Free Gambler's Woman by Jayne Ann Krentz

came the statisticians, the engineering mathematicians,
the practical math people,
without whom ail the work of the geniuses such as her father would have
been wasted. People in applied math were the ones who took the
brilliant discoveries and techniques and turned them to useful purposes
in the areas of accounting, computers, engineering, insurance and a
thousand other fields. The geniuses wound up teaching and conducting
research at the finest universities in the country.

She knew her father had been vastly disappointed when it became evident
that she wasn't going to follow precisely in his footsteps, and it hurt
Aiyssa to know she had failed him. But in her senior year of college,
she thought she had found a way to pacify him. That was when Chad
Emerson had first started paying attention to her.

From a very practical point of view, it was often far easier for a
graduate in applied math to get a paying job right out of college than
for one with a more theoretical background. Chad Emerson, for all his
brilliance, apparently had had a very down to earth grasp of that basic
fact He'd also fully appreciated the unquestioned eminence of the man
who was her father. Joseph Chandler could be a tremendous asset as a
father-in-law. He held an important post at a fine university. Chad had
wanted to assure himself of not only getting Into the right graduate
school but of making the right contacts. Being brilliant was great, but
politics always helped.

Alyssa had gone along willingly with the whirlwind courtship Chad had
instituted. Her father had been enormously pleased after meeting the
young man she proposed to marry. If his daughter wasn't quite smart
enough to take a place in the stellar list of brilliant mathematicians,
she was smart enough to marry someone who eventually would. Knowing she
had pleased her father and flattered by the overwhelming attention of a
fellow student whom she had admired from afar, Alyssa had agreed to
Chad's proposal of marriage.

It occurred to Alyssa on occasion that she'd never really set her own
goals. For years, her father had established them for her, and later,
married to Chad and working to pay his graduate student fees, she
had attempted to gain her satisfaction through helping her husband
attain his lofty goals. And there was some satisfaction along that
route. Being with Chad, entertaining his brilliant friends, gave her a
sense
of participating in the elite world of mathematicians, a world she'd
always been taught to respect

For a time, Chad had seemed content with his admiring wife, whose
practical ability had won her an excellent paying position right out of
college. Joseph Chandler certainly fulfilled his duties as a proud
father-in-law, helping his daughter's husband get into the graduate
school of his choice and making
certain he was brought to the attention of the right people.

But a year and a half after marrying her, Chad was offered a teaching
assistant's post at the university.
He had been recognized by the people who mattered. Along with the new
position came introductions to new people. Perhaps it was inevitable
that Chad would eventually meet a woman who was more suited
to his intellectual level. In any event, he evidently felt he no longer
needed Joseph Chandler's support
or a hardworking wife. He had divorced Alyssa to marry a beautiful and
unquestionably brilliant faculty member who would undoubtedly take over
the furthering of his career.

It had all been for the best, Alyssa had told herself a thousand times
since then. She would never have
felt entirely comfortable in Chad's environment There would always have
been that feeling of inferiority with which to contend, that knowledge
that she could never compete with his brilliant friends. And there was
no doubt that from her very humble, very practical point of view, it
hadn't been pleasant learning
that Chad had basically seen her as a meal ticket and her father as an
added asset.

But all the common sense in the world