“So you…?” Ronda queried Jeff with her eyebrows.

“First I made sure I had a golden parachute in place. If they terminate me they have to give me severance pay of five million bucks. That took care of being fired. I’d seen enough double crosses.”

“So let the fuckers fire you.” Ronda leaned forward in her chair.

“When they found out the FCC was on to them, they started shredding documents…it was chaos. I got out of there and called my FBI contact. I checked with him. I’ve been cooperating, so I won’t go to trial. And if they terminate me, I get a nice severance package. If they don’t, then…”

“Then what?” asked Angela.

“Then I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. But I’m taking some vacation time right now. I think it’s a good time to disappear for a while so nobody but my FBI pal can find me.”

“Where to?” Ronda asked.

“You know when we were kids I was always talking about a slow boat to China?”

“A Chinese junk?”

“That’s what I had in mind. So I have one stashed in Marseilles. The captain and crew are there. They take it out now and then to keep it in shape, but it’s waiting for just such an occasion.”

“Wow, it must be really nice to be rich.” Angela set her glass on the coffee table and sat on the couch.

“It sure is. Nobody but me knows about it. So it’s okay. The tracks are covered and I have immunity anyway.”

“So…” Ronda raised her eyebrows in question again. “So?”

“So we head for France, get on the junk, and disappear into the ocean for a while. We can come back whenever we want. We’re safe.”

“Will you come with us?” Ronda aimed the question at Angela.

“I think maybe you two need to be alone for a while. You were talking about teaching Jeff some nuances.”

“But I don’t want to be away from you.”

“I have a business to run. I can’t just bail out on my staff and clients.”

“Oh come on! Any one of those five operatives could do it!”

“Operatives?” Jeff showed definite interest.

“It’s just business. My business.” Angela detected Jeff’s curiosity and decided to deflect it. “And there’s my daughter to consider too.”

“You have a daughter?” His tone was incredulous.

“Twenty-two years old.”

“I wouldn’t have thought… A daughter? Twenty-two? How old are you?”

“A gentleman wouldn’t ask that. And my daughter doesn’t come into this story. She has her own life to lead. But I’m part of it.”

“I just didn’t know that women who had had kids could be as tight as…as virgins.”

“Well…” Angela looked at her feet to hide what felt like a blush coming on.

“If you don’t go, I don’t know if I want to. How would you feel about going alone, Jeff? After all that’s where I’ve been for a long time. Alone. Maybe you should try some of that aloneness now.”

“If you didn’t like it, why would I? And believe me, all that jet setting is plenty of aloneness for anyone.”

“Sorry to cut this short, but my phone is vibrating. I really have to go and tend to my business now. I’ll catch you guys later.”

Chapter Seven

It was a perfect day in the South China Sea. The day was bright without being hot, a breeze was filling the sails of the Chinese junk and keeping the passengers and crew comfortably cool, but not so cool that it was uncomfortable to jump in for a swim or lie on the deck to dry in the sun.

Ronda wore only a sarong, her breasts bare and tan. She lay on the deck, her arms raised overhead, basking in the sun with her bathing suit top down, resting inside out on her sarong.

Barefoot and wearing bathing trunks, Jeff walked silently across the teak deck to sit beside her and gently untie her sarong.

“The crew…”

“The crew is always here. Let them be invisible. We’re invisible to them.” He unwrapped the sarong to expose her firm, long, tan thighs and legs to the sunlight. She reached down and pulled the top of her black one-piece bathing suit over her breasts. The hair of her armpits was silky and long. The hair of her head was long now, coming down to the middle of her back after months of not cutting it.

Now they were both swimming all the time, their bodies were trim and toned. They jumped off the junk and swam whenever the weather was good-which was all the time. Or whenever they felt like it-which was most of the time when they weren’t fucking or otherwise making love. The exercise of fucking and swimming kept both of them slim and he was even more muscular than when he’d been working out in fitness clubs in downtown in Chicago. Her breasts and hips were smaller but firmer than when they’d lived in the Frank Lloyd Wright house. His pecs were surely firmer and his thighs and butt tight.

Ronda shivered as Jeff ran his fingertip along the underside of her arm, stopped to twirl the long silky hairs of her armpit in his fingers, and outlined the underside of her breast through the swimsuit. “You are a beautiful woman. Thanks for letting your hair grow out. All of it.”

He’s finally figuring out how to make love with me. Sometimes I still fantasize about Angela when he goes down on me or when he strokes my clitoris with his finger, but I enjoy his attentions more and more now that he has some time for me and isn’t putting all of it into his corporation.

“Why don’t you take me below and make love with me?”

“Not right now. Much as I’d like to.”

She pouted. “You don’t have any meetings to get to, do you?”

“No, but we have to make a landing soon. I don’t want to be interrupted while we’re making love.”

“Since when do we have to do anything?”

“Well, this is a surprise, humor me. Let’s just say we have to pick up some supplies.”

“What could we need? We still have several months’ supply of fine wines. This junk has to have the best wine cellar in all of Asia. Not to mention fresh fruits and fish.”

“My love, we couldn’t replenish the fruit without stopping all the time.”

“You’re right. But why would it interrupt us. It doesn’t usually.”

“I thought you might want to go ashore.”

“Why, where are we?”

“Coming up on the Parcel Islands. Sand Island to be specific.”

“Who lives here?”

“Nobody at all.”

“What country do they belong to?”

“Everyone claims them. Taiwan. Vietnam. China. Maybe others. But nobody rules them because nobody lives here. There’s no farmland, just beaches. No tourists, nothing at all. If one country decides to try to take the island from some other, they may send an army for a while. ‘Til they figure out it’s not worth the effort and leave. Now the islands are empty. I thought it might be fun to walk in the sand and enjoy the water from the land.”

“You’re right.”

She eyed his bronzed body, his muscles more well defined than they had been when he was twenty.

The skipper made the familiar call for dropping anchor as the junk approached the island.

Holding hands the couple jumped off the junk and into the water for the swim ashore. They walked through the breakers onto the sandy beach hand in hand and walked down the seashore, the wet sand firm under their feet.

“I thought you said nobody lived here.”

“I did.”

“Well, who is that?” Ronda indicated a woman sunbathing naked on her back, her feet just covered by the gentle swell of the water when it came ashore.

“Take another look.”

The woman stood and dusted the sand off her butt and back. She turned to face them. Ronda could see that she was naked, her breasts jiggling a bit as she walked, a thick patch of pubic hair below her navel emphasized her shapely thighs. Her long legs strode purposefully and powerfully toward them.

“Angela? Angela! Jeff, how did Angela get here? And how did you know?”