Chapter 51

It was nearly midnight when William and Colt entered the house. William tried to be quiet expecting everyone to be in bed, but Colt just walked in without worrying about the noise he made. At the irritated glance from William, he said, "I'm up all night and no one notices. If I tried sneaking around here all the time, I'd wake the whole house the first time I made a noise. Everyone is used to me walking around."

"Oh, I guess I didn't think about that," William said uneasy about the direction his life had suddenly taken. He watched Colt go into the security room to talk with Nicole to get an update about the evening's activities around the house.

Wishing he was alone, he looked over at Lucy lying on the couch reading a book. He was surprised, but not really surprised, to find that she was still awake. He wouldn't have been able to sleep if she had been out of the house for the same reason as he had been out that evening.

Overhearing the conversation between the two men, Lucy was watching William over the top of her book with a smile. When she was sure that she had his full attention, she asked, "Did you have a good time?"

"I guess," William answered. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I feel guilty."

"Don't feel guilty," Lucy said with affection. She could tell by the way he was standing at the door that he felt miserable. Mother Kelly had warned her that William would react in that manner. John Carter had fought tooth and nail to avoid collecting a harem of interested women. He had been unsuccessful in his attempt, but it wasn't his fault. She held out her arms and said, "Come here."

William flowed into her arms happy that she still welcomed him. His greatest fear had been that after pushing him into visiting Amanda that she would start pushing him away. With her arms wrapped around him, he sighed and said, "I love you so much."

"I love you," Lucy said. She ran her hand across the back of his neck and pulled him down to her chest. He settled there in comfort. Others might have thought it strange for a wife to comfort her husband after he had gone off to make love to another woman, but Lucy understood how much he had not wanted to do that.

After several minutes, William asked, "Aren't you going to ask me if she was happy that I... ?"

"I don't need to ask you that. She called after you left the house and told me that she was very satisfied," Lucy said softly. Amanda had been crying tears of happiness when describing the session with William. She had used the word incredible to describe the experience.

"I guess I'm glad," he said. Of course, he had spent the entire evening making sure that Amanda enjoyed herself. The last thing that he wanted was for her to feel cheated. It had been her first time with a man and he wanted to make sure her memory of it would be special.

Lucy smiled at the doubt in his voice. She said, "You concentrated on her and put me out of your mind when you were with her, didn't you?"

"I'm sorry, Lucy," William said. That was his true source of guilt. He had made love to Amanda like a real lover, not like a sex surrogate. While he had been with her, he had felt real emotions for her and expressed them.

"Do you know what I love about you?" Lucy asked without expecting an answer. She said, "I am your one true love. You love me with your entire heart and soul."

"So why are you so insistent that I make love to the women who work for us?" William asked.

"Such love is rather heady stuff for any person, but you are the most intense and focused person that I've ever met. There is so much force behind your love that it is a little like being in the path of a hurricane."

"I'm not sure that I like being compared to a hurricane. Are you saying that my love is destructive?" William replied with a frown.

"Not at all. All I'm saying is that there is enough left over for you to give your love to others."

"But you are the loser," William said.

"Loser? Me?" Lucy asked with a laugh at the suggestion. She kissed the top of his head and said, "I'm the luckiest woman in the world. You are my one true love. You complete me and make me whole. Even with all of the love you have within you, you can't make me more than that."

"Oh," William said.

It amazed Lucy that while William could see and understand relationships for everyone else he almost totally blind when it came to himself. She was halfway convinced that the reason the Two-Sided One had given William visions of her was so that he would recognize that she was the one. Without that vision, William would have gone his whole life waiting to meet someone who he could love without ever recognizing anyone who could love him.

She held him closer to her breast and said, "The thing is that I'm not the only one who loves you. To be true to yourself, you must return their love. To turn your back on others who need to be made complete and whole would be to deny something integral to yourself. It would cripple you."

Sighing, William moved so that he could look her in the eye. He said, "I love you so much. If you were to ever leave me, I think I would die. I never want to do anything that would risk losing you."

"The only thing that you could do that would risk losing my love would be to start limiting your ability to love," Lucy said touched by his statement.

"Your wish is my command," William said giving into her position. Deep down, he knew that she was right. The moment he started turning his back on others, he would be turning his back on her. That would put their love at risk faster than anything.

In the morning, William and Lucy sat at the dining room table surrounded by books and papers. William pointed to a section of one of the papers and said, "I think that this is incorrect, but my math isn't good enough to prove it."

Picking up the paper, Lucy read the section of the paper with care. Her mind entered into the mental space of mathematics in which equations became living entities. It was one of the times for which she lived. After five minutes, she said, "It is correct, but it isn't the only possible solution. There are three other solutions to it."

"What are they?"

Lucy picked up a pencil and pad of paper. Her hand flew across the paper as if she were writing down a shopping list. She was humming to herself as she worked. William watched her work. Her eyes were alive and her lips were curled into a small smile of satisfaction. It was easy for him to understand the pleasure she was feeling since he felt the same thing when working on a good challenging problem.

She finished writing and, while pushing the notepad to him, said, "Here they are."

Smiling, William enjoyed the pleased expression on her face. She looked up at his face and asked, "What?"

"I love it when you're working math," he said, "You're so sexy."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," she replied shaking her head. If anyone else had told her that she looked sexy when solving a math problem, she would have laughed at them. She knew that William was serious.

William picked up the pad and examined the other solutions. One of them leapt out of the page screaming to him that it was the solution he was seeking. Smiling, he said, "You might want to write up these solutions for publication."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. It would make a nice Master's thesis," William said.

"Why?"

"Well, lots of people have been using that one solution while ignoring the other possibilities. I think they've settled on the wrong one because it was the only one they've identified," William answered. He picked up several other papers on other topics and said, "These papers have that same basic equation to solve and all of them have the same solution. None of them address the other solutions."

Frowning, Lucy took the papers from William and started to read them. It took her nearly an hour to get through the half dozen papers. As if no time had passed, she said, "You're right."

"Of course I am. I'm William Redman Carter," he replied with a grin.

She reached across the table and slapped his hand with a soft love tap. She said, "Being William Redman Carter negates the possibility that you are correct."

He laughed and said, "Thank you for solving my problem."

"My pleasure," she said meaning it. It was a pleasure to have a good problem to solve handed her. She looked down at the pad of paper and asked, "So what should I put in the thesis?"

"I suppose that you could describe the behaviors of the various solutions and point out where the different behaviors would affect the results presented in those papers that I handed you," William said.

"I could do that," Lucy said thoughtfully. It would take her a month or two of effort to do what he suggested.

"I know you could do that," William said with a grin.

"You're terrible," she accused.

"Of course I am. I'm William Redman Carter," he said.

"You got that right," she said with a smile. She said, "Now take me to bed and ravish this body of mine."

After the pair left, Lisa entered the room and looked at the mass of papers spread over the table. She knew better than to disturb their work. She just hoped that they would come out of their bedroom in time to clear the table for lunch. Ken joined her in the room and looked at the papers. Shaking his head, he said, "They were working together again."

"Can you believe that they spend hours discussing math like most people discuss politics?"

"I don't get it," Ken admitted.