Turn around and look, Cora thought as she deliberately avoided the temptation to glance at Adriano again. She cleared her throat, instead. “The warrior/romantic embodies what women both want and admire in the opposite sex.”
“Like Don Juan?” the student asked.
“Or Robin Hood?” another student added.
Cora nodded. “Precisely. He represents a patriarchal view of the world. He is the king of his own domain. The medieval lord ruled his keep. The duke or earl held responsibility for his entire estate. The Americanized version—heroes like Zorro, Superman or the Lone Ranger—was created to embody the myth of the solitary warrior. He’s strong, independent and heroic. But despite this image, he puts aside his warrior instincts for the sake of a woman.”
Another of her students leaned back in her chair. “Doesn’t that play into the woman-needs-saving mentality? You know, the Cinderella complex?”
“No.” Cora shook her head. “In these stories, the woman does the saving. While he may rescue her physically, she rescues him emotionally. The emotional impact of the story is always given more weight than the external plot.”
“So she redeems him?” the student asked. At that question, Adrian gave Cora a pointed look.
“Yes. Precisely.”
Another student offered, “Like the pirate fantasy. He’s this corrupted guy, and she comes along and makes him change his wicked ways.”
Cathleen Grimes laughed. “Only after he has his wicked way.”
The quip sent the students into a round of free conversation and increasingly ribald comments. Adriano shot Cora an amused look and braced his shoulder against the door frame.
“But, Dr. Prescott,” one girl said, “I mean, really, isn’t that just a bit farfetched?”
“It could be.” Cora propped her hip on the edge of her desk. “But that doesn’t mean the fantasy isn’t still very potent.”
“Do you think that explains,” asked the same student, “why some women go for that scruffy look—you know, the long hair, three-day beard, that kind of thing?”
Karen O’Neil, one of Cora’s brightest students, laughed out loud. “And smelly,” she added. “If they’re really into the pirate persona, they’d have to smell like they’d been at sea for eighteen months.”
Ah, irony, Cora thought as she suppressed the urge to gloat. No way would she let the opportunity to goad Adriano slip through her fingers, not when he’d been a thorn in her flesh for the past several weeks. “That’s why it’s a fantasy, Ms. O’Neil.” She swiveled her laser pointer between her fingers. “Pirates have been romanticized to the point that there are some men who cultivate the look—and there are, undoubtedly, some women who find it attractive.”
“Sexy,” muttered a student. “They find it sexy.”
Cora looked at Adriano. His firm mouth appeared to be twitching at the corner. Deliberately she held his gaze. “They believe it makes them irresistible to women.”
“Doesn’t it?” Cathleen asked. “I mean, look at that guy who’s all over the news lately. What’s his name? That archeologist from the Underwater Archeology Unit at the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.”
With a loud sigh, another student supplied, “Rafael Adriano. He’s unbelievable.”
He certainly was. Cora saw a sparkle enter the jet-black of his eye. She could almost feel the temperature in the room rising.
Her students lapsed into a casual discussion of his appeal while she watched him. Adriano’s name had become almost a household word since his recent discovery of a site believed to be the underwater remains of the Argo—the ship of Greek myth. At first only the scientific community had paid much attention to the find.
It hadn’t taken long, however, for a few enterprising reporters to look at him and see the most marketable scientist the world had known since Einstein. Like Einstein, he was brilliant, eccentric and groundbreaking. Adriano, however, practically defined sex appeal. He looked more like a pirate than a researcher and almost overnight, he’d become a hot-ticket item. When his picture appeared on the cover of a magazine, it was a guaranteed sellout. Women everywhere seemed to adore his slight accent, his cultured manners and the edge of barbarism that said all the attention had merely tamed him for a moment. Every talk show, newsmagazine and network in America was clamoring for a piece of him.
But like most scientists she knew, now that the discovery was made, he was ready to move on to a new hunt.
Unfortunately at the moment he was fixated on a project that had reportedly haunted him for much of his accomplished career. He wanted to find the remains of the Isabela, a Civil War period clipper that was captained by the successful privateer, Juan Rodriguez del Flores.
And Cora was smack in the middle of his way. She’d hoped her last correspondence with him had been enough to deter him. Obviously she’d been wrong.
His only reaction to the somewhat ribald course of her students’ comments was a slight lift of his eyebrows. Cora sensed that the conversation was about to spin dangerously out of her control. Pressing her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose, she dragged her concentration back to her class. Dr. Rafael Adriano had a formidable reputation. And he loved it. If she knew one thing about him, she knew he adored being the center of attention. If he’d thought to disconcert her by arriving unannounced in her classroom, he was about to be sorely disappointed.
“I hear,” one of her students was saying, “that Adriano is on the track of some new discovery. Something bigger than the Argo.”
“Did you see that picture of him in Time magazine? He is too hot, girlfriend.” The student fanned herself with her spiral notebook.
The other girls laughed.
“I have a friend who saw him give a seminar,” one added. “She said he’s, like, drop-dead gorgeous. All you have to do is listen to him to get turned on.”
“That voice!” Cathleen interjected.
“And the accent,” said another girl.
“Can you imagine—” another student leaned over the edge of her desk and dropped her voice “—the sound of that man whispering in your ear?”
“Oh, Lord.”
Cora was having trouble containing her amusement as her students chased Adriano’s rabbit. “Ladies…” she said, trying to wrest control of the conversation.
They blissfully ignored her. “Gawd. I saw him on CNN the other night. He was talking about some new ship he’s looking for. When he started explaining the ‘thrill of discovery…”’ The student rolled her eyes in mock ecstasy and flopped back in her chair.
Cathleen chuckled. “I’ll bet I could think of a few things for him to discover.”
Cora used the distraction of the students’ ensuing laughter to recapture her advantage. “Okay, ladies.” She waved a hand to gain their attention. “Enough. This isn’t getting us anywhere with our discussion of pre-Renaissance romantic literature.”
“No,” one of the girls drawled, “but it’s doing a lot for my visualization skills.”
“Really?” Cora slanted Rafael a dry look.
“Oh, definitely. I mean, with that eye patch and all…Jeez, Dr. Prescott, you can’t say you haven’t noticed. The guy is, like, practically the sexiest man alive.”
Cora tasted victory. She didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d planned to disrupt her class—to catch her off guard with his sudden arrival. It seemed only fair that he should pay the price. “So you think Dr. Adriano is the perfect romantic hero?”
Cathleen rolled