Billionaire Bad Boy(14)

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.