No Illusion — Lynnette Kent

Mistress of Magic.

Among partygoers in Washington, D.C., she was known as the mistress of magic, the mysterious woman who could transform gold coins into a cloth of spun gold. With amethyst eyes and silky black hair, Chloe Smith resembled the mystical sorceress of a fairy tale.
But the world of illusion offered Chloe little escape from her struggle in the real world, a place where letters and numbers often looked the same and printed words were like a foreign language. Her daily struggle was her most guarded secret, a painful truth she tried to forget in the special moment when she held a captivated audience in the palm of her hand. Even as she mesmerized his nine-year-old son with simple hat tricks, Peter Carroll knew there was something special about Chloe. There was a clever, intelligent twist to her act that appealed to the college professor. He wanted to get to know her better, but it was hard to draw Chloe away from the illusory black cloak of her profession. Was she the woman of his dreams, or was he being fooled by a trick of smoke and mirrors?