Anna stared up at him. Her eyes were almost as blue as the King of Siam’s. “More than you want to marry me?” She was taking it personally. Of course she was. She took everything personally. Most of the time, Jerry liked that. Every once in a while …

“Babe, it’ll be really good for my career,” he said. If looks could have killed, he would have been lying there dead next to the chair by the window. Then he told her how much they’d pay him.

Her face changed. “You’re making that up.”

“No way, hon. Swear I’m not.” He raised his right hand, as if taking an oath.

“In that case, you’ve got to have Polaroids of the guy who asked you with a sheep,” she said.

He laughed and shook his head at the same time. The gibe was funny, but it stung, too. She’d never thought he was ambitious enough. She’d spent a year and a half at Cal State L.A., then bailed for the real world. She’d done well in it, too. She’d said more than once she’d never thought she’d wind up with a guy slogging his way through grad school.

But here she was. With him. And they had a wedding date. Or they had had one.

“They’ll pay our expenses for putting things off, too,” he said.

“They will?” Anna sounded astonished and delighted at the same time. She and Jerry were footing the bill for the wedding themselves. Her folks had supported her through high school. After that, it was “root, hog, or die” as far as they were concerned. She’d worked behind a typewriter or a cash register to pay for as much college as she’d got.

“That’s what they said. I’ll get it in writing before I go. You bet I will.”

“You’d better.” Anna cocked her head to one side, examining him the way a malacologist would examine a sea slug that might be a new species. “How come they want you so much?”

Jerry had been wondering the same thing. “Maybe because I write science fiction. I’m not even lying, or not very much. They mentioned it when they talked with me.”

Anna snorted. “There must be a reasonable explanation instead.” His tiny beginning of a career didn’t impress her much. The people who published in Journeys flew or sailed all over the world, wrote travel expenses off their taxes, and turned out polished prose about what they’d seen and done and eaten. Next to that, what were a couple of short stories in pulp magazines?

“I guess. I don’t know what it is, though. I do know they’ll also give me—us—two grand for putting up with the hassles of changing our plans, only they’ll call it a wedding present.”