"What look?" Gretchen Wagner barely heard her assistant's teasing tone. She was too busy watching an infant with enormous dark eyes who was securely nestled in the curve of his mother's arm. The mother, she noted, wore Western dress and looked a good deal cooler than Gretchen and Nancy. Even in the May desert heat, they each wore an ankle-length dress and a linen scarf wrapped loosely around their heads in deference to Egyptian modesties.
The two women passed through the heavy glass doors that fronted their Cairo hotel and entered the deep chill of the lobby. Both of them unwrapped their hijabs from around their heads and necks, automatically pausing as they folded the lengths of gauzy fabric.
"That maternal, googly-eyed, 'isn't-he-sweet' look. Are you getting the urge to nest?" Nancy Claxten didn't sound particularly enthusiastic, and Gretchen slanted her research assistant a questioning look as she avoided the question.
"Don't you like children?" she asked. It was inconceivable to her that anyone could fail to be enthralled by a helpless infant.
"They're okay." Nancy shrugged. "It's not that I don't like them. It's more where I am in my life, you know?"
Gretchen didn't know. Her childhood was a blank slate, courtesy of some trauma, the psychologists assumed, that had occurred during her twelfth year when she'd been adopted by Hans and Annika Wagner. She'd never had friends like most kids, at least not that she remembered, and by the time she'd been adopted, she'd been so different that she'd had no hope of figuring out the complex nuances that comprised teenage interaction.
Friends were a luxury for kids who fit in during adolescence. For those who didn't ... It hadn't mattered much to her, anyway, since she'd been so advanced in her studies that she'd been accelerated in school and had graduated at fifteen. At twenty she'd finished both her B.A. and her Masters in Linguistics. Her doctorate in Ancient World Writings and Transliteration at the tender age of twenty-two had been followed shortly thereafter with the first of several prestigious positions at acclaimed universities across the country. She spoke and read eleven living languages, had a solid acquaintance with several others and could read Latin and Greek.
But she'd never been anywhere near a baby in her entire adult life.
So no, she didn't know what Nancy meant. And she wouldn't have cared until a few months ago, when she'd realized her biological clock was ringing a strident alarm, warning her to get on the procreation bandwagon before it left her behind.
"Where are you in your life?" she asked Nancy.
"Too young to want to be tied down. Besides, I'm the oldest of six kids. I've done enough baby-sitting to satisfy me for a long, long time." Nancy grinned at Gretchen.
"Besides, I'm only twenty-two."
Lucky girl. She had plenty of years ahead of her. All those eggs in her ovaries were in prime condition.
"You, on the other hand," Nancy went on, "probably don't want to fool around too much longer to snag a man and get started if you want a family. You're about forty, right?"
"Mid-thirties," Gretchen hedged. Did she look that bad?
"Oops. I was about to tell you that you didn't look nearly that old. Swear to God. My mother just turned forty but believe me, she looks like she's on the downhill side of the decade. You barely look thirty. My mom's youngest sister is thirty and she looks like hell compared to you. Of course, she's got three kids. Maybe the stress of screwing up your face in childbirth makes your skin start to sag faster or -"
"Stop it." Gretchen was doing her best not to laugh. "You're just making it worse."
"Making what worse?" Nancy looked genuinely puzzled.
"This whole baby thing." Gretchen spread a hand before her in an uncharacteristically expansive gesture and took a deep breath. She'd never confided her desire for a family of her own to anyone before. "Your thirty-year-old aunt has three children. See? I'm a relic. On the shelf. I'll never have a family."
"Jeez." Nancy rolled her eyes. "Half of it's your fault, you know. You don't make much of an effort."
"I beg your pardon?" She didn't know what response she'd expected, but that was hardly it.
"Granted, the guys in the academic world are total geeks, but you barely bother to acknowledge them unless you need to discuss research. How are you going to meet your studly prince if you don't talk to him first?"
It was hard to take offense when the younger woman was so matter-of-factly sincere. "Since when have you seen a studly prince in the hallways of University College London?"
"You have a good point." Nancy skirted the edge of a group of chairs as they crossed the marble floor.
"Studs are few and far between at UCL. Dr. Wagner, you've got to broaden your horizons if you want to find a man."
"Actually," Gretchen said, "I've been thinking about this for a while. I don't really want to find a man."
"You're gay? Sorry I was pushing the whole straight scene -"
"No, I'm not gay!" Her voice might have been a little louder than she'd intended, causing a ruggedly handsome dark-haired man sitting in one of the lobby's elegant chairs to look up, clearly startled. She lowered her voice, her face burning. "I just meant that I'm perfectly able to conceive and bear a child today without involving a man."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pyramid Of Lies by Anne Winston Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.