“Marrying you because you decree it certainly isn’t,” she shot back.
“I want to marry so our child will have immediate access to both its parents. What is your vision of parenthood? An army of nannies and off to boarding school the moment you can?” he guessed scathingly.
“No.” It came out reflexively because it was the last thing she would do to her child, not after having experienced exactly that mass production approach to child rearing. “The child won’t go away to school until he or she is old enough to make an informed decision about the benefits and drawbacks.” She would be hands-on, hugging and steadying and probably smothering, but she would work on not being too helicoptery.
“Why do you say it like that? ‘The child.’ Why isn’t it our baby?”
“He or she is not an object we own. Further, if I say ‘my’ baby, it implies that I’m excluding you from the decision-making process. If I say ‘our’ it implies we’re a couple. ‘The’ is a neutral acknowledgment that the child is a person in his or her own right for whom we are charged with making decisions that affect his or her entire life.”
He shook his head in bemusement. “You can take the scientist out of the lab...”
His chide shouldn’t have felt like such an indictment, but it did. She refused to flinch, though, only said, “I don’t plan on experimenting on any child, particularly my own. Marriage to a stranger comes with too many uncontrolled variables. There is little stigma these days in having unmarried or separated parents so I see no compelling reason to marry.”
“Every relationship requires time to get to know the other person. Those variables can be identified and labeled and filed into one of your folders however you see fit. The only reason I will accept for you refusing to marry is that you are in love with someone else. Are you?” His voice took on a lethal note that made her stomach wobble.
“No. But I’m not in love with you, either.”
“Yet,” he shot back with a wicked grin.
Her heart lurched and she looked away, fearful he would read into her physical infatuation and maybe even glimpse how reluctantly fascinated she still was with him, standing there countering her arguments in sabre-like flourishes of sharp and steely words. She couldn’t marry that!
Yet every night since meeting him, she had gone to sleep wondering about him, imagining things having gone a different way. Wishing. Yearning.
It was a passing phase. Por favor, Dios.
“Love is largely a romantic notion. I’m not a romantic.” She wasn’t allowed to be.
“I noticed,” he said pithily.
She hid her flinch.
“The only reason you’re balking at marriage is because your parents expect you to marry a milquetoast from a ‘good’ family with old money. I happen to be a reverse snob who feels nothing but disdain for those who inherit their wealth instead of earning it. But I’m willing to overlook that flaw in you.”
So magnanimous.
“Remind me to show you what I’ve earned from my patents in biofuels and recycling of recovered plastics.” She showed him what disdain looked like. Her mother’s blithe smile, right here, on her face. “My parents expect me to marry someone with an unblemished background who complements our business interests, yes. I expect to marry someone who shares my values and supports my aspirations, whether that be motherhood or scientific research.”
She didn’t know where that last bit had come from. She had resigned herself to giving up that part of her life and contributing to the betterment of mankind through—blech—charity galas and the patronage of scientists
who were allowed to pursue their passion.
“I don’t care how many microscopes you buy as long as you’re there when our child gets a ribbon at school. Which reminds me. Why weren’t any of your family at your thing today?” He waved a hand toward the dusk closing in beyond the windows. “A PhD is a big deal, isn’t it?”
“Not in my family.” It was more the price of membership. “It’s something we’re capable of, so we do it.”
“Everyone in your family has a doctorate? Attained at twenty-four?”
“My father was twenty-five.” She looked at her nails. “My brothers were both twenty-six.” And yes, she had pushed herself to squeak hers in before her birthday next month. It was the bargain she’d struck with her mother, to get it finished early so she could marry before her eggs went stale. She was quite proud of the accomplishment, but knew better than to expect a fanfare for it. It was enough to know privately that she had done better than everyone else.
“Your mother...?”
“Married a scientist so she doesn’t have to be one.”
“Ah. But you’d like to continue to be one.”
“Yes,” she said with growing certainty. “I’ve allocated the next few years to marriage and starting a family—”
“Such an overachiever, getting it all done in one day.”