The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [51]
Unsophisticated as he was, Will still recognized a come-on when he saw one. What if she wants to go to bed? The thought filled him with a mixture of fevered anticipation and near panic. She’ll know it’s my first time, there’s no way I can hide it. What should I do?
Finally, he managed to calm down, even study a little for his next-day advanced calculus class. Maybe she won’t want to see me. I might as well not worry about it until I get my next pass. Hell, maybe I won’t even earn a pass for the rest of the year …
But he had earned one, the next month. Will called her, and she invited him up to her apartment, obviously delighted to see him, and she wanted to talk, and no, they didn’t go out. And what with one thing and another, their conversation eventually languished, then ceased altogether …
If she guessed that it was Will’s first time, Paula was wise enough not to say so. And, as in all his other subjects, the cadet proved an amazingly quick study.
Their affair continued for the next three and a half years. Paula remained a woman of mystery, sharing little of her former life with him. He knew that she worked as a liaison between a large theater and the performers who came to entertain there, but that was all he knew. He never met her business associates.
She did, however, introduce him to many city entertainments—concerts, the theater, ballet, opera. On his rare weekend passes, he took her hiking and backpacking in the Sierra. Paula seemed equally at home wearing jeans and a lumberjack shirt while pitching a tent in a meadow, or wearing a stunning long gown and waltzing in a crystal-chandeliered ballroom.
Riker knew that she had been married and was now divorced, but he was not sure of her age. Older than he, of course, but she was so beautiful, with her dancer’s passion for fitness—the difference in their ages just didn’t matter.
When Will was a couple of months from his nineteenth birthday, he was assigned to duty on his first posting as an ensign aboard the cruiser Nogura. He was wildly excited about actually getting out into deep space, and his only regret, he told Paula, was in leaving her.
“I’ll miss you so much,” he whispered to her as they lay in bed after making love; he was shipping out the next day at noon.
“I’ll miss you, too, Will,” she said softly, sadly, her eyes glistening a little in the moonlight flooding through her bedroom window.
“But it won’t be forever, Paula,” he reminded her earnestly. “Just a year, probably, until I come back for leave and refresher classes here in San Francisco for another year. I’ve decided to go for line officer training.”
“Good,” she said. “You belong in command, Will, you really do. You inspire confidence, and when you give orders, people want to obey them. Not everyone has that ability.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face, then kissed the side of her throat, barely listening. There was something else on his mind. “Just a year,” he muttered. “That’s not very long. You’ll wait for me, won’t you?”
Will felt the muscles of her shoulder go taut against his cheek as she tensed. He pulled back, trying to see her face, but she rolled away from him, onto her back, pulling the sheet up over her breasts.
“What is it?” he demanded anxiously, confused. “I thought that you … well, that you felt the same as I do. You do, don’t you?”
“Will …” Her voice was very gentle.
“Paula … ,” he said, his own voice roughening as fear touched him. Dammit, I love her! She must know how I feel! “I love you,” he said urgently. “You must know that. And you love me.”
He heard her draw in a deep breath. “No, Will, I don’t,” she said evenly.
With a muttered curse, Riker turned on the bedside lamp. Paula’s face in the dimness was strained and a bit pale, but her eyes were steady as they met his.
“I’m sorry, Will,” she said.
“Sorry about what? Sorry that you don’t love me? What kind of thing is that to say? It’s not true, I know it!” But a terrible fear was gnawing at the edges of