Free Sorcerer: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance by Ruth Owen Page B

rule rather than the exception for this evening.”
    She glanced back at him, her brown eyes as wary as a skittish doe’s. He recalled the last minutes they’d spent in cyberspace, when she had come to his side in that tattered dress with her hair full of brambles, smelling of loam and moss. He’d thought of her as a wood nymph, a fairy creature of spirit and fire, a dream never to be recaptured. Yet now, right in the mundane world of soap suds and coffee mugs, he again found himself staring into the eyes of that wood nymph—or eyes that would have belonged to awood nymph if they hadn’t been clouded by suspicion and distrust.
    Something twisted near his heart. For all her causes and courageous stances, Jillian Polanski was as delicate as lace inside. Sinclair had seen how cruel the world could be to fragile and unique spirits, but he’d never seen a pair of eyes more tragic or a spirit more afraid to let its true nature be discovered. He wondered who had taught her to be so wary, and experienced a surge of anger so strong, it nearly made him wince.
    “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, wondering whose damage he was apologizing for. “I never intended to hurt you.”
    She studied him for a few moments longer. Then her mouth sneaked up in a tentative half-grin that made his heart twist all over again. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion that you were after something.” She turned back to the sink and finished rinsing the mugs. “I mean, everyone knows you never think about anything but science.”
    Not always, Ms. Polanski.
As Dr. Doom he’d fostered a reputation for stoic indifference. But underneath his passionless exterior beat the heart of a normal, red-blooded man with all the normal, red-blooded desires as the rest of his race. Nowadays he tried to ignore that part of himself—letting his heart rule his head had almost ruined his life. Still, his physical self kept asserting itself, usually at inconvenient moments. Like during the slow dance at Griffith’s party. Like now. Try as he might, he couldn’tstop staring at Ms. Polanski’s petal-shaped mouth, and thinking some distinctly unscientific thoughts.
    When they’d come out of the simulator, the shock of reentering the real world had wiped the details of their kiss from his mind. He recalled the event visually, like a silent movie, but the additional sensations of sound, touch, and taste were missing from his personal memory banks. He’d lost partial sensation memory of other cyberspace events before, but he’d never regretted the loss so keenly.
    Until that moment he’d never questioned his motives for asking Jillian to help him recreate their kiss. But gazing at her soft, inviting lips, he had the uncomfortable suspicion that there might be more to his suggestion than he’d realized. After what he’d glimpsed in her eyes a moment earlier, he didn’t want to give her yet another reason for not trusting someone. Perhaps it was a lucky thing she’d turned him down after all.
    “Okay,” she said suddenly.
    “Okay what?”
    “Okay, I’ll kiss you.”
    Ian stared at her dumbfounded. For a second he thought he was back in the simulator, and Parker had switched realities on him while he wasn’t looking. “But you just said—”
    “I
know
what I said,” she replied as she picked up a dish towel and wiped her hands, “but I figure you’re right about it being for the good of science. Besides, if I don’t, I’ll always wonder if what I felt in the simulator was … well, I’ll just always wonder.Anyway,” she added with a shrug, “it’s only a lousy kiss.”
    Lousy?
Lousy!
Ian’s recollection of their kiss may have been hazy, but he was quite sure it deserved a better modifier than that one. He remembered enjoying it. He remembered
her
enjoying it. His disastrous marriage to Samantha had destroyed much of his belief in himself, both as a scientist and as a man. But nothing in this world or the virtual one