“So, are you angry because a fellow scientist wants to work with you, or because the equation he sent you was correct?”
“His name is Lucian Renoir. God, even his name sounds arrogant. But I’m the one who’s going to give the world a viable ion propulsion system,” she said, slapping her chest, “whereas he just wants to come here and steal my work.”
“Um, there’s a bit of a flaw in your theory, MacKeage. He can’t steal what doesn’t exist. You walked away, remember?” He suddenly smiled at her. “But if you think this Renoir fellow is five feet three and weighs four hundred pounds, maybe you’re expecting him to croak any minute, and then you’ll start working again?”
Since she’d thrown the fork, Camry used her fingers to eat some of the scrambled eggs. “I can’t start up again if I can’t figure out how to get unstuck.” She glanced at him, then looked back at the tray. “He . . . the equation he sent me was correct. I had to retrace nearly two years of work before I found where I’d shot off on a tangent.” She looked over at him. “But even though I found the problem, I still can’t figure out how to fix it.”
“Maybe Renoir could help you.”
“But if he can make it work, then I should be able to, too.” She actually smiled. “But I doubt he can do it on his own, because he’s really not all that bright.”
“He’s not?”
“He can’t even figure out that my mother is Dr. Grace Sutter.”
“ TheDr. Sutter, who used to work for StarShip Spaceline? Hell, I’ve read all her papers. She’s the one who turned me on to space science when I was twelve.”
Cam snorted. “She turned me on to it in her womb.”
“So why aren’t you collaborating with her?”
She looked back down at the tray and frowned. “I’ve tried, but she refuses. She just suddenly walked away from ion propulsion when I was a kid, and started locking herself in her lab to work on something else.” She snorted. “Probably cookie recipes. Having seven daughters seems to have taken the edge off her passion for science.” She looked over at him. “You men don’t have to worry about pregnancies messing you up with nurturing hormones, so you never lose your edge.”
His navy blue eyes studied her for several heartbeats. “Is that what you think happened to your mother?”
“What else could it be? She was really close to perfecting ion propulsion when she met my father and started having babies, and, thirty-five years later, we stilldon’t have a viable system.”
“But the paper I read was written . . .” He looked away in thought. “I was around twelve then, and I’m thirty-three now.” He looked back at her. “Your mother was still publishing just twenty years ago. And I believe she’s published as recently as six years ago, though not on ion propulsion. She’s still in the game, Camry. At least shedidn’t just suddenly walk away to start bartending and babysitting dogs.”
Cam said nothing as she looked down at the tray again.
“What really made you walk away, MacKeage?” His eyes suddenly widened. “Does it have something to do with what Fiona said just a minute ago? Maybe you’re not standing in front of a brick wall, but are smack in the middle of a midlife crisis.” He pointed at the bedroom door. “When you were Fiona’s age, didn’t you want it all, too: a career anda husband andchildren? But where you had one out of the three, now you have none.” He suddenly smiled. “Or are you really on sabbatical, working on goals two and three?”
“I don’t ever intend to get married and have children.”
“Not ever? That’s a hell of a long time.”
“I don’t see you rushing out to get yourself a wife and children.”
He let out a huge yawn and suddenly scooted down in the bed. “I would probably be married right now if I could keep a girlfriend long enough to propose to her. I just can’t seem to find one who gets turned on by what I do.”
Camry glared at him, even though his eyes were closed. But then she also let out a yawn. She started to shove the tray toward him to make room for herself, only to suddenly remember his bruised ribs. She set the tray on the floor beside the bed, slid down under the blankets, and turned her back to him.
Maybe instead of ion propulsion, she should work on the science of menhaving babies, so Mother Nature could screw with their hormones for a change.
Chapter Seven
Luke sat sprawled on the couch four days later, watching the infomercial explaining how mineralbased makeup would make his skin feel like he wasn’t wearing anything, so bored out of his skull he was damn close to tears.
How in hell did Camry do this five days a week, week after week?
Granted, the dogs were entertaining—for all of ten minutes—but how did she just hang around this house all day, doing virtually nothing? How does anyone with even half a brain not justify the air they breathe by at least trying to be productive?
When she’d mentioned her e-mail argument that first morning, Luke had felt guilty that he might have been responsible for Camry’s walking away from her work. But as he’d gotten to know her over the last four days, he’d come to realize that her little midlife crisis had more to do with her mother—and her concept of family in general—than it had to do with him or her work.
He now believed that Camry was afraid of being just like her mother instead of wanting to emulate her, afraid that falling in love with a man and having babies would addle her brain, and afraid of losing her passion for the sciences—which she readily admitted she’d acquired in the womb—just like she believed her mother had.
And Luke was pretty sure that being afraid of anything was as mind-boggling to Camry MacKeage as doing nothing all day was to him.
That’s why he’d spent the last four days trying to figure out how he might jump-start Camry—not only back into her work, but also back to her family. Admitting he was Lucian Renoir certainly might do the trick, but he wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t just as easily push her in the opposite direction.
Unless he also confessed that he’d destroyed her mother’s satellite. Because if that didn’t make her want to kill him in his sleep, maybe she’d at least try to kill him in the scientific arena.
Not that it mattered, considering he’d committed professional suicide the moment he’d started eavesdropping on Podly.
Luke drove his hand into the cellophane bag Fiona had given him before she’d gone to help Camry take a shower, and pulled out a fistful of corn chips. Four heads lifted and eight ears perked up. Four drooling tongues appeared, and eight hopeful brown eyes locked on his hand moving toward his mouth.
Luke suddenly lifted his hand over his head, then darted it to the side, then quickly shot it over to his other side—all the while watching the canine eating machines track his movements with the intensity of a guided missile locked on its target.
“You are such uncomplicated beasts,” he muttered, tossing the chips to the floor.
While they were occupied chomping down the junk food and inhaling stray crumbs up their noses, Luke quietly reached into the bag again and quickly filled his own mouth as he absently watched the magical transformation as a woman’s face went from blotchy red to visibly flawless.
Camry MacKeage certainly didn’t need this product; she hadn’t been wearing any makeup that first morning he’d awakened beside her, and her skin had looked damned flawless to him—except for the bruise on her left cheek and around her eye, which was only now starting to fade.
She’d felt pretty damn good in his arms, too, when she had recklessly kissed him right there in the bathroom, and he had just as recklessly kissed her back.