Page 96 of Hot Zone

“Why’s that?” he replied quietly.

“I don’t want to be a single parent. And any child of yours is going to be a terrible handful to raise. She’ll drive me crazy.”

A rumble of laughter rose from deep within him. “It’s a boy.”

“Don’t tell me you can control gender, too!”

He grinned down at her. “Actually, it can be done easily in a lab, but when I impregnate a woman by mounting her, nature takes its course in that regard.”

“Ha! So it could be a girl!”

“Either way, our child will still be a handful,” he remarked, grinning broadly.

“Just think,” Tess groused. “With two full-blown star navigators for parents, she’ll be jumping all over the galaxy by the time she can walk.”

The grin faded abruptly from his face and a fierce light came into his eyes. “That’s it! You may have found the answer to our problem!”

She blinked up at him. “I did? What answer?”

“Our child. By receiving the recessive navigator gene from each parent, he’s guaranteed to be a navigator.”

“And?”

“Not since the very first navigators were identified among my people has there been a female navigator to pass along the gene to her offspring.”

“Help me out here, Rustam. I’m not following you.”

“All of our children will be navigators. One hundred percent of them. The Centaurians are lucky if one in five hundred children is a navigator now. But with you…” His voice trailed off, his eyes thoughtful. With his arm firmly around her shoulders, he dragged her over to the conference room door and knocked firmly on it.

Athena, startled, opened it.

“I have the solution to our mutual problems,” he announced.

The professor stepped back from the doorway. “By all means, let’s hear it.”

Tessa followed him inside once more. She took a chair while he sat on the edge of the table. Ever the alpha male, assuming a position of dominance in a room, she mused.

And you love it,he shot at her.

You can stop picking my thoughts out of my head like that.

Huh. Like you don’t do it to me?he retorted.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Are you two done?” Athena asked tartly.

Guiltily, Tessa looked over at her boss. “Sorry.”

“Were you telepathic before you met him, Tessa? I don’t recall that being in your profile.”

She answered, “No. I can only do it with him. And only when we’re in close proximity.”

Athena nodded. “It appears that you’ve, indeed, blended your powers.”

Tessa met Rustam’s startled gaze with one of her own. Indeed, neither one of them had done anything with their powers without being within arm’s reach of each other for days now.

“Bonded soul mates,” he breathed. “Of course.”

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