The Misconception (8 page)

“How can it be boring when you’re so successful at it? You’re always jetting here and there. I swear, you’re away from home more than you’re home. And I’m not even sure what company you work for.”

Jax rearranged himself on the stool. “It’s not a company, per se. I’m more of an independent contractor.” He played his trump card, the one that always killed the conversation before it could go too much further. “We deal in stocks and bonds, securities, that kind of thing.”

As Jax expected, Mom’s eyes glazed over. Drew, however, looked thoughtful.

“If that’s where the money is, that’s where I want to be,” Drew said. “Maybe I should look into majoring in finance if I don’t get into MIT. Why don’t you tell me more about it, Jax?”

Jax hadn’t anticipated the question. He figured Drew’s interests would be more in line with Billy’s when college rolled around, and Billy wanted to do something that enabled him to spend time outdoors. Who would have guessed Drew would opt to become a financial wizard?

“Which aspect?” Jax wondered if he could bluff his way through this from what he’d gleaned from his accountant. “Equity funds? IRAs? Tax-free bonds? Overseas markets?”

“How about explaining how the stock market works.”

“I’m sure that would be very interesting, but that’s enough about Cash’s job,” Mom said, an almost desperate edge to her voice. Jax hid a grin. Despite what she’d said earlier, she clearly didn’t want to engage in business talk. “Stocks and bonds are, um, interesting, but I’d rather hear about his love life. Have you met any nice girls lately, son?”

Jax’s mind drifted back two months to the brief, earth-shattering time he’d spent with the woman who called herself Rhea Zeus. Despite the fact that they’d spent most of their time in bed, he’d sensed a connection that went deeper than the physical. Between bouts of incredible sex, he’d thought, when he could think at all, that she was the kind of woman his mother would like.

“You have met somebody special, haven’t you?” His mother stared at him through narrowed eyes. “When am I going to meet her?”

“There’s nobody to meet.” Jax emphasized his words by shaking his head.

“Pshaw. It’s a sin to lie to your mother. I can tell from your face that you met somebody.”

“Okay, you’re right. But only partly. I thought I’d met somebody special, but I was wrong.” Boy, was he ever. Jax remembered the sinking feeling that had assailed him as he’d stood in the lobby of the Hotel Grande holding five one-hundred-dollar bills. He’d decided on the spot not to waste any of his valuable time trying to discover Rhea Zeus’ true identity. He didn’t want any part of whatever game she’d been playing. “Whenever I do find a good woman, you’ll be the first to know.”

His mother seemed to accept the explanation. “Speaking of good women, Alexis Trumble is back in town.”

Beside him, Drew sniggered. Jax had a vague memory of Alexis Trumble from high school as a sturdy, tuba-playing girl with a hint of a mustache. He sensed the conversation was heading into murky territory, where he’d be sucked into a date if he weren’t careful.

“I ran into her mother the other day at the supermarket, and she said—”

Jax slapped the table theatrically, and his mother abruptly stopped talking. So far, so good. Now all he needed to do was employ what, in football, was called a misdirection play. If he could successfully change the subject, she might forget about the mustachioed woman.

“I hate to interrupt, Mom, but I just remembered there’s an important voice mail I need to check on my cell.”

“It’s so important you can’t hear what I have to say about Alexis Trumble?”

“Yes, it’s that important.” Jax rose and moved out of the kitchen toward the family room, his phone in hand. He slanted an apologetic look at his mother. “I’ll just be a minute or two.”

At least he had a message, he thought as he listened to the mechanical voice come over the line. Four of them, to be precise. He probably had the ringer turned off again or he would taken the calls. The first message was from his travel agent, confirming the dates of his flights for later in the week. Star Bright, his business manager, had left the second, asking Jax to call him back. The third was from some woman named Bambi he didn’t remember meeting. The fourth message was the strangest.

“Jax, this is Mac McGinty. Remember? From high school and the O’Hare Airport? The reason I’m calling is, uh, that I just, uh, got a really big check in the mail from Rhea. You remember Rhea, don’t you? The thing is that I didn’t earn this money. And I was just wondering if you, uh, delivered my message.” His voice changed, went up a decibel. “You didn’t deliver anything else, did you, Jax?”

Jax called back the number and had Harold McGinty on the line within seconds.

As he listened to the little man’s bizarre story, his mouth opened in increments until a tennis ball could have fit inside. He hung up the phone, feeling as though all his blood had drained to his feet and seeped onto the floor.

“Cash.” His mother was suddenly at his side, although he hadn’t noticed her come into the family room. “Is everything all right?”

Jax shook his head mutely. After what he had just learned, he wasn’t sure anything would ever be all right again.

“Cash, you’re scaring me. Tell me what I can do to help you.”

He cleared his throat, and looked down at his mother’s concerned face. “You don’t, by any chance, happen to know the name of a good private detective, do you?”

“Why would you need a private detective?”

“You don’t want to know. Let’s just say there’s somebody out there I need to find.” He stopped, raised his eyes to the ceiling and blew out a breath. “Correction. Make that two somebodies.”

Chapter 6

Marietta Dalrymple leaned weakly against the restroom stall while the lyrics of a golden oldie reverberated in her head. Except, instead of “turn, turn, turn,” she bastardized the words to “churn, churn, churn.” Which was precisely what her now-empty stomach was doing.

In the past few weeks, she’d become intimately acquainted with the inside of stall number one in the first-floor restroom of the Camelot Building. That’s because it was closest to her office.

If she continued this way much longer, she’d anoint herself Kennedy College’s Porcelain Princess.

She walked to the nearest sink on unsteady legs, reached into her purse and extracted the toothbrush she kept precisely for incidents like this. The minty smell of toothpaste hit her nostrils, and she reeled. Her olfactory nerve must be way out of whack if even the scent of toothpaste made her nauseated.

She collected herself, held her breath and brushed her teeth as quickly as possible. When she was through rinsing her mouth, she splashed water on her face and raised her eyes to the mirror.

She looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost’s scary older sister.

Her normally fair skin was milky-white except for the dark half-moons under eyes that looked even more washed out than usual. Even her lips, which she’d always thought were too large for her face, were colorless.

Pregnancy was definitely not agreeing with her.

She placed a hand over her still-queasy stomach, a gesture that never failed to get her through her bouts with morning sickness. She already loved the baby growing inside her and thanked providence daily that she was one of the lucky women who had no trouble conceiving. The only hitch in her plan was that it had taken so long to find a suitable sperm supplier that she hadn’t been able to time the birth for the summer months.

The baby was due in mid-October, which meant she’d have to take the fall semester off from teaching. But that was a minor inconvenience considering the tremendous payoff. No price on earth was too steep to pay for the wonder of motherhood. Not even the thousands she’d mailed to the baby’s sexy sperm supplier.

At the thought of Jax, warmth spread through her stomach, directly over the place her baby nestled. Memories of Jax in her bed, making procreation seem much more like recreation, assaulted her with hot fingers. She could probably come to orgasm just thinking about him.

Which was why she had to banish the warm thoughts and think about him as a talented stud-for-hire. He wasn’t her baby’s father any more than a donor who leaves a deposit at a sperm bank.

Her baby didn’t need a father, anyway. She, or he, only needed Marietta.

She rummaged through her purse for the little-used lipstick and blush her sister Tracy had thrust at her during her latest unsuccessful let’s-make-over-Marietta kick. After painting on the color, she surveyed the result.

Great. Now she looked like a ghostly apparition with Adobe-Sands cheeks and Very-Berry lips.

The restroom door swung open. Through it walked a college coed no more than five feet tall and so brimming with health and vitality that Marietta felt like ducking under the sink. The coed smiled, all white teeth, dark hair and olive skin. Then she clapped her face with both hands. “Oh, my God. You’re Dr. Dalrymple, aren’t you?”

Marietta nodded, taking a step backward to protect her ears from the squealing.

“Oh, my God!” the coed said. “I can’t believe it. This is so radical.”

“What’s radical?” Marietta asked suspiciously.

“Running into you in the restroom, that’s what. The rest of the FOCs will be so jealous they’ll have a cow. Nobody else had to go.”

Marietta was at a loss as to why the girl was acting like she was a rock star instead of a Ph.D. specializing in evolutionary biology. True, up to this point, her career had been remarkable. She’d finished her doctorate at the age of twenty-seven. After teaching at Kennedy for three years, she was putting together a tenure package that would come up for review next year. Her class was popular, in large part because her specialty was biological matters relating to sex, but that hardly qualified her as a celebrity.

“I don’t understand,” Marietta said. “Although, as a biology professor, I need to inform you that foxes can’t have cows. Animals mate within their own species.”

The girl laughed. “That was a good one,” she said, clapping her dainty hands. “I didn’t say foxes. I said FOCs. It’s an acronym for Feminists On Campus. I’m Vicky Valenzuela, the president. I organized a group to sit in on your class.”

Marietta was proficient enough at lecturing that she didn’t harbor any false modesty, but her audience typically consisted of students taking the class for college credit. “Why?”

Vicky’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding, right? You’ve been like a role model for our group since that feature story in the
Washington Post
last week. I picked up the academic journal that published your article and copied it for all the other FOCs. I even thumbtacked it to the bulletin board in my dorm.”

“You thumbtacked
Motherhood Without Males
to your dorm bulletin board?”

“Yes,” Vicky answered enthusiastically. “That was absolutely brilliant. We FOCs wholly embrace the notion that females can do anything they choose whether a man is involved or not. It’s the ultimate feminist viewpoint.”

Marietta’s stomach did a roll not quite as acrobatic as the one that had led her to the restroom. She pulled some crackers out of her purse, tore open the package, chewed and swallowed.

“Actually,” she said, “I believe you missed my point. I wasn’t stating a feminist viewpoint. I was giving my opinion as a biologist who has studied animal behavior related to sex.

“When was the last time, for example, you saw Mallard ducklings following their father? The mother’s the one they need. It’s the same thing with baby alligators. The mother stays near them for a year or more. The father, who I prefer to call the sperm supplier, departs before the mother even lays her eggs. She does just fine without him.”

“Cool.” Vicky leaned back against a sink. The mirror reflected the scene: The tiny ardent feminist and the much-larger nauseous biologist. “Just like I said: A woman doesn’t need a man to succeed. I can hardly wait to hear today’s lecture. What’s the topic?”

“Mating behavior. I’m going to talk about the reasons women and men are attracted to one another. Then I’ll present my theory on why love is a four-letter word for sex.”

“What does that have to do with feminism?”

“I told you I’m a biologist, not a—”

“Oh, now I get it,” Vicky interrupted. “You’re going to instruct college-age feminists about the manipulative ways of men so we can better compete in today’s sexist climate.”

Marietta rubbed at one of her eyes, intending to tell Vicky that wasn’t her intention at all, when her vision went blurry. “Oh, no,” she wailed. “I’ve just lost one of my contacts.”

“Hold perfectly still,” Vicky ordered, stepping forward. “Now lean down so I can search your face.”

Marietta bent over until her face was inches from Vicky’s, who looked like a larger-than-life image on a roadside billboard. “I’ll help you find it. Look up. Now look down. Oh, drat. It’s not in your eye.” She ran her fingers over Marietta’s face as though reading Braille. “It’s not on your face either. Maybe it’s on the floor.”

She took a step back and bent down to survey the area. “Oops,” she said after a minute. “You don’t wear hard contacts, do you? Most people wear soft, you know.”