A flash of red crossed her eyes, and she realized it was Vicky Valenzuela. The contact-crunching feminist took a seat in the front row beside a string of females. The rest of the foxes, no doubt.
Marietta adjusted the microphone and cleared her throat. “I take it advance word must’ve gone out that today’s lecture is about sex.”
Standing in front of a crowd always gave Marietta a case of the jitters, which she could quickly dispel by getting the students on her side. Laughter filled the room. The FOCs, who apparently hadn’t been versed in classroom decorum, clapped.
“Notice that I said sex, not love,” Marietta continued. “Sex is absolutely essential for our survival as a species. Love isn’t. But I’ll get to that later in the lecture.”
Now that her jitters had subsided and she had the attention of her students, Marietta launched into a well-researched lecture that included traditionally accepted dogma about mating behavior. Whenever she said anything that could be vaguely construed as pro-female, the FOCs, who she’d come to regard as her own personal cheering section, applauded.
“As you can see, men and women choose their sexual partners because of deep-seated evolutionary tendencies that began to develop in hunter-gatherer societies,” she said well into her talk.
“Men subconsciously seek out women who have youth and good health, positive signs of fertility. They’re looking for a vessel in which to spread their seed, because this response is deeply ingrained within them.
“Women subconsciously want men who transmit signals of strength and power. In the societies of old, when food was scarce and predators plentiful, it was extremely important for females to have males who would help provide for them.”
She took a breath, because she was about to get into the part of the lecture that had at its heart, no heart.
“Love simply didn’t play into it. It doesn’t play into it. In short, love doesn’t matter.”
One of the FOCs whistled her approval as the others clapped, and murmurs spread through the classroom like wind chimes carried on a breeze.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
A male voice from the back of the lecture hall exploded into Marietta’s consciousness. She was so surprised to be interrupted that she could barely believe it had happened.
“Excuse me?” she said into the microphone.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” he repeated.
A heckler. Here she was, at the front of a college biology class giving a lecture, and she had a heckler. Never, in all her years of teaching, had it happened before.
“I heard you the first time, but this is a college class,” Marietta said firmly. “We’ll have a question-and-answer period at the end. But my lecture itself is not open to debate.”
“It should be. You presented an opinion as fact.”
The voice was angry, ridiculously so, as though something in her lecture had touched him on a personal level. It was also familiar. It sounded, in fact, just like her sperm supplier’s voice. Marietta squinted to get a look at the speaker, but he was sitting at the back of the class, too far away to see. Besides, it couldn’t be Jax. He didn’t know where she was or even who she was.
“You’re wrong. I’ve formed educated convictions based on facts. There’s a difference.”
“But you’re talking as though love doesn’t exist!”
Marietta stomach rumbled. The baby, she thought, responding to its sperm supplier’s voice. Which was ridiculous. But for somebody who wasn’t Jax and couldn’t possibly be Jax, he sure sounded like Jax.
“On the contrary, I’m not saying love doesn’t exist,” Marietta said. “A mother loves her child, certainly, and siblings can develop love for each other. I’d even venture to say that some couples eventually come to love one another. But that blush of attraction between males and females has nothing to do with love and everything to do with sex. There are numerous examples I can site that back me up on this fact.
“The male praying mantis, for example, has such a strong urge to mate that he risks cannibalization every time he does. At any time during copulation, the female may twist around and tear off his head. I assure you she’s not doing this out of love.”
“Oh, come on.” This was one student, it seemed, who wouldn’t be placated. “You’re comparing humans to insects. You’re talking about instincts and completely ruling out the power of emotions.”
“Some humans let their perfectly good instincts be overruled by messy emotions better left out of the equation,” Marietta said, getting into the debate despite herself. “Sex, which leads to the survival of our race, is what matters in the long run. Not this thing we call romantic love.”
Her heckler laughed. He actually laughed.
“That reminds me of a joke,” he said, and Marietta told herself not to panic. Just because her heckler was telling a joke didn’t mean he was Jax. Especially if the joke was funny. Please, God, let his joke be funny.
“What’s the best way to a scientist’s heart?” He paused before answering. “By sawing open her breast plate.”
Nobody laughed. There must have been two hundred people in the room, and not one of them even tittered.
Marietta swooned.
The combination of her morning sickness and her growing suspicion of who was in her classroom was too much. She clasped the edge of the dais and willed herself not to faint. A woman ran up on stage, and when she got close enough Marietta saw it was Vicky Valenzuela.
“Pull yourself together, Dr. Dalrymple,” Vicky whispered urgently. “The future of feminism on campus is at stake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We must not show weakness in the face of male oppression. You have a right to be heard, and you must stand fast against masculine opposition so you can be a leader in the feminist movement.”
Marietta knew it was useless to try to tell her, once again, that she was a biologist. Vicky was right about one thing, though. The end of the hour was near, and she needed to pull herself together long enough to dismiss the class.
Besides, she could be jumping to conclusions. The world was full of the humor-impaired. Television sitcoms proved that much.
“Thank you for that humorless joke,” she said into the microphone, pleased that her voice sounded strong. “I’m sure the class, however, will back me up when I ask that you refrain from entertaining us in the future.”
Vicky returned to her seat. The rest of the FOCs, bless their loyal little feminist hearts, applauded.
“In closing, I’d like to leave you all with this thought. Remember, this is a conclusion I’ve reached from all my years of study. You are free to reach your own conclusions.
“Our mothers have always told us not to use four-letter words, especially in regard to sex. Count the letters while I spell the following word: L-O-V-E.
“Love: It’s the ultimate four-letter word for sex.”
Before the heckler could interject his unwanted opinion, Marietta gathered her papers and moved away from the dais. She was grateful that the FOCs in the first row had once again burst into applause, drowning out the other classroom noises.
She walked gingerly toward the short flight of stairs that led to the floor, but unfortunately three steps had blurred into one. She thought briefly of asking somebody to help her negotiate them, but rejected the idea.
Most of what Vicky Valenzuela said was off base, but she wasn’t entirely wrong. Marietta couldn’t afford to show weakness, not when she was entrusted to educate and command the respect of hundreds of students.
She stepped forward, missed the first step completely and pitched down the stairs straight into the arms of a mountain of a man who caught her as easily as if she were a rag doll.
His clean scent overwhelmed her, but it was intoxicating instead of nausea-inducing. Even before she looked up into his grim, handsome face, she knew who she would see.
Still, she couldn’t stop her eyes fro
m climbing upward and confirming the impossible. She almost wished she were far-sighted instead of nearsighted so she could still pretend that her baby’s sperm supplier wasn’t pressed up against the stomach that held the child.
“Hello, Rhea,” he drawled, putting emphasis on the alias Marietta just now realized also had four letters. “Remember me?”
Chapter 7
Marietta felt her already ghostly face go whiter and would have sunk to the floor in a horrified heap if Jax hadn’t been holding her up.
The eyes she remembered looking at her with melting warmth were as cold as a chocolate popsicle. He was gazing at her as though he had something to be upset about. As though he were perfectly within his rights, with thousands of her dollars stuffing his pockets, to bulldoze his way into her world and disrupt her life.
Those thoughts gave her the courage to pull herself up to her full height, which was about the level of his chin. She glared right back at him.
“What are you doing here, Harold?” She deliberately used his given name instead of the nickname he preferred, making her voice as cold as a blast from an open freezer. He still held her by the upper arms, and her frostiness contrasted vividly with the warmth that had gathered under his hands. Irritated at her epidermis sensitivity, she shrugged away from him.
“You have to ask that question?” He let out a short bark of what sounded like disbelief, and Marietta had a premonition of doom. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth unsmiling, his jaw hard. He didn’t look like a man who took the money and ran. He didn’t look like he intended to go anywhere. “And the name, as I told you before, isn’t Harold. It’s Jax.”
“I don’t care if you want to be called Ishmael. You and I have nothing to discuss.”
“I hired a private investigator to find you because I think we have plenty to discuss.” His eyes dropped to her abdomen before they raised to meet her eyes. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
“Belongs to you?” She affected the bravado that had always carried her through the sticky situations in life, but she felt faint, which simply wouldn’t do. She needed to heed the words of the FOC heading her fan club. Stand fast against male oppression. She couldn’t let herself be bullied by a man who had signed a contract relinquishing the very thing he was trying to claim. “Nothing of mine belongs to you. You have absolutely no right to come here and harass me like this.”
He laughed, but the sound held a bitter undertone. “You don’t want to get into an argument with me about rights, Marietta,” he said, emphasizing her name, “because you’ll lose.”
“Dr. Dalrymple? Is this man bothering you?” The voice of salvation came out of Vicky Valenzuela’s mouth. The FOC president, with panache befitting her position, walked straight up to Jax. She came so close that Marietta’s near-blind eyes could make out the girl’s features as she leaned back her head and looked way, way up at Jax. Her lips parted, and her eyes widened. Her brain, unfortunately, seemed to go stone dead.
“As a matter of fact, he is bothering me,” Marietta answered, but Vicky wasn’t listening. She wasn’t doing anything but staring spellbound at Jax, who was dressed in another of those beautifully tailored suits that were no doubt made for him. This one was chocolate-brown, like his eyes.
“Of course I’m not bothering her.” Jax switched on the charm, smiling down at Vicky. “Marietta and I are old friends. In fact, you could strip her bare and there’s not a man alive who knows more about her than I do.”
“Really?” Vicky said breathlessly, telling Marietta she hadn’t processed a word he said. Her lips formed a silent word that even Marietta could make out. It was “wow.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. What kind of feminist are you?” Marietta exclaimed, even though she understood the effect Jax was having on the young woman. It was no more intense than the effect Jax had on Marietta. Vicky was not only reacting to his symmetrical features, but the evolutionary truth that conditioned women to seek out men emitting signs of power and strength. With his great height and incredible physique, Jax had an unfair advantage.
Still, she’d expected more of the head of the FOCs. Vicky must know that men had a strong biological urge to spread their genetic material around. Jax, and every other man Marietta had ever come across, merely had to look at an attractive young woman to want to make love to her. Which is why you couldn’t trust any of them.
“Snap out of it, Vicky,” Marietta said. “Remember how you said I was your role model. Well, you’re ogling the man who was heckling your role model.”
“Heckling,” Vicky repeated, but she still wasn’t operating on all cylinders. Whatever bolts kept her brain in place had seriously loosened.
“I wasn’t heckling you.” Jax looked taken aback. He transferred his attention from Vicky’s starry eyes to Marietta’s nearsighted ones. “I was disagreeing with you, which I wouldn’t have done in the first place if you hadn’t said such ridiculous things.”
The insult cut into Marietta, taking precedence, for the moment, over her questions as to why he was here at Kennedy College making ridiculous insinuations about rights he should well know were legally nonexistent. This was her profession he was insulting, her passion. She balanced a hand on her hip. “I suppose this means you think you’re in love with someone?”
Confusion crossed his good-looking face, and Marietta knew in that instant that she had him. A corner of his mouth twitched, as though he didn’t want to admit the inevitable.
“Well, no, actually I’m not in love.” He quickly added a qualifier before Marietta could smile in triumph. “But I could be.”
The ray of hope that crossed Vicky’s face was so dazzling even Marietta couldn’t miss it.
“I mean, I will be,” Jax said. “One day.”
“I assume,” Marietta continued in her most scholarly tone, “that means you’ve never been in love?”
“If you’re talking about romantic love,” Jax said, “I’d have to say that’s true.”
“The sexual encounters you have had, then, weren’t motivated by love. In fact, I maintain they had nothing to do with love.”
“You’re twisting—”
“So that proves my point,” Marietta finished triumphantly. “Sex is what makes the world go ’round. Not love.”
“Professor Dalrymple.” Vicky, it seemed, had at long last found her voice. “Don’t you think you’re being too hard on him?”
“Hah!” The idea was so laughable that Marietta actually laughed, right in Jax’s handsome face. “I couldn’t possibly be too hard on someone so mercenary he’d sell his soul if he could find a way to extract it from his body.”
“Now, wait just a minute. You don’t know anything about me.” A red flush peeked through Jax’s olive complexion, and Marietta was perversely glad. After what he’d done, he ought to be ashamed of himself. He certainly didn’t have the right to take the moral high ground, and she wasn’t going to let him.
“I know that you took thousands of dollars of my money for something priceless. That’s all I need to know, buster.”
“Oh, come on.” The words were laced with disgust. “I’ll say this in professor lingo, so you’ll understand. You’ve reached a faulty conclusion. I don’t want your money. I never did.”
Reaching into his suit jacket, Jax withdrew two envelopes from an inner pocket. He tried to hand them to her, but she backed up, rendering him so blurry she could no longer make out his expression.
“What’s going on?” Vicky asked, but Marietta ignored her. As did Jax.
“Oh, no,” Marietta said. “I am not taking that money back. I am not going to let you renege on our deal.”
“If you’d listen to me for one minute, you’d realize we don’t have a deal.”
Marietta shook her head so vigorously some of her hair loosened from her bun and swung into her face. She swiped it back. Great. She was having a bad-hair day in the midst of a crisis of staggering proportions.
“A deal’s a deal, and I�
�ve got the documentation in my office to prove it.” She turned on the low heel of her sensible shoe and walked away from him, squinting to give herself a better view of the surroundings. It didn’t help. She misjudged the aisle and bumped into the edge of the first row of seats. Then she forgot about the descending single step that led to the door connecting the lecture hall to the outside hallway. She tripped, righting herself inelegantly on the door frame before she could fall.
“What is wrong with that woman?” Jax asked under his breath. The anger he was trying hard to hold simmered just beneath the surface of his skin, making his blood bubble.
“She can’t see,” Vicky answered.
“You’re right about that. I’ve never met anyone so stubborn about seeing another person’s side of an issue.”
“That’s not what I meant. She can’t see, literally. I stepped on her contact lens in the ladies’ room, and she didn’t have her glasses with her.”
That was just great, Jax thought. The woman carrying his baby was navigating Kennedy College as though she were a bumper car come to life. Hell, yes, he had rights. And the most pressing one involved the right to assure that she didn’t smash his baby before it was born. He took off in the direction Marietta had gone.
“Wait,” Vicky called after him. He didn’t stop moving, but glanced backward over his shoulder. “I find you very attractive.”
“Uh, that’s nice.” Jax noticed her appearance for the first time. She was petite with classic features and dramatic coloring, the kind of woman who probably commanded a lot of male attention. He wasn’t interested, but that didn’t mean he had to hurt her feelings. “You’re very attractive yourself.”
“Wait,” she called again. He was already at the door, but he paused once again when all he wanted to do was talk sense into Marietta. Darn his mother for drilling good manners into him. “Are you in favor of equal rights?”
The Misconception Page 7