Chapter 18

Their reunion turned into a lovemaking session that lasted all afternoon. Slowly, the nervousness each had felt leached out of them, like the red pigment in a sign leaches slowly under the sun's attack.

At one point, while they lay catching their breath, Bob asked, "Is it all right if I love you?"

She blinked, confused. To her, love was a precious thing, and eagerly to be sought. That he might somehow think it could be spurned shocked her. A little window into his soul opened up, and she recognized his fear. Her answer was quite serious.

"I welcome it," she said softly. "I craved it while you were gone."

"You are the first woman to say something like that to me," he sighed. "All the others pushed me away when they realized how serious I was."

"They were foolish," she said. She pushed back. "And just how many were there?" She arched an eyebrow.

"Just two," he said, sheepishly. "I'm not so good with women."

"That's a lie," she said. "You stole my heart."

"So this isn't moving too fast for you?" he asked.

She leaned in to kiss him gently. "No, Bob. It's not moving too fast for me."

"What if I said I didn't want to go?"

She frowned. "I'd be crushed if you did! You can't just do that to a girl and then get up and leave!"

"No," he said. "That's not what I meant. I'm going to find a place to live. I promise. But part of me wishes I didn't have to."

"I see," she said.

She hadn't given much thought to how long he might stay with her. It was all still too new. All her concentration had been absorbed in their unexpected chance to indulge in something she hadn't realized how much she missed until she had him back in her bed.

No. That wasn't it. She'd missed him horribly, but that was a combination of missing his sexual attention and missing him as another human being she just liked being around. Her eyes lost focus as she thought about having him here, with her, in this house, all the time. She was honest enough to admit to herself there were pros and cons, the major con being that she was afraid she'd never get any work done. She knew that wasn't true, but at this instant, she wanted nothing more than to live in bed with him for the foreseeable future. She also knew, on an academic level, that the passion that caused her to think like that would pass.

But she knew it would return. She'd been starved for this kind of intimacy for years ... and starved for real love for even longer.

"Riley?"

He sounded worried. Her eyes focused on a face that looked worried. She was aware that what must seem like a long time had passed for him, as she reflected on what he had suggested.

"Shhh," she said, leaning forward to kiss his chin, a physical signal that his fear was groundless. She thought again about that missed period. What if she really was pregnant? What would that mean to him? To her, it was simple. When she'd been pregnant with Curtis she struggled to do the right things, and live as healthy a lifestyle as she could. She hadn't wanted to be pregnant, but she never thought about ending it in anything other than giving birth to as healthy a baby as she could.

He wanted to stay with her. And he meant that in a long term way. But what if he reacted the same way Chuck had? She wasn't sure she could survive another rejection like that. She had believed Chuck loved her too. But Bob wasn't like Chuck in very many ways at all. To be honest, Chuck had been a better lover, at least in terms of knowing how to manipulate orgasms in her. But what Bob offered her had an additional component that Chuck had never oiffered ... or even possessed.

Bob cared as much or more about how she felt as he did about his own pleasure.

What Bob offered her was more fulfilling. She knew she couldn't articulate that, if called upon to explain it, but she felt it deep inside. Bob did have a grip on her heart. And she wanted him with her for as long as possible. If that meant making some rules so she could get her work done, then fine. They could deal with that.

What didn't bubble to the surface of her conscious thoughts was a fear, deep in her psyche, that if she really was pregnant, and Bob lived somewhere else when he found out, he could go on living there ... while he pulled away from her.

An instinct for survival ... the primal need for a man to protect her and feed her while she bore his children ... an instinct that is in all of us, whether we know it or not ... that instinct is what weighed the scales in her mind to one side.

"There's no hurry for you to find someplace to live," she said, softly. "I just got you back. I'm not in a hurry to give you someplace to get away from me when I need this."

She leaned in to kiss him then, and slid her hand along his right iliac and down to his thigh.

It wasn't until she pulled back from that kiss that she saw the tears rolling down his cheeks.

The resurgence of his erection pressing against her abdomen informed her they were tears of happiness, rather than pain.

Hunger finally drove them from bed, and when Riley looked at the clock on the wall above her computer center, she groaned and said she was going to have to do something extra nice for Bessie.

He offered to cook something while she went to get Curtis, and when they got back he had a pan of hamburger, potatoes and cream of mushroom soup simmering on the stove. He suggested she spice it to her tastes, and left her with it when Curtis demanded that Bob accompany him to his room, where he had "something important" to show him.

What was so important was a drawing of two oddly shaped humanoids, with their heads pressed together.

"It's Mommy kissing you," said Curtis. "She doesn't kiss anybody else except me. That means she likes you a lot."

"I like her a lot too," said Bob. "I hope that's okay with you."

"Sure," said the boy, carelessly. "Are you going to stay here like last time?"

"For a while," said Bob. "I'm going to find my own house. I'm moving here to be close to you and your mother."

"Cool," said Curtis. "Mommy will be happy about that. All she talked about after you left was how much she missed you."

"I missed her too," said Bob. "That's why I'm moving to Colorado Springs."

"You should live in Manitou Springs," said Curtis, sagely. "That's where we live."

"That's true," said Bob, who wasn't going to argue with a four-year-old about municipal complexities.

"Will your house have a swing set?" asked the boy.

"I don't know," said Bob. "Should I get a house with a swing set?"

"Yes!" said Curtis, jumping up and down. "Then I could come over and swing!"

"What if I built a swing set at your house?" asked Bob, smiling.

"Yes!" yelled Curtis, bouncing some more. "A big one! With a slide!"

"We'll see," said Bob. "No promises. Your mother might not want a swing set in the back yard."

"Then put it in the front yard," said Curtis, quite seriously.

"I'll talk to her about it," said Bob. "But this is a secret between you and me, okay? You can't pester her about it. Let me take care of it, okay?"

"Sure," said Curtis. "Let's go."

He ran from the room and Bob followed, only to see Curtis run to his mother at the stove and grab her shirt tail.

"Mom? Can Bob build a swing set in the back yard? Pleeeeease?"

Bob produced his driver's license for the guard at the gate, and was waved onto the Air Force Academy grounds. He already had a map, so finding the Civilian Personnel Office was easy.

He parked and went in. Two hours later he was back in the car and headed off base. The folks at CPO hadn't known quite what to do with him. He had been a GS-13 at the agency, and that was a grade which put him on the same page with major supervisory positions in the military. They told him he was overqualified for dozens of jobs, and his repeated assurances that he didn't care about that, and just needed a job, fell on deaf ears. Dozens of other jobs required specific areas of experience or training that he didn't have. So, for most lower level jobs ... he wasn't qualified. They wanted him to take the civil service test, but he got tired of the runaround and finally left.

He thought about going to a civilian job agency, but he wouldn't be able to give them much about his work history. It was all classified. Telling the CPO on base hadn't been a problem, because the person with the right security clearance could call the agency and talk to them. But he couldn't do that with a civilian job finder.

And if you couldn't tell people you had a job for twelve years, then it looked like you hadn't had a job in twelve years. Nobody wanted to hire somebody like that.

He didn't worry about it, though. He had plenty of money in the bank. The truth was that he could probably go for two or three years without a job, assuming his living accommodations weren't too expensive.

He even gave a shot toward learning how to do the things Riley did to make money. He was a whiz with computers, but not with the kind of computing Riley did, with graphics programs that had home screens which looked as complicated as his satellite control panel had looked. And the first story he tried to write caused Riley to laugh for half an hour. She kept saying, "I'm sorry, Bob. Really, I'm so sorry. I'm not laughing at you. I mean I don't want to laugh at you." But then she'd laugh again.

Especially if she picked up the printout and read it again.

Which she seemed to derive great entertainment out of.

A week passed. Riley wasn't hinting that it was time for him to find someplace to live. In fact, when she dragged him to bed each night, assuming he wasn't already there, reading, she made it crystal clear that she loved having him there, at her fingertips. Literally at her fingertips.

In fact, he felt more at home there, in the cabin, than he had almost anywhere he had lived.

There was only one oddity about the whole situation.

That first afternoon, when they'd been unable to keep their hands off each other, there had been no mention of condoms. He hadn't thought about it until long after it was too late, that day. But on the days after that, he used the condoms that were still in her night stand from his previous visit.