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“Fair warning, sweet Emberly. I intend to pick up where I left off once I get home tonight.”
    â€œAnd I shall be naked and waiting.” I watched him walk into his en suite. Rory and I had been friends and lovers ever since we’d been teenagers, which was so many centuries ago now I could barely even remember them. He was my life partner, the spirit I was fated to be with forever, and the only man I could ever have children with. But we were not, and never had been, in love.
    It was said that at the very beginning of time, a phoenix spurned the affections of a witch after taking her virginity. In her anger and shame, she cursed us with the inability to love one another, forcing us to forever seek—but never find—emotional completion outside our own race, thus ensuring that we would forever be left with little more than love’s bitter ashes, as she had been. I’m not sure I believed the whole witch-curse thing, but it certainly heldmore than a few grains of truth when it came to phoenixes and love.
    As the shower came on, I bounced out of Rory’s bed and headed into the kitchen to make us both breakfast. He walked in ten minutes later, dropped a kiss on the back of my neck, then swept up one of the plates of pancakes and headed for the table.
    â€œSo, did you manage to save your soul last night?”
    I glanced at him sharply, and he gave me a lopsided smile. “If I can’t read the signs by now, Em, something is seriously wrong. So who was it this time?”
    Sam’s warning shot through my thoughts as I picked up the two steaming mugs and the other plate of pancakes and joined Rory at the table. “No one important. And yes, I did.”
    His expression indicated he didn’t believe the lie, but he let it slide, asking instead, “What’s on your agenda for today, then?”
    â€œI don’t exactly know.” I pushed one of the mugs across to him. “Mark mentioned something about discovering a critical amino acid in the molecules he was studying yesterday, so I daresay he’ll be in the lab all day and I’ll be transcribing his notes all night.”
    â€œAh, the exciting life of a research assistant,” he said, voice dry.
    I resisted the urge to point out I wasn’t actually a research assistant, even if that was what they’d classified me as. Mark hated interference of anykind, even if it came in the form of help to set up and monitor experiments. After he’d gone through more than a dozen qualified assistants in less than two months, the powers that be at the Chase Medical Research Institute had given up and resorted to employing what amounted to a secretary. Meaning I transcribed his notes and generally ran around after him but otherwise didn’t interfere in whatever it was he was doing.
    And Rory was right—it wasn’t exciting. But I’d done the whole exciting bit the last time around. Right now, all I wanted was something easy.
    Besides, this lifetime was supposedly
his
turn to do the dangerous stuff, not mine. Not that
that
had ever stopped me from getting into trouble in previous lifetimes.
    â€œYou’ve never done well coping with a staid and boring life,” he added, obviously guessing my thoughts. “And I’m betting you won’t last much longer working for that crazy old man.”
    â€œThey’re paying me damn good money to run after that crazy old man, and that makes up for the boring. Besides, for an old guy, he’s not bad scenery—he has nice legs and an eminently watchable ass.”
    â€œSo have you,” he said dryly. “He made a play for it yet?”
    I snorted softly. “He’s old, remember? Besides, I seriously doubt he notices anything not connected to his microscope or his books. Not everyone in this world is as randy as you.”
    â€œThat he’s in his sixties doesn’t make him deadfrom the waist down—a fact we’ve both