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aren't any scientific specimens in there, I'd be delighted."
       She let out a peal of laughter. "Oh, but there are!"
       "There are?" His voice was guarded.
       "Yes. It's a tradition here. We make it with squid from the neurology labs. Squid have a giant axon—that's part of a nerve cell—that's used in neurological research, so they catch hundreds of squid for the lab, take out the one long cell, freeze the rest and give it to anyone who wants it. So, yes, there are experimental animals in it."
       "I can see that lab cooking is a science all its own." He peered into the pot of marinara.
       "Oh, you've never lived until you've eaten autoclaved lobster and mussels. Autoclaves aren't just good to sterilize supplies."
       He smiled. "Lab cuisine, then."
       She couldn't recall seeing him with a full smile before, and it softened the lines of his face and added a certain charm. No doubt he could be a lady-killer when he wanted. She felt an odd tug inside her. The question was why he was wasting his time touring her lab.
       She wished she knew the answer, especially as she was running out of things to show him. Well, perhaps he would leave then, and she could read the book while she waited.
       Calder inspected a shelf of journals. "Do you do this research year-round, or just in the summer?"
       "I only have access to the materials I need while I'm here during the summer, but in the winter I do data analysis, writing, and planning for the next summer. It works well because I don't have the resources—or the time, for that matter—to do serious research while I'm teaching." She wondered where this sudden curiosity about her work had come from. He had reverted to staring at her, and she had no idea what to make of it.
       "You must be very busy. Where do you teach?"
       "You've probably never heard of it. It's a small liberal arts college near Philadelphia." She was oddly reluctant to tell him, for once wishing she could name a prestigious research institution.
       "Near Philadelphia? Would that be Swarthmore? Haverford? Bryn Mawr?" He surprised her by being able to name some of the possibilities.
       "Haverford, actually. So you have heard of it."
       He crossed his arms and leaned back against the bench. "Yes, for some reason my parents decided to educate me, even if we did have more money than we knew what to do with."
       She gave him a sidelong glance as she poured a box of spaghetti into the boiling water, aware of the challenge in his voice. She realized with embarrassment that he was right, and she had been talking down to him, treating him like nothing more than a rich dilettante, despite the evidence before her. "A good education is never wasted. That's why I do what I do."
       "Do you plan to stay at Haverford, or are you looking to move on to a university where you can do more research?"
       She wondered if he was deliberately trying to prove he knew his way around higher education. "No, I like Haverford. My primary interest is undergraduate education. I wouldn't be able to have any real contact with students at a big university—just anonymous lecture halls and regurgitation of material on tests. I saw enough of that while I was a grad student to last me a lifetime."
       "You don't think much of big universities, do you?"
       "For undergraduate work? No. I think the job of a college is to teach students how to think, and I don't think that happens to undergrads at a big university. Universities are wonderful places to do graduate work, but for a real undergraduate education, there's nothing like a college where you interact directly with the professors." She was a little defensive, having had this argument many times with her university colleagues.
       "Where did you go to college?"
       She looked at him challengingly. "Wellesley—on a scholarship. How about you?"
       He smiled slightly. "Harvard."
       "A university man! I should have