The Misconception (28 page)

Ten minutes later, with Drake’s face the color of Jax’s still-intact teeth, Jax checked his watch. Thanks to Tracy, his pipeline to news of Marietta, he knew exactly what time she was scheduled for her guest spot on National Public Radio.

“I hate to do this, but I need to take a break.” Jax vaulted over the rope and landed softly on the floor of the arena. “You’ve got the act down anyway.”

“I’m not sure about that.” Drake leaned against the ropes and peered down at him. “I was trying so hard not to pulverize your teeth I forgot to practice looking crazed.”

“You can always use a mirror for that. I got something I need to do.” Jax never broke stride as he headed for the locker room.

Drake fell into step behind him. “What you got to do?”

“Nothing important,” Jax said, but knew Drake wouldn’t leave it alone. Pro wrestlers traveled so extensively they became a loose-knit family. Jax knew a few of them, Drake included, as well as he did his own brothers. When Drake got hold of a subject, he didn’t let it go. Last year, he’d pestered Gargoyle Dan so relentlessly for the secret to his newly trim waist that the embarrassed wrestler finally admitted to liposuction.

“If it wasn’t important, you would have stayed in the ring longer.” Drake followed Jax into the locker room.

Jax resigned himself to the other man’s company, because he didn’t have time to get rid of him. Marietta would be on any minute. Jax reached into his locker and took out the portable radio he’d located in a box of his stuff that morning.

“I didn’t think they made those things anymore,” Drake said. “Where’s your iPod? You know, you can download podcasts.”

“Not if you’re technologically challenged.” Jax fiddled with the dials until he found the right station. The program’s theme music blared from the radio.

“Hey, that’s NPR.” Drake smiled like a kid who’d been given jelly beans and coca cola for breakfast. “I love NPR. I didn’t know you were a fan.”

“Shhh.” Jax sank onto the metal bench in front of his locker. “They’re already introducing her.”

“Introducing who?”

“Shhh,” Jax repeated as a reporter with a voice so richly melodious it reminded him of one of his favorite show tunes recited Marietta’s credentials. He steeled himself to hear the hated words —
Motherhood Without Males
— as the reporter welcomed Marietta to the show.

“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.”