Disclaimer: I don't own House, but I am saving my pennies for the DVD set. Perhaps there will be a golden ticket inside…

A/N: Thanks for the reviews! This is my first attempt and your input makes me smile.

Allison Cameron's parents had not wanted her to become a doctor. If she wouldn't get married and give them grandchildren, they would have preferred a teacher or a librarian. They might have been able to handle a nurse, too, if it weren't for the sorts of things that nurses were expected to deal with. A receptionist in the doctor's office – that was the kind of medical profession they could see for their daughter.

They were not the most forward thinking people on the planet.

The problem was that their pretty and damned intelligent daughter was not content with that. The professions her parents had suggested were perfectly fine, certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but Allison wanted to be a doctor.

She had asked for a toy doctor's kit when she was four and had organized a tour of the local hospital for her Girl Scout troop when she was eleven. At fourteen she bought a second-hand copy of Grey's Anatomy. (Her mother went into hysterics when she found that in her desk.) In high school she took all the advanced science courses and refused to look at anything but the best pre-med programs in the country.

Her brothers caused problems by doing the things that their parents expected boys to do. They played sports and asked for racetracks and GI Joes for Christmas. They'd also chosen appropriate careers: farmer, mechanic, lawyer, and teacher/coach. Her parents hadn't understood why Allison couldn't follow their lead.

So, to satisfy her parents she had stayed in the dance and piano lessons she had taken from the age of five. She'd tried out for cheerleading and made it, but only because she was small enough to be tossed around and to climb to the top of pyramids. She had dated occasionally, but she had never been one of the serial daters that a few of her friends had been. Everybody thought she was pretty, but nobody thought she was much more than a really nice, really brainy girl.

It had been a shock to her but a thrill to her mother when Allison had been voted prom queen in her senior year. She definitely was not what one would call a leading contender; apparently, however, the senior class had had a small moment of maturity and decided to choose someone they liked rather than someone who fulfilled the prom queen stereotype. It still annoyed the crap out of Allison that her mother had found the tiara more exciting than the Valedictorian medal she got to wear at graduation.

At the beginning of her undergraduate years, Mr. and Mrs. Cameron kept hoping that Allison would see reason and put all those science courses toward a teaching certificate. When she was twenty, though, they threw their hands up in the air and declared that they didn't know what to do with her anymore. If she wanted to spend her life with sick people, then so be it.

Allison didn't appreciate that comment considering that she was about to marry a man whom both she and they knew was sick, which she told them. They yelled. She yelled. They left, and she cried because that was what she did when she was angry.

Now here she was sitting at her computer in her apartment, angry again. She was angry because House was throwing the stupid tiara in her face again. He wasn't acknowledging her abilities and her education; hell, he wasn't going to acknowledge her at all tomorrow, but he was more than willing to use her like window dressing if it came down to it.

"Moron," she whispered to herself, and for once she wasn't talking about herself. He was behaving like an idiot, and she was dealing with it in a way that was much more effective than tears. She was using her brain. She was not going to think at all about the emotional garbage that she had put herself through when it came to him, she was only going to focus on winning that bet.

It might have been wise to have gone to Cuddy and told her about this…this… well, whatever it was because she supposed Cuddy could have forced House to let Allison sit in on the meeting. She would have felt like a tattletale, though. She also wanted to watch from a safe distance when Cuddy found out.

She had one other reason not to tell Cuddy. She knew House was up to something. He may have been a moron but he wasn't a complete moron. He knew better than to play games with funding, especially after the last fiasco he caused, and Allison wanted to figure out what he was doing. She wanted to beat him at his own game. She wanted to throw it in his face when he was wrong, and she wanted to visit him every day in the stupid clinic – just to rub it in some more. She was tired of his attitude with her. If he was going to be the boy who pulled the girl's hair, she was going to be the girl who kicked the boy in the shins.

She grinned. She hadn't felt this fired up since her mother told her that she wouldn't need to worry about being Valedictorian anymore since she had snagged the tiara. Apparently all a girl needed in life was a tiara to pull out at dinner parties.

The tiara was in a box in storage, but the internet was right in front of her and a much better weapon in her battle. Allison looked at the computer screen and the list of hits for "Donald O'Bryan." The billionaire certainly had a lot of coverage, which didn't surprise Allison much. What surprised her was how many of those hits had nothing to do with charity work. She would have figured that a guy like him would be giving scads of money to different organizations for taxes and publicity.

She kept paging down, but couldn't quite figure out what the deal was. She stood up and stretched and went to the bathroom to find the bottle of eye drops she kept for long hours at the computer and the times when she did let herself have a good cry.

When she got back, she cracked her neck and looked at her notes. She smiled a bit at the sight of them. Very organized and neat. Very detailed. What a geek. She laughed at herself and went back to the screen. She called up pictures of O'Bryan out of curiosity. Looking at the thumbprints, she came to a shot of him and his wife at a ribbon cutting ceremony at a new preschool he had funded.

"Apparently when he does give money, he gives big," she thought. She found another charity function picture of him and his wife. She was speaking at a podium while he stood next to her.

Allison looked over at the biographical notes she had taken. Happily married for well over thirty years. Four daughters, all professionals who either had or were working on advanced degrees. No sons.

Another picture showed his wife and a daughter at some sort of ceremony but no sign of O'Bryan himself.

"So the women are the faces of his charitable work. This just makes House look more stupid," she said aloud to no one, "and it makes me more confused." She growled a word that would have given her mother a stroke and threw her pencil across the room.

OOOO

Meanwhile, at a bar near the hospital…

"I don't get it," James Wilson said for the third time. "What are you trying to do? Destroy your department? Find out if Cuddy is serious about the whole oil thing?"

House waved down the bartender.

Wilson continued, "You realize, of course, that Cameron may very well be completely right about this guy? What would it hurt to have her around? I don't get it." He shook his head. "Do you also realize that if we lose this money, or rather if you lose this money, it will be the entire hospital that will suffer?"

House finally answered. "I'm going to ignore that you are basically repeating the same crap that Cuddy has been harping on for the past two weeks, but what makes you think that Foreman and Chase and I can't handle this? I realize that my glorious presence alone would probably send O'Bryan running, but those two aren't nearly as bad as I am."

Wilson snorted, "No, not nearly."

"Perhaps I'm just trying to protect sweet little Cameron from having more angst in her life."

Wilson snorted again. "You're the cause of a good deal of the angst in her life at the moment. I doubt this helps."

"Maybe I think it would be a good experience for Tweedle Dee and his sidekick. After all, they are supposed to be learning something, aren't they?"

"You're an idiot."

"I'm buying your beer."

"You're still an idiot."

"I know what I'm doing, and no more beer for you."

Wilson paused and looked at his friend. "So, what happens if she's right and you're wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there are two things here I don't think you've considered. One is that you are going to have to admit you were wrong by asking her for help. I don't think that will be especially fun for you. The second is that you will have to live up to your end of the bet and do her clinic hours."

House interrupted, "I won't do her hours, Foreman and Chase will."

"Yeah, sure they will. They just love doing favors for you."

"I'll make their lives miserable if they don't."

"Don't you already strive for that?"

"Of course, but I'll just double my efforts and make them glad for some extra time away from me. Aren't you supposed to be buying the beer now?"

Wilson motion to the bartender for two drinks. "I'll concede that you are capable of making them that miserable, but you are ignoring the other problem."

House looked at Wilson and took the beer from the waitress. "What problem?"

"What are you going to when you have to go crawling to Cameron? And, my friend, she will make you crawl."

House didn't respond. He just looked at the beer.

"So you know what you're doing, but you haven't planned that far in advance, huh?" Wilson goaded. "Take it from someone who has been in your boat, you are in for some serious misery here. You'd better come up with something because I have a feeling that under her cute and 'sweet' exterior, there is a pissed off female capable of all sorts of horrific things, and I would bet that she has a list of them with your name right at the top." He shivered for emphasis.

House had seen glimpses of that monster, only glimpses, but he had seen enough to know that she could do some damage. And, besides, she was female. Females could do all sorts of damage. Cameron had definitely shown him more than once that she could bite when she got riled up. He grinned at that thought. He wondered if it would soothe things if he told her she was beautiful when she was angry. Probably not, but it would be good ammo to save for some time when he needed her to be angry.

He really hadn't planned that far in advance; he realized that he may actually have to say something like, "I was wrong" to Cameron, but he didn't want to dwell on that now. His leg was starting to ache from sitting on the bar stool and he didn't need anymore hounding from Wilson.

He just looked back at Wilson and repeated, "I know what I'm doing," threw some money on the bar and walked out.

"No you don't," said Wilson with a grin on his face.