Sorcerer: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance (11 page)

Last night she’d shown him heaven in a single kiss. Then, without a word of explanation, she’d turned him away, transforming his glimpse of heaven into something more akin to purgatory.

He’d tried to figure it out—he’d spent most of the night doing nothing else! Jillian’s kiss had ignited a fire inside him that he hadn’t experienced in years. His legendary iron control was absolutely useless when it came to her. Unable to sleep, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince himself that her skin hadn’t felt like silk, her scent hadn’t reminded him of a spring garden after the rain, and her body hadn’t fitted to his like a key in a lock.

None of his arguments did a bit of good. Instead, his internal fire grew hotter, burning him alive with unsated desire. If it had been only a sexual attraction he might have stood a chance at besting it, but the
need that consumed him had as much to do with her soft smile as her seductive kiss, as much with her intrinsic courage as with her enticing body—

“Nice work, Doctor.”

Curtis’s words brought Ian back to the present. He glanced at the screen and caught the tail end of his fight with the orc, when he’d plunged his sword into its chest. Watching the scene from the simulator’s objective viewpoint, he realized that his victory had more to do with luck than with skill. If he’d missed the monster’s heart by a millimeter, the thing would have wrapped him in its tree-trunk arms and snapped him like a twig—virtual armor and all. He was still thanking his lucky stars, when he noticed something else about the scene, something he couldn’t have seen while his attention was focused on the orc.

Miss Polanski stood in the midst of the confining brambles, rigid with terror, her hands covering her mouth as she fought not to scream. She was frightened to the edge of sanity, but her fear wasn’t for her own safety, it was for his. Her face, stripped raw by emotion, displayed the feelings she’d kept from him, the feelings she’d flatly denied the previous night. But there was no way on earth she could have counterfeited the expression on her face when she thought he was in danger.
By God, Jillie, you do care.
…

The audience began to shift in their seats and smile furtively among themselves. Turning back to the screen, Ian saw why. His virtual image had just
enfolded Ms. Polanski’s virtual image in a spectacularly erotic kiss. Damn, he’d meant to stop the tape before they reached this point. Some things were personal, even in the pursuit of science. And what he was beginning to feel for Ms. Jillian Polanski was very personal indeed.

He stretched out his hand, intending to switch off the video monitor, but a split second before he reached it the screen went blank. “What the …?”

“How could you?” a voice from the back of the room demanded.

All heads turned, including Ian’s. His gaze slammed into a pair of furious brown eyes, eyes that plunged their own brand of virtual broadsword into his heart. Jill Polanski stood near the side door, clutching the plug in VCR monitor tightly in her fist. She looked angry enough to tear an orc apart with her bare hands. An orc—or an eminent virtual reality scientist.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Ian.

I’m an idiot
, Jill thought as she preceded Ian into his office. She stalked across the carpet to the window and stared out at the gray industrial park, too angry to speak, blinking back tears of fury.
I really believed I meant something to him. Not enough, but something.

She heard the door close behind her. “Ms. Polanski, would you care to be seated?”

How dare he be polite at a time like this!
“I prefer to stand,” she said curtly without turning around.

She heard—no, she
felt
him move in the room behind her. Sight, sound, touch—these senses faded to nothing beside her awareness of him, the uncanny and unwanted sensation that seemed to bind them together in some intrinsic way. Without seeing him she knew when he started to walk toward her. Without hearing him she knew when he hesitated, and stopped. She took a deep breath and focused on the dismally industrial view of the office park outside his
window, determined to keep her chaotic emotions under control. “I don’t plan to be here that long. I came only because you ordered me to.”

“Ordered?” Ian said in surprise. “I wanted to speak to you in private. I didn’t care to discuss our personal business in front of my whole department.”

“Personal? You showed them a videotape of us kissing. How much more personal can you get?”

“I don’t want this conversation to degenerate into an argument.”

“Well, too bad, Doctor, because that’s exactly what you’re going to get!” Furious, Jill spun around to glare at him.
Big mistake
, she realized. Ian sat on the edge of his desk, his arms folded across his chest, his silver eyes studying her with a ruthless intensity. She instantly recalled him leaning against her kitchen doorjamb last night, watching her, making her tingle in places that had absolutely no business tingling where Dr. Sinclair was concerned.
Think lab rats
 …

She turned back to the window and the unremarkable scenery. “You shouldn’t have shown the tape to the whole department.”

“You’re right.”

She looked back in surprise. “I am?”

He smiled at her obvious alarm—a rare, slightly sheepish grin that somehow managed to make him look even more attractive. “I never meant to show them the kiss. I planned to stop the tape before that part, but I became … distracted.”

“By what?”

“By you, Ms. Polanski. Or, rather, by your virtual image. I saw your expression when you thought that orc was going to make mincemeat out of me. It was very … illuminating.”

Illuminating? For a moment she didn’t understand. Then she recalled the heart-stopping battle, and remembered how frightened she’d been for his safety. She’d watched him duel with the hideous monster, too terrified to breathe. In the space of a few minutes she’d lived a lifetime’s worth of emotions, and if even a tenth of what had been going on inside her had been mirrored on her face …

“I was concerned.”

“You were a hell of a lot more than concerned,” he accused her with lethal softness.

He rose from the desk and walked toward her, never taking his gaze from hers. His eyes captured hers with a ruthless intimacy—an assault every bit as brutal as the one he’d mounted against the orc. And every bit as effective, she thought, feeling her resolve weakening. “You’re mistaken. The simulator shows only projections of facial expressions. It’s not perfect.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed as he looked down at her, “but it’s calibrated to the ninety-eighth percentile. In any case, your expression isn’t the only piece of data I’m relying on. I’m also factoring in our two kisses—the real one and the simulated one. And the accumulated evidence,” he added as he dropped his voice to a husky whisper, “supports only one viable conclusion.”

She didn’t have to ask what that conclusion was. It burned in the depths of his silver gaze, and in the effortlessly seductive smile that pulled at his mouth. His mouth, she thought, undone by the memory of his kisses, and by the damning fact that she wanted like hell to kiss him again. For starters. She swallowed, shoving a host of dangerous images from her mind.
For God’s sake, he’s living with another woman.
“I need to be getting back to work.”

“Stay,” he said, his voice thick with soft, subtle hunger. “Please, stay.”

The simple request pierced her heart like an arrow. She saw his jaw tighten, and knew that inside he was fighting valiantly to keep his emotions under control. Behind his impassive façade, Ian Sinclair was as confused as she was about the feelings growing between them—and just as capable of being hurt by them. Damn, why couldn’t he be just another handsome, arrogant SOB? Why did he have to be so uncertain, so vulnerable, so … 
human
?

She was startled from her thoughts by a sharp rap on Ian’s office door. Jillie swung toward the sound and saw the door open, admitting the angular form of Sadie Hedges. The cyberengineer was apparently too absorbed in the computer printout she was holding to notice that the doctor hadn’t asked her to come in.

“Doc, I’ve got a few questions about the interface between the imaging generators and the new topological environment Felix and I are setting up for tomor—” Her words dwindled to astonished silence
as she lifted her head and caught sight of Jill and Ian standing within inches of each other. But her initial surprise lasted only a moment, and was quickly superseded by a wise smile. Sadie was nothing if not quick on the uptake. “Sorry. I’ll come back later.”

“No,” Jill blurted out. Sadie’s arrival had broken the spell between her and Ian, and given her a chance—perhaps her only chance—to escape. Without daring to look at him, she spun around and headed for the door. She knew she was taking the coward’s way out, but she couldn’t afford to be choosy. If she didn’t leave now, she was going to break that long-ago promise she’d made to her mother—and get her heart broken in the process.

She was almost to the door when he said her name. “Ms. Polanski.”

She paused in the doorway, powerless to disobey him. “Yes?”

“I just wanted to remind you that I’ll see you in the simulator tomorrow afternoon.”

Jillie gave a perfunctory nod, the best she could manage under the circumstances, and left the room. No longer able to read his emotions, she wasn’t sure whether his statement was a promise or a threat.

“Did you remember to check her calibration modulators?” Ian demanded of Sadie as she strapped him into the egg’s harness.

“Yes.”

“And her life-support monitors? Did you test them as I asked you to?”

Sadie sighed. “All three times.”

“Fine. And did you—”

“Look, Doc, I’ve tested Ms. Polanski’s systems six ways to Sunday. She’s going to be fine. You, however,” she added as she ruthlessly tightened the last strap, “I’m not so sure about.”

Ian stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come on. This is Sadie you’re talking to.” She stepped back, giving the harness, and the doctor, a sternly appraising once-over. “I saw the way you looked at Jill when she left your office yesterday. And I saw the way you avoided looking at her all through this morning’s simulator walk-through. What’s going on between you two?”

“Nothing,” he stated sourly. “Not a bloody thing.”

Sadie fought hard against a grin, and lost. “Sounds to me like you’d like to change that.”

“Why, that’s absurd—” he began, but stopped as he caught sight of Sadie’s skeptical expression. She wasn’t buying it. Why should she, since the explanation he’d been about to offer wasn’t anything close to the truth?

He’d known Sadie and her husband for years, almost since the day he’d arrived in America. If anyone knew him, she did. If anyone deserved the truth, it was her. Grimacing, he rubbed his jaw with the back of his stiff DataGlove. “It doesn’t much matter
what I think. Ms. Polanski doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Sadie’s skeptical smile melted into indulgent compassion. “I don’t suppose you’ve considered telling her how you feel about her.”

“Good God no,” he said, bristling at the suggestion. “You know I’m not good at … expressing my emotions.”

She picked up the HMD helmet and set it on his head. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Doc,” she said as she adjusted the leather chin strap. “
No one
is good at expressing their emotions. But it’s a risk you have to take when you care about someone.”

When it came to science, Ian was confident and courageous, but when it came to matters of the heart … well, that was another matter entirely. He could easily decipher the intricate hieroglyphics of binomial equations. He could postulate complex Boolean tables in his sleep. But women were completely beyond his understanding, and one woman in particular was driving him to distraction.

The scene in his office the day before had almost been a repeat of the night in her living room. One minute she’d been so close he could feel her warm breath on his cheek and see the flecks of golden light in her lovely brown eyes. The next minute she was running from him as if he were the devil incarnate. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she wanted nothing to do with him. A sensible man would have seen how hopeless the situation was and walked away with his ego intact.

But you aren’t sensible where Jillie is concerned.
…

“What happens if I tell her how I feel, and she
still
wants nothing to do with me?”

Sadie’s smile sobered. “There are no guarantees, Doc. But I know that sometimes you have to risk a lot to gain a lot. No guts, no glory, as they say. And anyway,” she said as she snapped his helmet visor down over his eyes, “there might be something Felix and I can do to help things along.”

“Such as?” Ian asked, turning his blind gaze in her direction, but he received no answer. Instead, he heard the telltale whoosh of the outer door sliding down, sealing him in the lightless, self-contained universe of the simulator’s egg.

Doubly blind because of his virtual visor and the egg’s darkness, he turned his sight inward, mentally reviewing the strategies he’d developed to help him locate Einstein. But his thoughts kept straying to another subject, a brown-eyed woman with a hesitant smile whose deceptively fragile appearance masked an iron will and a determined heart. And an absolute talent for running away from him when he most wanted her to stay.

Well, perhaps it is better this way
, he thought soberly. He was a man of science, not passion. Six years in a loveless relationship had taught him that truth all too well. Oh, he’d started out believing in all the starry-eyed fictions of marriage—home, children, undying love. He’d clung to those foolish beliefs much longer than he should have, even after Samantha informed him that she had no interest in his scientific
career, that she wanted to travel, not be tied down to a single home, and that she had no intention of ruining her life or her figure by having children.

Jillian Polanski was nothing like his ex-wife, but the risks of entering an emotional relationship were just the same. There were too many variables, too many unknowns. As Sadie had pointed out, there were no guarantees. As a scientist he’d been trained to view the risk of an endeavor in relationship to the outcome. No self-respecting scientist would enter into an experiment with so little possibility of success.