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?
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
