Sorcerer: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

along with duty and honor and all the other truths he’d been taught to believe in.
    Truths, he’d discovered, that were as false as the bright and counterfeit flowers beneath his boots.
    “Twenty minutes left,” Parker announced.
    “Damn,” Jillian fumed as she attempted to tug her skirt free from yet another snagging bramble. Her beautiful outfit was a disaster when it came to cross-country travel—the heavy material seemed almost magnetically drawn to every thorn in the vicinity. More than once she’d been tempted to shuck the elegant but unwieldy gown and go on without it, but she didn’t dare. She knew Felix was a stickler for detail—the unpleasantly real bramble bushes proved it—but she doubted whether even he had thought to include a pair of virtual lingerie in his topological design.
    She felt ridiculous! She gave her skirt another frustrated yank, trying to ignore the embarrassed blush that heated her neck and cheeks. “Dr. Sinclair,you go on. If we split up, we can cover more territory.”
    The doctor stood a few yards away from her on a small cairn of stones, scanning the unexplored part of the valley. He barely glanced back in her direction as he answered, “That’s not advisable.”
    Jill started to ask exactly what was advisable, but Sinclair had already turned his back on her, returning his gaze to the valley as if she didn’t matter at all. Correction—
because
she didn’t matter at all. She meant less to him than the bluebottle that buzzed around his helmet in the still afternoon air. A fly that wasn’t even real.
    Sinclair may have looked the part of a brave and chivalrous knight, but underneath the shining armor he was as cold and heartless as he’d always been. Saving Einstein meant nothing to him—and she meant even less than nothing. It was like reliving the humiliation of their slow dance all over again.
    Anger built within her, only this time her frustration had little to do with her skirt or the brambles. “You don’t give a damn, do you?”
    Sinclair looked back at her. “What did you say?”
    “I said
you don’t give a damn
,” Jill repeated, her anger increasing with every carefully enunciated word. “This is just another experiment to you. You don’t care whether we save Einstein or not.”
    “Ms. Polanski, I assure you that finding the computer is my highest priority.”
    “Highest priority,” she repeated acidly. “Doctor, Einstein isn’t a priority, he’s a
person.
He’s thekindest, sweetest, most wonderful personality I’ve ever met—and that includes the people I know. He’s my friend—one of my best friends—and I’m not about to give up on him because we’re not meeting some … arbitrary rules you’ve established.” She raised her chin and gave him what she hoped was a grandly haughty stare. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going off on my own so we double our chances of finding E, and that’s
final
.”
    Jill gave her skirt a sharp yank, hoping to pull it free and make a glorious exit. Unfortunately, her dress wouldn’t cooperate. No matter how hard she pulled, she remained firmly anchored in the bramble bush. In fact, her frantic tugging only seemed to make matters worse.
    “It would appear,” Sinclair commented dryly, “that you’re not going anywhere.”
    Damn him
, she thought.
Damn his blue-blood smile and his superior attitude.
Anger from a lifetime of in-justice boiled up inside her, bringing sharp tears to her eyes. People like him had made her childhood a living hell. Words from the past whispered through her mind, names that still had the power to wound her, even after all these years.
Gretchen Polanski’s little problem. That unfortunate Polanski girl.
And the worst of all,
Gretchen’s mistake.
“Go ahead and make fun of me,” she told him bitterly. “I don’t care.”
    For a moment he remained perfectly still, carved, it seemed, from the stones he stood on. Then he bent his head and slowly, deliberately, removed