BOUNDARY(82)

He was babbling. Babbling, babbling, babbling.



He clamped his mouth shut. Then, cleared his throat and said: "Anyway. Yes."



Instead of laughing, like he expected, Helen . . .



She was blushing. Even the dim lighting couldn't disguise it. The color in her cheeks made her look even more beautiful than usual.



Helen cleared her own throat. "A.J. . . ." she began, then stopped and looked aside. A rueful little smile came to her face. "I don't actually know what to say. How odd. I'm never at a loss for words."



He took a deep breath and squashed the part of his mind that had gone runaway on him. "You don't have to say anything, Helen. I know how stupid that was. You don't have to spare my feelings." He started to rise. "Look, I'll go—"



Her slender, tanned hand locked around his wrist and pulled him back down.



"Oh no, you don't, Mr. Baker." Her voice was a soft growl. Nothing at all like the even tone he was used to hearing.



"A.J., I don't . . ." She took a deep, slow breath. "Oh, baloney. I know exactly what to say. The truth is that I've always found you extremely attractive. It's just that I figured the age gap made for an insuperable barrier and so I shoved the notion out of my mind. I've kept it in a box under a tight lid for . . . what's it been? Two and half years, now."



Throughout, she'd still been looking aside. Now, her eyes came to meet his directly.



"I take it you don't find my age a problem?"



He started to make a wisecrack, but the same drill sergeant portion of his brain made the smartass do two thousand pushups in. . .



One second.



"No. Actually, it's . . . Well, to be honest, I think it's part of the attraction."



Seeing her cocked eyebrow, he sighed. "Look, Helen, I'm not stupid. I know I often act like a jerk. I don't even mean to, really. Well, not most of the time, anyway. It's just . . . I don't know. Defense mechanism. Whatever. But it never seems to bother you and I figured out a long time ago that's because you're old enough that you just don't care about stuff like that any more. If you ever did at all. So I can relax around you in a way that I almost never can around women my own age, unless they're just good buddies like Jackie."



He swallowed again. "And that's important to me. The thing is, no matter how much I act like the opposite—and it's mostly all talk—the truth is that I'm not a very casual person at all. No matter how I act. Not really about anything, and sure as hell not about, uh, well . . ."



"Sex. Love. Romance." The cool, relaxed, mature smile that A.J. treasured came to her face. "In whatever order," she added, waving her other hand breezily. Her right hand was still clamped around A.J.'s wrist.



"What the hell," she said, suddenly rising to her feet and half-dragging A.J. up from his chair. "Let's start with sex. And we'll see where it goes from there."





Their departure from the room did not go unnoticed. Joe and Jackie had followed the progress of the discussion between A.J. and Helen almost from the moment it began. They were sitting too far away to have heard any of the words. But the facial expressions and body language had made the subject matter obvious enough—even before Helen more or less hauled A.J. away. Not that he seemed in the least unwilling.



Joe drained his glass and set it down on the table with a solid thunk. "Well. It's about time, if anybody asks me."



For her part, Jackie bestowed a triumphant grin upon the other people at the table. "See?" she demanded. "I told you he wasn't my boyfriend."





Chapter 27




Dr. Glendale, is it true that you will not be going on Nike yourself?"



"Dr. Glendale, is this mission really necessary?"



"Dr. Glendale, please tell us about the latest results! I understand progress is being made in translating the aliens' language!"



"Dr. Glendale—"



He raised his hands, flashing the smile he knew worked so well on camera. "Please, one at a time. This isn't my first press conference, even for this particular mission, and I know for sure it isn't yours."



"However," said Paul Morgan, "this is the first conference since any of the more concrete plans for Nike and her crew have been released. NASA's usually much more forthcoming than this, Doctor."



Morgan was the senior news correspondent present. There'd be no point in trying to evade him, even if Glendale wanted to.



"True enough, Paul. And please, everyone, call me Nick or Nicholas. I've been 'Doctor Glendaled' too much lately."



A patter of chuckles rippled through the large group of reporters.