Chapter 4

At first Roger couldn't tell if it was a dream or if he was awake. The events of the night before seemed unreal, like he'd been having a particularly good erotic dream, but slowly he became aware of the fact that it wasn't a dream at all, that Catalina was still sleeping right up against him, her head still on his arm. The fact that his arm was totally numb only brought home the reality that he really had spent the night with this sexy and most interesting woman.

He moved his arm around a little to try and get some blood flowing, hoping not to wake her in the process. The feeling of the return of circulation to his arm was almost painful as the pins-and-needles feeling struck hard. As it turned out, he couldn't help waking Catalina. She looked at him, smiled, and then rolled a little to bring her lips to his. It was a long, languid, sensuous kiss with their hands caressing each other's bodies. After a while, his free hand strayed to the roundness of her firm breast; he caressed it for a while, then began to toy with her rock-hard nipple in his fingers. She gave a little shudder of delight and moaned. "Good morning, Roger," she whispered into his ear.

He gave her a smile and replied, "And a good morning to you too, Cattail."

"Cattail?" she frowned.

"Seems appropriate," he laughed lightly. "Does anyone else call you that?"

"No," she smiled, "Just Cat or occasionally Lina. When you stop and think about it, not many people who know me know about the tat."

"Then I guess I'll just have to call you 'Cattail', at least between ourselves," he grinned.

She leaned over a little to get her lips near his and smiled, "I think I can live with that." Then she kissed him again. "Are we going to have to get up today?"

"Want to, no," he replied with a grin on his face. "Unless you consider the condition of my bladder. I'm afraid that's a 'have to.'"

"A quick visit to the can doesn't count as getting up in my book," she laughed. "But I suppose Habitat for Humanity might wonder about your motor home rocking all day."

Only then did Roger pay any attention to the steady drumming of rain on the roof of the RV. It wasn't as bad as during the storm last night, but about the same as it had been in the aftermath. Just to check he rolled and pushed the curtains aside to see what was happening out there. "I doubt like hell that there will be anyone from Habitat around to wonder," he said. "It's still raining, and the house isn't closed in enough to work inside."

"Pretty wet, huh?"

"You might like it," he laughed. "Cattails like a swamp, after all, and that's pretty much what we've got out there."

She smiled at him. "Then I guess we don't have to get up. Let's hit the head, have a shower, and pick up where we left off."

"I'd like that," he nodded. "But Cattail, I'm not as young as I used to be, I can't go like that all day anymore."

"Yeah, I suppose," she replied with a little disappointment evident in her voice. "I'm a little sore myself."

"I hate to say it, because I'd really rather just stay here," he sighed, "But if we're not working, what we really ought to do is to up stakes and head up to Hattiesburg for a while. I need gas in this thing, the holding tank needs to get dumped, I need groceries, and I need to do laundry. We can dry out your sleeping bag while we're at it. While we're there, maybe we can get a decent restaurant meal or two."

"Much though I'd like to just spend the day playing in bed, I suppose you're right," she replied, and with a grin added, "Spoilsport."

"Oh, I agree," he laughed. "On the other hand, the sooner we get it done the sooner it's done, and then we can have the time to play without feeling guilty about the fact that we should be doing something else."

Catalina agreed that maybe he had a point, and they might as well get on with it. "Why don't you get your shower now?" she suggested. "I'll run over and get some clothes and my sleeping bag. That way I'll only have to dry off once."

"Sounds reasonable," he said. "The only question I have is what you're going to wear to go get that stuff."

"Oh, I'll just go nude," she smiled. "There probably isn't anyone out there to see, and if there is they'll just get an eyeful." Roger didn't have a comeback to that one, so he just grinned back, got up, and headed for the tiny shower while she headed naked for the door of the RV.

When Roger got out of the shower, Catalina was already back and was building a pot of coffee. "God, it's wet out there," she complained. "Is this an RV or an ark?"

"Just an RV, I'm afraid," he laughed as he dried off. "Still raining pretty good, I take it?"

"Steadily," she responded. "The ground doesn't hold a lot of water, so things are pretty soft. My tent is a disaster, and my sleeping bag is soaked. It's a down bag, so it's going to take a while to dry out. At least I threw it in the car last night so it wouldn't get totally drenched. I didn't want to paw around in my suitcase in the car with it raining like this, so I brought it over here."

"Just one suitcase?" Roger remembered back to when he'd gone anywhere with Colleen and Erin -- the car had always been packed to the eyebrows.

"Try living for two years on eighty pounds of luggage," she snorted. "That's when you learn to pack light. On top of that, I've done quite a bit of backpacking, and every ounce counts. I've gotten to the point I like to travel light and don't bring any more than I absolutely need."

"Is there anything you haven't done?"

"Quite a bit," she laughed. "But I'm working on them, too." With that, she headed for her turn in the shower while Roger pulled on some underwear followed by some clean jeans. From what he'd seen while the door was open it was quite a bit cooler out there, but even more humid, if that was possible. He decided on a T-shirt; he could put on something else if it was uncomfortably cool.

As soon as Catalina was done in the shower he pulled on a rain jacket and went outside to tear down. Fortunately, it wasn't a huge job, because he didn't haul a lot with him -- just unhooking the 110 volt and water, retracting the stabilizer jacks, rolling up the awning and stuffing the lawn chairs in a storage compartment. It was humid enough that he was pretty well soaked when he got back into the RV, and about the first thing he did once he got the raincoat off was to change his already soaked T-shirt. While he'd been outside Catalina had finally gotten dressed, wearing a short denim skirt and a sleeveless blouse thin enough that Roger could make out her bra underneath it. As he changed, she poured the coffee into a couple travel cups, then settled in the right side captain's chair.

Fortunately Roger had parked the RV on a paved driveway, or he suspected it might have sunk out of sight. Katrina had been more than two months ago; the streets and roads had been pretty much cleaned up, and traffic was light. It took about an hour and a half to get to Hattiesburg, and by then Roger had a pretty good idea of where he needed to go to do what he needed to get done. They found a likely place for breakfast on the edge of town and loaded up on a pretty good one -- neither had eaten, except for the coffee -- and they were hungry after a busy if enjoyable night.

With that out of the way they turned to other chores. Gas was easy and cheaper than in Gulfport, where only a few stations had reopened. Groceries were just about as easy, with Catalina getting a few things of her own. There was a laundromat in the same shopping center, so Roger left Catalina there with the dirty clothes and sleeping bag while he drove to a dump station he'd learned about the week before. It didn't take him long to get back to the laundromat, where he found Catalina keeping an eye on things and feeding quarters to the various machines. The sleeping bag was going to be the tough one: it had to be dried on "low fluff" to keep the down from matting, and that took a while. "If you don't do it right it'll be permanently loused up," Catalina told him. "Lose the loft and you might as well pitch it. I've spent months in that bag at one time and another, and it's an old friend to me."

The sleeping bag took until long after everything else was done, long enough that they stopped at the same restaurant they'd eaten breakfast at and had another decent meal -- though nothing great. Roger ordered the hot meatloaf sandwich that was on special, and after thinking about it Catalina did the same thing. They were back on the road to the coast shortly after noon, and pulled into the same spot by 1:30 in the afternoon.

The rain had let up quite a bit by then, although it was still very humid. There was still no one to be seen about the work site, so they figured that everybody must have taken the day off. With Catalina watching, Roger spent a few minutes getting the RV set up again -- power and water plugged back in, jacks down, awning and lawn chairs out.

Just about as soon as the two got inside they were in each other's arms. The several hours of riding around and doing chores had only heightened their passions and desires, although they had managed to maintain their cool. Now that they were alone, things exploded. As their lips joined in a desperate mouth-open kiss, their hands were all over each other, caressing, removing clothes. Quite soon, still in a deep kiss, the action moved to the bed. Some serious kissing and caressing went on for a while before she started to slide her way down his body. Figuring what was to come, he put out his hand to hold her and said, "No, no, Cattail. Ladies come first, after all."

An hour later they'd again reached the point of total exhaustion; they lay together on top of the bed, just holding each other and enjoying the closeness.

"Oh, Roger," she sighed. "I love what you do to me and how well you know how to do it. Your wife must have been a lucky woman, and you must have been lucky to have her."

"Pretty much," he agreed. "At least as far as sex was concerned. She could be bitchy and grumpy in other ways, but I could put up with it."

"That's because you're a nice guy at heart. You're gentle and laid back, you don't take yourself too seriously, and you're not pushy," she smiled. "Roger, let me tell you, most of the single guys my age running around are single for a good reason: they're jerks."