to soften. Strange, she thought, that a gangster could look guilty and remorseful over something as simple as a woman’s tears. But Ethan Zorn looked exactly that. After a moment, he removed the gun’s muzzle from her neck, clicked on the safety and returned the weapon to its holster. But he continued to hold on to a handful of her hair, stroking a curl between thumb and forefinger, as if he’d discovered a magic talisman of some kind.

      “Last chance,” he told her, his voice low, but lacking in some of the menace it had carried earlier.

      “All right,” she ceded, finally understanding that there was no way he was going to let her go until she answered his questions. “Like I said, I’m Angie Ellison. And I…I work for the Endicott Examiner.”

      “The newspaper?” he asked, seeming genuinely stunned by her revelation.

      She nodded quickly. “I broke in here on purpose, knowing full well that