Jeremy Waters listened to the car pull away and dropped the hoe on the ground. So that was the annoying Mrs. Melrose. She’d been pestering him with letters for months, describing how unusual her son was, how different, how extraordinary.
He’d heard it all before.
Not once had she mentioned whether or not he liked baseball or if he collected stamps. It was always the same, as if the child was one big brain with no other traits of importance.
He’d been expecting the pushy Mrs. Melrose to show up eventually, but he had to admit that her physical appearance had caught him completely by surprise. He’d been expecting the academic world’s equivalent of a stage mother, not a fairy princess. She’d been younger than he’d anticipated, probably in her mid-twenties assuming she hadn’t had a child when she was a baby herself. Her luminous eyes were fringed with dark lashes. And that stunning blond hair of hers, floating like a cloud around her face—he’d had to restrain himself from asking her to turn around so he could see whether it grew all the way down her back. Then, when she’d turned to leave, he couldn’t suppress a glimpse that had given him his answer in the affirmative. As always, it was the quest for knowledge that led to his downfall.
And the boy. Looking at him had been like looking in a mirror. Of course there was very little physical resemblance from the odd little minicomputer he’d been as a child, but the eyes had been the same, wide and inquisitive, taking in everything, thirsty for knowledge. His face was alive with intelligence, forever branding him as different from other “normal” little boys. He recognized the defensive angle of his shoulders, as if the boy could somehow protect himself.
Jeremy knew what it was like to be tested and probed, to be put on display. He’d given up being the main attraction in the freak show of life.
He didn’t want people around, especially a woman who looked like Abby Melrose. Although he didn’t care to admit it, he couldn’t deny that she’d induced a physical reaction from him. It was a conditioned response, he knew, programmed into his DNA to help propagate the species. But knowing the biology of his reaction didn’t make him feel it any less.
He supposed, in a way, it was fortunate that he would be unable to help her. Not only would it save his sanity, but it would protect both of them.
Because he would never again involve himself with a young person who had so much potential.
There was too much at stake if he failed. Again.
Chapter Two
Two days later, when she returned to Spooky Mansion, as she’d come to think of Dr. Waters’s home, it took five long and annoying rings of the doorbell before it was finally answered—although answered was a tame description of the way he threw open the door and sent it crashing against the wall. Abby got the impression she might have interrupted something by the way he was dressed: rubber gloves reaching nearly to his elbows, a multicolor-spattered rubber smock and plastic goggles covering his eyes.
What could he possibly be doing, dressed like that? Conjuring up the cure to cancer, perhaps, or on the brink of some messy scientific breakthrough? Abby didn’t ask. First, because he didn’t look in the mood for idle chatter and second because she was certain the details would be beyond her comprehension. It was hard enough keeping up with her five-year-old son. She couldn’t imagine what went on in the head of a man who, at age ten, had solved one of the mathematic equations previously thought to be unsolvable.
One thing was for certain. If he hoped to give the appearance of a mad scientist, he was succeeding.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
A maaad scientist.
“I came to talk to you.”
Beneath the goggles, his eyebrows lifted comically. She couldn’t be sure if he was surprised that she’d dared to return or by the stupidity of her answer.
“You don’t take a hint, do you?”
“You mean the hint I got from the gardener?”
“So you figured it out,” he sneered. “That doesn’t make you a rocket scientist.”
He wasn’t the first to point out that fact. He was right, of course. She didn’t have a fraction of the intelligence he had been born with. “But Robbie might be. A rocket scientist or a brain surgeon or heaven knows what else.”
“That’s not my problem.” He ripped the gloves from his hands and yanked off the goggles.
Abby could only stare as she got a closer look at the man who had been called a human computer. He certainly didn’t fit her image of a brainy nerd. His face was creased with ragged lines and planes, his mouth wide and sensual, though it twisted now in a snarl. But it was his eyes that really drew her attention. Standing this near, she could see their color, a soft, gentle brown. They made her want to step closer instead of away, as if they held some secret that was vital for her to understand. Remembering the picture of him as a child with oversize glasses, she concluded that it must be contact lenses that gave him the impression of vulnerability.
Certainly nothing about him fit her image of a super-genius, though even as that thought registered, she realized how narrow-minded it was. How many people had unthinkingly said the same thing about Robbie, as if brain function was somehow related to hair color and weak vision?
She supposed it was just some misguided attempt to explain her unusual physical reaction to him. Her palms were sweating and her heart was beating a little faster, and her reaction had nothing to do with the visual daggers Dr. Waters was throwing at her. Although she wouldn’t have admitted it, her response to Dr. Waters the other day was the real reason she’d run away rather than confronting him about his identity. She was sure he’d be amused by her reaction if he knew, but she had no intention of letting him in on the secret. She couldn’t afford the contempt that was sure to follow her foolishness. She had to convince this man to help her.
“Dr. Waters, I have to talk to you about my son, Robbie. As I wrote to you in my letters, he’s a certified child genius. His IQ is off the charts. When he started preschool, his teachers thought he had a learning disability until they figured out that he was so far advanced. They gave him a slew of tests and each one came back with more startling results than the last.”
“Mrs. Melrose…”
Abby didn’t give him a chance to continue with the brush-off she knew was coming. “Toward the end of the school year, I got called in to a meeting with the principal of the elementary school Robbie was supposed to attend next year. I figured they might want to have him skip a few grades since he’s pretty much mastered the alphabet and counting to ten.” She could tell the sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. “Instead he told me that Robbie might be better off if he looked elsewhere for his education.”
She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t stop herself now that the words had begun to flow. “The school said that according to his scores, he might be able to skip elementary or even high school all together if he passed a few tests. Can you imagine him in college? He’s not even allowed to go to the store by himself.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought she caught a glimpse of sympathy through his gruff exterior.
“They suggested home schooling as an alternative.” She laughed harshly at the thought of trying
