The Awakening of Dr. Brown

as the blue-black mass uncoiled itself and slithered down her bare back like a living thing, and was unprepared when a wave of desire hit him like a sucker punch, leaving him feeling dazed and slightly weak in the knees.

“And then?”

He blinked away grogginess and cleared his throat. “Then…” But, oh, Lord, what was this thickness in his speech, like someone struggling out from under anesthetic? Or someone under the influence of a powerful drug? A drug? Oh, yeah…a drug named Phoenix. “That would depend,” he said carefully.

“On what?”

“On…how things are going. How we both feel. If it feels right, maybe we go back to my place-”

“Your place?”

“My place,” he said firmly, “and we put on some music, and we talk, maybe dance a little. And if we get hungry, we feed each other leftover Chinese food straight out of the take-home boxes…”

“Because you’re good with chopsticks, and you want to impress me.”

“Right…”

“And then?” But he could barely hear her whisper over the thumping of his heart.

He paused and then replied with gravel in his voice, “We get to know each other.”

She didn’t reply at once, and in the silence, looking at her, it struck him suddenly that she wasn’t playing a game any longer, that for reasons he couldn’t begin to imagine, she was vulnerable to him. Maybe even afraid. We get to know each other, he’d said to her. Was it those words that had put that look in her eyes? A look of fear and longing…

Go on, ask me! She’d hurled it at him too quickly, brash and full of bravado, he realized now, like a cornered child with her back against the wall. He wondered if she knew how much she’d revealed about herself with those off-the-top-of-her-head answers. Dance in the rain…root beer floats…small children singing… They were the answers a very young girl might give, he thought, remembering that glimpse he’d once caught in her eyes of eagerness, innocence and yearning. A lonely little girl standing on the edge of the playground, watching the other kids’ games.

The vision vanished a moment later, though. There was nothing remotely childlike about her laughter, or the husky burr in her voice when she said, “Okay, then. Let’s do it.”

He looked at her, hating to destroy the moment, knowing his words would snuff the sweet little flame of liking that had kindled between them so unexpectedly, there in her darkened studio. The game had been fun, for him a sidetrip into fantasy that was all the more exciting because it was so completely against his nature. But Ethan was a doctor; he was also the son of the president of the United States. He couldn’t afford to believe in fantasy.

In the end he said nothing, but only smiled and shook his head.

“Come on, Leroy.” She hooked her arm through his. “You asked me out on a date, I’m accepting. You said you’d pick me up, you’re here, I’m ready, so…pick away. I have my heart set on dim sum.”

“Joanna…”

“Yes, Leroy?”

He was fighting laughter. She was batting her eyelashes at him so outrageously, and he didn’t know whether to grab her and pull her into his arms or just grab her and shake her. He was fairly sure, though, which of those things he’d wind up doing if he were insane enough to put his hands on her. So he said mildly instead, “Aren’t you forgetting something? Like…a six-and-a-half-foot bodyguard?”

“Ethan Brown has a bodyguard,” she reminded him. “Leroy doesn’t.”

“Leroy also doesn’t have a car. Do you-uh, does Joanna?”

“Ah.” She was silent for perhaps two beats. Then she held up one finger and murmured, “Don’t go ’way,” and before he could stop her she was running across the studio, vanishing into the shadows.

He watched her, as always fascinated by the way she moved, like some wild creature… Tiger, tiger… Yes, a tiger, he thought, disappearing in tall grass. He’d be crazy to go after her. She’d eat a man alive.

But, was he also crazy to like her? He’d been determined not to, had come here armed against the possibility, had steadfastly dismissed any attraction he felt for her as the remnants of teenaged fantasies. What, then, had changed? Watching her just now, in spite of the sexy rock star clothes, the buzz beneath his breastbone had felt less like the adrenaline rush of lust and more like the sweet warmth of… liking?

But that seemed too pale a word, somehow.

What was happening, he realized, was that when he looked at her now he wasn’t seeing a rock-and-roll superstar named Phoenix. What he felt when he looked at her was nothing like the adolescent panting after a sex symbol he remembered-with some embarrassment still-from his high school days. What it was was desire, pure and simple-grown-up desire, of one man for one particular woman. Somehow, in just a few minutes, with her little game of make-believe she’d managed to transform herself into a woman-a girl, really, for she’d also seemed to become magically younger-named Joanna Dunn. And had drawn him into the game with her and made him believe in it.

He wondered whether it had been so easy for her to make him believe because of her incredible magnetism, the same charisma that had held concert audiences in thrall the world over…or because he just wanted so much to believe. He’d do well, he told himself, to remember that this woman was above all things a performer-even for an audience of one.

“Here you go.” She was back, slightly out of breath but more from excitement, he thought, than exertion. He could see it shining in her eyes as she held up something small and metal, something that jingled when she shook it, picked up a bit of light from somewhere and winked it back at him like a conspirator in her mischief. “Wheels.” He caught the keys she tossed to him one-handed. “I borrowed them from Stewart, the sound man.” Her voice was rich with self-congratulation. “It’s Japanese-a ‘sport-utility vehicle,’ sort of brownish, he said-that should be anonymous enough, don’t you think? Stewart says everybody’s driving them now.” She hooked her arm through his in the way that was becoming familiar to him and gave it a squeeze. She was smug, altogether pleased with herself, as she added, “Come on, Leroy-you drive.”

What could he say to that? How did a man say no to Phoenix? Though the truth was, he had no wish at all to say no. He was enjoying the game too much, even knowing full well that it was exactly that-a game. Even though he hadn’t forgotten for a minute what it was that had brought him there. Just for good measure he said it silently, like a mantra, Michael Parker, and his momma, Louise.

“Where is this brownish Japanese SUV?” he inquired as he allowed her to tow him along.

“All the guys park out back, where the loading bays are. This building used to be a warehouse, did you know that?”

“Never woulda guessed,” said Ethan. But he was smiling, and she laughed with him, a rich little chortle that warmed his insides like a slug of straight whiskey.

He was thinking, with a shameful absense of regret, about Secret Service Agent Carl Friedenburg, sitting in an anonymous sedan with tinted windows parked in a Handicapped zone just outside the building’s street entrance. He knew he should find a way to let his protection know there’d been a change in plans, as he’d done the last time Phoenix hijacked him. He also knew he wasn’t going to. Childish, perhaps. Foolish, undoubtedly. But… just this once.

Early in his father’s first term, chafing under the restrictions placed upon him by his family’s explosion into the limelight and resentful of the loss of his cherished privacy, Ethan had taken pleasure in finding ways to outwit the United States Secret Service and its agents charged with the responsibility for protecting his life. It was Dixie who had finally set him straight. On one of his rare visits to his family’s new and temporary home, she’d sat him down in the dauntingly elegant upstairs sitting room and told him the story of how his sister, Lauren, had been kidnapped on the eve of his father’s nomination by a militia organization bent on destroying the election process. Bent on, in effect, usurping the two-centuries-old peaceful transfer of power as set forth in the Constitution. In other words, a coup.

He’d understood for the first time then, what it would mean to the country-what it would mean to his father-if he or Lauren were to be taken hostage. Understood that it would render Rhett Brown incapable of fulfilling the obligations of his office every bit as surely as a bullet to the brain. He’d done his best, ever since, to cooperate in seeing that such a thing never happened.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to justify this, when it came time to face the music. He didn’t want to think