Sorcerer: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance (6 page)

Sadie was right. As soon as Jill stopped trying, the memories flooded into her mind like a movie on rewind. She remembered the orc, the snagging brambles, the wonder of the sunny summer world and the gray emptiness preceding it. She remembered the gleam of armor and the flash of a sword, and the enchanted embrace of a knight who’d risked his life to save her. She remembered the passion, the pleasure, the multicolored magic that had bound them together like two halves of the same heart. Despair replaced wonder as she realized it had all been an illusion, a beautiful dream that had never happened. And horror replaced despair as she realized that real or not, she still had to deal with the consequences.

She’d kissed Dr. Doom!

Jill struggled against the remaining restraints like a wild bird caught in a huntsman’s net, her gloved, still-uncoordinated fingers fumbling helplessly with the harness’s clasps. “Sadie, get me out of this thing!”

“Hey, where’s the fire?” joked the older woman, extracting the clasp from Jill’s death grip. “No need to panic. You’re safe.”

Safe? She’d never felt more
unsafe
in her life. She needed to get away, to find a quiet corner where she could come to grips with what had happened, where she could compose herself … hell, where she could
hide.
She was no coward, but the thought of facing Dr. Sinclair after the ecstasy she’d just experienced—correction: which she’d thought she’d just experienced—in his arms, was enough to make anyone run like a rabbit. “Just get me out,” she said, closing her eyes as a wave of embarrassment washed over her. “Please.”

Sadie frowned in concern, but she did as Jillian asked. In another minute Jill bolted out of the egg and down the steel ladder that connected the simulator’s higher levels to the ground. She reached the floor and started toward the far door at a fast clip, wanting to put as much distance as she could between herself, the infernal machine, and the equally infernal man who’d created it. She pulled off her stiff DataGloves with a vicious tug, and wiped a lone tear from her cheek.
Tears of anger
, she assured herself.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to cry over losing a knight in shining armor who wasn’t even real to begin with.

“Ms. Polanski!” called an all-too-familiar voice behind her.

Sinclair.
He must have gotten himself out of his harness without waiting for Sadie’s help. Jill hunched her shoulders and kept on walking, pretending she didn’t hear him. With any luck, she’d make the door before he caught up with her.

But luck, as usual, wasn’t with her. Before she’d
taken ten steps, Dr. Sinclair was beside her, his long legs making short work of the distance between them. “Ms. Polanski, just where do you think you’re going?”

Somewhere you’re not
, she thought, purposely continuing to look straight ahead. Not that it did much good. She could feel him beside her, the lengthy, lean form of the man who had—and hadn’t—saved her life. Angry anew, she shoved her hands into her pockets, her ire increasing tenfold as she realized her bodysuit didn’t have any pockets. “What’s it to you?” she bit out. “Our search for Einstein is over until tomorrow. I’m leaving.”

“I can’t allow that. We need to discuss the events that transpired during our time in the simulator, to log them in with the rest of my research and test results.”

In your dreams, Doctor.
She wasn’t about to discuss what had
transpired
, with him or anyone else on God’s green earth. Hell, she intended to do her best to forget it! She glanced up ahead of her, noting that the laboratory’s door—and freedom—were less than ten yards away. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“We’ll talk about it
now
, Ms. Polanski.”

He stepped directly in front of her, effectively cutting off her escape route. Firm hands grasped her shoulders, barely preventing her from running into him for the second time that day. Only this time there were two distinct differences.

The first was that he wasn’t wearing his lab coat. Like her, he was still dressed in the simulator’s “immersion”
suit, and the dark, form-fitting material carved the planes and angles of his body with the precision of a sculpture’s chisel. She saw the ridged muscles of his chest, the understated strength of his lean hips and powerful legs. With a shock, she realized that his voluminous lab coat had concealed the classic lines of a body so perfect, it would have put Michelangelo’s
David
to shame. The man was muscle and sinew from head to toe. No wonder he’d beaten the orc.

The second difference was her point of view. The downward direction of her gaze afforded her a first-class look at a part of his anatomy that gave a whole new meaning to the word
perfection.
The black bodysuit left little of his form to her imagination, and at the moment her imagination was working overtime.
Strong fingers capturing her waist, holding her against him as they moved in unison to the rhythm of their beating hearts.
…

Her head shot up. Her gaze collided with his, and registered the presence of something undefinable moving in the depths of his silver eyes. But the look was gone before she could identify it, his glittering metallic sharpness back in place. She swallowed, suddenly feeling as if she were the orc, facing down the tempered steel of his blade. “Please,” she said weakly. “I’m tired. Can’t we do this tomorrow?”

Her voice pleaded for mercy. His eyes gave her none. He studied her with the same fascination she’d seen him use to examine logarithmic equations, absorbing the difficult problems into himself until they
had no choice but to yield up their secrets. Unfortunately, she wasn’t an equation, and the bold intensity of his gaze robbed the air from her lungs and made her personal parts ache with almost unbearable longing. Custer had more chance of surviving Little Big Horn than she did of surviving that look. She tried to back away, physically retreating from the onslaught of his piercing gaze. His hands held her fast.

“Please,” she begged. “Let me go.”

At that moment Felix rushed toward them, a ream of computer paper trailing behind him. “Dr. Sinclair,” he cried enthusiastically, “I think I’ve figured out how to get rid of the orc!”

Distracted, the doctor glanced toward Parker. His grip slacked almost imperceptibly, but it was enough for Jill to slip out of his grasp and sprint out of the room. She was halfway down the hall before she turned around to see if he’d followed her, and experienced a crazy jumble of relief and disappointment when she discovered he hadn’t.

Well, what did you expect? A mad dash after you and a confession of undying devotion? You’re a guinea pig to him, Polanski. Handle it.

And as she continued down the corridor, that’s exactly what she did. She dealt with her difficult emotions as she’d handled them since she was a child, stuffing them deep into the empty corners of her soul, finding more than enough room. It was just her tough luck that she had to displace a few rainbows to do it.

“He kissed you?” Marsha asked in open-mouthed surprise. “The hunk kissed you?”

“Dr. Sinclair kissed me,” Jill replied sternly. She raised her elbow and shoved an unruly stand of hair off her forehead, then continued to chop the salad tomatoes into needlessly small pieces. “But it wasn’t a real kiss. It happened while we were in the simulator.”

Marsha gave a snort of disbelief. “Honey, let me set you straight,” she said as she dumped another handful of mushrooms into the salad. “Lip lock is lip lock, whether it happens here, there, or on the moon. It’s the action that matters, not the location. So,” she asked slyly, “how was it?”

Jill was spared from answering by the unexpected arrival of Kevin, who blew through the kitchen door like a brawny, red-haired hurricane. “Hey, you guys have been in here forever. Want some help?”

Jill had seen Kevin helping in the kitchen, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He was one of Sheffield Industries’ most experienced computer hardware engineers, but he didn’t know a Cuisinart from a spatula. Anyway, she suspected his unexpected appearance had more to do with Marsha’s presence than with his desire to help. Ten minutes appeared to be the limit on how long he could stand to have his lady love out of his sight.

“We’ll be out in a minute, snoochems,” Marsha
assured him. Apparently satisfied, Kevin lumbered out of the room.

“Snoochems?” Jill said, staring at her friend in amused disbelief.

“Hey, guys love it,” Marsha answered in self-defense. “And know what? Kevin told me there’s about four guys in the other room who would love it if you called one of them snoochems.”

“Get real,” Jill replied, all too conscious of her less-than-devastating looks. With her short brown hair and brown eyes, she thought she was about as scintillating as the wheat fields surrounding the Nebraska town where she’d been raised. She looked at Marsha’s exotic Latin looks with a twinge of envy. “They should stamp
MIDWESTERN FARM GIRL
on my forehead and turn me out in mass production.”

“You always underestimate yourself,” Marsha complained. “I’ll bet Dr. Doom would love it if you called him snoochems.”

“You’d lose big-time,” Jill promised as much to herself as her friend. “Besides, Sinclair is the kind of guy who likes women’s minds. Preferably when they’re in small glass jars soaking in formaldehyde.”

“Now you’re underestimating your doctor,” Marsha said as she hoisted the sizable salad bowl.

“He’s not
my
doctor,” Jill argued, scooping up the tomatoes and dumping them into Marsha’s bowl. “Anyway, you’d better get that out to
snoochems
before he and his buddies start to eat the furniture. I’ll wait for the pizza.”

“Thanks,” Marsha replied as she opened her eyes
wide in humorous fear for her furniture. She headed for the door, but turned back just as she reached it. “You know, Jillie, you really do underestimate yourself. Someday that’s going to get you in trouble.”

You’re wrong
, Jill answered silently as her friend left the kitchen. The trouble she’d gotten into had come from
overestimating
herself, from forgetting who she was. Or
what
she was. She still remembered the snickers, the hissing whispers from the other students as the secret of her parentage rippled through the senior prom crowd. One remark—one spiteful remark—and a night that should have been a shining dream shattered into a nightmare ruin. She’d been on the stage when it happened, being crowned prom queen of Middleton County High School. She could still recall the dwindling voices, the halfhearted applause, the way even her best friends couldn’t manage to meet her eyes. She stood in the bright spotlight in a stainless white dress, and she’d never felt dirtier in her life.

She’d prayed God would strike her dead on the spot so she wouldn’t have to face the condemnation, disappointment, and especially the pity of the friends she’d given her heart to. But God hadn’t heard her … any more than he’d heard her that afternoon as she walked away from the simulator.

She leaned against the refrigerator and pressed her hands to the aching tightness between her breasts, wondering if it was possible to die from embarrassment. A scholarship to MIT had allowed her to escape the first time. A job at Sheffield Industries
had allowed her to escape the second time, when she’d developed that ridiculously one-sided crush on the handsome doctor. But she doubted she’d get that lucky a third time. Tomorrow she’d have to face Sinclair and discuss their kiss—a kiss she’d enjoyed a whole lot more than she cared to admit. He’d log her private, precious emotions in his test data, using her like a human guinea pig. Maybe she should have left him to that orc after all.

A knock sounded on the back door.
Great, at least I can drown my sorrows in pepperoni.
She grabbed her purse and started to dig through it for her wallet, which was down at the bottom as usual. Grumbling fiercely, she opened the back door, her head still bent as she pursued her contrary billfold. “I’ll have your money in a minute. Just put it on the table.”

“I’d be happy to, Ms. Polanski, if you’d tell me what
it
you’re referring to.”

Jill’s purse thumped to the floor. Her eyes shot up, meeting the glittering gaze of Dr. Ian Sinclair—scientist, orc slayer, and the man who’d done more damage to her self-respect than anyone since high school.

And the bastard was smiling.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” Jill stammered.

“I was invited,” Sinclair replied simply, his infuriating smile deepening. In one smooth movement he reached down and retrieved her purse, handing it to her as gallantly as if he were delivering a nosegay. “Don’t you remember, Ms. Polanski?”

Jill clutched her bulky purse to her chest like a shield. She remembered all right—that, and a great deal more. Though he was dressed casually, in black jeans and a loose midnight-blue shirt that emphasized his dark, brooding face, she couldn’t help remembering the way he’d looked in a suit of shining armor. Memories came flooding back with devastating force. She recalled the strength of his arms, the gentle seduction of his hands, the impossible rightness of the way their bodies moved together, his heat, his taste …