Across town in Winona's apartment, Sheldon stretched on his back in Winona's bed and studied her ceiling as he contemplated the evening. He'd been very impressed by Winona; she'd held her own against his formidable mother, and since Mary had left them to return to her hotel straight after dinner he assumed that either she was too angry to deal with them, or Winona had worked some kind of hoo-doo gypsy hex on her and bewitched her into giving them the evening to themselves. Unable to let it go, Sheldon drummed his fingers on the sheets and spoke his mind to Winona, who was brushing her teeth in the adjoining bathroom.

"Did you guys talk about anything?"

"Hmm?"

"You and my mother, when I was absent from the table, what did you talk about?"

"Oh." Winona, now dressed in a light cotton night-shirt, turned off the bathroom lights and laid down beside him. "I just told her that I didn't see any reason for us to get married just because we're having a child together."

"And she believed you?"

"Well, yeah. Then she threatened to kill me and bury on your family ranch if I made you unhappy, so..." Winona trailed off on a shrug. She should have known that Sheldon was goign to grill her like a cheese sandwich about anything that his mother might have said. Then again, upon hearing the news, Sheldon's mother had flown in from out of state to find out what in the blue hell was going on. Her own mother was a thirty-minute drive away in Beverly Hills and be damned if Clarissa Phillips Robertson Shuler could be bothered to pick up a telephone and call her only child in the last eight months. Hell, Clarissa hadn't even known that Sheldon was in her life the first time, much less the second. Winona thought about this, thought about her grandmother in Idaho. Dagmar would certainly have sound advice but she also didn't want to admit to her grandmother that she'd had sex outside of marriage, even though it was Dagmar wh'd given her the sex talk. And forget her father; Julien Phillips hadn't even remembered her birthday since she was twenty, how would she expect him to remember her now?

"Sheldon, do you think when we become parents, we'll turn into our parents?"

"Physically an impossibility. My father was about two hundred pounds heavier than me, not to mention blond with brown eyes. On top of which, he also thought that the reason deer season started when it did was because of fat-headed bureaucrats and nothing to do with the natural gestation period and life cycle of the white-tailed American deer. Added to which, the-"

Winona cut him off when she put a finger to his lips. "I meant, do we unconsciously take on their personality traits, both good and bad, or are we preprogrammed to be an individual parent to an individual child?"

"I sense this has something to do with my mother visiting." Sheldon knew this was an understatement, it was exactly what precipitated this sudden sombre change in Winona's mood - he'd know from the way that they'd kissed in her kitchen that he would be, to use the colloquial phrase, 'getting lucky' that night - and this was usually followed by what he had concluded was conversational foreplay, but the perameters had now been altered by the concentration on a particular thought.

"Somewhat, yes. It just got me thinking about my own parents."

Sheldon didn't say a word, because he realized that he knew little to nothing about the maternal grandmother of his foetus. He'd heard Winona speak somewhat derisively of her in passing or used her as the punchline of a rather acidly-tongued joke, but her biography was as of yet a mystery. He turned on his side to face Winona completely. "What about them?"

"Their indifference towards me. My father's some kind of wheeler-and-dealer in Los Angeles business and my mother was a cocktail waitress slash model. She met him at some Hollywood Hills party where she was hired help, but sharp little Clarissa had her portfolio with her, he tried to make her into a supermodel, they married and had me, then split up when I was two. During that time, my mother became a rummy-head, in and out of rehab, causing minor havoc and giving paparazzi enough bread and butter for decades. Since my father had no interest in making his latest twenty-something model a stepmother, I went to live with his mother on her corn farm in Idaho until I was eighteen and going to UCLA."

Winona shifted so that she was propping her head on her hand. "I got occasional visits from them both but once I turned eighteen, my father simply said, 'here's your trust fund, go away'. My grandmother had insisted on that, that he should be setting up some kind of financial support for me so that I'd never need to go to him for a handout. A hundred thousand dollars a year, properly invested, so that by the timed I could collect on it, the interest would more than cover my personal costs. My mother had by then moved on from alcohol and cocaine to heroin and pretty much made Betty Ford her permanent mailing address. When I came out for school, I saw her twice a month, and on the good days, she thought I was an aspiring model seeking her sage advice. On the bad days she thought I was a tabloid reporter or government agent some such nonsense trying to steal her thoughts. After about a year, I stopped and she didn't even notice I wasn't there."

Sheldon reached out his hand to brush away the tears on her face, and wondered if she even knew they were there. "Noni, you are not your mother. There's nothing of that behaviour in you."

"But what about my father? He was a greedy bastard, always wanting more and wanting what he couldn't have, never happy with what he had in front of him. And aren't I the same? I've got a good job, a few degrees and certificates, good friends, a wonderful boyfriend who I'm having a baby with. But I want more, I want to have my doctorate and be married and have a real family and show my children how much they mean to me, and know that they're loved, and how much I love them."

"Noni, you are also not your father. If you were, I doubt we'd be in the situation of pregnancy." At Winona's short burst of laughter, Sheldon felt the tension dissipate a little. "There is a big difference between being ambitious and being greedy. Frederick Banting was ambitious because he was dissatisfied with the status quo treatments of diabetes. Victor Frankenstein was greedy because he deigned to be an Almighty Creator and discover the secret to life itself."

"You do know that you compared a Canadian Nobel Prize-winning scientist to a nineteenth century figment of Mary Shelley's imagination."

"Yes but Mary Shelley was a highly intelligent individual and could be counted upon to include plausible inquiry methods in her literature. Not to mention the fact that Mary Shelley's inspiration was the Greek legend of Prometheus which was a cautionary tale of greed at its most elemental levels."

Winona laughed genuinely this time; was it any wonder that she was crazy about this crazy guy? Scooting closer to him, she kissed his lips fully, savouring the sweet and still somehow innocent taste of him, then let out a little gasp when he rolled on top of her. He'd definitely become much more comfortable with this aspect of their relationship since they'd gotten back together, she noted, making her fleetingly wonder if he'd been with anyone else in the in-between time. The thought was momentary, though, as Sheldon gently kissed her neck, making her blood sizzle. She made a low sound in her throat as she tugged at the t-shirt he wore and pulled it over his head, running her hands over that pale skin and pulling him tight against her.

His hands were trembling a little, Sheldon noted, as he slid them under her nightshirt, over the beginnings of the baby bump of her body. His work, he realized with some humbling amazement, it was his body that was responsible for this change in her body. With one hand still on her belly, he managed to slip the thin cotton over her head so that like him, she was naked to the waist.

"You're beautiful," he murmured, kissing her lightly. "You're so beautiful, Winona."

"I'm going to get fat."

"Pregnant," he corrected. "You need to increase your body mass so as to provide the proper support for our baby."

Winona's heart melted into a puddle as heat lanced her body. It was the first time he'd called it 'our baby', not the foetus or the child, but the baby, and more importantly, their baby. Wrapping her arms around him tightly, she pulled him close so she could whisper in his ear, "And you are going to get very lucky."

With that, Winona kissed him fully, not giving him the chance to change his mind, though if past experience was any indication, he'd never change his mind when it came to sex. It was such a contradiction, his shy demeanour belying the dynamo she knew lay within. She arched against him, her breasts pressing into his chest, reveling in a purely female way when she felt his body respond against hers too. Shoving at his pyjama pants Winona dug fingers into his soft flesh, slightly disappointed when he pulled back to kick the pjs free since it left a gap between them. Once again, he came back to her, his rangy body with its sharp angles fitting perfectly against the lush curves of hers, his hands caressing the small swell of her tummy.

Leaving his hand there Sheldon carefully slipped inside her, his woman, and felt an unparalleled sense of pleasure when she sighed and accepted him. With his mouth fused to hers, he kept his movements gentle, each one eliciting a soft groan from Winona until he felt the tension in her body coil and release as she went over the edge; as she crested again, Sheldon held her close and let himself follow her.

They lay on her bed, chests heaving as both struggled to catch their breath. Winona had flipped onto her stomach, as it always seemed to help her breathe better, and studied Sheldon's face, now a study of concentrated nerves.

"Noni?" His voice was quiet and serious.

"Hmm?"

"I want you to be my wife." When Winona's eyes popped wide at him, Sheldon gave a small, comforting smile. "Our baby deserves better than what you had, much better. We don't have to get married any time soon, but I want you, eventually, to be my wife."

Winona closed her eyes, forced the tears back. "Yes."