by Ruth Owen
On the night she’d died, Gretchen exacted a promise from her daughter. She’d made Jill swear never to settle for a man’s halfhearted love. Ten-year-old Jillie had sworn to the pledge without understanding it, but she’d never forgotten it. Nor had she forgotten how shattered her mother had been every time a love affair failed—leaving her young daughter to cook and clean and generally keep the household in order until Gretchen got over feeling sorry for herself. Even without the promise, Jill could never settle for part of a man’s passion, no matter how much she wanted to.
Or how much she wanted him.
She summoned up a smile she didn’t feel, and met Ian’s heated gaze with a steady, noncommittal one. “No need to break your promise, Doctor. After all, we’ve finished the experiment.”
Ian’s dark brows drew together. “Experiment?”
“Yes, the kiss. We’ve re-created the cyberspace event, so there’s no need for you to stay any longer.” Without giving him a chance to reply, she pushed herself away from the doorjamb and walked over to the living room’s sliding glass doors. She looked out at her lighted deck and the empty beach beyond. “Be careful walking back. I think the tide’s coming in.”
“I don’t give a damn about the tide.” He strode across the room and caught her by the elbow, pulling her around to face him. “That kiss was more than an experiment, and you know it.”
She’d never seen him angry before. Hell, she’d never seen him anything before. Sinclair kept his feelings so well hidden that most of his colleagues didn’t believe he had emotions. Jill was one of the few who’d suspected that there was something other than ice beneath his controlled exterior, but she never imagined that the power, the sheer intensity of the man within, would take her breath away.
He was magnificent. Passions strong and subtle moved across his face, bringing the handsome features to life. His brows drew together in stormy anger, making him look like an ancient god ready to flay her alive with a thunderbolt. Yet beneath the fury she sensed his vulnerability, the need in him that called to her even more than his strength. Vermilion desire blossomed within her—a soul-deep need to heal the uncertainty she saw in his eyes. Lord, she realized helplessly, he doesn’t even need to kiss me to make the colors happen.
It would be so easy to give in to her emotions and fall into his embrace. But she knew that on some level he was already committed to someone else. Leftover love had ruined her beautiful but weak-willed mother’s life, and had ruined the first part of hers. Promise me, Jillie.
Jill didn’t like to lie, but when she needed to, she could do it quite well. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said firmly, schooling her features into apparently genuine surprise. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d leave. Now.”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. He released her as if she’d slapped him and stepped back, putting more than an arm’s length of distance between them. His gaze never left her face, and she saw his features harden into their familiar indifference, the cold façade. She felt as if she were watching him turn to stone.
“My mistake,” he said stiffly. “I’ll not make it again.”
He pushed open the glass door and stepped into the night, his dark form walking out of the range of her floodlight and disappearing into the deeper darkness beyond. For a long time she stood by the window, staring at the footsteps in the sand that he’d left behind. Wise up, her common sense told her. The guy’s going home to another woman. But somehow that didn’t stop her from missing the warmth of his arms around her.
“Like I told you before, Marsha, I’m fine,” Jill said into the receiver. Sighing in exasperation, she hung up her office phone, both touched and annoyed by her friend’s persistent concern. Ever since Jill had arrived at work that morning, Marsha had been calling at regular intervals. Apparently unsatisfied by Jill’s sketchy description of what had happened between her and Dr. Sinclair the night before, Marsha demanded more details. I told her we had tea and he left, Jill thought as she stared at the now silent phone. It’s the truth—mostly. Why won’t Marsha believe it?
Because she knows you too damn well, her conscience supplied.
Marsha’s concern and Jill’s conscience weren’t her only naysayers. It seemed to Jill that the whole world was conspiring to disprove the simple fact that she couldn’t care less about Ian Sinclair. Last night the ticking of her bedside clock had seemed unusually annoying, and had kept her tossing and turning until almost dawn. This morning while she’d been fixing Merlin his bowl of crunchy-munchy cat food, she noticed how much the Persian’s refined meow sounded like the name Ian.
As a scientist, she knew that she was only noticing this apparent cat-and-clock conspiracy because her subconscious mind was trying to bring something to the surface. She also knew she’d rather swallow ground glass than admit what that “something” might be. After all, she’d have to be the biggest fool in the world to want a man who was committed to someone else.
She didn’t care about Ian Sinclair. She didn’t even like him. He was arrogant, deceitful, and …
And his kisses set her on fire.
Groaning, Jill crossed her arms on her desk and laid her head on top of them. Today she could avoid Ian with a clear conscience, but tomorrow afternoon they’d go into the simulator again. Alone in her office it was easy to convince herself she didn’t care. But seeing him, talking with him, being in that blasted machine with him—she doubted even she could lie that well. And if he kissed her again …
“Bloody hell,” she murmured into the crook of her arm.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a slight ringing sound. Marsha again, she thought as she reached reluctantly for the phone. Then she realized the sound wasn’t coming from the phone, but from the computer terminal on her desk.
Jill had believed she was alone in her office, but one glance at the PC showed her that she wasn’t quite as solitary as she supposed. The CPU lights flashed in delightfully chaotic disarray, while the monitor screen blossomed into a wallpaper pattern of a hundred tiny racehorses, all galloping at top speed toward an unseen finish line. Jillian smiled, recognizing the monitor pattern as the calling card of a very dear, albeit very inhuman friend of hers.
“Hello, PINK.”
PINK, the prototype for intelligent network computers, was a clone of her jive-talking big brother Einstein. Between the two of them they had enough gigobytes to run the data processing functions for a couple of continents, but their good intentions and their irreverent vocabularies made them seem more like rambunctious children than supercomputers. Still, certain intrinsic anomalies in both PINK’s and Einstein’s programming had given them little “problems.” Jill, who understood human vices better than most, was able to help them deal with them without sounding condescending.
“So, PINK—have you been good while I’ve been gone?”
“Mostly,” she replied, which in PINK speak meant not at all. “Don’t like new tech they gave me. She says I’m probability challenged,” PINK added, her computer-generated voice dripping with an excellent approximation of human exasperation. “I’m not probability challenged. I gamble.”
Jill’s smile widened at PINK’s obvious dislike for her new technician’s “politically correct” description of her passion for games of chance. “I wonder what your tech would call Einstein’s TV-shopping mania. VISA-challenged, perhaps?”
Jill expected the little computer to enjoy the joke, but instead, PINK’s screen turned a somber gray, and the small video camera mounted on the terminal drooped in despair. “I miss Einstein,” she wailed. “Big-time.”
Damn. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems that I forgot about hers. Einstein was not only PINK’s best friend and co-creator, he was the only other computer like her in the world. Without him she was alone, solitary in a way Jill had never been, not even during her lonely childhood. Even her heartache over Ian couldn’t begin to compare to what PINK was going through. She reached out her hand and stroked the top of the prototype’s termi
nal as if she were soothing a lost child. “Don’t worry, PINK. Dr. Sinclair and I are going into the simulator again tomorrow afternoon. We’ll find Einstein for you, I promise.”
“I like Dr. Sinclair.”
That makes one of us. “He’s a competent scientist,” Jillian acknowledged curtly.
PINK’s camera lens whirred slightly as it zeroed in on a close-up of Jill’s face. “Ooh, chill burns. You don’t like him, do you? Why not?”
“Now, PINK, that’s really none of your—”
“Is it because he kissed you in the simulator?”
Jill’s jaw dropped open. “How … how did you find out about that?”
“Reviewed the videotape,” PINK said as her camera rose and fell in a close approximation of a human shrug. “Dr. Sinclair always records what happens in the simulator—part of the test data. I linked in and watched it. Major hot!”
Oh, Lord, Jill thought, wincing in mortification. The memory of kissing Ian in cyberspace was embarrassing enough without having a video record of the event floating around somewhere. “Where’s the tape now?”
Ever-helpful PINK supplied the answer. “Usually tapes sent directly to off-site vault, where they’re stored for future evaluation.”
Hopefully the distant future, Jill prayed. Like after I’m dead and buried. “Is that where the tape is now? In the off-site vault?”
“Not exactly …”
The hair at the nape of Jill’s neck prickled in alarm. I’m not going to like this. I can tell I’m not going to like this. She leaned closer to PINK’s terminal. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“It’s being shown in the main conference room. To a few dozen members of the simulator’s engineering team.” PINK paused, as if belatedly realizing that she was delivering a case of dynamite with the fuse already lighted. “But it’s okay. Dr. Sinclair came up with the idea. He’s in there now, explaining all the events in the video to his staff.”
“As you can see, the orc is a fully realized 3-D spacial rendering,” Ian explained to the audience assembled in the conference room. He pointed to the VCR television monitor, making a circle around the image of the slowly advancing monster. “I’d especially like you to notice the rough, toxic-looking texture of the creature’s skin. We’ve found that texture is as important as color in creating a realistic-looking image in the virtual environment. Scent enhancement is also critical.”
“Bet the scent enhancement on that thing was pretty rude,” a tech engineer in the front row whispered.
Ian looked sternly at the speaker, a young technician with a reputation for being a wiseass. “I’d rather you save your comments until I’ve completed my presentation, Mr. Curtis.” Then, giving the chastised technician the ghost of a smile, he added, “But now that you mention it, it smelled like hell.”
As laughter rippled through the audience, Ian continued to explain and evaluate the scene, but his heart wasn’t in it. Reviewing the simulator tapes with the engineering group was standard procedure—he’d done it dozens of times before—but this time it left a particularly bitter taste in his mouth. Seeing the virtual image of Ms. Polanski, watching her bravely pellet the orc with stones to draw its attention away from him, was like pouring salt into a fresh wound.
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.
SEVEN
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.”
