Adonis 5000

Lissa Spence is thirty-two, a Westinghouse Scholar, holding dual degrees in cognitive science and robotics. She is dedicated to her job. And, oh, what a job! She's being paid quite handsomely to create a lifelike man, and yes, he really does have blond hair and a tan. Problem is, he looks just like her boss, Segrin Cayce. Not her fault! Honestly! After putting in a long day of tweaking and testing "sensitive" electro-sensors, Lissa likes nothing more than to go home, take a luxurious bubble bath, throw on some jazz music, open her bedside drawer and pull out her own personal set of electronic lifelike toys for a little "down" time. As a rule, Segrin Cayce, CEO of Cayce Industries, stays far away from the labs. In his opinion, those white-smocked scientists are just too odd. But he has had his eye on one scientist for quite some time, Dr. Lissa Spence, and it's no longer enough to speculate about the woman who wears sedate clothing-and that gawd awful lab coat-on the outside, but whose in-depth personnel records identify online purchases of "toys" that are anything but sedate. Segrin is determined to crack Lissa's icy, cerebral shell, and in the process get her to leave her work AND toys behind to discover what it's like having the real thing. But more than love lurks in the labs at Cayce Industries. There's Lissa's life-like man, the Adonis 5000-a $47 million state-of-the art robot with recognition scores a Harvard grad would kill to have. And once the line between life and life-like begins to blur, something unexpected is bound to happen. Publisher's Note: Adonis 5000 was previously published by Yoni Books in 2003 as "Beauty and the Gee" under the pen name Thea Solo.