“Hello?” she said, resting one hip up on the counter.

“Hi! Where are you?” a familiar voice said.

“In the shop.”

“Oh no, my friend. Not on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The wine is chilled, the sun is coming around to the deck, and I have been deserted. When can you be here?”

“Where’s Roger?”

“Roger who?”

Kyle laughed. “The handsome man you live with.”

“Oh, him. He has some terribly important something or other to do at the hospital. I’ve written him off for the day. So are you coming over, or what?”

“Well, I’m right in the middle of finishing that table.”

“It doesn’t have to be done until next weekend.”

Kyle sighed. “I know, but…”

“Kyle!”

“Oh, all right. I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Thirty minutes.”

Kyle laughed. “I’m leaving now.” She hung up the receiver, off pulled her coveralls, and headed for the door.

Twenty miles south of Kyle’s coastal community, Anne pulled the jeep out onto the highway and reached for Caroline’s hand. “I’m glad you’re home.”

Caroline squeezed Anne’s fingers lightly and smiled over at her.

“So am I, babe. I missed you.”

Anne deftly negotiated the heavy expressway traffic, smiling softly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes—your sparkling conversation, your great dinners, your wonderful backrubs, and—”

Anne looked over at her lover. “And?”

“And your tender services.”

“Let’s talk about that some more!” Anne said lightly, as she drove off the exit toward their apartment.

“I’ve got a better idea, Caroline replied.

“What?”

Caroline smiled. “Let’s not talk at all.”

Anne nodded as she pulled into a parking space and switched off the ignition. Once in the apartment, Anne went directly to the kitchen and opened the bottle of champagne she had placed there that morning. The shower was running in the other room as she filled a plate with cheese, crackers and fruit. She arranged iced glasses on a tray and folded linen napkins into small brass rings, completing the arrangement with small candles.

She carried the tray to the bedside table in their room and sat down on the edge of the bed to remove her boots. Caroline walked in with a towel draped around her and smiled at the top of her lover’s curl-covered head.

“Leave your jeans on.”

Anne looked up, her face flushed. She stood and unbuttoned her shirt, stripping it off to expose her small firm breasts. Caroline came to stand before her, turned her back, and handed Anne her towel. Anne slowly dried Caroline’s back, gently rubbing the nubbly cotton down the soft curves of her thighs. When she was done, she folded the towel neatly and placed it on a chair.

Caroline stretched out on the satin comforter covering their bed and reached for one of the glasses of champagne. She sipped slowly, her gaze traveling appreciatively over Anne’s body.

“Why don’t you pull the drapes,” Caroline said softly. “And light the candles.”

Finished, Anne looked at her questioningly.

“Would you like some of this very nice champagne?”

Anne nodded, not moving.

“You’ll have to earn it first.”

Anne gently climbed onto the bed and stretched out between Caroline’s parted legs, resting her face softly against the inner curve of Caroline’s thigh.

Caroline laced her fingers through the wispy curls on top of Anne’s head and guided Anne’s face toward her. As Anne began to kiss her lightly, Caroline closed her eyes and took another sip of the cool, bubbly liquid. Yes, it was very good to be home.

Kyle turned her motorcycle up the tree-lined drive leading to a wood structure nestled at the top of the knoll. The house commanded a view of the ocean far below, while blending imperceptibly into the hillside where it stood. Kyle walked around the side of the house to the deck in the rear. Mounting the steps to the raised platform, she smiled at the fashionably dressed woman stretched out in a recliner in the sun.

“Hi, Nance,” she said as she climbed to the top step.

“Hi yourself,” her friend said, shading her eyes with one well-manicured hand. “Could you pour me some more wine?”

Kyle grinned. “Sure.” The wine bottle stood chilling in a gold-plated bucket, and an empty glass of expensive crystal stood beside it on the tray. She refilled the half-empty glass by Nancy’s chair and then poured a second for herself.

They reclined in silence for a while until the small trim woman beside her sat up with a sigh.

“So, where were you last night?”

Kyle looked up in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I called at eight this morning—I know you never sleep late. And no one answered. Therefore, you must have been out somewhere last night.”

“How do you know I didn’t get up early and go out this morning?”

“Kyle!” her pretty companion said, pretending to pout.

Kyle laughed. “All right. I spent the night in the city.”

“Oh?” Nancy inquired, arching her neatly contoured brows. “A little wanderlust?”

“Is it all right if I go out once in a while, Nance?” Kyle asked, suddenly not sure she wanted to talk.

“Of course. I’m always trying to get you to go out!”

“You mean you’re always trying to fix me up with someone!”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Nancy feigned a hurt look and reached for a cigarette. She looked expectantly at Kyle, who reached into her pocket on cue and pulled out her lighter.

Kyle leaned forward and touched the flame to her friend’s cigarette, catching the twinkle in her eyes. “Don’t be dense, Nancy.” Kyle answered. “First of all, I can choose my own companions. Secondly, half the time the people you’re trying to fix me up with are men.”

Nancy drew deeply on her cigarette and looked out over the two acres of her prime coastal property.

“Men aren’t all that bad, you know.”

Kyle sighed. “Nance, we’ve been having this conversation since our freshman year in college. I never said men were bad—I just don’t feel the same way you do about them.”

“I can remember when you didn’t mind sleeping with them.”

Kyle could tell her old friend was in a mood to bait her. Whenever the subject of Kyle’s sexual preferences came up, they went through the same arguments. Underneath Nancy’s superficial-appearing exterior, Kyle knew there was a very complex woman. They often didn’t agree, but they did care for one another. Not only were they business associates, they were close friends.

“It’s not that I mind sleeping with men, Nance. You know that. It’s that I prefer women. There is a very real difference. Women are not substitutes, alternatives or second choices for me. They’re…”

“…a positive first choice,” Nancy finished for her. “Did you read that somewhere, or are you writing propaganda for all the lesbian groups in the area?”

“Nancy!” Kyle exploded.

“Oh, all right,” her friend replied contritely. “I know, I know. It’s important to you—that distinction. I just don’t see why you have to be so hard-line about this gay thing. You could settle down with some nice, unassuming guy, get a few of the advantages it would bring, and have a lover on the side.”

Kyle knew Nancy was serious and tried for the hundredth time to explain.

“I don’t want to do it that way. I don’t want to live with someone I don’t love. I want the person I live with to be the only one. And I don’t want to hide!”

“Isn’t that a little unrealistic? After all, people aren’t perfect, you know. No one person would ever be enough.”

Kyle knew very well that her business partner had affairs outside her marriage, and she also knew that Nancy’s husband, Roger, was aware of them. Roger and Nancy had agreed years ago that both of them were free to explore as long as they weren’t serious about anyone. It seemed to work well for them, and Kyle respected that. But not for her.

She shook her head stubbornly.

“It’s not right for me.”

“Oh, Kyle,” Nance said in exasperation. “You’re impossibly romantic!”

Kyle smiled and refilled their glasses.

“No, I’m not.”

“Do you think you’re going to find the woman of your dreams in those bars you go to—when you can’t stand the silence of your own home any longer?”

Anger flashed in Kyle’s eyes. Nancy was getting a little too close to the quick today, of all days.

“It’s not as easy for me to meet people as it is for you, you know. I can’t just go to some respectable university function and pick someone up.”

“Touché,” Nancy replied softly. She leaned back in her lounge chair and sipped her wine. “All right. So you have to go to gay bars to meet gay women. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Is it any different this time than all the other times? Did you find someone you can stand to be with the next day?” Nancy knew she was pushing Kyle’s limits, but she didn’t care. She had watched Kyle struggle with her loneliness for years, and she truly wanted to see her friend find some kind of happiness.

“Can you always stand them the next day?” Kyle retaliated.

Nancy laughed. “Usually I don’t have to worry about it. They have to go home to their wives. Besides, I asked you first.”

Kyle drained her glass and reached for the bottle.

“The wine is gone.”

“In the kitchen. I put two more on ice.” Nancy followed her friend’s muscular form into the house, noting with a practiced eye the sensuous way she moved. She thought about how Kyle’s body would feel on top of hers, and she knew she would like it. She also knew Kyle would never consider such a thing with her. Roger and Kyle were friends, and Kyle, unfortunately, was a woman of integrity.

Kyle returned carrying a fresh bottle of chilled white wine. She removed the cork, filled their glasses again and leaned her back up against the railing of the deck.

“Nancy,” she said seriously, “Why are you always going on at me about this? I don’t bother you about your life, do I?”

“Why should you? I have a great home, plenty of security, all the money I need and a husband who doesn’t mind my—ah—flirtations.”

“I don’t believe for a second that’s all you want,” Kyle replied. “You’re intelligent, talented, warm and loving. All those nice things you have can’t be enough, or you wouldn’t be sleeping with every good-looking, horny guy you meet.”

“I haven’t slept with all of them, Kyle,” Nancy said demurely. “Not yet.”

Kyle laughed. “Oh hell, I give up.”

“Good! Now tell me about your latest. Was it any different?”

“Yes, for me at least.”

Nancy waited expectantly. “Well?”

Kyle turned to look down across the bluff to the ocean, stretching for miles before them. “I went to a leather bar last night.”

Nancy sat up straight in her chair. “Do you mean an S /M bar?”

“I guess you could say that.”

Nancy was surprised, and intrigued. “So, tell me.”

“I met this woman. I went home with her. A lot happened. I felt differently with her than I’ve ever felt before. I felt things about myself I never felt before.”

“Did she beat you or something?” Nancy asked in amazement.

“No, it wasn’t like that. It was like being in another world. We were making love, except so much more was happening. I almost didn’t know myself. It was physical, and emotional, and something else, too.”

“What else?”

Kyle sighed in frustration. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how I’m going to find out.”

CHAPTER SIX

KYLE LOOKED UP from the chair she was stripping and sighed.

“Nance.”

“Hmm?” Nancy replied absently, her mind on the design she was outlining on a tabletop.

“About that party tonight—”

“Yes,” Nancy murmured, still engrossed in her painting.

“I don’t think I can make it.”

Nancy looked up quickly. “Bullshit. You don’t want to.”

Kyle tossed her stripping knife onto the counter. “It’s not that I don’t want to; I just don’t feel like meeting a lot of straight doctors from the hospital.”

“Well, all those straight doctors have wives, you know.”

“I don’t want to meet somebody’s wife!” Kyle said. “I don’t even want to meet the doctors who are women. Roger does know a few female doctors, doesn’t he?”

Nancy laughed. “There might be one or two of those! I don’t usually notice! So, will you come?”

“Well—”

“It’s been a month since you went into the city. I know, I’ve counted. You must be ready for a little diversion by now.”

Kyle looked uncomfortable for a moment.

“Actually, there was something else I wanted to do tonight. I read about this meeting in the city. It’s a discussion group. I thought I might go.”

“Oh, that sounds like lots of fun!” Nancy said sarcastically. “You could spend Friday night sitting around talking about how tough it is being gay, or single, or green, or whatever tonight’s topic is.”