My head was not happy the next morning, so I spent an hour on the sad excuse for a treadmill up in the home gym on the pool level. Sweating out my hangover helped, but certainly didn't cure my regret at the conversation I'd had with Katrina. I wish I could say that I didn't remember much of it, but that would be a lie. I clearly remembered that I'd straight-up propositioned her and told her that I was down with a… well, a sex vacation, I guess, would be the most accurate way to describe it.

The old saying that alcohol doesn't make liars was certainly true in my case, and I sure did feel as if I'd made a fool of myself. Katrina had more or less told me that she wasn't as interested in me as apparently I was in her after all.

A long, room-temperature shower helped clear the last of the effects of the rum from my system, leaving me ready to face the morning's meetings. I will admit that Katrina wasn't far from my mind even while I was talking with the contractor working on our school in Barrio Albornoz. Walking the property I'd bought just north of there I was pleased to see that it was very close to ready for occupancy- ready to become our South American headquarters. The dock was fully functional, the office building up to modern standards, and the first of the two warehouses converted to meeting rooms and classrooms. The second had been roughed out, but was still a month away from use as a physical training facility yet.

Since the heavy work was done I signed off on our guys moving in and getting the office set up. Ricky was ecstatic at the idea of real staff, but I warned him that we just didn't have many fluent Spanish speakers in our outreach division. I promised him that I'd have Michael put out the word among our people in general to see if any wanted to follow through with this opportunity, even throwing out the idea that if we had any real takers we could maybe teach non-speakers Spanish.

"After all, this is going to be our main focus going forward, since we're getting North America locked down," I assured him.

"We need to send guys to Medillín and Bogotá soon," Ricky said.

"Yeah, but they need to be experienced in outreach. As much as I'd love to send locals, they just don't know the drill," I objected.

Indicating our new training center, he said, "That's what all this is for."

"Yeah, but it takes time," I replied. "Even if we start training up locals tomorrow, it'll be months before they're ready for field work."

"We've got a handful chomping at the bit to go right now," Ricky countered.

"Train 'em up," I said. "Need me to bring Michael down to get the ball rolling?"

I could see the conflict on Ricky's pitch-black features. "I'll still be in charge down here, right?"

"Yes, but never forget that Michael is my regent. He is the top guy after Emmy and me. He's been at this the longest and knows what works and what doesn't. If he comes down for a month or so to get the program rolling, I expect one hundred per cent cooperation and compliance. As far as I'm concerned you've been doing a great job, but building out a training program is something that he knows how to do."

Properly chastened, Ricky agreed. "I want everything to go right, so all the help we can get would be welcome," he said.

"Good man, Ricky. You do know it was him who picked you for this job, right? He thought you could rise to the task, and so far you've proven him right."

Pleased with the compliment, Ricky smiled. "I only want to do what's right."

Dinner with the Castro family was nice. Cecilia talked about London some, but seemed more focused on Los Angeles, now that it was looking like a lock. I cautioned her that it was going to suck, going straight from the end of her junior year right into senior year in an American school.

"I know," she agreed. "But I am still looking forward to it. Yes, it will be hard, but I can do it."

"I'm sure you can," I agreed. "I have no doubt."

"It will be difficult, seeing our daughter go off into the world," Mamá said. "But she is almost ready."

"Yeah, well, she'll still be at home and living with family for at least another year," I countered.

My flight from Panama City to Los Angeles was delayed, so it was after midnight when I finally got home but Emmy was still wide awake. She was in the living room when I walked in. but didn't hear me. Of course, I could barely hear myself, since Emmy had set up her effects board and an amp in the living room and was practicing her new (to her) blue Stratocaster at much higher volume than I was used to. Usually she practiced with headphones if she was in the house- she only ever used an amp out in the studio's rehearsal rooms.

Once Emmy caught sight of me her face lit up and she set her guitar aside. Pulling out her earplugs, she rushed over to give me a kiss as I let my carryon bag drop so I could wrap her in my arms.

"I am so very glad you are home!" Emmy said between kisses.

"I'm glad to be home, too," I agreed, inhaling Emmy's familiar jasmine scent. "Happy to be home with you."

"Let me put my guitar away. Are you hungry?" Emmy said as I let her go.

"No, I'm not hungry, but I wouldn't mind a bath," I replied.

"A bath sounds like a very good idea," Emmy said with a smile. "Give me… ten minutes, and I will join you."

True to her word, I'd barely set my carryon bag in the closet and dropped my clothes unceremoniously on the bedroom floor when Emmy came to the room. She wrapped her arms around me from behind and pressed her face against my back as I tried to make my way to our bathroom to fill the tub.

"I do not like being apart from you," she sighed. "I miss you very much."

Chuckling at Emmy's unwillingness to let me move, I said, "You know, babe, we can't actually take a bath right here. We need to go in there- specifically, to the bathtub, which I need to fill with hot water."

"That sounds like too much work," Emmy complained, but I could hear the laughter in her voice.

"You don't need to do any of that work. I'll take care of all of it," I assured her, rotating my body in her arms so I was facing her. I lifted her up off her feet and carried her giggling body into the master bathroom, setting her down again next to the tub. I gently pried her off me so I could fill the tub, but Emmy took advantage of my position and ran her hands across my bare butt. One of her slender hands ended up cupping my vaj from behind and simply staying there, unwilling to leave its prize.

"Are we in a mood?" I asked.

"Yes, we are very much in a mood," Emmy agreed. "We are very, very moody."

"Well, that's a really good thing," I said as I straightened up, turning my body so that Emmy had to slide her hand out from between my legs. "I like those moods."

Emmy started to remove her clothes, but I captured her hands. "Let me," I said, and her expression showed that she liked that idea.

I knelt down and slowly unbuttoned Emmy's violet silk shirt, slipping it off her shoulders. She let it simply fall to the ground behind her- she was too busy concentrating on what my hands were doing to think about it.

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I pulled her bra straps down over her shoulders, inverting the cups as the straps lowered. Once the lacy bra was around Emmy's slender waist I rotated it around so I could unclasp it and toss it on the floor behind her.

This left her perfect charcoal-colored breast at the exact right height for me to take them and kiss her nipples. I softly rubbed my lips across the two peaks, my open mouth breathing warm air as I teased.

"Leah," Emmy groaned, her hands doing their best to pull my face into her chest, but I wasn't having it.

I leaned back to look up at her face. "Soon," I assured her.

Emmy wasn't wearing shoes or socks, so her skirt and then her delicate panties were next to go.

Emmy was squirming with need at this point, I I stuck my index finger in my mouth, then reached it down and drew it slowly up through her slit, feeling how very ready she was. Returning my finger to my mouth, I moaned with pleasure.

"So sweet," I said.

The tub was full enough by this point so I climbed in, and once I was settled Emmy joined me. She took her usual spot, between my legs, leaning back against me. That wasn't going to work for me, though, so I lifted her up a bit and brought my knees together so she could straddle my legs. This gave me much better angle for the fingering I planned on giving her- a plan she seemed happy to go along with.

"I needed that so very much!" Emmy said after she recovered from her second climax. She stood up to turn around, settling back down in my lap, but facing me this time. She rested her arms on my shoulders and leaned in for a long, slow kiss.

"Tell me about you and Katrina," she said, arching her back as I fondled her breasts. "Has she called back to tell you that she agrees? Perhaps Montreal is the wrong choice. It may be that San Francisco might be a better place for the two of you to explore things together?"

"Em, I have to say I'm finding it very hard to think about Katrina when I have you right here in my arms," I told her.

Smiling, Emmy said, "Then we will talk about it after we make love all night long."

"We'll be asleep then," I countered, gently tugging on her hard little nipples.

"Tomorrow then. Do not think that you can avoid this conversation. I want this for you, Leah. I want to know that you have everything you want."

"Tomorrow," I agreed, mostly to get off the subject.

We did spend half the night making love. At first we just started out fucking like rabbits, then transitioned into a sort of sexy playtime, but after a while we settled down into a slow, sensual lovemaking. We lavished attention on each other, but kept it soft and gentle. This was partly because we were both tired, but also because we'd gotten the hot and nasty out of the way right at the start.

I was sorely tempted to stay home and in bed with Emmy, but it was a weekday, so I got up early (I was on East Coast time, so that part was easy) and went in to Clancy's Fight Gym, arriving just as Eddie opened the door and turned on the lights.

"Been a while," he commented.

"It has," I agreed, and he didn't push it any farther.

It felt good to get in a nice, hard workout and not have people staring at me. All the regulars there at that time of day knew me, knew what I was capable of, and generally respected my desire to work out in peace. Even Ritchie just said hi, and offered to buy me a coffee after I was done.

He accepted it gracefully when I told him I was headed straight to the office from the gym with nothing more than a, "Next time, then."

My day at the office was taken up with everybody popping their heads in my door to say hello and bring up whatever little thing just to reconnect, and that was fine. I'd managed to stay up to date while out of town, so there really were no fires to put out or big issues to tackle. Really, just to remind everyone that I actually do exist was enough reason to spend the day at work.

That said, it wasn't enough justification to keep me from bailing out early so I could spend the afternoon with Emmy. The two of us had been apart more than together for a while (or so it seemed, anyhow) and I just wanted more Emmy time.

Of course it took me a while to find her when I did get home. She was with the boys in the smaller of the two recording rooms. Well, she was in the recording room, but Lee, Jackson, and two guys I didn't know were all crowded into the adjoining production booth as Emmy played.

"Hey, Leah," Jackson said, getting up from his chair to shake my hand in greeting. "Em's just doing some fills. We got maybe another hour, hour and a half, tops before we're done for the day."

Emmy finished her guitar line, then looked up and saw my wave.

"Leah!" she said, smiling. "We only have a little bit more- I will see you at home?"

Remembering to press the red button so she could hear me, I said, "You'll know where to find me."

As it turned out, she eventually found me in the racing sim rig. I'd set it for Barber Raceway and a Porsche GT3, just for the sake of it. I had a little twinge of envy for Madison's actually getting to race the real thing at the real place, so I thought I'd fake it as best I could.

She'd done reasonably well in her first professional race, notching up a credible twenty-second out of thirty-one finishers (and eight DNFs). Yeah, it wasn't in the top half of the field, but she was the highest-placed rookie, so she got to stand on the box and take a trophy home anyhow. The race on Sunday went a bit better, with Madison finishing in seventeenth place out of thirty-three finishers. Yeah, one spot shy of the top half, but solid.

Reggie had sent James and me a long email with a complete play-by-play of how the weekend had gone, and we both congratulated him and the team for their efforts. We all knew that the first race weekend for a new driver and a new team was going to be a challenge, after all. We came out of it with our collective heads held high, and James and I were both very pleased.

Meanwhile, I was working the somewhat unfamiliar virtual car on a track that was completely new to me when Emmy came to bring me downstairs.

"It has been a while since you have used that simulator, no?" Emmy asked as we walked down the world's longest residential hallway back to the living room.

"It's been a while since I've been home here in Los Angeles," I replied, and Emmy had to admit that it was true.

"Yes, but you are here now, and we do not have anything to do or anywhere to go for a while," she replied.

"Well… About that," I said. At Emmy's inquisitive look, I said, "I do need to go up to San Jose next Friday, and I'll probably need to spend a week in New York pretty soon."

"I can go with you to San Jose and of course to New York," Emmy said. "We are almost finished with the recording phase. Now it is mostly production work. We may find that we would like more fills here and there, but that is nothing that cannot be worked around."

"How involved will you be in the actual production work? Is that going to be mostly Lee and Jackson?"

"Mostly, yes," Emmy agreed. "They will ask my opinion, but they will do the real work."

"Good," I said. "That means I get you all to myself again- for a while, at least."

"I will still spend time on my music, writing my own songs," Emmy cautioned as she got herself a Perrier from the fridge. "But it is true I will not be chained to the recording studio."

"Hey, when does Jeremy get back?" I asked.

"I gave him a long weekend," Emmy replied. "It has been a long time since he has been able to spend any time with his mother."

"Has he considered bringing her here to LA?"

"I asked him, but he said that his mother likes Reno and wishes to stay there," Emmy said.

"As long as they know that it's an option."

"They both know," Emmy confirmed.

Since he's not here to cook dinner, we have two options," I said. "First, I could maybe make us something. I'd have to look at what we have by way of ingredients. Second, we could go out, maybe to that Thai place you like?"

"Shrimp with cashews!" Emmy said, her face lighting up. "That sounds very good to me."

Emmy suggested that we should take the convertible, even though May Gray had started early and the weather was cool and cloudy.

We made a little date of it, first doing a little bit of driving with the top down just to be out and about, then enjoying our privacy in a corner booth at the upscale Thai place we liked in West Hollywood. Like a number of restaurants in the area, they got enough celebrity patrons that they understood how to keep it from being any sort of big deal.

It wasn't until we got home and I poured us a couple of glasses of wine that Emmy brought up Katrina again.

"Has she called you?"

"No, no calls, no texts, nothing," I replied as we snuggled on the couch. "Honestly, it's probably a good thing. The more I think about what I said to her the other night, the more I regret all of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, two things. First, I'm less and less convinced that I even want a relationship with her at all- at least not some sort of… well, I'm not even sure we're talking about a romantic relationship at all, you know what I mean? And if that isn't what it is, is it just a booty call type situation? That isn't really fair to her, is it?"

"What was the second thing?" Emmy asked.

"If she interprets what I said to her as me wanting a booty call hookup on demand, I wouldn't blame her for being really pissed off at me and not wanting to talk to me at all, which means that I've screwed up a friendship."

"I understand," Emmy said, thinking about it.

"And anyway, why are you pushing for this? I'd like to think I know you well enough to believe that you won't get jealous of me if Kat and I do, well, hook up, I guess, but still… I've told you that I'm not looking for a replacement for Angela."

"No, I do not think that Katrina could ever replace Angela," Emmy admitted. "My concern is that you have needs, emotional as well as physical, that I cannot satisfy for you. I wish I could be your everything, but I have come to recognize that I cannot. If you had another, then perhaps you wouldn't…" Emmy trailed off, lost in how to express herself.

Realizing that she wasn't going to continue her thought, I said, "Em, I'm not some sort of libidinous raging beast who needs to get laid all the time."

"No, that is not what I mean," Emmy protested. "The sexual aspect is… secondary." Clearly choosing her words carefully, Emmy said, "Leah, I have come to understand that you do not thrive without companionship. It was wonderful when we had Angela with us, and she could be there for you those times I could not. I felt terrible for you when I took her away from you-"

"I never felt terrible about that," I protested.

"No, because you put the welfare of others above your own. It is one of the things I admire most about you, Leah," Emmy said, turning to look me in the eyes. "But I wish you to be more selfish. I wish you to see to your own needs more than you do. If that means having another… another companion, then I wish that for you."

"And you think Kat could be that person?" I asked. "Why her in specific?"

"She is smart, she likes you, and you like her. What more reasons could there be?"

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