Chapter 40

Stoney's turn:

I punched the button on my office phone. Rang twice. Sweet, happy voice. "Hi, my love."

"Hi, my princess," I replied. "I'm getting ready to walk out the door. What's up for the evening?"

"Me and you. Some deli roast beef. Muenster cheese. Artisan ciabatta rolls from the bakery up the street. A bottle of Reisling. And then ... I have designs on your body..."

"No Kara this evening?"

"Nope. We talked a bit ago. She's got a Skype session with the bunch in Alabama. Chords are being struck, I do believe. And I need my Stoney time. Clothing is NOT optional. After the plates go in the washer, clothes are FORBIDDEN."

Now that's a pleasant set of thoughts. "I'm on the way."

Giggle. "Don't sound so eager!"

Yeah. Like I can picture that redhead naked and NOT be eager. "I love you princess. See you in a few!"

I passed Brad's door as he was gathering his coat. "Stoney," he said, "you really need to fake a sad trudge when you're going home. You make us old married guys jealous."

"Embrace your jealousy, buddy! I'm going home to heaven!" And I'm praying, "Please, Lord, let me get home safe. I have Johanna waiting for me."

I was used to the traffic along the route between the office and the apartment. I was aroused. I was expectant. And I was hurrying. Made it!

Through the door and into the arms of my startlingly happy redhead. The kiss came before the words. As they say in the army, no plan survives first contact.

I finally managed to sigh a "Jo..."

"My Stoney. I miss you like crazy." And then her lips silenced any verbal reply I might entertain.

Another break. She was pushing me backward now. I know the way to the bedroom. And I know that a giggling Johanna is a good thing.

"I guess sandwiches are something for later." Plan? What plan?

"You betcha," she blurted as she tugged at my shirt buttons. I took over undressing myself. She was wearing a loose sweatshirt, something she shed with one graceful sweep, leaving her breathtakingly bra-less. She unfastened her jeans and with a wiggle, they were a cotton puddle at her feet and I was pressed backward onto the mattress.

"Let me get my stupid socks off, Princess," I said.

"Oh, oooo-kay," she cooed. "I know how you are..."

I can't stand having socks on when the rest of me is nude. Fifteen seconds for the socks, okay? Then a tangle of arms and legs and, "I want to give you a kiss for every freckle."

She giggled. "Start kissing. And who's keeping score?"

I know how to derail her train of thought. Of course, she knows how to do the same for me, so it doesn't take long for any sort of plan to go out the window in a cloud of squeals and moans and sighs and hisses and monosyllabic vocabulary.

In the luxuriously silent, aftershock-filled aftermath, we stayed in each other's arms for a while before I got up, went into the bathroom, and washed my face. Don't know where it got all that stickiness from. I returned with a warm cloth and gently caressed her face with it, eliciting purrs.

"I suppose that now we need some clothes, in the interests of kitchen safety," she said.

"Yeah. I guess. Although you make a terrific naked chef."

She giggled. "I don't want us burning any useful bits, though. So clothes, okay?"

"Okay." I had admitted to Jo that on occasion, usually hot days, I'd lounged around the apartment in the nude, but I was by myself, the drapes were closed, and I never tried cooking that way. With Jo in my life, we'd done nudity in private on a much more frequent basis. I enjoy seeing her nude. Quite frankly, she's just pretty to look at.

She says the same about me, but she's a lot more touchy-feely when we're naked, too. It's just fun. Loving fun. But I'm not cooking like that.

The cooking was limited tonight to making hot roast beef sandwiches. We consumed those at the little table in the breakfast nook and we took our wineglasses and the bottle back to the living room with us. Mellowed the evening somewhat. Like any evening that I had Johanna with me wasn't mellow enough.

Okay, you have to extend that 'mellow' definition to include me wearing my fingers out trying to keep up with her music abilities. Even this evening, you know, because she IS a concert musician and daily practice is a requisite, and if Johanna's gonna do music, Stoney ain't gonna sit there and just watch, wine or no wine.

Well, actually, sometimes she tells me to sit back and listen, but since I've got a partner to play music with, I don't let her pick up her flute without expecting that she wants me to play alongside her for at least a bit. Johanna has taken a somewhat minor bit of relaxation in my life, plunking on a banjo, and turned it into something major that we shared.

Conversely, I'd taken her minor association with sailing and turned it into something that was always near the top of the list of options for the weekends. Yes, the overnight bags in the closet, waiting to be packed on Friday afternoon.

Tonight, though, flute, banjo, music. Some on sheets, made to be read by artists and played on instruments not in our possession, some music in our hearts, to be played with laughing eyes and smiles.

And just because the instruments were back in their cases doesn't mean that the playing is over. She plays symphonies on my very being. And I play them on hers.

Wednesday. Work for me. Class for Jo. Mid-day text. "Baby, I hope you understand. Kara's coming over for a visit."

I replied "K. Yes I understand." Because I did. Friends, even troubled youth friends, are a good thing. 'Course it helps that the 'troubled youth' in question does to a violin what Jo does to a flute. I'm hoping that we can bring in Key and her oboe, but Key's been awfully Hutch-centric of late.

Going out the door on the way home, I received instructions to stop by the Chinese place near the apartment to collect dinner. When I got home I was carrying my laptop and a bag full of odiferous cartons. With both hands full, I elbowed the doorbell, got let in by Kara and kissed by Jo and we laid the spread out on the table.

Amid the slurping and soft clicking of chopsticks we talked about things.

"You know, that bunch in Alabama, they're something," Kara said. "I wanna be there."

This wasn't news. For two weeks Kara has been consulting with the Sisterhood. That's a big circle that feeds information back to Johanna, because, as her 'mini-me', Cindy says, "You're in on this too, you know."

"Yes," Tina added to the Skype session, "You're just the oldest of the Sisterhood."

After that session, Jo snuggled up with me and intimated, "You know, Stoney, there are a lot worse groups to find myself in."

"I know," I said. "And if I was going to pursue engineering, I think that 3Sigma would be an interesting bunch to work with."

She twisted to kiss me and restrain me within her arms. "If only they weren't land-locked up in Auburn." Then she giggled. "Boat at a marina on the Gulf Coast. Plane in the hangar. Little car in another hangar down on the coast."

"Takes money."

"Solheim Limited. Money."

"You're thinking again, aren't you?"

Little kisses on the corners of my mouth. I do get the idea that I am being manipulated. "Yes. You should've married some cow-breasted ditz that thought reading the covers of the tabloids in the grocery checkout line made her 'literary'." She sighed delightfully dramatically. "But you didn't, did you? Oh, but nooooo, you had to go off and tag a musician with a college background and an actual vocabulary."

"And money."

Giggle. "Yes, but you didn't know that at first."

"Nope. Was looking at the 'poorer' end of that 'richer or poorer' part." Truth. Would have been perfectly happy with Johanna bumping around whatever job she chose, her income just money to add to the respectable sum (and savings) that I had. A whole lot of people are a whole lot less comfortable, monetarily speaking than Johanna and I would have been.

"So we're not poor. And we're learning to fly. Because I don't want to be the only sister in the family who can't fly a plane."

"Who isn't too young to get a license."

"Poor Cindy ... She gets so frustrated."

I chuckled. "Nothing 'poor' about Cindy, you know. Fifteen. She's gonna have the same degree I have before she's seventeen."

Jo's eyes softened. "Kara's like that. Except she IS seventeen. Very smart. Just abused in a whole different way. If she'd had one of your buddies over there in Alabama nudging her a bit, she'd be out of high school and into college. She's smarter than just the music."

This I already knew. Kara in a game of Trivial Pursuit was as formidable as my Johanna. She beat both of us, her normally repressed demeanor taking a decidedly gleeful turn. In the weeks since she started coming over, she did seem different. I said so to Jo.

"And since she's been talking with the Sisterhood, they say the same thing," Jo had added.

The detritus from the meal went into the trash after we finished. Hands were washed. The musical instruments came out.

We practiced. I guess it was practice, but it was more recreational than pure exercise. We worked our way through some sheet music, all classical, and then went into some folk things, Celtic, Bluegrass. Jo's right. Stick a violin into Kara's hands and she's a different person.

We took a little break from playing.

"I'm talking to my counselor at school," Kara said.

"Problem?" I asked.

"Oh, no, not in the traditional sense. I want to move on."

"Move on?" I saw something in my Johanna's eyes that told me that she wasn't surprised by this conversation.

"Yes. I want to leave Houston."

"Leave?" I questioned.

"Yes. I feel so isolated at ... at home. Since Ysabela left, I haven't connected with any of the ladies who Dad's tried. Dad's even more distant since I'm a teen. I think it's because I'm nearing the age of some of his lady friends."

Jo sat beside her, touching her forearm gently. "You have us, you know, Kara."

"I know, Jo. We talked. But ... Oh, Jo, YOU started this..."

Jo turned to me. "Stoney, she wants to move to Alabama."

"Let me guess. A certain community in Auburn." Two smiles told me I was correct. "That's a big step. I have no doubt, though, that certain arrangements are already being made at that end. What's your dad going to say?"

"Daddy Dearest looked into private boarding schools before. I think he'd be relieved." Kara looked a bit sad.

"And you think that Alabama is better?" I asked the question. Apparently Jo already knew the answer from previous conversation.

"I do. I know I'm going to college. Auburn will work for me. Dad isn't going to be picky about that. I have a sizable trust fund when I graduate from college."

"What about us? Jo and I really don't mind you coming over at all." I caught Jo's smile.

Kara's face formed into a soft, gentle smile, a beautiful feature. I harbored the desire to see it more, finding it right behind my Johanna's. Johanna's because she was my lifemate, Kara because she's young and vulnerable and needs more smiling in her life.

"You two..." Kara said, "you've given me something I was missing, and then you introduced me to the gang in Alabama. I didn't know I could be somebody's sister from three states away. But here I am." She kept smiling. "Jo, you're my sister too, you know."

"I know," Jo laughed. "Mom was surprised to hear that I had siblings. In her words, 'You, dear daughter, are the result of our only serious sible.' I'm supposed to inform you that one must have parents who sible on a serious level in order to acquire siblings."

Kara chuckled. "Your mom jokes with you. And I did NOT know that siblings were the result of having sibled."