Beauty And The Brain

Beauty And The Brain
Elizabeth Bevarly

BLAME IT ON BOB BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR…Too bad sexy Rosemary March didn't heed this advice - because as an adolescent, she'd harbored a secret wish to get even with nerdy, brainy Willis Random. She'd also has other secret wishes involving him - ones she hoped to realize if she ever got the chance.And suddenly, thirteen years later, there was a chance - all six feet two inches of him - knocking at her door. And as Rosemary stared at the magnificent speciment that Willis had turned into, she swore she was going to have one more crack at him.Prove to the science whiz that hers was a body as worthy of study as any comet's. If it was the last thing she did…BLAME IT ON BOB:The comet passes through only once every fifteen years… but it leaves behind a lifetime of love!

“Tell Me,” Rosemary Demanded. (#u909bfe41-f428-5f32-99db-3ad19ce983cc)Letter to Reader (#u2e08267d-79d0-5dc0-b98d-1aa919393f2d)Title Page (#ub5fd0629-952e-5cb1-85bc-edba3661f167)About the Author (#u7a5271a4-a85c-5957-936c-f013a6c9e417)Dedication (#ueb93bf6c-8d34-5f23-8d60-1c08328b87f5)Prologue (#ude8e41ce-2fd0-5f16-bb90-19d2c9f90e58)Chapter One (#u3615a8c3-7239-59ac-8e2e-2ce47318fe31)Chapter Two (#u5a62fa14-ef72-59fd-8683-55d26132a819)Chapter Three (#u7dd3b572-dee0-5a97-b04b-668720015547)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“Tell Me,” Rosemary Demanded.

“Name some stars for me, Willis.”

“Okay,” he replied. But something in his voice sounded a bit strained. “Like... like Beta Pictoris, for example,” he told her. “Or...or Regulus. Aldebaran. Arcturus.”

The heat inside Rosemary began to churn as he rattled off the unfamiliar words, until it swirled into a seething mass of turmoil, spilling into her heart, her hands, her head. And suddenly she remembered something. She remembered that she had always been completely turned on—yes, by Willis Random, whenever he started talking like a scientist.

Because even at fifteen she had always been utterly aroused by boys who could talk intellectual talk. Mathematical talk. Scientific talk. Boys who could split atoms in their basements after dinner. And there had been only one boy at Endicott Central who could do all that.

Willis Random.

Dear Reader,

Where do you read Silhouette Desire? Sitting in your favorite chair? How about standing in line at the market or swinging in the sunporch hammock? Or do you hold out the entire day, waiting for all your distractions to dissolve around you, only to open a Desire novel once you’re in a relaxing bath or resting against your softest pillow.. ? Wherever you indulge in Silhouette Desire, we know you do so with anticipation, and that’s why we bring you the absolute best in romance fiction.

This month, look forward to talented Jennifer Greene’s A Baby in His In-Box, where a sexy tutor gives March’s MAN OF THE MONTH private lessons on sudden fatherhood And in the second adorable tale of Elizabeth Bevarly’s BLAME IT ON BOB series, Beauty and the Brain, a lady discovers she’s still starry-eyed over her secret high school crush. Next, Susan Crosby takes readers on The Great Wife Search in Bride Candidate #9.

And don’t miss a single kiss delivered by these delectable men: a roguish rancher in Amy J. Fetzer’s The Unlikely Bodyguard; the strong, silent corporate hunk in the latest book in the RIGHT BRIDE, WRONG GROOM series, Switched at the Altar, by Metsy Hingle; and Eileen Wilks’s mouthwatering honorable Texas hero in Just a Little Bit Pregnant.

So, no matter where you read, I know what you’ll be reading—all six of March’s irresistible Silhouette Desire love stories!

Regards,

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

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Beauty and the Brain

Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

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 have a three-year-old son.

For Laurie, Debbie,

Gina and Tina,

my best buds at

Seneca High School.

Thanks for the memories.

Prologue

“I hate him. I despise him. I’m going to kill him.”

Fifteen-year-old Rosemary March glared at the auburnhaired, bespectacled, orthodontically decorated boy on the other side of the school gymnasium and frowned.

“That pizza-faced little twerp,” she said, continuing with her verbal assault. “Just who does he think he is?”

“Calm down, Rosemary,” Kirby Connaught, one of her best friends, told her. “By now, nothing Willis Random does or says to you should surprise you. You guys have been mortal enemies since school started.”

“Yeah,” her other friend, Angie Ellison, agreed. “Just because he called you a ‘simpleminded, slack-brained know-nothing’ in chemistry class today. I mean, he’s called you lots worse things before.”

Rosemary turned her venomous gaze toward her friend in silent warning not to remind her. Angie immediately fell quiet and returned her attention to the delicate gardenia corsage that hugged her wrist.

“Yeah,” Kirby concurred after a noisy slurp of her diet soda that sucked the beverage dry. “You ought to be used to it by now. And he’s going to be your lab partner for the rest of the year, so you also better get used to just ignoring him.”

“Oh, thanks a lot, you two,” Rosemary grumbled. “You’re no help at all. I only wish I could ignore him. But he makes my life miserable. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t make me feel like...like...”

“Like a simpleminded, slack-brained know-nothing?” Angie supplied helpfully.

Rosemary frowned harder. Yeah, she thought. Exactly like that.

The three friends were taking a break from the dancing couples who crowded the floor of the high school gymnasium. The Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival was in full swing, and the gym doors had been thrown open wide to invite in the general public and the balmy September night for the traditional Comet Stomp Dance. Rosemary’s and Angie’s dates had gone in search of refreshment and left the three girls to talk among themselves on the bleachers. Kirby’s date...well, Kirby’s date was sort of nonexistent, Rosemary knew, which was all the more reason for her to remain with her friends.

The Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival was an event that occurred in the small southern Indiana town of Endicott every decade and a half, and, as always, the community had turned out in numbers to celebrate. Comet Bob had actually made his peak appearance in the skies over town the night before, but he would be visible to the naked eye for another few days, and within telescope range for another two weeks. The Comet Festival generally ran for the entirety of Bob’s appearance, for the most part constituting the whole month of September.

The festival belonged to Endicott and took place with such regularity because, 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 the coordinates that were exactly—exactly —directly above Endicott.

Bob’s punctuality and preference for such specific coordinates had frustrated the studies of many a scientist since the comet’s discovery nearly two centuries ago. Every fifteen years, scores of experts in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology—and hundreds of amateurs, too—descended on southern Indiana in an effort to explain the unexplainable. And every fifteen years, those experts returned home again with notebooks full of data that defied analysis, and prescriptions for migraines that simply would not go away.

And because no one had been able to explain exactly what caused Bob’s constancy or his affection for Endicott, the comet’s celebrity had grown and grown, and the residents of the little Indiana town had come to claim the comet as their own.

Comet Bob actually had a much more formal name, but virtually no one could pronounce it correctly—no one but Willis Random, Rosemary thought to herself with much irritation. Because Bob 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 a hundred years anyway, the general consensus seemed to be, What difference does it make?

Comet Bob was Comet Bob, and in addition to his mystery and celebrity—or perhaps, more accurately, because of it—myth and legend had grown up around his regular visits over the years. Anyone in Endicott who’d been around for more than one appearance of Bob knew full well that he was responsible for creating all kinds of mischief.

Virtually everyone was of the opinion that Bob was responsible for cosmic disturbances that caused the local citizens to behave very strangely whenever he came around. Waitresses confused restaurant orders. People got lost on their way to jobs they had been performing for years. Children cleaned their rooms and finished their homework in a timely fashion. And people who would normally never give each other the time of day fell utterly and irrevocably in love.