Hi--I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting." The husky voice, instantly recognized and unmistakable, spoke from the back of the room. And every head in the room snapped toward the sound as if pulled by the same invisible thread.

Later, when he'd had a chance to think about it, Ethan was able to convince himself that she probably hadn't meant to make such a dramatic entrance. It was just that, with Phoenix, there couldn't be any other kind. The woman had only to step onto a stage, or walk into a room, he thought, and you could hear the thud of bass guitars and the zap-zap of laser lights, taste the tension, smell the excitement. It seemed as if she carried the spotlight with her wherever she went, like some kind of personal energy field. And yet...and yet...For the life of him, he could not put his finger on the reason why.

It couldn't have had anything to do with the way she was dressed. In jeans--fashionably low-slung on hips as slender and lithe as a girl's--and a pale blue knit top with a square-cut neckline that clung to her supple body like a stocking and stopped just where the waistband of the jeans began, she could have passed for one of the delegates seated around the conference table--or one of their children. But for the mirrored sunglasses, of course. And the hair--that famous hair, now the irridescent blue-black of a crow's wing--that fell from a haphazard center part, rippled down her back and slapped gently against her buttocks when she walked.

"Traffic was murder," the world famous rock star said as she crossed the room with the same long-legged stride that would carry her the width of a concert state in a few pounding beats. Her voice was breathless, her smile wry, inviting those seated around the table to commiserate. "They've got Fremont all torn up--what are they doing, fixing potholes? Anyway, I got lost in all those one-way streets they've got downtown now. Whose idea were those?" Having reached the head of the table, she whirled and addressed those seated around it as if she truly wanted to know.

The delegates shifted uncomfortably, awestruck but unwilling just yet to relinquish the angry baggage they'd come with. Father Frank, apparently only just remembering that he was still on his feet, slowly lowered himself into his chair. Someone--Kenny, maybe--cleared his throat too loudly. Ethan wasn't surprised to find that his own heart was beating hard and fast. He could hear its echo, like distant drumbeats, inside his own head.

Phoenix stepped behind the lectern and slowly took off her sunglasses. Then, for long unmeasurable moments she said nothing, while her unshielded eyes--those remarkable trademark eyes, electric, heart-stopping blue and fringed with sooty-black--traveled around the table, touching each person there in turn.

With his own confrontation with those famous eyes fast approaching and his frequent and futile wish for invisibility strong within him, Ethan was surprised to find himself smiling. Laughing, actually--silently, and with a schoolboy's dry mouth and sweaty palms, deafened by his own heartbeat--laughing with pure chagrin at his own childish vulnerability.

And it happened to be just that moment that the eyes touched his. They slid past the laughter and moved on... Then jerked back suddenly, flared with something he couldn't fathom, and abruptly lost all expression, as if a curtain had fallen behind them. But in the instant before they moved on, for good this time, Ethan felt a strange jolt of recognition. They reminded him of someone, those eyes. Someone or something he'd seen just recently.

It was a few moments more before it came to him exactly where. With the shutters down, devoid of all life and expression, Phoenix's eyes--the almond shape, the exotic tilt, not the color--reminded him of Louise Parker's eyes.

The realization made his throat tighten and his body go chill with the cold wash of memory. And he no longer felt the slightest urge to laugh.

From the book: "The Awakening of Dr. Brown" By Kathleen Creighton
Silhouette Intimate Moments February 2001
ISBN: 0-373-27127-1
Copyright 2001 by Kathleen Creighton-Fuchs

Home

Other Books By Kathleen Creighton

Graphics by