Free Nobody's Baby but Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

voice, ancient and wise, told her what logic couldn’t explain. It would be Cal Bonner or no one.
    Unfortunately that internal voice didn’t tell her how she was to find the courage to approach him again. Christmas had come and gone, but as desperately as she wanted a baby, she couldn’t imagine arranging another sexual coupling.
    The sight of Jerry Miles’s lips thinning into a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile yanked her back to the present. “. . . tried to avoid this, Jane, but in view of the difficulties we’ve been having over the past few years, I don’t seem to have a choice. As of now, I’m requiring that you submit a report to me by the last day of each and every month detailing your activities and bringing me up to date on your work.”
    “A report? I don’t understand.”
    As he began to elaborate on what he wanted from her, she couldn’t hide her shock. No one else was required to do anything like this. It was bureaucratic busywork, and the very idea went against the essense of everything Preeze stood for.
    “I won’t do it. This is blatantly unfair.”
    He regarded her with a faintly pitying look. “I’m sure the Board will be unhappy to hear that, especially since your fellowship is up for review this year.”
    She was so outraged, she could barely speak. “I’ve been doing excellent work, Jerry.”
    “Then you shouldn’t mind preparing these reports for me each month so I can share your enthusiasm.”
    “No one else has to do this.”
    “You’re quite young, Jane, and not as well established as the others.”
    She was also a woman, and he was a sexist jerk. Years of self-discipline prevented her from saying any of this out loud, especially since she would end up hurting herself more than him. Instead, she rose to her feet, and, without a word, marched from his office.
    She fumed as she rode down to the main floor in the elevator and stalked across the lobby. How much longer was she going to have to put up with this? Once again, she regretted the fact that her friend Caroline was out of the country. She very much needed a sympathetic ear.
    The gray January afternoon held that ugly hint of permanence that always seemed to hang over northern Illinois at this time of year. She shivered as she climbed into her Saturn and sped toward the elementary school in Aurora where she was scheduled to do a science program for the third graders.
    Some of her colleagues teased her about her volunteer work there. They said that having a world-renowned theoretical physicist teaching elementary-school children, especially disadvantaged ones, was like having Itzhak Perlman teaching beginning violin. But the state of science education in the elementary schools disturbed her, and she was doing her small part to change it.
    As she hurried into the assembly room where the third graders were waiting and set down the supplies she’d brought with her for the experiments, she forced herself to put aside thoughts of Jerry’s newest act of bureacratic sadism.
    “Dr. Darling! Dr. Darling!”
    She smiled at the way the third graders had corrupted her last name. It had happened during her first visit two years ago, and since she hadn’t bothered to set them straight, the appellation had stuck. As she returned their greetings and gazed into their eager, mischievous faces, her heart twisted. How she wanted a child of her own.
    She felt an unexpected rush of disgust directed entirely at herself. Was she going to spend the rest of her life filled with self-pity because she didn’t have a child, but not doing anything to correct the situation? It was no wonder she hadn’t been able to conceive a warrior’s baby. She didn’t have a backbone!
    As she began her first experiment, using a candle and an empty oatmeal box, she made up her mind. From the beginning she’d known her chances of conceiving after only one attempt were slight, and now it was time to try again—this weekend, when her fertility was at its peak.
    She