The Misconception (11 page)

“There.” She extracted another folder and handed it to him.

This one was entitled: “Conception Connection: Contracts, Medical clearance forms, etc.” He flipped through it with growing amazement, because it documented Marietta Dalrymple’s deliberate search for what she called a “sperm supplier.”

The wording of an advertisement she’d evidently placed in a national publication had the emotional intensity of lint. “Well-adjusted, financially independent professional female will pay cash for sperm. Qualified sperm supplier must submit proof of superior intelligence, excellent health lineage and professional credentials. Intercourse required.”

The folder also contained completed application forms filled out by what Jax assumed were Marietta’s sperm-supplier candidates. Judging by the red pen circling the remark, one man had apparently doomed himself by noting in the “fetishes and other foibles” section that he was an armpit smeller. Harold McGinty, Jax noted, had wisely left that section blank.

The last ten or so papers were comprehensive legal documents signed by Harold relinquishing his rights to any child he and Marietta might conceive. Jax closed the folder.

“There’s your proof.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You signed away any rights you might have had, especially when you accepted the payment. So you can just keep the money and forget you ever met me, Harold.”

“I keep telling you my name isn’t Harold. It’s Jax.”

“I don’t have the patience to stand here and listen to your nickname preferences. You got your money, and I expect you to uphold your part of the deal.”

“You’re not listening to me. You have a deal with Harold McGinty. He’s the one who signed the papers, not me.”

“Don’t tell me you have a split personality. That you were Harold McGinty then, but now you’re somebody else.”

“My name’s Cash Jackson,” he said, unamused. Humor was necessary for a happy life, but nothing about their situation was funny. This covertly sexy biologist had completely altered his existence two months ago by luring him into her hotel-room bed. How was he supposed to know she had babies on her mind when he hadn’t been able to think straight?

“I don’t believe you,” Marietta said, giving a superior little shake to her head.

He reached into the back pocket of his trousers, pulled out a wallet, extracted his driver’s license and held it out.

“You can’t prove what isn’t true.” Marietta ignored the small, square piece of plastic in his hands.

“Look at it.” Jax said, his voice firm.

“I don’t need to—”

“Just look at it.”

She snatched it away from him, telling herself there was nothing to be worried about. She knew who she was dealing with, and it was a money-grubbing sperm supplier named Harold McGinty.

At first, the image on the driver’s license was blurry, but it slowly came into focus as she brought it closer to her eyes. It was Jax, all right, in all his glorious symmetry. She swung her eyes to the name alongside his outrageously good-looking face.
Cash Jackson
.

She ran her finger over the print, checking for anything that felt phony, such as stick-on letters over his real name. She scratched, but nothing came off.

The news sunk in that the man before her really was Cash Jackson and not Harold McGinty. Her legs buckled. She braced herself against her desk.

“Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” She tried to suck in air, but nothing seemed to reach her lungs.

Jax came instantly to her side. He lifted her onto the desk as though she weighed little more than a paper weight and peered at her with concern. “Lower your head between your legs and take deep breaths.”

She was about to protest, but then she thought of the baby. The baby needed air as badly as she did. She lowered her head and breathed.

“That’s right,” he said. “In and out. In and out.”

After a few miserable minutes, she raised her head. Jax was leaning over her, looking every bit as solicitous as an expectant father. Adrenaline filled her. She put both hands on his boulder-like shoulders and shoved.

He staggered backward, but righted himself with the grace of an athlete. “Hey.” His voice was injured. “What was that for?”

“For telling me you were Harold McGinty, that’s what!”

“I didn’t say I was Harold. I told you right off the bat to call me Jax.”

“You let me believe you were Harold McGinty, and you know it!”

“Only because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Harold is an old high school classmate. When I ran into him at the airport, he was planning to stand you up. I told him I’d let you know he wasn’t coming.”

“So instead you decided to see if I could make you come, is that it?” Marietta challenged.

Jax rubbed his chin. Despite his dark looks, he didn’t have a heavy growth of beard, and she remembered how good his skin felt. Smooth, warm, electrifying. Remembering made her angrier, because she should never have touched him in the first place.

“Of course that isn’t it,” Jax said. “I thought you and Harold were meeting for a blind date. How was I supposed to know you had some crazy conception scheme?”

He was making her crazy. Her heart rate was up, her body temperature rising at an alarming rate. “It was a perfectly logical plan until you showed up and ruined it.”

“Are you nuts? There’s nothing logical about advertising for a candidate to father your child.”

“I advertised for a sperm supplier. That’s an entirely different thing.”

“Oh, excuse me. That makes it entirely logical.”

“You don’t need to be sarcastic.”

“What do you expect? I think I’m going on a perfectly innocent blind date, and two months later I end up an expectant father.”

“You are
not
an expectant father.”

“I didn’t sign those contracts, Marietta. And I don’t want your money.” He took the envelopes of cash and threw them on her desk. “One of those envelopes contains the money you sent Harold. The other has the five hundred dollars you left at the front desk of the Hotel Grande. So, you see, sweetheart, we didn’t have a deal.”

Marietta tried to think. She had to do something even if it was only to throw him off track. “You can’t even be sure I’m pregnant!”

The second the statement left her lips, her stomach did a roll worthy of one of the logs fancy-stepping contestants tried to keep afloat during those crazy he-man competitions.

“Marietta.” Jax’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Are you okay? You look really pale. I mean, ghostly pale.”

Marietta didn’t answer. She couldn’t, because the contents of her stomach were rising. She hopped off the desk and dashed for the restroom, dimly aware that her actions confirmed her pregnancy.

She reached stall number one and got to her knees in front of the toilet. She retched but nothing came up. The dry heaves. Someone lifted the fallen mass of hair off her hot neck, and she closed her eyes as a wave of shame washed over her. Jax had followed her.

“False alarm?” he asked softly.

“Only because there’s nothing in my stomach besides salted crackers,” Marietta said as he helped her to her feet. His touch was ridiculously comforting. . . and nice. But the calming effect of skin-to-skin contact was a noted biological response. New mothers soon discovered it was the best way to soothe cranky babies. Anybody could have elicited the same response in her. That it was Jax meant nothing, except that she had let him see her in a moment of weakness.

She needed to make it clear that this wasn’t how Marietta Dalrymple dealt with adversity. She was strong, self-sufficient. She didn’t need a man to get her through anything. She didn’t need a man. Period.

She turned around and nearly came up against his chest. He seemed even taller and broader in the close confines of the toilet stall. She held herself still, not wanting to come into contact with all that potent male flesh, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from rising. When she did, he smoothed her hair back from her hot forehead, his expression almost tender. His beautiful dark eyes ran over her face. He no longer seemed angry.

“You shouldn’t be in the ladies’ room,” she said, wondering why she was whispering.

“Who’s going to throw me out?” The corners of his mouth curved upward. The overhead fluorescent lights shone on his face, making it even more appealing. “Listen, arguing about this isn’t getting us anywhere. We both made mistakes, but the fact of the matter is that we have to deal with this situation. Agreed?”

Marietta didn’t nod, not wanting to get caught in a trap. Just because she yearned to lean her body against his didn’t mean she could trust him.

“The way I see it is this,” he continued. “I care about what’s best for the baby. I assume you do, too.”

“Of course I do,” she answered weakly.

He stroked her cheek. He was so close that she could barely think, remembering all the things they’d done to each other in that Washington D.C. hotel. As biological advantages went, his was definitely unfair.

“Good,” he said. “It’s settled then.”

She was watching his mouth, which could be the most appealing part of him. She remembered his lips were softer than any man’s had a right to be. “What’s settled?”

He gave a short, decisive nod. “We’re getting married.”

Chapter 8

“Married?” The notion was so shocking that Marietta fairly shouted the word. After an hour lecturing her biology students about the intricacies of mating behavior, she’d been caught off guard because she’d nearly succumbed to lust. “Did you just ask me to marry you?”

“Marietta?” A third voice rang out in a restroom Marietta thought contained two people. Worse, she recognized the voice. “Mari, it’s Tracy. Is that you in the stall? Are you talking to yourself?”

“Who’s Tracy?” Jax whispered.

“My sister,” she hissed back, mortified. Tracy had been against her conception scheme from the beginning. What would she say if she found Marietta cavorting in a restroom stall with the sperm supplier who had not only hunted her down but was trying to stake a claim on her baby?

“Marietta? That is you in there, isn’t it? Robert Cormicle called and asked me to bring your glasses.”

Jax opened his mouth, so Marietta clamped a hand over it. “It is me, Tracy,” she answered, warning him with her eyes to keep quiet.

The stall doors were high, but maybe not high enough that part of Jax’s head didn’t peek over the top. Marietta prayed that Tracy wouldn’t look up.

“Were you just talking to yourself about marriage?” Tracy asked, her voice even closer to the stall.

Marietta closed her eyes. It was useless to deny it, so she had to come up with an explanation. “I’m practicing for a lecture.”

“You’re giving a lecture about marriage?” Tracy sounded dubious.

“Yes, I am.” Marietta looked straight at Jax while she elaborated on her answer. “I’m going to air my opinions on the instability of the institution and the extreme likelihood of any union ending in divorce.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jax exclaimed so loudly that his voice carried through her hand. She removed the useless barrier and glared at him.

“There’s a man in there with you!” Tracy said.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Marietta whispered angrily. Jax shrugged and opened the stall door. Tracy gaped at him with the awed expression Marietta imagined every female who got her first look at Jax must wear.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He gallantly held out his hand as though he were greeting her sister at a cocktail reception. Tracy, of course, took it. “I’m Cash Jackson, but you can call me Jax. I take it you’re going to be my new sister-in-law.”

“Omigod.” Tracy broke the shake and gestured wildly with her hands. “Were you proposing to her in the toilet stall?”

“He wasn’t proposing—” Marietta began, but Tracy kept right on talking.

“I can’t say that’s the most romantic proposal I’ve ever heard of, but I can go with it.” She stepped forward and embraced Jax as she talked. “This is wild. I never thought this would happen for Marietta.” She let Jax go and moved to Marietta, flinging her arms around her and hugging tight. “I’m so happy for you, Mari. I’m so glad you didn’t mean it when you said you were never getting married.”

Tracy was squeezing so hard that Marietta couldn’t speak until she let go. The grin on her sister’s face was rivaled only by the one Jax was wearing. Marietta wasn’t smiling.

“I am not getting married, Tracy,” she said firmly. “He didn’t mean it anyway.”

“I did so mean it,” Jax rebutted.

Marietta turned on him, feeling her blood pressure rise. Now that he was no longer so close to her, imposing his biologically unfair advantage, she could think more clearly. Especially since she was far enough away that he looked like a very large blur. “You did not! You just want to get your hands on my baby.”