The Misconception

by Gardner, Darlene

  “Your controversial views of evolutionary biology and how it relates to sex have been drawing attention throughout the country, Dr. Dalrymple. I understand that today you’re tackling another contentious subject: Mate switching.”

  Drake’s eyes got large in his bald head. “She’s going to talk about swingers?”

  “She said switching, not swinging,” Jax said. “Now shut up.”

  “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not referring to couples switching partners for a night. That’s a different subject entirely.” Marietta’s voice, which Jax hadn’t heard in nearly two weeks, washed over him like a soft, warm rainfall. With a start, he realized he’d missed her.

  “In this context,” Marietta continued, “mate switching refers to our deep-seated desires to rebel against a society that pushes us to try to be faithful to one mate.”

  “Try to be faithful?” The reporter’s voice cut in. “Are you saying fidelity is an impossibility?”

  “Not at all. I’m aware that some people manage it, but infidelity is much more conducive to human nature, especially as it regards the male of the species.”

  Beside Jax, Drake let out a tremendous harrumph. “What is she? A female chauvinist pig?”

  Irritation bubbled in Jax, and he was shocked that it was because of Drake instead of Marietta. Yes, she was a female chauvinist pig, but he didn’t want to hear Drake call her one.

  Marietta went on to describe a university study in which researchers enlisted exceptionally beautiful women and stunningly handsome men to approach strangers of the opposite gender to ask for sex. All of the approached women refused, but seventy-five percent of the men, many married or in serious relationships, accepted.

  “Because they’re biologically programmed to ensure the survival of our species, men are driven to spread their seed as widely as possible,” Marietta said, repeating something she’d told Jax before. “Females, too, have an irresistible need to procreate. But since they must nurture the demanding new life well beyond the nine-month gestation period, they have more at stake when engaging in sex.”

  Jax held his breath while he waited for the motherhood—

  without-males illogic that would surely follow. Instead, Marietta paused and the interviewer asked a question. “So you’re saying females are less prone to infidelity than men?”

  “Not exactly,” Marietta countered. “Neither sex is cut out for monogamy. If you want proof, look at our country’s spiraling divorce rate. Then consider how many people would be better off divorced, but stay together because of societal pressure. Humans are genetically predisposed to separate. To mate switch, if you will.”

  After Marietta answered a few more questions along the same vein, the segment ended and Jax switched off the radio. Drake looked as though someone had zapped him with a stun gun, paralyzing his vocal chords. All good things, however, came to an end.

  “That was the biggest bunch of shit I ever heard,” Drake said.

  Jax bristled. “Hey, watch your mouth.”

  “You’re not saying you agree with her? How could you? Sure, some of that shit had a grain of truth. I mean, I tried to score with every woman I could until I met Ruthie. But, since I got married, I wouldn’t cheat on Ruthie. I love her too much.”

  “Of course I didn’t agree,” Jax groused while he tried to sort out his jumbled feelings. On one hand, Marietta’s opinions made him mad as hell. On the other, she stated them so eruditely that he was actually proud of her. “I don’t have to agree with her to respect her opinion.”

  Drake narrowed his eyes and peered at him. “Just who is this woman to you?”

  “A friend,” he answered quickly. Too quickly.

  “A friend you’re sleeping with?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Oh, it’s that way, is it?” Drake tipped his bald head, looking infuriatingly wise. Like an inflated Yoda. “Does this friend know you’re the Secret Stud?”

  Jax stared down at the locker room floor. “You know better than to ask me that. Nobody in my private life knows I’m the Secret Stud.”

  Drake tapped his fat finger against his bristly chin. “You better not tell that professor. Especially if you’re serious about her.”

  “Why not?” Jax asked, only now aware he’d been thinking about coming clean. He was tired of evading Marietta’s questions about what he did for a living, weary of pretending he was something he was not. If he could get Marietta to accept she was pregnant by a pro wrestler, he could get her to accept anything. Even marriage.

  “Think about it, Jax,” Drake said. “That Secret Stud act of yours plays into every stereotype there is about a man not being able to stay faithful to one woman.”

  “It’s just an act,” Jax muttered. It felt more like an albatross around his neck pulling him deeper into a pit from which he couldn’t escape.

  Drake got up and slapped him on the shoulder. “You know that, and I know that, pal. But I don’t think a professor who talks about humans being genetically predisposed to mate switch will see it that way.”

  While Jax was digesting his comment, Drake lowered one corner of his mouth, bared his teeth and made his eyes into narrow slits. “How’s this for a demented look?”

  “You look more like a bald, seriously pissed-off Santa Claus than a demented dentist.”

  Drake’s sneer disappeared, and his mouth drooped. “I do?”

  “No, but it was fun telling you that,” Jax said and suffered a serious attack of jealousy. He wished he could be the demented dentist brandishing the drill. Hell, at the moment, he’d leap at the chance to change places with one of UWA’S bottom-feeders, such as the wrestler who dressed in black, waved a pitchfork and called himself the Dregs of the Underworld.

  Anything would be better than being stuck acting like an immoral stud while he tried to gain the trust of a woman who had a devil of a time giving it.

  Chapter 18

  Marietta’s back didn’t just hurt. It ached like a centipede with sore legs.

  When she came home from work, she should have taken it easy instead of straightening the house. Or done some of the yoga poses that were supposed to provide some relief. Better yet, she could have called Jax and griped. Expectant women complained to their men all the time, justly so because the men weren’t the ones who got pregnant.

  Except Marietta didn’t have a telephone number for Jax, wouldn’t ask Tracy for it and had surrendered her inherent right to grumble when she’d discovered that Jax hadn’t known

  she was angling to get pregnant.

  So she’d stripped to her underwear, thrown on a nightgown and crawled into bed instead.

  Now, an hour after she’d gotten into bed, not even the article on sexual cues and miscues she needed to finish for the Biology Review could drive her out of it. Especially since Tracy had indulged her with dinner in bed.

  With the hubbub of finals week over and her work schedule slowed down considerably, Marietta preferred to indulge herself by lying in the semi-darkness with the privacy of her thoughts. If nobody knew she was wondering when Jax would return from his endless business trip, nobody could attach any importance to her wondering.

  A knock sounded at her halfway-open door. Tracy, no doubt.

  “Come on in.” She almost swallowed her tongue when the door swung the rest of the way open. Jax. Resplendent in brown slacks and a cream dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves, baring his magnificent forearms. He’d loosened his tie and unfastened the first button of his shirt, which would have made him look like a sexy corporate rebel if it hadn’t been for his extraordinary physique. Instead, he could have been a well-dressed poster boy for The Body Beautiful.

  The distance from the bed to the door wasn’t great enough to hide the way his evenly balanced features warmed at the sight of her.

  Her heart did a boom-boom-boom worthy of her unborn baby’s quick metabolism. The drabness of the last two weeks disappeared, replaced by vibrant color. He leaned against the door frame
, hooked a thumb in the pocket of his slacks and grinned. “Hi.”

  She should ask what he was doing in her bedroom or at least tell him he needed to call before popping in. She should order him away with a finger as straight as a hunting dog’s tail. She shouldn’t, under any circumstances, smile at him.

  She felt the corners of her mouth lift skyward. “Hi.”

  His grin got bigger. Something was curiously off kilter about it, but it was still so dazzling that she didn’t bother to try to figure out what it was.

  “Tracy let me in on her way to the grocery store.” He straightened, gestured with one of his big, well-shaped hands. “Mind if I come in?”

  Her gaze snagged on his hand, which she imagined stroking her naked skin in that silky way she couldn’t forget. Her breath caught. “You want to come in bed with me?”

  He laughed, showing his perfect teeth. “Actually, I do, but I was asking if I could come into your room.”

  Marietta scrambled to a sitting position, frantically finger-combing her hair. She should tell him that of course she minded, that they weren’t on intimate enough terms that he’d be any more welcome in her bedroom than in her bed.

  “No, I don’t mind,” she heard herself say.

  Jax walked toward her in the easy way he had of moving, not quite a strut but not the walk of a mere mortal either. His steps were long, his gait so smooth it seemed he moved to a rhythm playing in his head. If the rhythm were from a show tune, she’d guess one of the upbeat, sexy songs from West Side Story.

  Her bedroom was decidedly feminine, with lace curtains, pine furniture and an off-white color scheme softened by coral-hued accents. Jax looked large and potently male inside of it, but, somehow, he also managed to look as though he belonged. Inches from her bed, he stopped. Then she realized his mouth was no longer symmetrical. “Do you have a fat lip?”

  He rubbed the puffy part of his lower lip, which had thrown his mouth slightly off kilter. “It’s not quite fat. Plump, maybe. But not fat.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Probably bumped into something,” he said absently, which wasn’t a satisfactory answer. She meant to question him further, but then he slowly lowered his head, and she went a little dizzy.

  She shut her eyes and got ready for the onslaught of his lips, telling herself she should stop him but knowing she wouldn’t. A sensation of brightness penetrated her closed eyelids, which didn’t square with ordinary biological responses. She’d need him to kiss her more often so she could research the phenomenon.

  Except she didn’t feel his mouth on hers. She opened one eye, then the next, and her pupils constricted. The lamp. He’d switched on the bedside lamp, throwing the previously dark room into brilliance.

  “What do lightning bugs yell before they take off?” he asked.

  She squinted at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Lightning bugs.” He acted as though it were perfectly logical for him to walk into her bedroom after an absence of fifteen days and start talking about lightning bugs. “What do they yell before they take off?”

  “I didn’t know lightning bugs could talk.”

  Jax frowned. “Well, they can’t. But, if they could, what would they yell before they took off?”

  She didn’t answer, so he did. “All system’s glow!”

  She waited until he stopped laughing, thinking about what had just happened. She’d thought he intended to kiss her and instead. . . “Was that a joke?”

  “Of course it was a joke. It was funny, wasn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer, not that he seemed to expect her to.

  He patted the bed beside her. “May I?”

  Before she could ask may he what, he lowered himself onto the bed. The mattress compressed under his weight, throwing her thigh against his side. She inhaled sharply at the contact, and scooted away so they weren’t touching. This close, she could smell him, an intoxicating blend of shampoo, soap and man. Pheromones at work.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She considered the soft light of concern in his eyes. Since he’d come back into her life, she’d made a point of being honest. She didn’t see any reason to stop now. “I wasn’t comfortable with the rush of sexual arousal that occurred when my thigh touched your side, so I moved away.”

  His brown eyes brightened, the lines around his mouth deepened and he laughed. He tapped her on the nose. “You’re damn cute.”

  Marietta eyed him suspiciously. She was an expert in evolutionary biology who dressed in tweed suits, had little use for makeup and pulled her hair back to get it out of the way. Cute was not the image she was trying to cultivate.

  “It’s the hair, isn’t it?” Marietta had let it down before getting into bed. It was long and loose around her shoulders, the way it had been in that hotel room when they’d indulged themselves in mating.

  “What’s the hair?” he asked.

  “The reason you called me cute. Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”

  He laughed again, captured a lock of her hair and twirled it around his finger, holding her to him in silken bondage. This time, he kissed her on the cheek before letting the hair unwind. “Then nobody’s taken a good look at you. With your hair down like that and wearing that piece-of-nothing nightgown, you look like a cute sex goddess.”

  “Now you’re teasing me.”

  “The way you blush is cute, too.” He touched cheeks that she knew had gone hot. She wasn’t sure whether to attribute the reaction to embarrassment or the sexual tumult brought about by his nearness. “Now are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I already told you. I wasn’t comfortable with the rush of sexual—”

  “I’m not asking why you moved away from me, silly,” he interrupted. “I’m asking why you’re in bed at eight o’clock at night.”

  “Oh, that.” She tried to sound offhand. Considering her face felt as red as a chameleon hitching a ride on a fire engine, she couldn’t be fooling him.

  “Yes, that,” he said.

  “It’s nothing. Just a backache.”

  No sooner had she said the words than the mattress sprang back into place. She gazed up in shock as Jax, who’d just gotten back, prepared to leave. Disappointment swirled through her like wind-blown snow in a blizzard. She tried to bank it, but couldn’t. “Where are you going?”

  He gave her a cheeky look over his shoulder. “Are you saying you want me to stay?”

  “No,” she denied, then realized he might misconstrue her answer as meaning she wanted him to leave. “It’s only that you just got here. You haven’t told me anything about your trip.”

  “You want to know about my trip?”

  “Well. . .” Marietta paused, considering his question. The answer she came up with almost knocked her back against the pillows. “I suppose I do.”

  “Hold that thought.” He strode out of the room. Marietta watched him go, her hands on her hips. Of all the nerve! Marching into her bedroom; casually brushing her thigh with his big, sexy body; neglecting to do more than buss her on the cheek; and, striding back out.

  Ten minutes later, when he strode back into her bedroom, this time without knocking, she was still quietly fuming. Until she saw what he was carrying.“Is that a heating pad?”

  “Uh, huh. I used the microwave, but it still took me a while to warm it up.” He came closer to the bed. “Now lean forward.”

  She did, and he propped the heating pad behind her back. Soothing warmth immediately assailed her, chasing away the dull ache. She closed her eyes, savoring the feeling. When she opened them, he was studying her. She couldn’t help but smile at him. She didn’t even try not to. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He sank back down on the bed. This time, when her thigh brushed his side, she didn’t move. Instead, she luxuriated in the same delicious warmth that spread through her back, even though this time the cause was strictly sexual.

  “I want to thank you, too,” he said.

 
; “For what?”

  “I listened to you on All Things Considered.” He paused. “I was prepared to hear you say that babies don’t need their fathers, but you didn’t. I wondered why.”

  She could tell him the omission was coincidental, but she wouldn’t lie. She owed it to him to try to be honest, even though she was still sorting out her thoughts on the subject.

  “I didn’t think, under the circumstances, that it would have been the right thing to do.” She paused, looked down at the bed, cleared her throat. “The males in some species of animals share the raising of their young with the females. After the female emperor penguin hatches her egg, for example, she goes in search of food and leaves the male holding the egg for nine weeks.”

  He grinned and brushed his knuckles against her cheek. “In our case, I think maybe you better send me off in search of the food. I wouldn’t know what to do with your egg.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” she answered, refusing to be charmed. “The emperor penguin has a fur-lined pouch on his feet. You don’t. My point is that Father Penguin helps with the feeding and care after the baby is born as well.”

  He tipped her chin up so she had to look at him. “Are you trying to say you think I’d make as good a father as a penguin?”

  She swallowed, bit her lip, thought about that. Then she nodded. Very slowly, he kissed the tips of his fingers, pressed them against her lips and smiled. “Thank you, again.”

  “You’re welcome, again,” she whispered, fighting the urge to grab him by the shoulders and pull his mouth to hers. What did a girl have to do to get a kiss?

  “This doesn’t mean I agree with what you said in that interview,” he continued, as though he wasn’t thinking about kissing her at all. “I don’t believe men are as prone to infidelity as you think.”

  Marietta stopped thinking about kissing him. Instead, she thought of her former boyfriends, of Ryan Caminetti, of her father. “Yes,” she said firmly, “they are.”