She Blinded Me With Science (8 page)

Life would have been perfect, except Jennifer Montcrief kept insisting they would both
be better off if they became research partners.

Either Jennifer hadn't managed to come up with her own thesis, or she suspected Sophie
had struck gold. Either way, there was nothing in the world that would persuade Sophie to let
Jennifer get one good look at Kevyn.

Every time a gorgeous, talented or rich man crossed Jennifer's path, she seduced him,
turned him against his friends and/or lovers, and then crushed him. Sophie liked Kevyn, but she
had come to realize there was something rather immature about him. If he really was nearly two
hundred years old, he hadn't grown up much. That disappointed her. She wanted Kevyn to be
someone she could admire and depend on.

Maybe she should just adopt his life philosophy of enjoying the world as it came to her?
Heaven knew, she hadn't been enjoying herself.

On night twenty-three, Sophie dreamed that Kevyn slung her over his shoulder and flew
off to Hollywood, where they lived in a crazy, Bohemian-style loft apartment and dined on diet
cherry cola and dark chocolate bars, and he got her starring roles in movies. And they made wild,
passionate, laughter-filled love every night.

* * * *

"Never thought I'd see you fall for the brainy type," Dougie said, laughing. "Of course,
that Sophie was kind of cute, if you go for chubby."

Kevyn swallowed a growl. There was nothing chubby about Sophie. That implied she
was immature, childish. If anything, she was far too grown up for her own good. No, he liked
Sophie's soft, generous curves. She was just right. His hands itched and his mouth watered and
he ached in several uncomfortable spots every time he thought about how she would feel in his
arms. How sweet she would taste when he finally kissed her. How warm and silken her skin
would be.

"So, how much longer is this little love nest going to last, buddy?"

"I have no idea. She's quite literally got me prisoner." Kevyn laughed, thankful his
friend had pulled him away from another painful, hungry daydream, courtesy of his raging
hormones.

Funny, but he thought maybe he was learning something important in all this. Putting up
with restraint and restrictions, for the sake of someone he liked more every day, seemed to have
a maturing effect on him. Being forced to sit still, read and think for a change, instead of flitting
from one party and film job to another, definitely had a beneficial effect on him. Waiting for
what he wanted instead of just taking it, enjoying it, and moving on had taught him the value of
patience. And anticipation.

"Anybody still looking for me?" he asked, breaking in when Dougie repeated his
tiresome joke about Sophie's lack of taste in lovers. Checking in on the Enclave Hunters'
progress in finding him was the only reason to go into Sophie's bedroom to use the phone.

Heaven knew, it was torment to breathe her sweet, clean scent and look at the bedsheets
that were probably still warm from her body. How soon until he could persuade her to trade up
from her teddy bear to him as a bedmate?

"Don't know who those jokers are who claim to be your relatives, but they're persistent. I
swear, I think they've followed me home five nights in a row." Dougie chuckled. "Good thing
I'm busy every night, huh?"

"Yeah, good thing. Thanks." Kevyn could only be grateful Dougie was so enthralled
with the new love of his life, his conscious thoughts were full of her.

The Enclave Hunters required physical contact, violating several Human-protection
laws, to dig into Dougie's mind to find memories of their phone conversations. He had given
himself a headache the first time he called, using magic long-distance to dismantle Dougie's
caller i.d. system. Still, some faint memory of reading that phone number might remain, buried
deeper and deeper in Dougie's mind as time went on.

The warning tinglers went off, signaling that someone approached the house. Kevyn
hurried to thank Dougie and get him off the phone. He snapped his fingers and everything went
back to the way it had been when Sophie left her room. He laughed at his increasing urge to
clean her room. Sophie was a slob in the privacy of her bedroom. Maybe she tore her room apart
looking for clean clothes because he kept her up until three this morning talking, and she hadn't
done her laundry in two weeks.

Any sign of his influence and power in her life was sweet victory. Especially since he
still hadn't worked up to where she would snuggle in his arms and surrender to the deep, potent
kisses he dreamed of.

Kevyn couldn't even influence her dreams to make her want him, because the dratted
charmed necklace insulated her against his magic twenty-four hours a day. He wondered if she
even knew she wore it. She even showered with it.

He snickered as he left her room and closed the door. He knew she showered with it,
because some mornings he stole peeks at her as she hurried through her hasty routine. Was it
his
fault she ran around her house in her underwear whenever she thought he was safely
asleep in the basement?

Actually, it was. He had been creating an illusion of himself asleep in bed since he was
four years old, to fool his nanny. He could do it in his sleep. And if Sophie thought he was
asleep, and she was otherwise occupied, she never noticed when he crept through her house,
cloaked in invisibility.

She's going to kill me, when she finds out the truth.

He swirled his hand through the air to call up the scrying globe.

According to the globe, the person now standing at the front door, fiddling with the lock,
was female and Human with just a touch of Fae blood, but not Sophie. Enough Fae blood to give
her unusual good luck, and some influence over unguarded minds. Kevyn called up more
information in the scrying globe and sneered. Influence over
male
Humans, using the
most basic magic of all. Sophie could do that if she wanted to, and he liked her that she didn't
want to.

This Human didn't have much magic sensitivity. He could leap through the door and
slap her while invisible. She would be spooked, but she wouldn't sense his magic at work.

And she was trying to pick Sophie's lock. Should he let her, or zap her? Or amuse
himself by fuddling the lock and frustrating her? He went into the kitchen to bake a triple
chocolate sin layer cake, and spared a fraction of his attention for the unwanted intruder.

One side benefit of Sophie's attempt at restraining his magic was that she had created a
privacy barrier around the house. He and Sophie could stay up to all hours, singing at the top of
their lungs, with all the lights on and all the curtains wide open, and no one would ever know.
The neighborhood would see a quiet, dark house. Kevyn speculated that once he got Sophie into
his arms, they could shoot off sparks and make love on the ceiling, and no one would notice.

"Note to self," he said, calling up his personal ether memo file. "Make love to Sophie on
the ceiling." He snickered, snapped his fingers, and the block of dark baking chocolate flew
across the kitchen into his hand.

The intruder gave up after only ten minutes. Kevyn sighed in frustration, put a holding
spell on the whipping cream and the mixture of honey and cocoa, and stomped into the living
room. He tweaked aside the curtains and watched the blonde slither down the driveway to a
poison green Jaguar sitting at the curb. He conjured up a three-dimensional image of her that he
saved to show Sophie when she came home. This was no ordinary thief. Anybody could tell
that.

* * * *

Sophie swore viciously, loud and fierce enough to make two light bulbs pop when
Kevyn showed her the image of the would-be housebreaker.

"Mount Grief," she spat and slammed her fists into the counter.

The fluffy mounds of cocoa cream and chocolate silk cake with chocolate shavings and
sour cherry filling wobbled. The plate Kevyn's masterpiece sat on took a single jolting step
toward the edge of the counter.

"Who's that?"

"The slimy twitch who was trying to break in." Sophie sank down onto the nearest
kitchen stool and rested her head in her hands. "What is she up to? Did she think she could just
waltz in here and steal my notes, since I won't work voluntarily with her?"

A look of horror crossed her face and she sat up and stared at Kevyn until tears made her
eyes gleam.

"What? What is it? What's wrong?" He wrapped his arms around her. When that didn't
work, he slid his arm under her knees and carried her out of the kitchen to the living room and
cradled her on his lap on the couch.

"It hasn't been any good, has it?" she whispered.

"No, it's okay." He guided her head down to rest on his shoulder. "She didn't get in. She
didn't see anything, didn't get anything. And even if she got in, she never would have seen me,
never would have taken anything. Your place is safe, with me here. I would have taken care of
her like that." He snapped his fingers to demonstrate.

"That's just it." Sophie twisted out of his embrace and slid halfway to the floor before
she got her feet under herself. "None of the things I did made any difference." She gestured
around the house. "You can do magic."

"Oh. That." Kevyn felt like his stomach had fallen down to around his knees.

The misery and shame in Sophie's eyes made him ache for her. He wished she would get
angry, but she just stood there and stared at him. He could almost hear the gears whirring in her
head, could almost see the pieces of the puzzle coming together in her incredibly agile, swift
mind.

"Tell me about Mount Grief," he said, hoping to distract her until she got used to the
idea.

"She's been trying to horn in on my project. Everything Jennifer wants, she gets. Guys,
clothes, the best lab, the wimpiest advisor, passing grades she didn't earn. You name it, she gets
it."

"She didn't get in here."

"No thanks to me."

"No, actually, it is. You worked some real magic among all the mumbo jumbo. This
Jennifer twitch could have shown up with a stick of dynamite or a diamond drill, she wouldn't
have gotten in the door."

"I worked magic. Right." Sophie snorted and stomped across the room. Kevyn feared
she would walk out on him, but she turned sharply in the doorway and stomped back toward
him. Pacing was a good sign. He welcomed her anger, as long as it wasn't directed at him.

"She's been pestering me since I came back with you." Sophie chewed on her bottom lip
between sharp sentences. "Tried to use a sob story on her advisor that her work was sabotaged. If
I wasn't so busy, she would have framed
me.

"She claims we're following the same lines, and it would benefit the entire academic
world if we worked together, that her thesis works off of mine." She snorted. "The nasty little
twitch actually tried to convince me that since
my
work is a foundation for
hers
, I'll get a whole lot more recognition for my work. Yeah, right. Like the guy who
discovered penicillin gave the limelight to the guy who let the bread get moldy."

"What does--"

"And today was the topper." She stopped in front of him, close enough the toes of her
sneakers touched his bare feet. "Her advisor whined until my advisor tried to convince me it'd
benefit both of us to team up. Which makes me wonder why she was out here, trying to break in,
when she had to be so sure of success."

"Did they convince you?" Kevyn was delighted when Sophie screwed up her face in a
disgusted look and then laughed.

"They wish! I told them I'd go home and think it over. Yeah, it took me about two
seconds to think it over and the answer is still no. What did she think she could gain by coming
out here and breaking into my house?"

"Which she didn't do, because of your magic."

"And yours." Sophie dropped down on the couch next to him.

Not close enough, Kevyn was sorry to note, for him to put an arm around her. She
vibrated with tension and anger. He could almost see smoke coming out of her ears as she
thought hard and fast.

"You spend a lot of time on your computer," he offered, and wished he had pushed past
his revulsion for computers to investigate what she had recorded about him. "Maybe she thought
she could copy your notes and get ahead of you. I think she was telling the truth. She needs your
research to launch her own."

"Jennifer, copying notes? That's too plebeian for her tastes. It's more likely she'd get one
of her computer geek slaves to break into my computer though the university network and steal
all my notes. She's done it before. That's why I change my password every couple of weeks,
change the encryption and shuffle the files. So she can't find anything no matter how long she
has them hunting. In case they break into my system." The defiant light faded from her eyes.
"What if she did, though?"

"Have you been putting everything you've learned from me into your computer?" Kevyn
whispered, feeling a sick twisting in his stomach that had nothing to do with six chili dogs and a
full gallon of banana split ice cream for lunch.

"Everything." Sophie's voice cracked. She stared at him, tears filling her eyes again.
"Every video. Every audio file. Every picture. Every transcript of every interview. Every bit of
evidence of the magic that you can do and all the things you told me and all that Fae history."
She burst into tears and flung herself into his arms.

Right where he wanted her, of course, but not soaking his
Galaxy Quest
crew
jersey. He wanted her quivering with passion, not with rage and terror mixed.

"She probably has all my research, down to my notes for the questions I wanted to ask
you this weekend. With a little fiddling," she blurted between muffled sobs, "she'll prove
everything was
her
work, and I tried to steal it from her."

"Yeah, but how's she going to prove any of it is real and not a bunch of special effects?"
he offered, trying to bolster her spirits.