He was one academician she loathed. Even if he was head of the Zoology department. And even if his darling son Owen was a professor in that august body of men.

Her father was part of that department, too. But in Blair's eyes he was a bit special. He did most of his work in the field. He usually shunned fancy black-tie affairs like the one he had promised to go to tonight, and he was a kind and loving man.

Blair only wished that he would re-marry someday. Having lost his wife, though it had been ten years earlier, must have made him a bit lonely. And then there had been suitors. Or whatever the female equivalent of a suitor might be. Women after his heart, though some of them had probably been after his wallet.

Dr. Fortner was a widely-published and respected authority on Greater Primates. He had popularized them actually, had written several commercially-successful books on the subject as well as countless more academic studies.

His blonde daughter never bothered to hide the fact that she idolized him. And he never bothered to hide the fact that he doted on her. Adored her. And he took her everywhere he went.

She had gone to schools all over the world. Grammar school in the Philippines, and in Ceylon, where he had gone to do his extensive and definitive studies of the gibbon and spider monkey. South America, where he had gone to research the New World monkey. And in Chicago, where he worked at the zoo studying the big one… king ape. The gorilla.

There had been lots of trips in between. A full, rich life for a young girl, nearing her twentieth birthday. And Blair had loved every minute of it. Well, most every minute.

She never liked the boardroom crowd. The dinner party group. The social scene.

And as beautiful and exciting as she was, she far preferred the depths of a dense jungle to the piazzas and parlor rooms of the well-to-do academic set. Or even the non-academic set.