Billionaire Bad Boy (6 page)

She leaned forward, her face inches from his, and
closed her eyes. It was now or never.

Annie leaned over him. Touched him. Zack, in his
semi-conscious state, could sense her closeness. The desire to feel the
delicate brush of her skin against his, or maybe a nipple caressing his arm,
overwhelmed him. Even his lips tingled in anticipation of a small kiss.

The whisper-light stroke against his forehead might
have been a dream but he wanted to believe it was real, that she'd kissed him
there.

Do it again
.

He felt light-headed, dazed by the heat and his own
drowsiness. But there was a definite desire on both their parts—the air
between them buzzed with it.

The same feather-like caress brushed the hair from his
forehead. In his dreams Annie was so close he could almost taste her. She
smelled like roses...

A small gasp near his right ear quickened his pulse. "Annie,"
he murmured, or maybe only dreamed he did. Then all previous thoughts were
swamped by a driving need to feel her lips on his. To feel—

The slap on his cheek.

Zack sat up with a jerk. "Hey!" he shouted. "What
the hell have I done now?" Since he never seemed to do anything right
according to Annie McCallum, he must have done something to annoy her. Maybe he
breathed in the wrong direction.

She looked at him matter-of-factly. "There was a
bee on your face."

He glared at her, not sure whether to believe her. It
was more likely he'd done something to deserve that slap. "A bee?"

The soft pink lips that he'd dreamed were kissing him
only moments ago crept into a smile that made her bright blue eyes sparkle. She
was truly beautiful when she smiled like that. And she had no idea.

"Did you think I just decided to slap you?"
she asked with a laugh. "Why would I do that?"

He shrugged, trying to appear cool, calm and collected
when all he felt was hot, on-edge. "Who knows. I seem to have offended you
more times than I can count. It wouldn't surprise me if I offended you by the
way I slept."

He tried to look intent on picking up their trash and
putting it in his backpack. He wasn't avoiding her, he just didn't want to look
at her right now. Not with those sweet, tempting lips. Kissable lips.

Jeez, he needed to stop these thoughts immediately. They
were wrong. Worse than wrong—they were dangerous. He should
not
be
thinking about her at all. She wasn't his type.

He cursed under his breath. Who was he kidding? Annie
was perfect. Too perfect. She was everything he wanted and desired in a woman—she
was sexy but didn't have a clue what affect she had on men. She was funny,
intelligent and she sent his pulse rate soaring to dangerous levels whenever
she was close. What more could a man want?

But that was the problem. She was so perfect for him,
he needed to avoid her. She could tempt him to go where no woman had taken him
before—matrimony. His type of woman was the partying kind, the kind whose
breast size was inversely proportional to her brain size and who believed banks
were there to pay for her plastic surgery and shopping sprees. She would never
want to have children because it would ruin her figure and she'd never want to
live on a ranch because the cafes were too far away. His type of woman was the
kind a sensible man would never marry and that was all right by him because he
wanted to remain a bachelor. Forever.

He'd seen it all before. The man who married the love
of his life, only to become a slave to her. His father, for example. He'd had
dreams of stardom, of making it big as a musician. He gave all that up when he
married Zack's mother. Sure, he'd loved her and would have followed her to the
end of the world, at first, but it also meant giving up the music and his
dreams. The growing family couldn't live on love and songs. His father got a
job, then another, as the family grew.

But it wasn't enough. A dreamer and unqualified for
real work that paid enough, he needed to supplement his income with the
proceeds of the occasional burglary to support a wife and brood of hungry
children. That was the beginning of the end. He went from city to city dodging
the law, dragging his family with him. Zack's parents' great love ended in
bitter divorce because of the financial and legal pressures.

His father's creativity, sapped by the time he was
forty, went undiscovered until after his death. Too late.

So much for dreams. So much for love.

Zack would not make the same mistake.

No, he couldn't let Annie know what she did to him or
he'd be trapped. In his experience, women latched on when they knew he was
interested, hoping to drag him to the altar. He supposed he was a good catch on
paper, but so far, he'd managed to extricate himself from any delicate
situations with his bachelorhood in tact.

So far.

But Annie was different to those other women. Already
he wanted her. If she knew, she'd use her entire arsenal to get him—and
her weaponry was more powerful than any other woman's because she wasn't aware
of her allure.

Yep, she was so perfect, she was downright dangerous.

***

Zack took her home and later that night he took Annie
to a bar where shmoozers shmoozed and gossip columnists listened in. Following
in his wake, she peered into the darkness and the motionless haze of smoke
which lent the place an aura of gothic moodiness. It was probably exactly the
atmosphere the trendy LA bar was trying to achieve.

"What do you want to drink?" Zack asked, easing
himself onto a barstool.

She shrugged. "Whatever you're having."

He ordered two beers.

"Can I have mine in a glass, please?" she
said to the barman.

"No," countered Zack. "You'll drink
from the bottle." He grabbed his around the neck and swallowed half in one
gulp. She did the same but with considerably less success. She finished with a
splutter, spitting some of the beer across the polished surface of the bar.

"Keep trying," he said. "Do you like
it?"

"Not bad." She shrugged one shoulder. "But
I've had beer plenty of times before."

He nodded but said nothing.

Damn, he knew she was lying. Not a good
sign.

She glanced around at the other patrons, trying to
appear as if she did this sort of thing all the time. Several scantily-clad
starlets sat in prominent spots in the middle of the room and a few
sophisticated drinkers hunkered down in dark corners doing deals or whatever it
was they did in bars.

"You come here a lot?" she asked Zack.

He shrugged. "More or less."

"That's not an answer."

"Nosy, aren't you?"

"Just curious. I don't know much about you, but
I'm sure Bob's told you about me. That gives you an unfair advantage."

"That's the way I like it."

Okay, try a new tactic
. "Yesterday you said you've lived in lots of
different places. Why? Was your father in the army or something?"

Zack took another long gulp of his beer but he never
took his eyes off her. Even when he put the bottle down he studied her for a
long time. It was unnerving. She'd never felt so vulnerable in her life. It
didn't help that he was the man of her dreams either.

"Okay, if I answer your question, you have to
answer one of mine."

She hesitated only momentarily before nodding. She had
nothing to hide after all.

"My parents were poor," he said
matter-of-factly. "Dirt poor. Dad had two jobs but Mom kept having
children. An itinerant laborer can only earn so much. He couldn't support
everyone and Mom couldn't work because someone had to look after us. So he
moonlighted as a thief."

"Oh my God. I had no idea. Did he get
caught?"

"We moved before the law caught up with him, then
my parents divorced and he died in his early forties. Shortly after, I headed
to LA. The story gets boring from there."

She doubted that. "Oh," was all she said. Wow,
was her life so...normal. Next to him, she was dull, despite her father's
decadent lifestyle. A lifestyle he'd tried to share with her. A lifestyle she'd
tried to avoid. Annie's heart went out to the kid Zack had been. But studying
him now, all good looks and confidence and wealth, he hadn't grown up any worse
for his experiences.

"So tell me how you made all your money?"
she asked, settling into the conversation. She was surprised at how much he'd
opened up already—who knows what she could get him to tell her.

Zack was just as surprised at how much he'd said to
Annie. He wasn't the sort to tell people about his childhood, especially not to
someone he barely knew. Maybe it was because she was still a relative stranger.
He didn't expect to see her again after the end of the week when Dug-E flew in
and hired her to be his agent. Yeah, that must be why—it was safer to
tell a stranger than a friend.

Besides, if she knew where he came from, maybe she'd
be less likely to want to get involved with him. Good girls don't date bad
boys. They might use them to make the good boys jealous or to temporarily
escape their image, but beyond that, women like Annie had nothing to do with
guys like him. Just as well. It would make it easier to resist her if she
didn't want him. As it was, resisting her was going to take all the
self-control he had.

"Okay," he said in answer to her question. "I've
got Bob to thank for that. When I moved here, I was following in my father's
footsteps."

"Working two jobs?"

"Stealing. Cars to be precise. One day, I was
attempting to break into a nice convertible. Bob's. But you know what an old
softie he is. Instead of turning me in, he organized a job for me. Retail. A
men's wear shop. I was seventeen and it was just what I needed. Of course, Bob
threatened to turn me in if I didn't stick it out."

"You got rich working at a men's wear shop?"

"No, I got rich when I learned what Bob did for a
living. My new boss, a friend of his, told me. You see," he leaned towards
her, "my father had written some songs before he met my mother. It had
been his dream to have them recorded, but life got in the way. I had my older
sister send me Dad's old demo tapes, and I got Bob to listen to them. He liked
them and represented the family, getting a deal with Sonic Records. A very
lucrative deal. The songs became popular and all six of us took our share. I
used mine to buy the shop where I worked and turned it into a department store.
The rest, as they say, is history."

"Wow. Interesting. What were the songs?"

"Ever heard of
Love is a Velvet Sky
? Or
Walking
on Hot Coals
?"

"By
The Dream Weavers
?"

He nodded. "They recorded Dad's songs."

"I never knew. My father never discussed
business."

"He wasn't involved. Bob brokered the deal."

"That sounds right. Dad handled the publicity and
temperamental artists. Since the songwriter was deceased, his talents weren't
really needed, I guess."

Zack detected a note of...what? Disappointment? Annoyance?
Maybe she wasn't proud of her father. If so, they had more in common that he
first thought.

"You're not like him," he said.

She stiffened. "No."

"Tell me about him."

"He loved life to the fullest. End of
story."

"I told you about me, so now it's my turn to ask
a question."

Her mouth twisted into a wry grin. "Shoot."

He placed one elbow on the bar and leaned his cheek on
his palm. "Why did you decide to become an entertainment agent?"

"What sort of question is that?"

He shrugged. "It just isn't...you."

"Not me? What's that supposed to mean?"

He dodged the sparks fired by her intense blue gaze
and decided to let her dwell on her own question a moment longer. He finished
his beer and toyed with the empty glass before he answered. "You're not a
typical LA agent."

"That's because I'm not," she sniffed. "I'm
not a typical anything."

"No kidding."

"So why are you asking me such a silly question? You
wasted a perfectly good opportunity to ask me something personal."

"Did I?" He shrugged again. He'd got her
shackles up, that was for sure, but she wasn't going to admit it. He decided to
leave it alone. It was obvious that Bob was right when he said she probably
became an agent because of her father. Some part of him just wished she'd admit
it. He didn't know why.

"Let's change the subject," he said quickly,
not wanting the evening to deteriorate further.

"Good idea."

"What do you want to drink now?"

"Aren't we having another beer?"

"You've barely touched yours. I figured you
didn't like it."