Unforbidden. Aidan McGill © 2005

Category: Best Story by a New Author

Warning: The following is a work of fiction. It centres on events that are often sexually suggestive or mildly explicit. The central element of the story involves actions which are generally legal in the setting of the story, but which would be illegal in many other settings. The author in no way advocates, supports nor condones these actions.

In fact, the author really wishes that this story hadn't chosen him to write it, as he had other plans; but since it happened he's done the best job he could.

The events and characters depicted bear no intentional resemblance to real events, or to real persons living or dead.

Chapter 1.

Most of my life had potential, but until I reached Canada it had been disappointing.

My name is Rodney Johnston. Born in Scotland, my parents immigrated to Australia when I was five. We lived in Sydney, and I'd done quite well in school and sport without achieving anything remarkable. I matured into that redheaded, tall, deceptively lean build that still crops up in Scots from time to time, a result of Danish heritage.

I took a double degree in Physics and Electrical Engineering at university. During this, I did part-time work with a computer manufacturer. When I graduated I went to work for them full-time. I enrolled in an MBA course and my employer promptly went bankrupt, leaving me stuck with the university fees. I scrabbled desperately for about eight weeks, but then got a job in technical support for one of those instrumentation and control-system companies that had originated in the American oilfields. I settled in, continued the MBA, and set to learning everything I could about my new employer and its products.

About a year after this, when I was 24, I inherited a share of a substantial estate from one of my grandfathers in Scotland. With my unemployment the year before in mind, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to buy a house, so I'd never have to worry about the rent again. I found a nice home in a developing area within easy reach of work and public transport, and I settled in.

After another year I moved into a marketing support role rather than pure technical support. My social life picked up considerably as well. Anything in marketing seemed to have a ring of glamour to it. I succeeded too - I had a knack for seeing market opportunities and how to develop them. I also worked on projects for other companies as part of my MBA, and they were happy enough with the results to say so in writing. Eighteen months later, with my MBA complete, I took an opportunity to move into sales. I'd seen what a successful salesman could earn - analysing sales and commissions had been part of my job - and I had some ideas that I thought I could improve on. I took time out to marry a charming and beautiful blonde who seemed totally smitten with me and my success, then I moved into my new position.

Well, I'd been correct. I succeeded in my sales career. I used my marketing skills to find new opportunities, and my technical skills to work with prospects in developing equipment incorporating our products. I had a slow start, but closed the year with a new record for first-year sales. I set an all-time national sales record the next year - and 70% of it was new accounts. I was well on the way to surpassing my previous record the next year when the company promoted my manager to national sales manager. By talking about my success I may have implied that my manager was doing a poor job, but that wasn't the case. He was more than competent in sales, and he was very good at sales administration and staff development. The company offered me his old position. While I enjoyed high commissions I was still financially conservative, and the idea of a higher base salary attracted me. I was also beginning to look for new challenges. So, at age 29, I became state sales manager.

I turned out to have a knack for this too. Redistributing my old accounts gave everyone a higher income, which helped a lot. Revitalised, and with some changes of accounts, they then discovered new growth areas in existing accounts as well. I employed a new junior sales representative and worked with him to develop new accounts. This included some niche markets which would have taken me too long to develop myself as a representative, but which were ideal for him during the time he was on a fixed salary. In short, in thirty months as manager, I increased state sales by 85% in a market that had been considered economically depressed, and without my former direct sales contribution.

The only problem in my life was that my wife was unable to have children. She'd had a gynaecological examination and told me that a misdiagnosed chronic adolescent infection had left her with internal scarring. She didn't want to adopt, and meanwhile she continued with work two days a week. I wanted children, and I knew the problem wasn't with me. There had been one scare at university that had been resolved when the girl, who had tested pregnant, had her period the second month - I assume an early miscarriage. I'd also had myself tested, and was viable. At last, when it became evident that my wife and I would not have children, I surreptitiously became a sperm donor. They kept inviting me back, so things must have been all right there.

In short, I threw myself into work because there was a gap in my personal life, and accordingly work was going well. When the company's national manager died of a sudden heart attack, it surprised no one that the company appointed my manager to act in the position, and appointed me to act as national sales manager. Twelve months later the positions became permanent.

However, I had a personal and professional problem. I'd progressed fast, but now there was no more room for me to progress in the company, and a long time to do it in. I hadn't yet reached 33, and my manager was still under 40. I did the best I could to build sales, but I also built the organisation. I deliberately developed people who might not even think of themselves as my potential successors, and also bore that in mind when recruiting staff.

Then a near miracle occurred. My wife became pregnant. She started having morning sickness, and I insisted on taking her to an obstetrician as soon as possible. While she didn't seem as happy as I was, I thought she was probably worried about the internal scarring.

Well, I could hang in there at work for a while longer if I had to provide for a family. I started taking some of the work I had been doing at the office home with me, working in my home office, and keeping my wife company as well as I could with the demands of my job. The company world-wide had moved onto a networked computer system, making work away from the office feasible now. As some of my sales administration involved monitoring product availability and shipments from the USA, it was actually better to do that during the US day - our night. I also remodelled one of the bedrooms into a nursery in my weekend spare time.

My wife didn't want me in the delivery room with her. She was in labour for a long time, while I alternated playing the nervous husband in the waiting room with working there. The child eventually arrived by Caesarean section. As soon as things settled down, the baby was put in a crib and wheeled up to a window for me to see. It was what I'd come to expect a child to look like from my advance reading. That is, it looked like a baby chimpanzee, was vaguely plum-coloured, and barely hairy in spots. My surname was on a card, along with some medical details: date and time of birth, male child, mother's name and hospital identification number, and blood group.

WRONG blood group. I was type B, my wife was O, the baby was A. I couldn't be that baby's father. Some things began to come together in my mind.

A nephew of mine worked in a pathology laboratory. I called him, got referred to a medical pathologist, and arranged to get a DNA sample from the child taken. On their advice, I also got my wife's hairbrush, and took that into the lab, where they took a swab from me. They used dandruff from the brush, and the results took two days, but they were definite. It was my wife's child - no baby mix-up. However, I had not fathered it.

I thought things through that evening over a bottle of whiskey. I'd bought a case of single-malt scotch about a year before, and been nursing it along, but I was putting a fearful hole in it that week. About halfway down the bottle I phoned my boss and told him I needed to take the rest of the week off, although possibly not the week after which I'd been planning on.

First thing next morning I phoned realty offices in the suburb where my wife's parents lived. I shopped around for a two-bedroom apartment in good condition on a six-month lease with an option to renew. The only criterion for divorce in Australia is twelve months of irretrievable marital breakdown, preferably shown by separation. However, I fully expected her to have some other sucker in there before the first six months were through. I changed all the locks on the house and on my car. I changed the security codes on the burglar alarms, and informed the security company of the new situation. The child wasn't mine: there was no way either he or my about-to-be-former-wife would ever enter the house now. However, I had to be careful. I'd seen friends worked over by the Family Law Court. Investing $6,000 plus some goods I didn't want to set her up separately was bad, but vastly preferable to losing more than half my worldly goods to some court-mandated "settlement". I called a furniture removalist, then a private detective, and then my lawyer for an appointment. I furnished the apartment with furniture she had chosen, and the things from the nursery. I let her have our whitegoods - refrigerator, washing machine and clothes drier. Where I wouldn't let her have a particular piece of furniture (basically only the lounge and dining suites and my office); I bought serviceable equivalents from a Salvation Army shop. I moved all her clothes and personal items there, and had the electricity connected in her name, paying the deposit plus pre-paying one hundred dollars myself. Finally I videotaped the apartment and the house for future evidence of what I'd done.

The private detective turned up some interesting results. In retrospect I could see some of what had been happening, and I gave him some starting points. He found a lot more. She broke her marriage vows with a succession of men ever since we were married, and with a substantial amount of overlap. She'd give a new candidate a trial run before she dumped the former incumbent, and there were times when she ran three at once, plus me. This was in the early days of HIV, but I still shudder to think of it. Evidently she never wanted a family, or me personally - just a meal ticket and a means to finance her affairs. Even the clinic that performed her "gynaecological examination" turned out to specialise in abortions. In fact, she only worked half a day a week. The other day and a half, plus whatever time she "had lunch with a girlfriend", or "played tennis with the girls", or "went out shopping", were almost entirely devoted to her affairs.

I saw the lawyer, told him what needed to be done, and got him to stop panicking about it and deal with the situation. The next day, I drove her car to the hospital, met the lawyer, and had him tell her where her car was, serve notice on her about the situation, and deliver the address and keys of the flat. The lawyer also sent a similar package by registered post to her parents to be held for her. It helped that she had forged my signature as the father on the birth certificate, and the lawyer had arranged to see the copy from the hospital's files. That was proof of fraud - a godsend for me.

That still left me with the problem at work. I threw myself into the process of market and staff development, trying to make the organisation as resistant as possible to, for instance, my being run over by the proverbial bus. After almost six months, with distinct headway made, I talked the situation over with my boss. I wasn't coming to him with a problem - I was raising a potential problem with solutions in train.

He had a possible solution to my problem. The corporate marketing group at head office in the USA would have a vacancy in about eight month's time. The British national manager was due to retire then, and a Scotsman (we do get around) in corporate marketing had been selected as his replacement. The marketing group was a recognised grooming ground for people who would go on to greater things in the company, either in national or corporate management. My boss would put my name forward as a potential recruit to the group, and with my track record he felt I was very likely to be accepted. Put like that, so did I.

I spent my time now almost entirely on staff development, getting them to do the market development I had been doing, working as a marketing team with various managers and the national manager. That gave both my boss and I a chance to assess them and their ability to interact with each other in depth. We were fairly up-front about what we were doing. We held monthly two-day "market development seminars" in conjunction with the national sales meetings, and week-long " staff development workshops" at the two and five month marks. In the end, we had two good candidates. Both had family in Sydney. One was within five years of retirement, and the other had children who were either in school or university for about five years where he was living. That determined who got the first offer, and how we could probably keep the other good candidate. It also helped that both of them liked my house, and the older candidate would be moving to a small coastal town when he retired.

At some time towards the end of this process I passed the twelve-month mark for separation, and almost miraculously won an uncontested divorce.

Then, at the age of 35, I left for Texas.

Chapter 2.

Texas was almost three years of solid work. They started me on the Asia-Pacific division, since I already had some grounding in that from the other end of the pipeline. When I'd assimilated the procedures, they turned me loose as one of the troops on the entire division, from Japan down through Southeast Asia to Australia and New Zealand. Both China and India were run as separate divisions because of the potential provided by their enormous populations. Pakistan, for diplomatic reasons, was not lumped in with India, but instead was treated as part of a band of nations across the top of India and Africa which, purely by coincidence, happened to all be Muslim. They called it North Africa and the Middle East. Bangla Desh, on the other hand, was part of the Asia-Pacific division. Other Divisions were Southern Africa, Europe, Eurasia (basically the former USSR, less a few Muslim states), South America, and North and Central America.

That last one was a company oddity. They'd experienced problems when they'd given the USA preferential treatment. International customers would bypass their local companies to buy discounted goods from distributors in the USA, then expect support from the local entities. It was bad public relations to refuse them outright, but the support they wanted hadn't been financed in the country they wanted it. The company's market in the rest of the world was many times bigger than the USA, and discounts in the USA meant higher charges to the rest of the world - not a good way to grow business. They decided to keep the USA sales organisation at just as much of a distance as any other nation, rolled it in with Canada and everything down to Panama, and reserved only finance, administration, legal, research and development, manufacturing and regional market support to the corporate entity.

To me, it was interesting. Before, I'd had to worry about extracting the necessary supplies from the corporate entity. Now, I had to worry about pushing the goods down the pipeline to the various national entities, AND worry about extracting them from corporate. We also had to quietly try to ensure that the countries didn't overstock on goods that were about to be outdated by new releases, without letting premature word of the new releases kill everyone's existing revenue stream. We were also one step closer to the development of those new products, and had one step louder voice in their development.

We also did major trade shows, new product releases, promotion of existing products, and incorporated general "meet the troops" functions into those as well. That involved a lot of international travel, but it wasn't as glamorous as it sounds. It involved long hard hours of work in a state of serious sobriety. We would usually be able to take a couple of days at the end of the tour to do some sightseeing, but that didn't make up for the long hours and gruelling pace. We'd also try to arrive in a new country before the weekend, so at least we had that time both to acclimatise and sightsee. However, we'd generally be so jet-lagged that we couldn't do the opportunity justice.

After a year the company moved me onto a special project in China for three months. This was more of what I'd done before - market development, using my technical and market support skills. However, it was done living in China, and incorporated my new knowledge of what was possible from the supply-side of things. Fortunately, all the Chinese engineers I dealt with could speak English.

However, someone also accompanied me from corporate head office. Her family was White Russian, and had reached the United States via China over a period of decades. They had ensured all the children and grandchildren could speak Russian, Chinese and French as well as English. The family in Texas had added Spanish to that. She had graduated in Commerce and Law, was working on her MBA, and was there to negotiate legal and policy matters in Chinese when and as necessary, and keep an eye on finance as well.

Katrina looked too much like my former wife for me to take to her. In fact, she had an exotic beauty - high cheekbones, white-blond hair, green eyes, tall, slim, broad shoulders, medium hips, narrow waist. She'd have been a knockout on screen. She was also a lesbian. However, she was intelligent, educated and cultured, we had common ground in our company careers, and we were more or less isolated together, so we ended up talking a lot in addition to the work we did during the day and after hours.

You can quite rapidly exhaust the tourist possibilities of an industrial area of China, particularly when the only time you have available is weekends. The local wines and spirits were also fairly awful. However, there was a local beer that was really quite good, so one weekend we decided to do as close as we could get to a Texas (or Australian) style barbecue. If we got it to work, we'd use it as a farewell feast for the people we'd been working with. We bought some meat (pork, chicken and goat was what was readily available), and some soy sauce, lemons for juice, sesame oil, garlic and chilli for a marinade. Of course, we had to accompany it with boiled rice and stir-fried vegetables, but we tried. Katrina had also discovered how to make an acceptable flatbread from the local flour. This was definitely shaping up as more Australian style than Texas. I bought a case of the local beer to work on, and we settled in to our barbecue.

Well, by the third beer each, we had both broken down some barriers, and were talking quite freely. It turned out I wasn't the only one who'd been worked over seriously by a woman in a relationship. She had been seduced into her lesbian relationship by a woman who had then abused her love and trust - selfish, manipulative and abusive. Another couple of beers and we had talked our way past those issues and were just enjoying each other's company. Another one and we were comfortably relaxing on a sofa, an arm around each other. To cut a long story short, I decided even spectacularly beautiful blondes needn't be too bad, and she decided selected men could be all right. We slept together most nights after that.

As for the reason we were there, technically and business wise we managed to pull off quite a coup. There was a widespread need in China for a fairly simple device incorporating three of our products, which is why we were there. Our prices were too high for the market, but we could negotiate licensing for local manufacture. That in itself was easy enough, but we also managed to persuade them to manufacture the two other products in that line, and then export them all, delivered to the docks, to us. This dropped our on-board cost by one third, dramatically increased our profit margin, and we could supply that product line to the rest of the world from China. With this entire product line available economically in China, they could then expand its use to other areas, and were working up products for use in their oil and gas fields when we left. Our company policy was not to be wholly dependent on overseas manufacture for any key product, but they could retire manufacture of that line to an older, smaller facility to supply just North America. This freed up needed manufacturing capacity for a new product line, and deferred the need to build a new factory for at least two years, saving almost twenty-five million dollars. Kudos all round.

Katrina and I continued our affair when we returned to Texas. It wasn't a grand passion: more a matter of two good friends (best friends, in fact) enjoying each other's company, and having great sex together. We could have, I'm sure, married, been very happy together, and had more than most people get out of their marriages.

However, she raised the subject. "Rod, I'd like to talk about marriage - or rather, talk about not marrying." After I recovered, we talked it through, and agreed that our careers were carrying us in different directions. She was committed to the corporate head office, whereas I needed to move back into sales management at some level - which really meant national management from where I was now. I certainly wasn't going to get the USA - too many other candidates with too much experience. I might have got state management in one of the USA states, and that could well have been bigger than Australia, but it wasn't really what I wanted, and unless it was Texas it wouldn't have kept me near Katrina. If we married, one of us at some stage would have to sacrifice their career for the other, and as friends we each felt we couldn't ask that of the other. So we continued as we were, enjoying what we had, but recognising that at some stage I'd be moving away. "Carpe diem" indeed.

Workwise, after the China project I returned to corporate marketing, but on the tongue-tangling North Africa and the Middle East Division - named NAMED (boom, boom!). This was a new experience. Bribery and corruption are a way of life there, but so is petroleum. We needed the business, but we couldn't get involved in what was perceived as normal practice there, but as crime in the USA. The company followed fairly standard practice in this situation (as it did in Southern Africa and some Asian countries). That is, it worked through national distributors. They acted almost as subsidiaries of the company, but they weren't. They'd order goods, we'd ship them, they'd pay for them, but what they had to do to get business was their worry. We had a pretty good idea what sorts of things were going on, but it wasn't our legal responsibility.

That lasted for six months, then I was swung onto Europe for another six, and then onto North and Central America. This was one of the turning points of my life. Working here, I did some special project support for Canada. The details don't matter. What did matter was that I got to know the national manager there.

Canada was a special situation. One of the company's founders, Cameron McIntyre (Scots descent again, you notice) had semi-retired there. When the company went public, he'd received a barrel-load of shares, he'd hung onto as many of them as he could, and even bought more. He still owned 17% of the issued shares. Eventually, he'd recognised that the people the founders had hired were doing a better job of corporate management than he could, and that what he wanted to do was to get back to his strengths - sales, and corporate development rather than corporate administration. He also wanted to get away from the all-consuming demands of corporate headquarters: a viewpoint I could appreciate. He was happy to have others do that if they wished to, but he wanted to enjoy life.

He enjoyed hunting, and he'd enjoyed a lot of time in Canada. When the Canadian national manager's position became vacant, he'd applied for it. It was a true application - no strings pulled. However, it doesn't take a genius to work out who got the job. He'd moved up there, and run the national company competently for twenty years. Now he wanted to retire, he'd noticed my Australian performance and my Chinese project through his position in the company boardroom, and he thought I was the one who should succeed him in Canada. With 17% of the company in his back pocket, no one was going to disagree with him, so he asked me if I was interested. I said I was, and we settled down to haggling.

The end result was that, just short of three years after I moved to corporate marketing, and at the age of 38, I bade a passionate farewell to Katrina, and moved to Canada.

Chapter 3.

Well, Canada was a different national entity to any other, thanks to Cam's influence.

For one thing, a house came with the national manager's position. Well, more like a mansion. When he'd taken over, the company needed to expand. They had. He'd built a new national headquarters in a developing suburb of Ottawa. He'd also bought five acres nearby, with the company's money, and built the mansion smack-dab in the centre. The land itself was on a 220 yard frontage, and 110 yards deep (200 by 100 metres). The house had a basement (four-vehicle garage, workshop, separate natural-gas storage area, one-bedroom servant's quarters, laundry), ground floor (kitchen, formal dining room, ballroom, bathroom, library), and second floor (six bedrooms plus master with en-suite and walk-in wardrobe, two bathrooms, two separate toilets, lounge-room, family room with kitchenette). A small lift ran from the basement upwards. The servant's quarters were unused - they had an older married couple come in daily as general housekeepers, cooked for themselves, and hired a commercial catering company for any formal or business catering they needed.

He'd actually managed to make this a paying proposition for the company. Off to one side of the property he'd built "the bunkhouse". Separate vehicle entrance, normally locked. However, when anyone needed to come in (like for monthly national sales conferences) they stayed at the bunkhouse. It had a row of 20 small bedrooms at the back - each with a king-sized single bed along one wall, a small table/desk opposite, a wardrobe at the back, a chair at the desk/table, and a commercial-grade vinyl armchair between the table and the wardrobe. They also had a small TV with cable access, AM/FM radio sound system, and a CD player. These all fronted on a long hallway, which had men's (one end) and women's (the other) showers and washrooms, which in turn led to toilets. Between them there was also a laundry, and a large common room with a kitchenette, TV, and a lot of commercial-grade armchairs and sofas, coffee tables, and ordinary tables and chairs. A lot of under-cover parking space fronted the bunkhouse. For meetings and conferences, they'd use the dining room or ballroom in the house.

The other side of the property was devoted to the occupants of the house. Being from a hot climate, Cam enjoyed swimming, and he didn't want to give it up. He'd built a 12½-metre swimming pool. However, Ottawa is not the warmest place in the world, and rejoices in about 2¼ metres of snow a year. He'd needed to shelter the pool to get year-round use of it. What he'd done was to build a cabana (one side) and garden/pool/storage-shed (the other) on the north side of the pool, with a door and entranceway between them. He'd built semicircular frames extending over the pool, and had four garage-door type rolling partitions, which could be rolled from the roof of the cabana/shed row, up and over the pool. The partitions were clear polycarbonate, so this created a Quonset-hut-shaped glasshouse. End walls were permanent, double-walled polycarbonate, with shelves holding pot-plants and vines. Each autumn, he'd roll the partitions over, line them inside and out with glasshouse-grade clear plastic, and string tie-down lines across the outside. Each summer, he'd roll it all back and cover the frames with shade cloth, which also kept out insects. Entrance to the pool was through the door between the cabana and shed. A solar water heater would contribute what it could to the pool water, and during winter whatever else was needed would be provided by a natural-gas water heater. There was almost no other heat - the set-up functioned as a glasshouse, with the pool water providing both thermal mass and heat. He ran a dehumidifier, which gave up some heat as it condensed water vapour and returned the water to the pool. It wasn't really for heating purposes though - just to avoid plants going mouldy, and to reduce ice build-up on the inside of the walls and roof. The cabana and shed were fronted with two each of lemon and lime trees, chosen to give fruit year-round. The rest of the space up to the pool was a tiny lawn, about the size of two double beds, and a large quarry-tiled area. This truly served as the glasshouse. Potted orchids and begonias would overwinter there; and tomatoes, capsicums, chillies, eggplant, melons and pumpkin would be started long before the snow had melted. They were all done in folded newspaper containers with holes in them so they could simply be buried without transplanting.

All this would be mine - along with everything else that came with the job. I stayed as a guest in the house for two months while I got acquainted with the country and the national organisation.

Cam and his wife were retiring to a lodge about ninety minutes out of the city. He'd been building it (literally, in part - he worked as a labourer on the foundations and walls) for three years. Smaller indoor pool in the basement, with adjacent hot tub, then laundry and storage (including natural gas cylinders), then garage, then workshop, then storage cellar and wine cellar. Above that was a "log cabin". Walls were pine logs, but they'd been dried, turned to a constant radius on a super-sized lathe, then worked so they were "tongue-and-grooved". One side was flat and six inches wide with a deep two-inch wide groove along the length, and the other side had a matching ridge rising from a flattened area each side of it. Filler along the top and sides of the tongues, glue on the flats beside it. Grooves were underneath the logs, tongues were upward, so when they reached roof height they didn't need to fill in a groove - they just cut off a tongue, and water wouldn't pool in the groove. Good mix of thermal mass and insulation. Lengths were semi-random, but wherever they would meet corresponding two-inch tongues and grooves would be worked into the ends with a router. Holes down through the logs every two metres, or 30 centimetres back from the edge of any door, window or corner. They'd fastened steel cables to the foundations at the bottom of those holes before they started, threaded the cable through the logs as they built, and at the end they used them to fasten top-plates down, and fasten the roof to those. Coated with three layers of polyurethane, which filled in all the cracks and checks in the dried logs.

Chapter 4.

I continued Cam's plans for expansion of the company's operations, and improved on them, However, that wasn't enough - he'd laid the groundwork there, he expected that to work, and he was still on the board of directors. I fell back on my old technical skills, discovered a possibility in industrial automation for our products, delegated it to one of our bright young things (female, as it happened), then basked in the success when our business increased 25% because of my 30-second brainwave and her three-months work.

Personally, I was settling in to Ottawa, or rather I was settling in to living in the mansion. However, I wasn't making any personal progress in, for instance, replacing Katrina with anyone else. There were many intelligent and charming young ladies working at our head office. Come to that, there were some who were also intelligent and charming but by no means ladies. However, I couldn't justify selecting any one of them for the "master's touch" and making them the one selected by the man in charge. I wasn't meeting anyone else though - male or female - in or outside work. Basically, what kept me almost sane was the fact that every three months I'd get back to Texas for a Divisional Meeting, get together with Katrina again, and we'd screw like mad minks for three days.

Well, mid-spring I did at last manage to meet someone socially (a guy, as it happened - settle down there). I'd been planting out the last of the tomatoes, and got talking to a neighbour across the back fence. Jim was an Indian (or Amerindian, or Native American). We were both working in our yards, got talking, and he invited me over for a beer. His young daughter was playing in a wading pool in the backyard, so I invited them both across to my place instead so she could enjoy the swimming pool. I ended up inviting Jim and his daughter Joanne, and Betty, Joanne's stepmother, across for dinner that evening. They'd met Cam and Gemma, but they didn't know me, and I had to assure Jim that I thought I could throw together some steaks and stuff, and if he felt the need to dress for dinner then he could put a T-shirt on.

That was about the level I kept it on, too. I used my Chinese marinade on some rump steaks, light on the chilli in deference to Joanne, although as it turned out I needn't have bothered, then served them with canned mushrooms in butter sauce. I did fine-sliced chilli and crushed garlic in soy sauce as a side sauce, and Joanne used most of it. I did canned cream of mushroom soup. I boiled baby jacket potatoes, and nuked some frozen green beans and frozen carrots and served them all with a mint sauce I made from lemon juice and fresh mint from the greenhouse, and a dash of olive oil. For dessert I served some canned berries with ice cream - very down-home and bachelor cooking.

Jim was a bit of a surprise-packet. He did one of those roughneck work schedules in the Northwest - two solid weeks of twelve-hour days on a gas-field, then two weeks off, less travel time on the company plane. However, that was the way he liked to live - he was management on the site, another double-degree - Mining Engineering and Geology. At thirty-seven years of age, he was just a year younger than I was. Betty, his second wife, was twenty-nine, and they'd been married eighteen months His first wife had been killed in an auto accident when Joanne was six, and for some time she'd lived as a boarder at the girl's school she now attended as a day-student. Joanne herself was "almost eleven".

They rapidly became part of my life. Jim was there full-time for two weeks, then away for two weeks. Betty - well, I just accepted her as married to Jim, and left it at that. I'd had enough of unfaithful women already in my life, and I ignored some pretty broad hints from her while Jim was away. I expected he'd get some grief from her, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Joanne was a total joy. I hadn't had children - or none I'd known, and I suppose part of it was filling that gap, but it wasn't only that. She was incredibly intelligent - the school already had her doing high-school level science and maths. Personally, she took a simple joy in life that we could all learn from. And she loved the swimming pool. I'd established some rules - like "the pool is not a bath - you shower before you go into it" (the cabana had a separate toilet, and a shower and changing-area inside). Also "no pool without an adult to keep you company". That was fine when Jim was home, but Betty didn't want to be tied down to that, so when I came home from work I'd find Joanne perched beside the pool, sitting at a garden table on the quarry tiles, doing her homework and waiting for me to arrive. OK, I could live with that - I enjoyed her company, and in fact I started coaching her on her maths and science, and swimming and athletics. Started going to the office earlier, then leaving at 5:15pm to meet her - probably a good thing - less stress and I was exercising more. In fact, I started spending quite a lot of time with her. Betty was staying out later and later, and if Joanne hadn't had me she wouldn't have had anyone a lot of the time. She simply adopted me as family, and I'd get a hug and a kiss whenever we met. I loved it, and Jim didn't mind. I'd gone as far as I thought I could in hinting to Jim about the situation with Betty. He'd hinted back that he knew there were problems, and that he was grateful that Joanne had somewhere to go.

Well, one evening approaching late spring with the day still light at about 7 p.m., Joanne and I had finished swimming, and climbed out of the pool. She skinned out of her swimming costume and started towelling off, and I near to died. If ever, that was when I learned that my circulatory system was in good shape. I did a swift half-second scan of the neighbourhood to make sure no-one was watching, then said "Joanne - that's why we've got the cabana - you get changed in there - you know that." Visions of Jim or the nosy neighbours or Police or Child Welfare flashed past my eyes. Well - not Jim - he was working - but anyone else. She looked puzzled, then said "Oh!" She gathered everything up and disappeared into the cabana, little buttocks twinkling. My blood pressure crawled back down from the stratosphere, and I began thinking again instead of mere panic reaction. One of the things I thought was simply that she was beautiful. Not in a sexual sense - she was too young for that - but simply as a beautiful creature. Her skin was red-bronze - a permanent suntan. More gold than red - not the same colour as Jim, but still a built-in tan - no suntan lines. However, she was simply beautiful in that sense you see in artistic photographs, where sex and age become almost irrelevant and the simple beauty of the human form is all that you see.

Well, I might think sex and age were irrelevant, but I imagined Child Welfare wouldn't accept that as an excuse if they caught us together with her naked. She came out of the cabana, fully clothed now, and I asked her in a simple rational manner what the Hell she thought she'd been doing. She couldn't answer! In fact, what it amounted to was that she hadn't thought about what she was doing - she'd done it without thought - just acting automatically. I thought about that. It could happen again - any time - no warning - just happen. I began to wonder if we'd really proved my circulatory system was good enough. I checked over my shoulders - no police so far. Aahhh! On the count of three, everybody panic. One... oh, to heck with it, avoid the rush, panic now! Aahhh! I explained my thought processes to her. She giggled. This wasn't helping. I explained child molestation laws to her. She wasn't stupid. She understood that, but she couldn't really help - she'd honestly been on autopilot when she'd stripped off - she didn't do it deliberately, or she wouldn't have done it. She simply didn't know why she'd done what she'd done.

Well - she didn't do it again - for quite a while. She was no longer "almost eleven" - she'd passed that milestone. About two months later, and approaching full summer, she repeated exactly the same thing - except of course it was much more full daylight, everything was much more visible if anyone was watching, and my arteries were much closer to exploding. Aahhh!

I really did love this girl-child, but I couldn't have this sort of thing going on. Jim was a good friend. I talked it over with him, and he understood what I said, as far as was possible. At least I'd let him know what was happening.

Another two months and we were into early autumn. I'd taken a couple of days vacation, and was working in the garden. Joanne was in school. My mother, in keeping with her Celtic heritage, had the "second sight". She knew what was happening with her siblings - particularly her sisters. She'd also extended it to her children, although only in a general way. She'd know if we were undergoing crises, but not always details. Well, it turned out I knew in general what Joanne did, and in a little more detail, although it wasn't constant or immediate. I was showering off in the cabana after a hot dusty day in the garden when Joanne came home from school. I knew she was on her way, but what I didn't know was that Betty was out that afternoon, so Joanne came straight over to the pool. She came into the cabana, stripped off, and when I noticed her she was on her way towards me. She gave me the standard hug and kiss hello.

Uhhmm. She was naked. So was I. I was also stunned. I more-or-less automatically hugged and kissed her in return, as normal. She had her arms around me. I rubbed her back, then cupped her buttocks and pressed her more firmly against me. Then I came to my senses, and disentangled myself. No potential witnesses in here, and the damage had already been done, so I pulled my swimming costume on and told her to put her costume on as well.

OK, more deep and meaningful discussions. Despite the fact that she was only just eleven, Joanne was a mature young girl, and she understood what sex was about. When we talked about it, she knew that what she was doing was "sexy", although she simply hadn't thought about it in advance. She understood the concept of good touching and bad touching, and that there could be touching that might not feel bad but was inappropriate. She knew that there were laws which protected children from sexual interference by adults - even those they might trust. When she thought about it, she understood that what had just happened could get those laws applied against me. However, she said, she thought that was silly - after all, I hadn't started it. In any case, she simply would not accept that anything I would do to her could possibly be bad. In fact, she believed anything I would do with her would be not just fun but good for her, and she was quite happy for me to get on with it. Right now would be fine.

This was definitely not her normal behaviour. We talked about it, and she really didn't know why she was doing it. She had quite a well-developed sense of personal space and personal propriety, but apparently I was an exception. "Rod", she said, "I don't know. You know how you feel about other people. You know they're there, you can feel their otherness. You know there are people who aren't you, standing right beside you. Now, I wouldn't be naked with Betty - I just wouldn't feel right about it. I wouldn't mind if Dad saw me naked - after all, he's changed my nappies, how much worse could it get? However, I'd never dream of just getting undressed in front of him any longer, even though I didn't mind two years ago. In your case, I sometimes don't seem to think of NOT getting undressed in front of you. I just don't feel that sense of apartness with you. It's not that I don't know you're there - I always know you're there, all the time. It's just that it doesn't niggle at me, the way it would with a teacher or another student in a changing room. It just feels like you're part of me."

Well, that was food for thought. However, one thing that it seemed to mean was that she wouldn't go stripping off with me in front of others. In fact, any time it had happened her father had been away. I pondered that a little, and thought it through. It seemed important enough for me to ask her about it, and she thought the same thing. Basically, she might strip off in front of me, but she wouldn't do it where others could see - as far as she knew. Of course, she might not know that there was someone a hundred metres out with binoculars, so I begged her not to do it at all. It wasn't, I assured her, that I didn't like the look of her. However, if it came to spending years with her, or having seconds to look at her naked body and then years in prison, I'd definitely prefer having years with her. At least I thought so. That didn't get a giggle, but it did get a smile. Quite a canary-filled cat smile, actually, for someone who was barely eleven.

I still thought she was a beautiful creature, too. I'd have to be careful not to let my opinions about young age and lack of sexuality mislead me again, though. I'd certainly started reacting to her sexually for a few moments today, just eleven years old or not. If I'd followed her lead it was obvious that all I'd have had from her would have been enthusiastic co-operation, even though that wouldn't be her normal behaviour. It was evident it was up to me to be more on-guard.

Chapter 5.

The season rolled on to autumn, and I rolled the cover over the pool and lined it with the plastic. Joanne would still be waiting for me when I came home from work. However, I'd set up a gymnasium in the basement of the house, and we'd often adjourn there for a workout before a brief swim and then coaching on maths and science, and English and social studies as well. She was getting me a better education than I'd had for a long time. I was churning my way through the complete works of Shakespeare - lot more fun than I remembered. I'd stride around, acting out each of the parts in turn. Over-acting, actually, but that was OK. They were stage productions after all, and the actors had to make huge gestures for it all to be seen in the back stalls. I was also picking up an education in the history and geography of my new country.

In fact, she could have waited in the house for me - there was a spare key in the shed at the pool, and I'd made sure she knew the security codes for the house. I'd had her input them many evenings. However, she said she wouldn't feel right about that - "just sort of moving in on you", she called it. Well, whatever kept her happy. I didn't want to upset her - you never knew what she might do, and if she did I wasn't one hundred percent sure what I might do in response. At the same time, she was spending more time with me - Betty was out for longer and longer times, and Joanne stayed over for dinner a couple of times a month (that really counted as about once a week, as I thought differently about the times when Jim was home). In fact, there were two formal dinners I held there, with Jim and Betty among the guests, where Joanne functioned as my hostess. She was growing fast at that stage. I would have bought the dress she used, but after thinking about it I hired the dress, and bought her brand-name sneakers and a calculator, and a doll (and a bunch of roses, and a posy of violets, and boxes of chocolates) instead.

Word of advice - never buy a girl violets if you don't mean it. Roses they expect, and they discount it. Sweet little violets - trouble. I didn't know it then, but those violets sealed my fate. I'd kissed Joanne and cuddled her, I'd caressed her naked, I'd sat head-to-head and cheek-to-cheek and thigh-to-thigh with her while I was coaching her, I'd massaged her calves and thighs during workouts when she got cramps, I'd joked and laughed and giggled with her. All this, but when I gave her violets I was lost.

Then, one day in late autumn, Joanne called me at work. This was unheralded - never happened before. I was already packing-up - I'd had an uneasy feeling I ought to get home. It rapidly got worse. Betty was bailing out. In fact, she'd been having an affair with a drug dealer all summer and autumn, and she was moving out to live with him - that afternoon! She was abandoning Joanne - like NOW!! She and her boyfriend had already stolen a lot of the furniture. Joanne came home from school to a halfway-gutted house, and an outright statement - "I'm moving out! You get your over-aged boyfriend to help you." By the time Joanne had assimilated that, they'd gone. Jim was working - eight more days before he'd get home. She couldn't bring herself to go back into the house - she'd used the key and codes for my house for the first time, and called me from there.

Well, it took about a minute for me to get out of there. Thirty seconds to decide what to do, another half a minute to also decide to retain a private detective, instruct Susan my personal assistant (or secretary, or whatever) to do so for me - "Get me a good private detective, and get him to meet me at home within ninety minutes. No buts! I'm out of here. You can get me either at my home number, or on the cell phone". Left at a flat run, and left the staff to marvel at my unexpected athleticism for the next ten years.

Susan had more sense than I did. Well, that was what she was paid for. She'd got the company's security chief on the phone, and delegated it to him. He was about ten minutes behind me, and he'd used contacts to make sure that there was a good private detective on his way about ten minutes behind him. I had good people working for me, thanks largely to Cam.

Well, Joanne's over-aged boyfriend (and the resources he could muster) proved a little bit more than Betty had imagined. Our big problem turned out to be getting in touch with Jim, and that was something I could handle on my own. Betty had cleared out all the phone books and teledexes. It was so long since Joanne had phoned her father at work personally that she didn't remember the number. We knew who he worked for, but it wasn't quite the sort of area that had a phone book. I suppose we could have tried directory enquiries, but I suspected it might be a satellite phone. What I did was simply to ring the managing director of the company out of the business "Who's Who", and tell him I was a neighbour of one of his workers in the Northwest and that there was a family emergency. I asked whom I could talk to who could put me in touch with Jim. He scribbled some details, said he'd get back to me, and did within five minutes, with all the information I needed. The next day I had my secretary ferret out two bottles of one of Australia's finest red wines - the first one that humbled all the French in a competition in Paris - and send them to him and his wife (he had a VERY French name too).

Well, Jim and I talked, then Jim and Joanne talked, then Jim and I talked again. There was no way he could get back from there, of course, but there was no reason why he should either. He gave me full verbal permission to act in his stead, then faxed it through later that evening. It turned out he'd been quite cautious in his financial arrangements. Everything was in his name, nothing in Betty's, except for a housekeeping account in joint names that never had more that $500 in it. If she wanted anything else of his, she'd have to get it with a court order - she wasn't just entitled to it.

Joanne would move in with me for now, of course - about time those six spare bedrooms upstairs started earning their keep. I'd move everything in their house that was still left over to the garage and the servant's quarters downstairs, and wait for him to get back. He was actually at the stage of re-negotiating the house lease for another six months, and it didn't look like there was a great deal of point to that now.

My security chief put a guard in the house for the night. There wasn't much the private detective could do that evening, but he put an operative waiting across the road in the morning. I forestalled Betty and boyfriend by phoning around the university fraternities until I found one that would turn their residents out at ten p.m. for the right reward, and they came and trotted everything that was left across the lawn and into my servant's quarters. Betty and boyfriend arrived the next morning in Jim's four-wheel drive, and her reaction (caught on videotape) when she found nothing left to steal was golden - in fact nearly literally. As Jim said when he saw it, she nearly pissed herself.

While they were finding that out, the private detective put a radio beacon onto Jim's vehicle, and followed it to where they were living. He used a spare key Jim had told me about and drove it away, parking it in my garage. On my instruction, he'd had someone filming what he'd done and Betty's reaction, and that film was also one of the great joys of Jim's life. Joanne's too - she'd only barely tolerated Betty, and was well pleased she was gone. Jim really REALLY wasn't much of a one for sniggering, but in this case he made an exception - big time.

The private detective had alerted the police to the situation, and what he was going to do about it. To cap everything so far, Betty tried to report the vehicle missing and herself ended up being threatened with a charge of vehicle theft - oh, ambrosia. We'd then moved in on Betty's boyfriend. The operative who'd done the filming was still watching, and when Betty and boyfriend left the house the private detective had left the students in a van across the road while he checked things out - alone, without witnesses. Well, looky here - even drug dealers can get careless. He left the back door unlocked - fancy that, so it isn't really breaking and entering. Helped by Joanne as spotter for her father's property, and me as escort for her, we'd recovered the rest of Jim's stuff, videotaped the special herbs and spices we'd seen, then the police took action. Just wasn't their day, was it?

The students had been paid one hundred dollars apiece, plus the use of the back yard and the pool for the Saturday fortnight (when Jim was back), plus four kegs of beer and a barbecue (Chinese marinade and others), and the use of the bunkhouse that day. They'd actually treated the pool with respect (chemical test) so I scheduled them in for another barbecue post-exam as well, and had Human Resources invite them and their girlfriends to test for traineeships. More of making the property pay for itself tax-wise. Actually got some of our best employees from that night.

Loved it!

Well, life had changed. I had live-in eleven year-old female company. I adjusted quite well, actually. We were a multinational company, so I adjusted my habits. I'd put in an hour or an hour and a half on the company network early in the morning, then we'd get ready and I'd take Joanne to school, then go on to work. About 3:25 I'd leave the office, and pick her up from school. The office was becoming quite family-friendly, and as far as I could see no one was suffering from it. We'd go home, do the training and coaching, then I'd put in another two or three hours of work while she finished her homework. We both functioned fine, and we both enjoyed it. Jim was quite OK with it, as well. He'd offered to have her go back to boarding at the school, but I said why fuss with it - what we had was working. He really wouldn't have been able to handle a different lifestyle - he needed time out of the city, but this way he could go on doing what he had been. He was happy, his daughter was happy, I was happy. Jim had a sister and a cousin living in the city, so any time both Jim and I were away Joanne would stay with one of them. Jim did a rather unusual thing with parental permissions, though, since he was away so much. He delegated things, in writing, to Joanne herself. She would act in his behalf while he was absent. While Jim was away she was her own guardian. She, in turn, put it in writing that I could act on her behalf if she was for some reason incapacitated and her father was away. The school office nearly had a seizure over that set-up, but it was ironclad-legal: Joanne didn't have to be of age to exercise that delegation.

Jim lived in the downstairs flat one fortnight out of two. He paid full-time rent for it, and for Joanne, but we both knew that was just for form's sake - we'd still be doing the same thing without the money. Still, I took it - or rather, Jim had Joanne write cheques for it, and I'd get it put through the company books for the mansion, and I'd draw a little of it back for Joanne's share of the groceries. The servant's quarters had separate utilities accounts. All legal and above board.

In fact, I joked with Jim that maybe I should be paying him rent for the pleasure of his daughter's company. Joanne overheard that one evening, and told us both that if anyone was going to get paid, it should be her. Turned out she was one hundred percent serious about it, too. Jim had been paying her an allowance- not much - $10 a week. Well, she elected to view that as payment for the pleasure of her company, and coming from me. Just about exactly 1¢ per ten minutes - and she expected me to come through with it.

I thought about that for a while, and decided that we'd talk it through. I told her that if she wanted to be paid for her company, then that could be done - but I'd be deducting money for costs and bad conduct. In any case, I pointed out, that would put her in the class of a hetaera or a courtesan or a geisha, and I wasn't sure that was a good idea. She said it would put her in the class of MY hetaera or courtesan or geisha, which was fine with her. Hmm. We (well, Jim and I) reverted to the $10 a week method. Maybe we could develop on it though. Jim could still pay her a basic allowance; I'd pay her pocket money for household chores. She started getting paid for dishes, laundry, and house-cleaning. She liked that - she'd always been a responsible young lady. Now she was getting paid for it. I didn't save any money, but the housekeepers (who were getting older) found themselves getting less work for less money, which was fine with them. Joanne made firm friends with them, and learned a lot from them Saturday mornings. She was treating them somewhat like a third set of grandparents, and they enjoyed it. Her pocket money skyrocketed, and the house had never been better kept.

I talked this whole situation over with Katrina while I was screwing her one evening. She spent about five minutes laughing, then another five minutes giggling (very disturbing, I can tell you - jiggle, jiggle, squeeze, squeeze, jiggle, squeeze), and my chest was getting a massage as well. She explained it to me in words of mostly one syllable. "Rod", she told me, "the girl loves you. I think you love her too. She's in your head, and you're in her soul. You've found the girl of your dreams, and she's not even twelve". Well, put like that, there really wasn't much room for argument. Or if there was, I'd have to save it for another day. Jiggle, squeeze, indeed! OH, INDEED!!! Oh, my, yes!

However, I recognised that she had a point. I did love Joanne, and it wasn't just in a "daughterly" way. I would happily set up house with her - in fact, I already had. Simply put, she was the woman for me. She was also under twelve, and I was closing on forty. Damned Shakespeare! This was a tragedy he'd never written about. Although, come to think of it, it wouldn't have been a tragedy in his day. Wasn't his Juliet about twelve? "When they're big enough, they're old enough" had been taken at face value back then. Then again, Romeo and Juliet had solved all their problems in a fairly major manner. Where was this all taking me? Prison, that was where! If I followed through on these thoughts, I'd no longer be Canadian manager of a major international company - I'd just be a paedophile in prison.

Chapter 6.

So, I had a live-in girl. In fact, if I held my mouth right, I'd have a live-in eleven year-old girlfriend - and a guaranteed ten-year sentence in prison. Those heart-wrenching moments when she got all naked and close-up hadn't stopped when she'd moved in with me - quite the contrary. She'd hop out of the shower, wrap herself in a towel, and come out to talk to me (and no, she didn't need to - her bedroom was down the hall from the bathroom - I'd thought of that - she could have changed on the way). Whoops - the towel would just fall off, and she'd look all confused and naked for a few seconds, then bend over - WAY over, pick up the towel and wonder what to do with it. I did notice that her breasts were beginning to develop, and she was beginning to grow pubic hair, although it looked soft and silky at the moment (no - I hadn't checked by touch - mind out of the gutter, please. I was working on memory here. And no - we don't need to go into the question of what I'd been doing when I was around that age.)

Or even worse, she'd come out wrapped in the towel, and she'd settle herself in my lap for a kiss and a cuddle. Now, I don't know whether you've stopped to analyse matters, but a nearly-twelve-year-old who's just wrapped in a towel, sitting in someone's lap, doesn't have a great deal to shelter her basic fundamentals from said lap. Particularly when said almost-twelve-year-old is wriggling her little tush fit to beat the band, and getting settled-in. And said lap is growing a burgeoning erection at a monumental rate. Ahem.

So, we had another one of those deep and meaningful conversations. Seems like we had to do this every couple of months. We had a pretty good life - suited her, suited me, suited her father. Didn't want any suspicions to get Child Welfare involved. They wouldn't even need to charge me first - just pull her out and put her "in care", regardless of facts. I looked into Canadian laws, then showed her the bits about penalties for me if I got caught stroking her little fanny - or even if people just thought I was stroking her little fanny. People like her schoolteachers, or the office staff at school. I pointed out that we were in a vulnerable situation. She was living alone for a fortnight at a time with a man who wasn't her father or her legal guardian. The situation was very open to suspicion anyway, so we had to be careful not to do anything that could raise suspicion. I was trying particularly hard not to have any secrets - I didn't want her in a position where she felt she had to remember to lie about anything.

Didn't mean we didn't touch. We'd have a goodnight kiss and a cuddle, or a good-morning kiss, or a casual hug in passing, or we'd trade back-rubs or neck massages. I think human touch is one of the basic human needs - water, shelter, food, cuddles. I'd missed out on it recently, I was enjoying it now, and I didn't want her to suffer that way. In fact, I was treating her like a daughter or a niece. However, we had to be careful to keep it innocent, and there were times when she may have been innocent, but she certainly wasn't careful.

Well, time and the seasons rolled along. Joanne turned twelve, and continued to mature physically and intellectually. One interesting advanced project that school assigned to her was something that crossed the boundaries of two subjects - science, and human sexuality. Yes - I was coaching her in human sexuality. I was trying to get her to think about the varying rates of physical and hormonal and sexual and emotional and mental development. To think how a young person could get whip-sawed around as the balance of those changed from month to month, or even from day to day, and to identify those elements in herself.

Anyway, school issued each girl in the class with a clinical thermometer, and the girls were to take their resting temperature each morning when they first woke. The idea, of course, was to get the girls acquainted with the way their bodies worked. The temperature noted each day, and other details - if they were sick, whether they were having periods, and if so how heavy, were also logged. She'd log everything by hand - keeping a bound notebook is sound scientific practice, and it takes a bit more than a disk crash or a careless file deletion to destroy your notes. We set it all up on a computer spreadsheet as well, so graphing the temperature was automatic for her. The temperature was to pinpoint ovulation - there was a small increase in temperature when the girls ovulated.

Joanne had been an early developer in that respect - she'd had her first period when she was nine, and settled down to a regular twenty eight day cycle quite quickly. In fact, Jim had some bad luck, in that his work was on the same four-week schedule, and he'd always get home just in time for the pre-menstrual tension, period pains, and general crabbiness.

Eureka! Light dawned at last. I went back over what I remembered of those revealing little accidents Joanne had. Always while Jim was away, usually Friday or Saturday. Where I could tie it down to an exact date, it was smack dab in the middle of her cycle. Using that predictor, I was able to work back to and verify dates I hadn't remembered. It seemed that Joanne had very well directed hormones and instincts in action. She got naked and up-close right at the time it would do the most good - right when she ovulated. Hypothesis subject to confirmation, but I was in a position to make predictions now. For two cycles, the predictions held, to the day.

Her breasts were developing, the nipples and aureolae were enlarging, and the pubic hair was darkening and thickening. More Celtic there than Amerindian. I did know its texture now - the little witch had sat in my lap, held my hand in her lap, then dropped the towel behind her. This for a man who was trying hard not to have secrets. I didn't think that was the sort of thing we could share with Child Welfare, though.

At least we knew what was causing it now. It's always easier to control something, or at least its effects, if you know why it happens. I talked the situation over with Joanne, and explained my theory. She was both fascinated and a little horrified to realise how much her body could rule her mind like that, but there was no real doubt that was the answer. We just had to worry about one or two days a month, and at least one of us knew the sorts of things to expect at the time. Joanne couldn't help herself much though. When it happened she was running on automatic - not thinking about it. Fortunately it was all directed at me - it didn't happen outside home.

I talked about my new discovery with Jim when he came back, too. I hadn't made a big point about the fact that she was more-or-less stripping off in front of me every time he went away, but I hadn't hidden it either. I'd told him of the first times back when she was still ten, and of the fact that she didn't seem able to help doing it - it just happened without forethought or deliberation. I think that maybe he thought she was just experimenting sexually. As it turned out later he had some cultural basis for that. Now we knew she really couldn't help it. Her hormones just took over and turned off critical thought about that aspect of behaviour for a few hours when she was at her most fertile.

A light dawned for Jim as well. "I think she inherited it from her mother", he said. "Diane was very passionate midway through her cycle. We'd used birth control pills just to move her cycle, so we could enjoy ourselves while we were together. Well, Diane was very eager, very demanding during the weekend in the middle of my time at home."

Chapter 7.

The day Joanne turned thirteen, the world changed. Not just that she was now a teenager - she'd always been remarkably mature. However, she was remarkably mature with strong ideas of what she wanted to be doing in a year. She told me she needed to have a serious talk with me. "Rod", she said, "I'm going to be fourteen in a year. We need to do some planning." "All right," I said, "but give me a clue here. Planning about what?" "Rod", she said," I love you, and you love me. You've avoided talking about it with me, but it's true. In Canada, the age of consent for sex is fourteen. You can't get married then, but all the things we've been avoiding doing, and worrying about starting rumours, will no longer be illegal. It will, in short, be perfectly OK for you to fuck me. Not just OK with me - as far as I was concerned you could have been fucking me when I was still ten - I'd have been happy enough about it. In a year it will be OK with the law for you to fuck me".

Pardon? For some reason I hadn't realised that. I'd been trying so hard to avoid having any sexual involvement with Joanne that I hadn't thought about when it would be possible. Most places had laws like sixteen years, or seventeen, or eighteen; and I'd been assuming. I hadn't realised Canada took sexy little minxes like Joanne into account. What a civilised nation!

Then she gave her consent. "Here's your answer for my fourteenth birthday -", she said - "Yes".

"What's the question?" I said.

"You decide", she said. Predated a year, and subject to renewal on her birthday, but -- Oh, heck, where were we going with this? Oh, there! I'd thought our previous conversations were deep and meaningful? Well, now we really got deep.

I found myself propositioning this little thirteen-year-old. Well, not that little - she was slender, but she was tall and muscular. She'd put on a growth-spurt recently. Actually, not just propositioning, but proposing-to. I told her I loved her, I couldn't live without her, I needed her, I wanted to spend my life with her. The question to her answer I chose turned out to be "Will you marry me?" No surprise to the rest of you, I suppose, but it shocked me at the time: events were running a bit fast for me. No surprise to her, though. She told me she knew all that, and she felt the same way, and always had, since the day we'd met - and yes, and what had been stopping me from asking the question? Glad I got around to mentioning it at last. After all, wasn't she already keeping house for me? And wasn't I already paying for the pleasure of her company, just like a real mistress? Hadn't I made her a kept woman before she was even a teenager - by over a year? Well, that was a bit of a reach, but at this stage I wasn't going to argue with her. She'd certainly noticed that I reacted sexually to her, she said - she liked it - part of the reason she sat in my lap. Ahem. Deep and meaningful conversation followed by deep and meaningful tongue-kisses. With a thirteen-year-old, to whom I'd just become engaged - at the age of forty. I wasn't quite sure what the law would say about that, but I sure didn't want to test the matter. I wasn't sure what we'd say to Jim and vise versa either, but we'd obviously have to tackle the matter.

Things got better after that for a time. We'd taken some of the pressure out of matters. If - or when (little doubt she'd do it again, particularly now) she crawled into my lap wearing nothing but a towel, I could stroke her thigh (not too high), then tell her to get the heck out before I did something we both might NOT regret - enough. The next time I went to Texas, she had a SERIOUS TALK to me before I left. She told me she knew I was still having sex with Katrina, she knew Katrina and I loved each other, but I wasn't marrying Katrina, I was marrying her, and that was the way things were supposed to be. Katrina was doing something for me that she wished she could do herself, and would the moment she could, but which she wasn't allowed to do yet. She hoped Katrina and I would enjoy our time together, she wished she could share our joy, but since she couldn't she wished us lots of fun.

Darn near ruined me. It took me about half an hour of talking about it, and a good deal of work from Katrina's mouth, before I could get an erection. It wasn't permanent - the problem, not the erection, that is. Erections never are. Second time only took about five minutes to get it up, and the third and fourth times were even shorter - well, quicker. Well, both. However, it was just different. Like Joanne was standing behind our respective shoulders. Actually, it was that picture that got me past the hump of impotence. And got me there in the first place, I guess. The thought of her standing there, giving her blessing and maybe a little physical help (which she'd never done, but I'm sure she would have given the slightest encouragement, and under the circumstances I would have encouraged her), got me over the hump - or the hump over - oh, forget it. And Katrina knew it, and knew that every stroke we had was sanctioned and blessed by Joanne as well.

Katrina DID rejoice in saying "told you so!" though. She was still a best friend - I couldn't not talk to her, even though I knew she'd revel in rubbing my nose in things. After all, she'd recognised Joanne was my woman long before I had. Or perhaps even before Joanne had. I still thought it was the violets. Tested that too - brought a bunch home and Joanne positively melted.

Chapter 8.

I got back to Ottawa and picked Joanne up from her aunt just before Jim was due back. It was unthinkable not to tell him what we'd decided, but I was having a hard time thinking how to tell him. "Don't worry," Joanne said. "I'll tell him. I'll be subtle about it, and break it to him gently".

When Jim got back, he dropped his duffel in the apartment downstairs, then came upstairs. Joanne got a couple of beers and a Cola out of the refrigerator, and got us all settled at the table. "Dad", she said, "you know I love Rod?"

"Mmmm", he said.

"Well", she said, "I'm going to marry him. But I can't do that for a few years, so I'll be sleeping with him and having sex with him as soon as I turn fourteen."

Subtle! I sprayed beer out of my nose. Jim tossed me a paper towel and waited until I was a little less discomposed. Then he lifted an eyebrow at me and said, "Well?"

"I've been better", I said, "That was a fairly brutal summary of the plan, but it is what we hope, among other things".

"Would you care to expand on that?" he asked.

"Expand, right." I said. "Give me a moment here, please. I’m trying to catch my breath."

"I love Joanne and she loves me", I went on. "I've been trying to dodge that for years now, but it kept sneaking back up on me again. The age difference is regrettable - heck, the age difference looks enormous at this stage. I'm a year older than you are, and she's just turned thirteen. However, that difference will look less in twelve years time. Fact is, I would probably have kept trying to dodge the issue, but she forced my hand. Pointed out that the age of consent is fourteen in Canada, which I hadn't known, and that she fully intended to sleep with me from her fourteenth birthday. I could do what I liked about it, she said, but she was going to be right there naked every time I woke up, and she wasn't going to keep her hands off me. She was agreeable to waiting until she turned fourteen, and it wouldn't be illegal for us. She did that for my sake though. She told me if it had been left to her it would have been a lot sooner. She's a remarkably strong-minded person. You may be able to change her mind, but I'm really not interested in trying, now that she's busted through my defences."

"What would you do about the rest of her life?" he asked. "I mean children, and family, and education".

"Well, of course" I said, "I'd take on all her costs. I think she'd stay at the school she's at until she graduates - they're doing a good job. At the rate she's going, though, she'll be doing all college level courses, with a lot of accumulated credit, by the time she's sixteen. Then, it's up to her what she wants to do with higher education. I'd judge something in science from her interests so far, but it's her choice. As for children, certainly none early. That's sort of a shame, considering my increasing decrepitude, but she's still young. I wouldn't risk her health, and I'd like to see her higher education completed, or at least well started and under control, before she had family."

I noticed we'd got past the sticking point, and were down to details. This might go OK after all. Jim's race and culture were working in our favour, I found later. A girl was recognised as a woman when she had her first period. From then she could make many of her own decisions. By that test, Joanne had been a woman for four years.

There were other cultural elements that determined why Jim didn't live on the "reservation" or "homeland", but was listening to me now. He could have worked from there, leaving Joanne with her grandparents when he was away. He'd visit for two weeks each year, but he didn't want her constantly exposed to some of those elements. He knew the cultural patterns though, and in this case they acted in favour of Joanne and me, either by making our plan look good, or making it look normal.

There was another item related to age of womanhood that wasn't widely talked about, but was real enough. Girls who had become women were eager to exercise their new status. It was traditional for them to have sex within the next lunar year from having achieved womanhood: they would feel they were failures as women if they couldn't achieve that "validation" of their status. In fact, having sex with "new" women was a form of birth control for men as well, since they were less likely to become pregnant than mature women were. This meant there was a lot of juvenile sex - girls who might be as young as nine, or as old as thirteen or more. Against the law, but long-established traditional practice and culturally recognised. Some girls would use a cousin, a friend's brother, and even their own brother to fulfil the requirement. Others wanted a "real man", so there was a traditional pattern of younger girls having sex with mature men. It wasn't "unthinkable" in the same way that some people might react to Joanne and me. There were also a lot of juvenile marriages as well. No matter what the law said, a lot of girls would go through traditional marriages a lot younger than eighteen, or sixteen, or even fourteen. It didn't always happen any longer, but it happened a lot more often than most people recognised.

There were other darker aspects of this as well. Girls who were approaching their anniversary still unfulfilled could become desperate. Predatory men would note the date, and then watch the girls as the year progressed. It was not unknown for desperate and incautious young girls to find themselves the centrepiece at a gang-bang. Some girls would do this voluntarily - they felt it increased their "score". Some would co-operate with one or two men at first, then another one or two, and things would snowball, with or without individual permissions. Finally, there were out-and-out pack-rapes.

There were certainly things that looked much worse than what Joanne and I were proposing.

Jim must have agreed. He didn't say "Yes" but he did say that if everyone felt the same way in eleven months time we could go ahead.

Chapter 9.

Joanne became even more self-confident now, if such a thing were possible. She seemed to feel that she'd secured her man, and she was going to put her mark on him. That worried me. Some things - like her being fully clothed for a kiss and cuddle, even sitting in my lap - were perfectly harmless, pleasant and necessary, given the circumstances. I even felt that her monthly injudiciousness was reasonably defensible in court with the right doctor, although I'd definitely prefer not to have to explain it. However, what worried me was that she'd become a deliberate and flagrant exhibitionist when we were apparently alone together. Her breasts were filling out, she was beginning to grow underarm hair, and her pubic hair was a dark triangle, shielding the view of her vulva to which I'd become used. She'd walk out scantily dressed or even naked, flaunt herself, spin and pirouette, vamp and preen. I think a lot of it was pure pride and even just an offering of herself to me. 'Here you are, my love - you wanted it, you're going to have it, I'm proud and happy to be able to offer myself to you.' I still worried about neighbours with binoculars, though. Then one evening after her display she settled down on the floor by my feet, leaning against my legs and hugging them to her naked breasts.

I'd thought we were over those, but it seemed time for another deep and meaningful discussion. We covered the fact that even if some things would be legal later they weren't now. That meant that anything done now that was criminal would always be criminal. I could still be charged in the future with doing things that were illegal now, even though they wouldn't be after her fourteenth birthday. I pointed out that, even though she'd be over the age of consent, we still wouldn't be safe from rumours and suspicions. People were likely to find out that we were sleeping together Many would be shocked even though it was legal, and they'd be suspicious about what we were doing before she turned fourteen. They'd go looking for anything that might be evidence, and any pattern we'd established might be viewed that way. As she was acting now, there was even a chance that her naked body could be glimpsed through the windows, or deliberately viewed by a peeping Tom with a telescope, binoculars, even cameras or video cameras. We really didn't need some suddenly virtuous peeping Tom popping up with a dated videotape of Joanne prancing around naked, and my head in the background. While people might not think anything of it now, they could recall it later if a witch-hunt was started, and one pattern everyone knew about was that I was always in or around the house when Joanne was there, unless Jim was home. The sort of thoughts we needed to forestall, I pointed out, were that if Joanne was in the house naked in general living areas, then I was in the house and probably with her. Which, I pointed out, wouldn't have been too far from the truth over the last week or so. We simply had to continue to exercise the same care we had before.

Well, she accepted it - she was too intelligent not to, once she thought about it. However, she wasn't happy - she'd wanted some relief from the pressure, now that we'd decided what we'd do. Obviously she didn't realise what sort of pressure she was putting me under.

Then she found another way. She was careful now with curtains. However, those accursed towels came into play again. I had the habit of leaning back in an armchair with my shoes kicked off, legs and feet stretched out in front of me. She came out from her shower with the towel wrapped around her as usual, top of it just above her breasts and below her armpits. She stepped towards the chair a little, putting one foot each side of my ankles, leaned forward a little to support her weight on her hands, resting on the chair arms. Then she leaned further forward, and did a thorough job of kissing me.

Simple enough in execution, but it took me about five minutes to analyse all the details - she must have practised a lot. She'd stood with her feet each side of my ankles - which meant my little thirteen year-old had spread her legs for me and had my legs between hers. Then she leant forward. The towel rode up her back until her buttocks were bare, while the part of it to the front and sides hung down - I think she must have used a safety-pin to secure the towel. Nothing was visible from where I sat, but effectively she was completely naked from her breasts and down. She had spread her naked body before me, opened her legs for me, and taken me between them - and it had taken me about five minutes to realise it.

All right, I'd live with that one - not only was it clever, but it didn't have me doing anything blatantly illegal. And I rather liked the idea of being between her spread legs, with her naked body before me. I'd better - I was expected to be doing a lot of it in about ten months.

Chapter 10.

One thing we all agreed on was that Joanne should put as much into schoolwork as she could this year. Things were going to change in early summer, after her birthday, and we weren't exactly sure how that might affect study. We wanted her to graduate, if possible, just after her sixteenth birthday, and to do it with a good deal of academic credit in college-level courses when she did. That was a lot to pack into three years. The school ran four solid semesters over the year, without a long summer break, so she was already getting as much as she could from school, and didn't have any summer-school options.

At the same time, we didn't want her physical well being to suffer. She represented her school in swimming, and was otherwise strong and fit from the work in the gymnasium, was a good athlete but hadn't developed any other strong interests. There'd been a nasty series of abductions, rapes and murders of girls and young women over the last three years; so I enrolled us in Taekwon Do classes. I was surprised when Jim came as well, but as he said he should have some sort of sport, and the exercises were something he could continue in the gymnasium at the gas field. Society was changing, a little more ability to defend himself couldn't hurt, and he'd hate to have to rely on his daughter or son-in-law or a man who was older than he was to protect him. Jim and I were strong and fit, but no longer as young as we once were - we hoped to achieve competency, but no more. Joanne, on the other hand, was a tiger. Strong, tall, fit, flexible, she did well, that gave her positive feedback, she loved the sport, and she became extremely competitive and advanced rapidly.

Joanne's school had a policy of education in the arts and humanities as well as sciences and traditional academic subjects. As part of this, she told us, they were a visiting an art gallery the next afternoon. It was quite close to the school, so the entire class would gather and walk down there under supervision after lunch. Even the best-laid plans can go astray though. Joanne's menstrual cycle was normally very regular, but there's always some variation. She was due the next day, but as they gathered to walk to the gallery, she realised she was going to have to spend another five minutes at school. She explained the situation to the teacher, who gave permission for Joanne to catch up to them later.

About this stage my second-sight connection to Joanne cut in. I knew what she was doing, in fact, but I was very uneasy about things. I decided to listen to the voices, and drove towards the school, arranging things so I could continue past it and cruise towards the gallery. By the time I got there I was too late. All the action was over. Joanne had come out of the school about four hundred yards behind her group and was walking to catch up with them. She passed a parked van, caught motion out of the corner of her eye, her Taekwon Do training cut in, and she warded off a baton. The next moves weren't all strict style, but they were the result of some classes in self-defence she'd done as well. She stamped hard on her attacker's foot, then scraped deeply down his shin with her other foot. She kicked him in the groin - twice - then kicked his head as he crumpled to the ground. She was still standing there about ten seconds later when I drove up. Well, maybe I'd been too hard on myself - if the attack had been successful, I would probably have been just in time to rescue her. If she was inside the van I would have known it, whether she was conscious or not.

I used my cell phone to call the police emergency number, told them there'd been an attempted abduction of a girl, the location, and that they'd better either bring an ambulance or decide not to. Made no difference to me, but the attacker had hurried the would-be victim, and she had had neither the time nor the inclination to be careful with him. I was rather proud of that line when I caught it on TV news that evening. I then rang the school and informed them. The two of us were too few to do everything needed, and in any case I wasn't going to leave Joanne alone. I left it up to the school to get a message to their party at the gallery. Then I phoned Jim at home and let him know the score. Told him there was no need to hurry - I'd call him again when I knew how long we'd be here, or where we'd end up. Asked if he knew of a lawyer, just in case Joanne's interests or privacy or something needed protecting. He did - one who specialised in Native American cases, and he'd put the man on notice about the situation. I got a call direct from the lawyer a few minutes later. He'd found out where we'd be going after the on-the-scene investigation, and he'd meet us there In the meantime tell the police immediately that on legal advice we were reserving Joanne's surname for potential privacy reasons until we spoke to the lawyer at the police station. We'd give them full information on all other matters, but would not sign anything either until we'd consulted the lawyer.

Thus it was done. The police weren't pleased about the disruption to their procedure about Joanne's name, but they swallowed it. They wouldn't, they said, have expected any signed statements until we got to the station anyway. I quietly thought to myself that we'd made sure of that now. I saw some of where the lawyer was going on this, and I realised that anything signed might turn up in a civil damages case. "Oh, look! The nasty big schoolgirl nearly killed the poor little kidnapper, rapist and murderer. Let's award him five million dollars in damages for his pain and suffering". If nothing else there were lawyers who'd be prepared to approach that sort of thing on a contingent-fee basis, knowing that it was just extortion to get a settlement, rather than go to all the trouble of defending the case.

Things went relatively smoothly after that. Jim and the lawyer were waiting for us at the police station. The lawyer emphasised to the police that Joanne was a minor, and that nothing that could help to identify her could be released. As he said, they knew that, but he'd found they remembered better if they'd been reminded recently. We worded our statements carefully under the lawyer's advice, then signed them and went home.

Jim and I were proud of Joanne. She'd broken several bones in the man's foot, ruptured both his testicles, broken his jaw and cracked his skull. She was a good girl, and definitely one to be proud of.

We were not so happy with the school. This was a difficult situation, but eventually Jim wrote a carefully worded letter. It pointed out that they were responsible for pupils during school hours. They had allowed a situation to develop which placed his daughter in danger of assault, rape and murder. While he realised there were difficulties, nevertheless some simple procedures could have avoided the situation. One would have been to delay the start for the gallery - particularly as they started five minutes earlier than they were due to. Alternatively, they could have split the party. They had other adults (parents) in the party. Even if they did not trust their students unsupervised, they had delegated authority to the adults when they reached the gallery - they could have done so beforehand. He ended by saying that he sincerely hoped they could learn from their errors, and develop procedures that would protect students.

Chapter 11.

Life continued, and at what seemed an accelerated pace. The seasons turned. It was late autumn, which meant only six months to "the day of decision", as Jim insisted on calling it. Joanne threw herself into study, exercise, and as much sexual badinage and innuendo as she could get away with. Two could play at that game, at least, and I took great pleasure in startling her from time to time with graphic descriptions of what I'd be doing to which parts of her with what in six and a half months. Of course, there were still those four-weekly moments which were so enthusiastic, so innocent of deliberation, and so highly sexually charged. I was actually looking forward to them now though. Silly me. I knew it was coming, and when. It usually meant I got to see her beautiful body, without doing anything illegal. Some may think it's a very sick man who would think a thirteen and a half-year-old girl - barely a teenager in some terms - is beautiful. I'll point out that I thought she was beautiful when she was ten - but not in a sexual way. She was still beautiful, but it was in a sexual way now, as far as I was concerned. Just as well too, since I would be having sex with her on her fourteenth birthday.

Anyway, I knew enough to duck now if she started getting too close. I still didn't want any chance of even being accused of breaking the law, even though the letter of the law was supposed to take into account intent. It specifically used the term "for a sexual purpose" in describing the offence. I'd been studying those laws since I'd been caught unaware of fourteen being the age of consent.

We were fortunate, in a way, about the letter of the law. There were circumstances we could very easily have fallen into where Joanne's legal age of consent with respect to me would have been eighteen. That is, if I'd been in "a position of trust or authority" towards her, or she'd been "in a relationship of dependency" with me. However, the unique delegation of authority to Joanne herself which Jim had made had forestalled the first; and the fact that Joanne was paying (on Jim's behalf) rent and board, her school fees, buying clothing, and was still drawing an allowance from Jim forestalled the second.

In fact, there was another section, which worried me a little more. The wording ran "...who, for a sexual purpose, invites, counsels or incites a person under the age of fourteen years to touch..." That was the one which I thought others might be more likely to try to apply to our situation. It wouldn't be true, but it would be harder to disprove. I had realised there were inconsistencies and legal leeway which I couldn't resolve in the laws, and which would probably have been determined in court. I needed an expert, so had made an appointment and then consulted a lawyer the day before. He had laid facts out for me step by step, many of them things I knew, but putting them in new contexts. At last, he had summed up by pointing out that what we were undertaking had particular dangers beyond that of being found guilty of some offence. My reputation could be ruined by charges which could not be sustained, but which dragged out details of our personal lives and splashed them across the headlines. However, judges didn't like having unsustainable charges made in their courts. They didn't like the courts being used as bludgeons merely to ruin reputations, or for fishing expeditions in the mere hope of finding evidence of something or other. If charges were laid which related to the time before Joanne reached fourteen, and we could demonstrate that they were false or unprovable in advance of a trial, then a reputable lawyer wouldn't proceed with them. If the charges were brought anyway, then at a pre-hearing meeting we could present our evidence, say that we had consulted with the prosecution, the charges would not proceed to trial, and the prosecution would get their knuckles rapped. In short, his advice was that we should be ready to produce a medical certificate dated on or just before her birthday (which was on a Saturday), certifying that she was a virgin.

Then I broke the law. Inadvertently, certainly, but under the circumstances I don't think a plea for leniency would have been favourably received.

I was lounging in my armchair, and Joanne was teasing with her towel trick. She stepped back, tripped over my shoes, and started to fall backward towards a steel and glass coffee table. I lunged forward to try to save her, grabbed what I could (which was the two sides of the towel) and it popped open. I had a hold on her now, but she was still swinging backward in the towel. I was half standing by then, and swivelled her around by ninety degrees so she avoided the table. I couldn't fully support her, though, so I went to my knees with the weight.

Well, this wasn't real good. There she was, not quite 13½, stark naked, flat on her back with her legs apart, knees raised, and me kneeling between them, with my hands touching her breasts. However, at this stage I must have lost my presence of mind. I had been so frightened when I saw her head falling toward that table that I was still in something of a panic state. "Darling", I said, "are you all right?" I reached forward to caress her cheek, and she nodded, still shaken. "I was so frightened when I saw you falling towards that table. I love you. I need you. I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you". I leaned forward, shuffling my knees back slightly for counterbalance, lifted her head slightly with one hand and supported myself on that forearm as I kissed her. Bang! Instant reaction. She passionately returned my kiss. Her arms went round my neck and torso, pressing my body onto her breasts and belly. Simultaneously she locked her ankles behind my thighs, pressing my crotch into her groin. My other hand had come away from her breast, but she recaptured it, replaced it, and then hugged me again, capturing it between my shirt and her breast.

Well, this would never do. Terms like "invites... or incites a person under the age of fourteen years to touch" ran through my mind. As for "for a sexual purpose", how would the words "I love you. I need you" fit? Or even the caressing and kissing while she was naked - that sounded a lot like incitement. Probably was, although not deliberate. I also remembered that Joanne was due to ovulate tomorrow. Evidently she already had fairly high levels of hormones. When her hero had saved her, then kissed her, it had obviously switched her on; but I couldn't just reject my little sex kitten out-of-hand. I did love her, and need her - just after it was legal. I caressed and kissed her gently, trying to slowly release the intensity. This session was just going to have to be SECRET. Well, I could defuse things over a period of about ten minutes, but then she'd latch back on spasmodically, and I'd have it all to do over again. Her body and her emotions avidly wanted to make love. So did I, but I knew we couldn't allow ourselves. Eventually, after about two hours, we got to the stage where I was lying on my side, propped up on one elbow, with her head cradled on my lower arm, stroking her cheek and shoulder with the other. I'll tell you, two hours with an erection you don't dare do anything with is a long time, and I don't believe my underpants were ever the same again.

She was still lying naked in my arms, and she still at least wanted me caressing more than her cheek and shoulder. However, I could talk. She positively knew she wasn't going to want to hear what I was going to say. However, I managed to convey the message. Some of it was repetition and reassurance - that I did love her and need her, that I did want to spend my life loving her, that I had in fact promised to do so. Some of it was repetition of the potential problems we faced, emphasised by the new knowledge of the need to be able to prove her virginity at the crucial date.

Then I walked her, still naked, to her bed. Told her there was only one thing that could do more damage if people found out about this day, so we'd allow ourselves just a little, then forget about it after tonight. At some stage she'd got my shirt open and pulled out. I hugged her gently - I wanted something from this night, and feeling her breasts and body against my chest and her arms around my back was as much as I dared allow us. You'll realise I was still not being entirely rational, and in fact those of you who are rational will realise that's the point where I broke the law. However, I loved her and wanted to be close to her, and what I'd done and not done that night was more difficult than was anything else in my life. I kissed her and cuddled her - something, I told her, that wouldn't be happening again while she was naked before her birthday, because we couldn't risk not being able to resist our attraction, or risk being seen. Then I dressed her in her night-gown, tucked her into bed, and kissed her forehead. She needed cherishing at the moment, and it would all have to return to normal in the morning.

Then I went and killed three quarters of a bottle of Laphroaig. Then I went to sleep.

Chapter 12.

The first thing we needed to do was to make sure that we could show that Joanne was a virgin. With some virgins, it can't be proven. The hymen simply doesn't grow fully, or has been broken by accident. This could be tricky - some doctors would see it as their duty to report even our intent to the authorities. However, the lawyer scheduled an appointment with an eminent and reputable gynaecologist on a consultancy basis. Without going into details, the brief was to determine if her virginity could be proved, then if so, to schedule a panel with two other eminent experts as well to repeat the process and report the results on the Friday before her birthday. We were fortunate: in Joanne's case, the evidence was clear.

I had two other divisional sales meetings in Texas between now and "der Tag". I had been going to assure Joanne that I would not sleep with Katrina, but she was truly an extraordinary girl. She pre-empted me, again telling me that I must continue to make love to Katrina. "When I'm being sensible", she said, "I know that I can't make love to you yet. Exposing you to those risks would not be a true act of love - just a selfish immature girl wanting her own way regardless of consequences. I've told you before that I'm glad Katrina can do that for you while I can't. Withdrawing what I said before just because I appreciate even more now how nice it will be would be selfish and unloving. Since she made you happy for so long I'm glad for her sake that you can make her happy too."

Extraordinary girl: loving, generous and unselfish. I told her so, and she agreed with me, and told me to make sure I remembered it. Then she told me that to an extent it was more of her exposure to her father's culture. Traditionally marriages there had tended to be more inclusive. While it wasn't common now, traditionally, successful men who could afford to do so might have more than one wife. This was particularly so with sisters or women who were good friends and even more so if one of them was widowed. They also, she said, had a tradition of women friends acting as surrogates for wives during times when they couldn't have sex with their husbands, such as in late pregnancy, after childbirth, during illness, or when they were otherwise prevented from servicing their man. And, she said, looking at me quite pointedly, she was definitely otherwise prevented, and for a long time, so it might even be a wise move for her to make sure her man was provided for somehow by someone she could trust.

So I went to Texas, and I did my business: meetings, conferences, reports, seminars. In the evenings, I phoned Joanne, and then Katrina and I renewed our relationship. She was not being "wholly faithful" to me: that would have been ridiculous. However, she hadn't settled into any long-term relationships. She had tried lesbian relationships again, but found the associated "lesbian scene" distasteful. There were too many of the same sort of woman she had been involved with before. She felt the "scene" in a big city made this almost inevitable, the desirable companions would be hard to find and already in stable relationships, and she wasn't prepared to seduce some other girl, as had been done to her. She had also tried other heterosexual relationships, and found those somewhat more satisfying, but she felt there was still an element of "big city selfishness" in them. Ultimately, she found her career combined with expectation of my next visit and memory of my last more satisfying than any other relationship so far. Very flattering.

She asked about Joanne, and I brought her up-to-date. I had always told her, and when our relationship had developed into more than just a boarder and a friend Joanne had insisted I continue to do so. I had always told her something of Katrina, and she had read between the lines. She had come to regard Katrina as a friend - perhaps a pen friend, and in fact they corresponded by e-mail. I suspected there were things each had told the other that I had never heard about. However, she hadn't got the details of that recent frantic painful night from Joanne yet.

I realised something odd then. Joanne was developing into almost exactly the same build as Katrina: tall, slender, strong but with long muscles rather than bulky ones (like me, in fact), wide-shoulders, narrow waist, medium hips, breasts shapely but not over-developed. Katrina's sport of choice was horse riding, and during the week she did low-impact aerobics. Joanne did swimming, light weights, a little running or Nordic track depending on the weather, and Taekwon Do. Odd. I noticed it when Katrina was walking back naked from the bathroom, silhouetted against the light, and I was so surprised that I just said, "Stop! Let me look at you!" I squinted my eyes, then had her turn around. Yes! "That's odd", I said. Radically different coloration, of course. Katrina fair-skinned, green eyes, white-blond hair, pubic hair which was either almost invisible or entirely shaved, depending on her latest mood. Joanne with red-bronze-gold complexion, dark eyes with gold flecks, dark hair - almost glossy black in some lights, full black bush of pubic hair and developing underarm hair which looked great on her skin. I couldn't imagine wanting her to shave her armpits, although I did sometimes miss the clear full-frontal view of her slit that there had been when she was younger. Even the faces were somewhat similar in that both had firm chins and high cheekbones, although Joanne's heritage gave her a more pronounced nose. I stood up and took Katrina to stand in front of a full-length mirror, then told her what I'd noticed. It gave her another feel for what Joanne was like. Joanne was not yet full grown, but close to it. I believed that when she was Katrina and she would probably be able to comfortably wear the same clothes. They wouldn't, of course - the colours would be wrong, but the fit would be right. Although, I thought, perhaps not all colours - I could picture a deep blue velvet - an evening sky colour - that would look remarkable on both of them.

Then Katrina took me back to bed. "Use your imagination", she said. "You can't have Joanne yet, but I'd probably feel a lot like her. Pretend. Fantasise. Don't fuck Katrina - fuck Joanne instead. Close your eyes, and work by touch. No, I'll pull the drapes and turn the lights out". Well, that was the hottest sex we'd ever had, and on the second round, the longest lasting. I couldn't count how many orgasms she had, and she only seemed to like it more when I lost track and started calling her Joanne. Eventually, after I'd come for the second time, I saw the nightstand clock. I'd been fucking her almost continuously for over three hours. She was almost delirious. "Oh, darling" she said, "is that what my little sister has in store for her? That was incredible. It can only be better when you have the real thing." "Well", I told her, "half the time I was lost - I didn't know you weren't Joanne. You were right about pretending - and you were right about incredible". She said "Well, darling - half the time I thought maybe I was Joanne - or at least I didn't know who I was. Just hold me now, and pretend I'm Joanne again, and let me go to sleep in your arms."

We were sore the next morning. Both of us were walking bow-legged. We'd certainly had three-hour sessions before, but never non-stop constant motion. Katrina had been having almost constant orgasms, so we weren't short of lubricant, but it can only carry you so far in the face of three hours of friction. Still, we agreed it was worth it.

Back home again, and a passionate if restrained re-union with Joanne. Then we settled down to talk. Caught up with what had been happening at school. She asked about business in Texas. Then she asked how Katrina was. Again standard practice - they each liked the other to get caught up. "How was the sex?" she asked. "Very good, thank you, dear", I replied. After all, only fair - the sex was with her permission. "What about Thursday night?" she asked. "Did you and my big sister have a particularly good session last night?"

Dumbfounded! I asked if they'd been in contact. Apparently not. But Joanne had a particularly long and involving erotic dream that night about having sex with me - the sex we had not been able to have earlier. Only she wasn't always Joanne, sometimes she was Katrina. She'd tossed the bedclothes off, but when she'd woken up the bottom sheet was still soaked in sweat – or whatever

Well, this was - this was - I didn't know what to think. My wild guess was that the connection between Joanne and I had reached out to encompass Katrina-acting-for-Joanne as well, and connected them both. Us all. Maybe. Whatever. I thought a bit more. This WAS important. "Joanne", I said, "I'm going to almost break a rule. Come with me." I took her to stand in front of a full-length mirror in her room. "Now", I said, "I think I need to explain something important to you. This is not, I emphasise, for sexual purposes, but the explaining would be easier if you took your clothes off." Well, her response was twofold. She said "Can't resist, can you, Rod? Just have to see all of me - and often?" I didn't dignify that with a response - I didn't have time. She was stripping as she spoke. That took all of about thirty seconds - she was always eager to undress in front of me. Then I explained to her what I'd noticed about her and Katrina. I asked her if she'd mind if Katrina saw some shots of her, some of them as she was now. In fairness, I pointed out what I'd told her before - that Katrina was quite as happy to look at beautiful young women as I was. She said she didn't mind how many people admired her, just provided they didn't touch her uninvited - which she was sure her big sister wouldn't do. In fact, she said, she thought her sister should know what she looked like. That assumption of relationship was one of the most startling things to me. They'd both just done it, and both meant it as a relationship - not as a feminist or as a lesbian sisterhood.

I grabbed my digital camera and took some photos, then asked her to get dressed again. She had been wearing her school uniform, and took her own sweet time about choosing alternative underwear, then about two minutes more choosing between a dress, or a blouse with slacks or a skirt, and only then started getting dressed, but eventually she was dressed. I took another few shots of her that way, then told her to get into her hostess outfit, and call me when she was ready. She took about a minute, called me, and she was naked again. "I said call me when you were ready", I told her. "Oh, I'm as ready as I'll ever be short of my birthday or last night", she said, giggling. Just teasing and using the opportunity I'd given her to flaunt herself. "Please", I said, "just do it. My nerves can't stand too much of this, and the longer it goes on the more chance of being caught". OK, she called again in about five minutes. She was in the glamorous outfit she used to act as my hostess at formal and official functions - well mostly in it - I noted she needed a replacement. She had been doing some physical maturing, and the hem was a bit high as well. We left the zip not quite up at the back while I took a few more shots. I had some recent ones of her in school uniform already, and I sure wasn't going to give her the opportunity to undress again two more times.

I thought about things, then I told Joanne I thought she should communicate directly with Katrina, tell her about her experience, and ask if she'd like to see some photos of her. I didn't want to see what she sent, but I'd also send Katrina a message, since I knew both ends of the story, and I wanted Joanne to check that before it went. I also told her I had some photos in roughly the same styles taken of Katrina about two years ago - work clothes, dressed up, casual, and extremely undressed - and she should ask if Katrina minded if she, Joanne, saw them. I wanted this directly between them - I didn't want any communications from me attached to photos of Joanne naked. The digital camera could have been set up on a tripod and used with an exposure timer, and in fact Joanne could demonstrate that she knew how to do that.

Chapter 13.

I thought about that hostess dress. We needed a replacement, and although it isn't widely appreciated, some of the best dresses in North America are made in Texas. There's money there to pay for them, girls who'll do them justice, and they'll pay for quality, but most won't overpay. Joanne and Katrina had exchanged measurements, and my eye had been correct - they were pretty much the same size. I decided to jump in. I sent an e-mail to Katrina, then followed it up with a phone-call. Text messages are often better, but sometimes you need the nuances that come through a conversation. I described the colour I had in mind - deep evening sky rather than midnight blue, velvet, and asked her to arrange for some sample swatches to be sent to me from a dressmaker or shop she trusted. When I picked the colour, I wanted her to place an order for two dresses in her own size - one for her and one for Joanne. I'd arrange payment and delivery. If necessary - and I was no longer sure it was - I'd have a local dressmaker alter Joanne's dress. Joanne knew I was arranging a new dress - she just didn't know the details.

In fact, I was grandstanding on this one - I hoped. I had a formal occasion scheduled for five weeks off, and I hoped to smash their eyes out. I also thought the "sisters" should meet. When Katrina messaged me to say when the dresses would be ready, I asked if she'd like to bring them up and meet Joanne. I knew she had accumulated leave - she almost never took vacations. I leaned on her hard, and she eventually agreed to come up for two weeks. I'd already sounded out Cam - I wanted her to see as much as reasonably possible without being rushed, and it wouldn't hurt her at all professionally to spend a little time with the company's largest stockholder. I took advantage of a long-standing invitation, which had included Joanne as well for some time, and I shoehorned Katrina onto the end. We'd visited before, but never stayed over. Well, Gemma, Cam's wife, took the call, but she evidently suspected more than I hoped anyone knew about my relationships with Joanne and Katrina. She pussy-footed around sleeping arrangements, and was relieved when I assured her separate bedrooms were essential, unless she needed to fit Katrina and Joanne in together. I also invited them to a grand ball we (the company) would have the evening before. They would be as welcome as guests as I had been, I assured her, also as welcome to stay overnight, and I thought they would find it all entertaining.

Now this was going to be grandstanding, I hasten to add, and it was going to somewhat flagrantly advertise that I had two women in my life - one of them scarcely 13½. However, it was actually done on lawyer's instructions. If I acted as if I had nothing to hide about Joanne, while parading a mistress twice her age, we could defuse some things. We shouldn't do it often, but being able to point to an instance at least one time could be helpful. So - Katrina arrived. I'd advised Joanne that we'd be having houseguests (rather than in the bunkhouse) for the ball, a couple of whom would be Cam and Gemma. She'd got the house just right with the help of the housekeepers - downstairs immaculate, upstairs comfortable. I told her I was going to collect a guest from the airport, and she should look for Jim to pick her up from school this afternoon; then I picked up Katrina. Jim had picked Joanne up and taken her home. I'd been really careful about the timing - this was Joanne's home, would be for a long time if I didn't get imprisoned, and I didn't want it looking like anyone was moving in on her. No sex this trip - just get-to-know-you for the girls. When I was about a mile from home, I called and asked Joanne if she could meet our guest and I at the front door - formal dress not necessary. She did, she took one look at Katrina, and fell on her neck, mumbling "Oh my God sister. I'll kill him. He never said. No, I won't kill him, I'll let him live - just - for a thousand years." When she'd finished, I asked "Don't I get a kiss too?" Instead of a kiss, I got "the look", You men know "the look", don't you? Like "if I could only muster enough enthusiasm to like you just a little more, then I'd be prepared to raise my foot and scrape you off my soul/sole".

However, when she saw the matched dresses she began to get intrigued. I'd arranged for Jim and me to get silk evening suits made - both of exactly the same shade. I pointed out that that made the girls look sleek, slender and cuddly all at once; while we looked slippery at best, and slimy in ordinary light. Actually, with his red-brown complexion, it made Jim look Satanic, while I looked like a vampire with my hair on a slow burn. It turned out the dress would be fine for now. The hem was a shade long, but not much. I'd asked for a little extra room for lengthening to be built in there. I suspected Joanne would lose a little padding in the next year, while her breasts finished developing. Balanced off, she might be able to wear this dress for a decade.

Katrina took a day of non-vacation to come in and see the office, and catch up on e-mail. Jaws dropped. I called a quick staff meeting to introduce her, and explain that she was a lawyer and finance specialist from head office who was just dropping in, taking a day out from vacation. I also explained I'd worked with her there and in China. Did my reputation no harm, I can tell you. I saw some appraising eyes shift from me to her and back, and some vigorous conclusion-jumping going on about my continuing unmarried state. It had got to the stage where some of them thought I was gay, and having an affair with Jim. They'd obviously never seen the traffic into that downstairs apartment - except possibly for one young lady from Human Resources who may have been part of it. In any case Katrina killed that line of thought stone dead.

We had the rehearsal for the grand ball that evening, and went through the choreography. This was my big chance. Complete professional direction: I'd told them my intent and the parameters, then left them to get on with it. It wasn't quite what I'd envisaged; it was even better. Jim was to be grand-crier, or announcer. He'd greet the guests, but restrain them behind velvet cords until the grand moment arrived. Then he'd go to the opposite end of the ballroom, announce us. I and my bitch kitties would proceed down the centre aisle, one black jet and red-gold, one platinum and rose quartz, one each hand, my deep red hair flickering and flaring under professional lighting, all in deep evening blue, followed by Jim bearing a flambeaux. Professional musicians too, of course, but we'd had the drummer hire a kettledrum just for the procession. We'd reach the end, bow, I'd welcome the guests. When they'd revived the faint and weak, and carried out the dead, on with the party. Jim was to join us as our fourth member.

Worked, too. Overplayed all to blazes, of course, but that was the intent. I caught a glimpse of Cam and Gemma during our entrance - he was deliberately looking unimpressed, but she was shaking uncontrollably and had a handkerchief pressed to her mouth. I'd had the directors pay the standard honorarium to the social reporters, and we got coverage like you wouldn't believe in the social pages. It even spilled into the news and business pages of the local papers. Social affair of the century, they billed it - for that week.

Chapter 14.

Well, that was about it. We had a good time together, then went up to the lodge and spent time in "the Great North Woods". It wasn't really hunting season, although it was still trapping season. That is, the animals were thin and hungry after a long cold winter, but they still had their thick winter coats. Cam often ran a trap-line, but he did it with humane traps - he'd leave lots of food in the cage, and release the trapped animals each morning. As he said, if the world collapsed he'd know what to do, and in the meantime he had fun. He'd often get the same captives every morning - they loved it. So did Katrina and Joanne. We also went camera hunting - armed with our great telephoto lenses, we'd stalk the woods, searching for its denizens. Of course, they were a bit thin on the ground - in fact more than a bit thin overall. However, we enjoyed it tremendously, and Gemma managed to extract a promise from Katrina to come back later, in autumn when everything would be fat and healthy. Katrina wasn't averse to a venison barbecue or pot roast, and she'd gone out and got the raw materials on a fairly regular basis, but only in Texas and New Mexico. She usually used a .270, but she owned a 30/06 as well, and that would serve with the right bullets: moose and bear were something she'd look forward to.

Cam and Gemma were the only other people I'd ever heard who called Kat "Kitty". When she was presenting a report to the Board later that year, and he questioned her, she automatically called him "Cam" and he responded to her as "Kitty". It opened some eyes, I believe. Particularly when she later had to correct some people who took liberties, and say she only let very close friends call her that. They all knew that she'd got where she was on ability, not patronage. Gave people some pause for thought.

Anyway, here we were at almost three months to the day. We were determined that Joanne wasn't going to get pregnant immediately, and that really meant the pill. That has its problems, but not as much so as pregnancy. She went to a doctor, who basically exercised her own ego and prejudices by refusing to prescribe it, although by law she was required to do so. Then she went to a Family Planning clinic, repeated the same facts ("I'll be turning fourteen in three months, I WILL become sexually active then, and I want to have been on the pill long enough at that time to be sure the contraceptive will work") and got full co-operation.

That had one side effect I should have anticipated, but hadn't. As Joanne's system settled to the use of the contraceptive, those revealing accidents or heart-stopping cuddles with her bare bottom planted firmly in my lap - stopped. Of course, that's how that pill worked - it suppressed ovulation. Typical - just when I'd be in a position to take advantage of the situation, the situation went away.

One more divisional meeting in Texas before the day. Joanne gave me instructions to "think good thoughts", and I told her I couldn't do that all the time. "In fact", I told her, "when I think I'm making love to you, I almost can't stop. It seems, from the limited testing I've done, that I go on for hours - and one can't do that without a certain amount of physical damage. Think sandpaper. Think no repeats for a week. You'll just have to wait for Thursday again, then we'll see if Katrina and I can manage a repeat performance, and I'll be home on Friday night - probably bowlegged. We are going to have to approach your birthday with a certain amount of caution, though. I don't want to ruin you on the first day." Well, she wasn't too dissatisfied with that - took it as a compliment, for the most part.

That's the way it worked out. Katrina and I used the first nights for ourselves, but the last night big sister played Joanne again, and it worked - even more so than before. I could actually feel both of them inside my mind, feel their minds mingling, and mine threading through them. Weird. But mostly in the background - foreground was pure sexual lust. I was fucking Joanne, just as I'd wanted to for so long. Only difference was, this time I could get deep inside her mind as well. Like I said - weird. I knew she was happy to get me in her - whatever. And Katrina was deliriously happy again too. After all, we figured out the following morning, she was having three people's orgasms at once.

One Saturday about a month later, it suddenly occurred to me that there was one thing I hadn't talked to Joanne about, that she really ought to know. She was in the kitchenette. She'd just mixed up a jug of lime juice and ice water for us, and poured herself a glass. I came in and sat down on a stool, then said "Jo, I just realised there's something I haven't mentioned to you, and it is the sort of thing a potential bride should hear about before her marriage - or whatever it is we'll call your birthday. Bridal perhaps. Anyway, I just remembered that I haven't told you about my twenty or thirty children." She spun round; the glass hit the edge of the table, then shattered on the floor. "Don't do that", I said, "They're expensive, and finding matching replacements isn't easy." She gave me "the look" again - she was getting good at it - practice, I guess. "Twenty or thirty!" she said. "Children?" she said. "Mmm", I said, "or forty or fifty". I got a much more pointed variation of "the look", but I decided I'd count it - two in one minute - we were on a roll here. "I'm waiting", she said. "Well, I don't know", I said. "I was never introduced to their mothers, so how could I keep count?" I got the jug away from her in time, so I got "the look" again - three! "Anyway, some of them were probably in the country, and interstate. The first numbers were just for Sydney." Could you count variations in intensity? I decided I'd do it - four!

She picked up a soup ladle. "You will explain", she told me. "Yes, of course", I said. This was picking up a bit of intensity, but at this stage I was following a principle - women don't beat up on their men. Or vise versa, come to that. Well, it was darned certain I wouldn't beat up on her anyway - I'd made sure of that myself. She'd get her explanation when she got her temper back - I'd spoken to her about it in the first place, after all. We waited. After a while I asked "Temper under control now?" She tossed the ladle on the table and said "Almost". So I explained to her about the sperm donations. She was intrigued more than anything else. I explained that there was a policy of a maximum of twenty offspring per donor for the metropolitan area, but that might get exceeded a little - they were always short of good donors, strangely enough. However, there could be more offspring in country areas, which would take me to about thirty for the state, and because of shortages they'd also exchange sperm with other states. They'd told me at one stage that I'd reached my "quota" in Sydney, but they were shipping me interstate, and they didn't stop me coming (ahem) for about two years after that.

She was also intrigued about the details, but as I explained they weren't all that exciting. I'd come in (well, enter) and register at the desk They almost always seemed to have a fresh-cheeked good-looking laughing pretty young girl on duty there - deliberately, I'm sure. Then I'd be issued with a specimen jar and a small jar of something clear and oily - I suspected glycerine. I'd be escorted to a room with a medical examination table, a chair, a sink, and a collection of exceedingly seedy-looking Playboy and Penthouse magazines. And left to get on with it. Or get off. Or whatever. I generally couldn't bother using the magazines - once I'd tried and all the interesting pages seemed to be stuck together. Ugh. So I'd just use my imagination and picture the pretty young receptionist coming in to give me a hand - literally - and I'd fill the jar soon enough. Wash off, then I'd leave the specimen jar on a tray, leave, and collect my pay (yes!) on the way out.

So that was that. But it did raise another question. What were we doing on her fourteenth birthday? Other than fucking our brains out, that is? We were doing a bit more than that. We were, in fact, initiating a lifetime commitment. At least we both sincerely hoped so. It wasn't a legal marriage - that would come no less than two years later. But as far as we were concerned that day would be our formal day of mutual commitment. We ought to have a significant name for it. We gave it a day, thought about it and researched it, talked and read, but eventually I settled it by proclamation. When we got legally married, that would be our marriage. Her fourteenth birthday would be our wedding. You can be wed to many things - a career, an art, a home, a person. Being wed is being personally committed for life. On that day, Joanne and I would be wed. She cried when I told her that - then took a long time making sure I'd been properly kissed. Then did it all again to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Sometimes you get it right.

Well, this was all building up to more of a production than we'd imagined. Joanne had been thinking in terms of crawling into bed with me at midnight. I'd wanted both of us to have a good night's sleep, breakfast and a shower before we started on a heavy day. But this looked like building up into a fairly portentous day. Ultimately we decided that with her heritage and mine, we'd do a dawn service. Nothing over the top, but we'd make mutual vows in a natural setting as the sun rose.

Chapter 15.

Jim couldn't be there. We hadn't told him again how much weight we were placing on this day - it would have been difficult if not impossible for him to change his work schedule anyway. He'd assured himself no-one had changed their minds, given us his blessing, given his "little girl" (who stood up to the top of his ear) her last "little girl" birthday party on Thursday, then caught the company plane as usual back to the field on Friday morning.

Joanne took the afternoon off school on Friday, and kept an uncomfortable appointment with three eminent gynaecologists. She came away with two copies of a signed certificate stating that this date, this time, they'd examined her, and she was a virgin - hymen intact. Later I did a fancy heading strip titled " Certificate of Virginity ", and we framed our copy and hung it in our room.

We lodged the other copy with the lawyer. We'd also had him draw up legal documents which we signed that afternoon - wills, and statements of intent. We stated that as far as we were concerned we were being wed on Joanne's fourteenth birthday. We would then be living as man and wife, and although we were as yet forbidden the right of legal marriage, we were establishing a common-law relationship that we expected to stand in its stead until we could marry under the law. I also formally deeded her with a certificate of deposit for ten thousand dollars. We did this through the lawyer so there'd be no appearance of prostitution. The deed stated that, while Joanne had her own money, this endowment was a free gift - a dowry to ensure the establishment of her financial independence. In other words, we were pussyfooting around any legal "position of dependence" while she was between fourteen and marriage, just to play it safe.

Then we drove up to stay with Cam and Gemma overnight. We didn't really have a suitable place for the dawn service in town, so we were using an east-facing ridge there. We hadn't really gone into details - just said Joanne wanted to do something special about meeting sunrise for her fourteenth birthday.

Up very early. Dressed. Joanne wore a fringed and beaded doeskin dress, and I wore a kilt in Johnston tartan with a white linen shirt. Hiked up the ridge. I set up two video cameras to catch what was done. Damned cold, even near mid-summer.

I'd given this service, simple as it was to be, a lot of thought, and what we were doing would fulfil the basic requirements of a historic wedding. People back then understood the distinctions Joanne and I were making. People were wed when they committed to each other; they were publicly wed when they said so in front of witnesses; they were married when authorities agreed they were married.

Order of Service.

Joanne and I were seated side-by-side, cross-legged, holding hands. A lot of basic watching the sun rise while we meditated, until it was fully risen, then I stood and offered her my hand to help her rise. Turn to face each other.

Rodney:

Ï, Rodney Nigel Johnston, on this new day, and before Mankind and Divinity, declare my love for Joanne Ravenwing. I will love her and uphold her and cherish her always.

Joanne:

Ï, Joanne Ravenwing, on this new day, and before Mankind and Divinity, declare my love for Rodney Nigel Johnston. I will love him and support him and cherish him always.

Both:

We pledge our love for each other, and thus do we vow before Mankind and Divinity that this day are we two wed for all time.

Pause.

So mote it be.

 

Then we exchanged rings. We'd agreed she couldn't wear a wedding ring until after the official marriage. Nor could I, for obvious reasons. However, what I'd done was buy a complete matched set of three rings for her - wedding, engagement, and eternity. We'd got some looks at the jewellery store, but they'd evidently decided that whatever I was doing it wasn't petty seduction: we were well over the two thousand-dollar mark here. She'd wear the eternity ring for now, as if it were just a dress ring or even a teenager's friendship ring. Seemed appropriate. We were building our own personal symbolism. If necessary (say at school, where personal jewellery was forbidden) she'd wear it on a thong round her neck. At the same time, we bought rings for me. One was a "plain gold band", matched to hers, to be held in reserve for the official marriage. Another was the ring she gave me now: a black jet signet ring, in symbolism of her hair and her Raven name, signet of her ownership of my heart and soul (my idea), with an inset diamond which signified this morning, the new dawn, a new life for me. I was also prepared to pay for my rings, although I'd want a token contribution from her (symbolism again). However, it turned out she'd been saving seriously over the years: she did it on her own.

That was it. All over. Joanne and I were crying. We were wed now; we had a lifetime to live together. I took a few minutes kissing her, she rather cheekily (ahem) checked out the stories about what Scotsmen wear under their kilts, and then we walked down the ridge, trailing cameras, to the lodge.

Raised eyebrows at our varied traditional dress. Gemma gave the shiny new rings an immediate glance, too, and I don't think for a moment she underestimated the value of the one Joanne was wearing. Probably guessed more than they'd been told, again. They were good friends, and provided we were discreet so would they be. However, if I ever did anything to damage the reputation of the company I knew Cam would hang me out to dry. Couldn't help it - I was doing what I had to do.

Our wedding breakfast was a real breakfast - bacon, sausages and eggs, hot bread rolls with real butter and blackberry jam, pancakes and maple syrup, orange juice, real coffee. And a couple of muffins with birthday candles stuck in them. Couldn't be better. Then we drove back home.

I did the traditional carrying over the threshold, and I'll tell you - a tall young woman of fourteen years who's been swimming and working-out for years, and is an active competitor in Taekwon Do, needs a fit, strong groom for that - let alone the rest of the day. No ethereal waif, my Joanne, slender though she may be. I loved the sound of that - "my Joanne". Called her that ever afterwards.

Well, I could go into a great deal of detail that I enjoyed immensely about the rest of our wedding day, but it really isn't anyone else's business. Suffice it to say that we took things gently and often, rather than the frantic frenzy we'd all enjoyed while Katrina was acting as stand-in. And I started out making love to her fingertips, and her palms, and her wrists, and worked up and out from there. And she tasted great. And still does, come to that. At some stage we got rid of that pesky hymen, and we didn't miss it at all.

We made up composite tapes from the video cameras, including a prelude I made about how and why we wed, and why it was a wedding and not yet a marriage. Did some video editing on a personal computer, and pulled our wedding photos off the videotape. We sent a tape labelled "The Wedding of Joanne Ravenwing and Rodney Johnston" to Katrina, and left one downstairs for Jim to find when he came home. We'd played a bit fast-and-loose with the wording when we'd said "before Mankind", but the tapes were our way of fulfilling it. Others would get copies in the future too - but not the near future.

Oh, I'd printed those Orders of Service up on a high-quality parchment style of paper. When we'd finished the service, we'd put them in a plastic envelope to bring home, and framed and hung them as well.

Chapter 16.

Well, that was only the beginning, of course. We weren't frantically hiding our domestic arrangements, but we were being pretty careful not to flaunt them either. Front-page headlines about "Businessman's fourteen-year-old mistress" wouldn't help matters any way we could see, even though what we were doing was legal.

One thing I did feel necessary though was to stop payment for Joanna's room and board. That was all right when she was a boarder, and it was right for Jim's rent. However, the company provided the mansion for the manager and his family, under certain conditions, and I bought my own food. Joanne was now my family, and mistress of the household. Well, in fact, she'd been "the little woman" for several years before she became family. There was a small danger of exposure in stopping that regular payment while Jim's was still maintained, but right was right. I thought I could get it past an auditor if questions were asked, and that wasn't too likely - the "Manager's Residence and Official Functions" account had a distinctly slushy feel to it.

Joanne and I fully enjoyed sleeping together - it was a joy to fall asleep with her in my arms, and wake with her beside me. We also definitely enjoyed the sex we'd denied ourselves for so long. We were a little surprised about its nature - contrary to prior indications; it was generally slow gentle loving rather than hot physical sex. We'd both given up on wearing night-clothes - for summer at least. She was physically and mentally mature - certainly for her the legal age of fourteen was the right age. I loved to admire and caress her body, and would do so for sheer non-sexual pleasure for half an hour at a time (like having a big sleek pet cat). In this mood, I was aware of her sexuality, but not intent on it.

Jim came home the next time, assured himself that all was well, and things continued more or less as normal for him. For him, his little girl was still sleeping upstairs, and doing most of the same things. The only difference was that she was no longer sleeping alone, and she and I would cuddle longer and closer than we used to.

Joanne had a brief mid-summer break from school, then threw herself back into the next semester. She had started college-level Biology, and was at senior high-school level in all her other subjects. At home she studied intently, determined to fulfil her potential and not to allow our wedded bliss to affect anything badly. She also threw herself into swimming, exercise, and particularly Taekwon Do. Her intensity there was becoming awesome. I myself had said she was a tiger when she started Taekwon Do, and one of the senior male competitors had jocularly called her "Tiger" as a nickname. Now it was no longer a joke. People who trained with her and people who competed against her had begun using the term "The Tigress".

I'd been right about her body. She'd carried a little padding from childhood - not really "puppy fat", but just a rounding over the muscles, plus possibly a little extra in the breasts from the pill. That slight excess largely disappeared with her intense training, and she put on some muscle mass. She also finished growing, putting on perhaps half an inch in height, and I suspected the same around the bust to counterbalance her lost padding. She was exactly 5'8½" now - 174cm. Her "hostess dress" was a perfect fit. Still a feminine shape - still a covering over the muscles - not hard masculine musculature. However, you could see the play of her muscles clearly as she moved, prowling. Awesome.

That gave me an idea. Until then, I had never thought about the fact that Joanne's coloration - dark almost-black hair and red-bronze-gold skin - fell within the range of tiger coloration. I phoned around fabric shops and firms, found a few who recognised what I wanted, and checked them out. I found a sleek, thick furry velvet fabric in a tiger skin pattern - almost an exact match for her colouring. As a bonus, there was a remnant of light silky summer-weight fabric as well in that pattern. I had a lap rug made up, and two loose lightly lined jackets with tuck-in hoods, using black sleeves to fill out the summer-weight remnant. I also got one of those photo-editing programs that morphs one picture into another, and did up some posters and T-shirts that showed her changing to a tigress. Now she was "The Tigress" in truth. Of course, it would have been improper to wear that on the Dojang floor; but she'd wear it in, change, and then use her tiger skin as part of any pre-match focussing.

It was odd. I'd thought of her in terms of cats and cat-like creatures a lot. A playful kitten, sexy minx, sleek little sex kitten, bitch kitty, and more recently my big sleek pet cat, stretching and purring as I stroked her. All of these metamorphosed with absolute intensity into "The Tigress".

In training, I could never match what she was becoming, nor would I want to. That degree of speed and intensity is only for the young - we more mature specimens attain success by substituting experience and guile, timing and a selective memory. However, she was setting an example I could learn from, and I could also become something she could not - stronger and possibly with more endurance. I began heavier training. I did flexibility work and fast wind sprints every weekday morning. In fact, the start of my flexibility work was Tai Chi. You know: that super slow kind of dance you see old Chinese people doing in parks in the morning? Well, Tai Chi is actually a martial art - one of the schools of Kung Fu has "tai chi" as part of its name. It's just that the moves are immensely slowed, so people can concentrate on style, control and flexibility. It doesn't have to be slow when they don't want it to be. A number of would-be muggers have been surprised stone cold dead by seventy year-old Tai Chi exponents who took the brakes off. A lot greater number than you'd know, I suspect, since Chinese tend to be a bit pragmatic about these things. If it had been a similarly skilled Chinese girl that Joanne's mugger had attacked, the police would quite possibly have got the report about a dead body from a passer-by. Anyway, I'd start with Tai Chi, which was also teaching my muscles good things for Taekwon Do, then I'd move onto stretches, then the sprints, and warm down with more Tai Chi. After a while, Joanne began to join me for the morning workouts - only took about 25 minutes.

In the evenings I'd go through basic Taekwon Do exercises as a warm-up, then alternate heavy weights on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with 5km runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a distance which I worked up to a half-marathon on Saturday or Sunday. Still swam in the evenings, but it was more in the nature of a warm-down - I'd try to concentrate on maintaining good style in the face of bodily exhaustion. On Wednesday evening we attended the Dojang, so I left the weight work until we got home, and skipped the swimming. I put on muscle mass too, and in my case it was hard masculine musculature. However, the medium and long-distance running trimmed down any excess muscle I built up, and at the age of 41 I was as strong as and possibly fitter than I'd ever been before. Although I didn't have the on-tap explosive speed I'd had when I was younger, I might just have been more durable and flexible - I was putting a lot of careful effort into stretching and flexibility to avoid over-stressing my ageing body. Surprised some people at the Dojang who'd thought they'd known the old man's limits, too.

Chapter 17.

During all this, of course, life continued on other fronts as well. With the workload Joanne was taking on, she couldn't continue to do everything - something had to go. It certainly wasn't going to be our time together, or her study, or her training and sport. I took on some of the housework she'd been doing. After all, pocket money was no longer appropriate, and I was providing her with a much more substantial allowance than Jim had.

I'd been a bachelor on and off long enough to know housework. I'd cook meals in the evening, and clean up afterwards. Often this might just be a casserole or pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning, and microwaved vegetables in the evening. Maybe marinade steaks in the morning, then grill plus throw together a salad in the evening; or a full microwave meal with fish fillets; or a Thai or Chinese-style soup plus a bowl of bean sprouts and lemon juice. Anyway, I'd had enough experience to make it tasty, varied and nutritious. Cooked big batches and froze a lot of meal-sized portions as well. I'd make up lunch packs for the next day from what we'd had that evening, or dig frozen sandwiches out of the freezer.

I'd run loads of laundry, run what I had to through the dryer that evening, and hang the rest to dry in a roofed outside entertainment area we had. Hanging clothes was a personal choice - I didn't save any money by it, as our utilities were provided. However, I just liked sun-and-air-dried clothes, I found them easier to iron, and I liked the idea of saving a little in the way of natural resources, even though I lived in a mansion. Yes - ironing as well - a little each evening would soon get ahead of it. I didn't do much in the way of general cleaning, and I didn't iron the bed linen - left that to the housekeepers. Joanne would take up the load again on weekends, when she had a little more breathing space - she liked to cook too.

About three weeks after our wedding, I had another divisional meeting to attend. Joanne and Katrina corresponded regularly now, and often phoned each other as well - just sisters keeping in touch. However, as I said to Joanne, things were different now. She was doing just fine at providing what I otherwise had only got from Katrina, and I wasn't going three months between having sex - often not even three hours - and certainly three or four days would only give us both something to look forward to. In fact, Joanne didn't have intercourse during her period - more of that cultural thing, but OK with me as well, so we'd lasted through longer than that already. I'd still be seeing Katrina, and take her out to eat and talk, and she'd probably take me out too, but there'd be one significant element missing from our previous activities. Well, we met and we talked, and I brought her up-to-date in person on Joanne and me and our life together. It was good to get together again. She even invited me back for dinner at her place one evening, and after some internal debate, and a phone call to Joanne (there was no way I was going to take the risk or the stress of having secrets I couldn't afford to let slip) I accepted. I decided not to do it again though - the tension for both of us in that setting was too great.

At work, I'd more or less run out of brilliant ideas to increase sales, so I fell back on brute force. The best advertising is word of mouth, but we seemed to have hit a wall here. I did a test marketing, then when that worked I started a rolling "beat-the bushes" campaign to scare up prospective customers. First we scheduled a series of seminars on our products and how they could be used in a particular industry. Then we'd do targeted advertising to that particular industry, basically to build "mind share", but also to get what registration for the seminars we could. Used a basic "Are you so good you can afford not to know what your competitors know?" approach. Then we'd do direct mail-outs to the non-responders that were listed for that industry in trade directories or telephone directories; then at last follow up with telephone calls to the holdouts. We'd get a lot of attendees, we'd do a lot of follow-up after the seminars, but not a very high proportion would turn into customers. However, the numbers were with us, and one thing about these "raise consciousness" exercises, like trade shows and conventions, is that they keep paying dividends for a long time. If you do it right, someone who doesn't need you now will remain aware, keep noticing your products, and come back to you in nine or eighteen months when they do need what you supply. We made sure of that, with a direct-mail newsletter every quarter. We kept this up for two years, in fact, scaring up enough prospects to saturate our sales force, working on them, then moving along to the next industry.

We had to keep placing ads where they'd be seen by the industries we'd moved past, and as time moved on the most cost-effective way to do this was in the national press, with only occasional spots in trade press. It was an expensive way to build a client base, but it worked. We had to keep expanding our sales force. In fact, Cam had built our headquarters with room to expand, then leased out floors, and we had to decline to extend the lease for one floor adjoining our existing ones that had been deliberately kept on a short lease. As lease renewals rolled around, we then moved the next adjoining floor to a short lease. The campaign had been quite expensive, and our profit margin had dropped, but ultimately we terminated it with a "catch-all" period for all the industries we hadn't addressed specifically, and a last-chance round for all the non-responders from the previous rounds. Profit bounced up again when we terminated the active campaign and just continued maintenance advertising and the newsletter. We had four times the gross sales serviced by two and a half times the sales force we'd had when we started. This was good for the sales force - they were more fully occupied and earning more; and still getting new business from the follow-on effect. In fact, the year that profit bounced back everyone in the Canadian organisation got enormous year-end bonuses. Morale, which had already been high as they saw the growing gross sales figures, went through the roof.

Chapter 18.

Well, as you've seen, I got through the next two years.

On the finer detail level, Joanne got though the end of her next semester fine, and retired her high-school chemistry to move onto college-level the next semester. She still hadn't decided for sure on her vocation, but she was definite it would be in science, and she was leaning towards something in the applied biological sciences. Whatever she did, she would need basic science, so she was aiming at first year courses in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. She might, she said, take a wider range, but those were essentials.

I pretty much agreed. The last three are basic, and if she was doing Biology, she'd need Biology. I had done Chemistry and Physics, I told her, and also done Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, but that was the right choice for my chosen career, and I still sometimes regretted not having some biological education, even though I'd done a lot of reading. She responded that it wasn't too late - I could do university courses in Biology by correspondence and on the Internet now, and she could coach me for a change. After all, she said, a man needs a hobby. "I've got one," I said "and I'm looking at it now". "Yes", she responded, "but you're not actually carrying it out at the moment". So I carried her out, and into our bedroom, and that pretty much ended that conversation for the evening.

I thought about it, though, and I decided she was right. I was at a loose end for a while each evening after I'd done the housework, and while she was still doing the homework. I was putting in eleven or twelve hours a day on work, with time at home in the morning, at the office, and in the evening. I was pretty sure I was dulling the edge, no matter what others might be able to handle, and that the company would do better if I delegated some of the hackwork. Also, I'd retire some day, and I rather liked the idea of living on a small hobby farm. I certainly didn't want less room between the neighbours and ourselves than the five acres we had at the moment. Didn't know a thing about farms, but I could probably pick up enough theory to muddle through if it didn't need to make a profit. Sort of like a super-size tomato garden and melon-patch. I told her that I would enrol next semester, but only for one unit to start with.

Another quarterly divisional meeting, and another opportunity to talk to Katrina. I was concerned about the workload Joanne was undertaking, I told her, but she was holding up. However, I added, she was putting herself under enormous pressure, and she'd said she'd coach me next semester. Katrina took a few seconds to sing the chorus from "Try Biology Today", with a wide-open on the knee front-of-the-stage finale, which got her some applause and me a red face, but then she pointed out that I'd only need coaching if I wasn't coping. I could share things with Joanne in five minutes, rather than needing her sitting beside me helping me through for thirty. However, she pointed out, if Joanne thought I wasn't coping she'd pour a lot of time into helping me. Well, I knew that, but I'd never heard it stated outright before. I determined that I'd dig in really hard to master my second hobby, and I would find a way to delegate the routine work I was doing in the evening. That was going to be a balancing act - during the routine work I learnt things I needed to know to do my higher-level duties.

Joanne and I celebrated our half-year anniversary in fine style. Close to midwinter, but we (well, she) decided to return to the ridge where we'd held our wedding. I'd have been perfectly prepared to celebrate in bed, or on a rug (possibly her tiger rug) in front of the heater in our family room, but no - my young enthusiast wanted an east-facing ridge at dawn near midwinter. OK, it was going to be a different form of celebration to what I'd envisaged - no way was I going to drop my drawers in the open in that weather. Or even wear a kilt - even Scotland benefits from the Gulf Stream, but Ottawa does not. However, if that was what she wanted, then that was what I'd get.

And I did, and we did, and it was good. In a rather high-minded, sexless way, of course. I'd begged accommodation from Cam and Gemma again, then with that more-or-less secured I'd sent them a copy of the videotape of our wedding. We had enough history on the board at this stage for them to have some assurance that we wouldn't drag the company through the mud of the front-page headlines - at least not by gross carelessness. I'd then assured Gemma that we wouldn't impose on her housekeeping to the extent of requiring separate rooms from now on. We took all the rings up to show them. Gemma persuaded Joanne to wear her engagement ring as well while she was there, and we all slogged up that benighted ridge and greeted the dawn. And it was good. Sort of. But cold.

When that was done, we all trekked back to the lodge, and Gemma made us gluwein and pancakes. While we were waiting Cam served scotch whiskey, then we all returned to bed to do whatever one does in couples in bed when you're awake, if you're awake at mid-winter, then I guess we all slept. I also guess Cam and Gemma weren't too old and worn-out. At least we were up again in the afternoon before they were. We'd brought some stuff up, so Joanne and I spent the time starting roast lamb and potatoes, and preparing pumpkin, carrots, and green beans; and an entree of asparagus to boil, with a covering of cheese to microwave later. We'd also brought a boiled pudding and some custard; and we mixed and pre-cooked a can of cream of asparagus soup with some sautéed fresh-chopped onions, and some milk. Cam and Gemma eventually woke and followed their noses to the kitchen, then we settled down with crackers and cheese and small glasses of sherry until the roast was done. Then came dinner accompanied by a couple of bottles of one of those magnificent Australian red wines - "Hill of Grace", which I'd first encountered on a support trip to South Australia, and followed with an Australian Muscat - Morris of Rutherglen - which I'd met the same way, but from Victoria. Of course, this was highly illegal - I could fuck Joanne, but I couldn't provide her with alcohol. "Hell with 'em, I say".

Joanne wore her engagement ring at home after that, with my concurrence. I should have thought of it first. My greeting to her became to kiss her ring finger first, before moving on, even when I was picking her up from school. I could get away with that, thanks to the French influence in Canada. If anyone looked carefully, they could see where she had been wearing a ring, so there was some danger in it. However, some young girls wear their friendship rings on the ring finger in private - wishful thinking. I decided a small amount of danger I could take, for the sake of keeping her happy. It did keep her happy - she wore the mark of the engagement ring as proudly as if it was the ring itself, but she didn't flaunt it.

Chapter 19.

More time, and we got past midwinter. Joanne started a new semester, and so did I. I'd tagged someone in our marketing group who was a single father, and asked whether he'd be interested in working a half-day, plus time at home in the morning and evening, he'd thought about it, then said yes. I was still monitoring what he did for the information, as he knew, but I could skim it in ten percent of the time it took to do it. Biology 1 was a breeze - in fact I knew most of it from prior reading, but they put the bits and pieces I'd picked up into a solid context. I was having pure fun, no pressure, which was a first for me as far as study went.

Then Joanne shocked me. We were approaching another divisional meeting, and she and Katrina had been talking, as they always did.

She was cuddled up one evening, when she said "Do you know, Katrina hasn't had sex in nine months?" Well, no, I didn't know that - why should I? How could I? She said "I'm going to lend you to her again". Choking on beer is one thing, but snorting whiskey through your nose is at least an order of intensity different - took me most of the evening to recover, and I'm not sure my sinuses were ever the same again. At least it sprayed all over her lap - and I had a cold - and she wasn't wearing any clothes at the time - she deserved that much. If anyone's interested, it's an effective way to clear your sinuses. Makes your eyes water, though.

Well, it was one of those cultural things again. She was Native American, and even though she hadn't been raised on the reservation, she'd picked up some attitudes when she visited and socialised with her cousins and their mothers. She was sharing. Makes some sense. A man shared is a man who is probably so shagged out that he can't raise the energy to look elsewhere. Women in control again, without looking like it. Women rule the world. All parties satisfied. Anyway, she wanted her big sister to be happy, so she was willing to share - me.

So I went off to Texas with specific instructions from my young bride to go fuck my former mistress. I was having trouble believing this.

So was Katrina. She'd been told, but still. .

Well, I told her again. And I moved in with her. And I phoned home, and talked to Joanne, and she talked to Katrina again, and told us both to enjoy ourselves, and to think particularly good thoughts on Thursday night. She was looking forward to it, she said.

Sex with Katrina was different. I'd been affected by my time with Joanne. I took longer, and it generally was gentler and less physical. She didn't complain at all, but it did mean that what we'd been able to rush through by 9pm now took half an hour longer. I didn't complain at all either - I loved her, in a particular way, and I was having a terrific time being deep inside her again, and moving slowly there. Felt a little different though - Katrina was fit, but her body hadn't hardened up the way Joanne's had. I thought they were almost exactly the same size, but Joanne was now four or maybe five kilograms heavier - solid muscle. Katrina was - softer.

Thursday night was different too. I'd been worried we wouldn't be able to "make the connection" - after all, we'd only done it twice, things were a lot different now to then - even the way I made love was different now. I feared we might not be able to "tune in" nine months later. I needn't have worried. I pictured Katrina as Joanne, and went straight through her and into Joanne's head. In fact, the connection was even more real than before. I could actually communicate with Joanne and she with me, and we both with Katrina - true telepathy, and more - because we were perceiving each other's thoughts and feelings - not just communicating words. I was having a terrific time making slow physical love to Katrina this time, and enjoying her feelings as well as mine. Katrina was enjoying herself, and my slowly peaking feelings; and Joanne was having a terrific time enjoying me making love to Katrina from both sides - me making love, and Katrina enjoying it. All of us were communicating - maybe communing is the right word - about it to each other.

So that was fine, and we all enjoyed it, and the next time too, three months later. Then I got a jolt. I had visiting dignitaries the next week - the next Monday. I was preparing when I got pulled out of my normal routine by a sudden mental flash. Something really bad had happened to Katrina. I replayed it, and she'd had a crash - her four-wheel drive had been run off the road. Been run off - not just an accident. Don't ask me - we'd never been this closely connected before. I rang the Highway Patrol for Texas, and Deo Gratia - I got connected to someone called O'Reilley - I could talk to him about second sight. I kept it short and simple - my mistress had run off the road - I was pulling up maps on my PC as I spoke - at such-and-such a bridge on this road, and I'd be very grateful if they'd have a vehicle check there. Told him to treat it as if I'd had a CB radio call, if it kept him happy, but I knew what had happened. I called out to Susan to tell Joanne, if she called, that I was on it, but Joanne should pack her bag for Texas, and for Susan to book her a ticket with an open return. Then I realised that most of the communication was unnecessary - Joanne had been watching over my shoulder for quite a while, though she was still at school. Seamus (would you believe?) O'Reilley came back on the phone - they'd found her, and she was in an ambulance on the way to hospital, and they'd traced my call, and it was from Canada, and how the hell had I known? I told him second sight, and neither of us would ever be able to explain it to our bosses, and let's just be grateful for it. I also told him my current girl-friend, who regarded Katrina as her big sister, would be down to look after her within a day.

So Joanne went down, and she slept on the floor next to Katrina, and Katrina's crushed chest slowly recovered. In time Joanne exercised her own mental powers and took some pictures out of Katrina's mind. After a fortnight or so she made a very special phone call, and asked me if I'd like to keep her company one evening, or whether she was going to have to do it on her own. Seems she'd found the bastards who'd run Katrina off the road - for sport. My Tigress was NOT in a forgiving mood, which was fine with me, so two nights later we spoke to them about it, and they made the wrong responses, so we made sure they'd never ever do that to anyone again.

That was fine, but we were doing things here that we'd never have believed possible a month ago. Well, so be it. If it happened, it was possible. I was an engineer, after all - not a scientist or a theologian.

Joanne went back home, and worked hard to regain her standing in her studies, and her physical fitness, and her place in Taekwon Do. There was a precision in her sport now that hadn't been there before. Although no one else knew, she'd used it to kill. She didn't regret that, but she knew it was possible. The intensity she'd had before was now governed by a measure of control. The ferocity had been focused to precision. What she did was exactly what she meant, and what she meant was exactly what she did. Precision. Intent. Accomplished! If anything, it was more frightening than before. She displayed an ice-cold ability to just do it. What she needed to do, she did. What she did was just as much as she needed to do to ensure that her intent was accomplished.

Well, OK. I'd always known I had the capability to kill. I'd never done it before, but I'd always known I could. Males are mostly warriors - in disguise or not. If not, then they're poor excuses for males. A pacifist male is a contradiction in terms - or a liar, or sick. Non-combatant, perhaps, but that's circumstance rather than nature. The fact that I'd killed someone who'd tried to kill one of my loved ones was no surprise to Joanne, or me. She'd called me because she knew absolutely that the two of us could kill any half-dozen opponents, whereas she hadn't been sure she could kill the second one on her own, alone, if he was carrying a pistol. Which he had been. Maybe she could do more than me, but she trusted me to be able to throw the switch and not hesitate. It didn't surprise me that my Tigress was a warrior too, nor did it really surprise or worry either of us. Although what we'd done hadn't really, in the end, been done as an act of retribution - more as a public health measure. Simple vermin eradication.

Chapter 20.

Joanne and I celebrated our anniversary on that East ridge as she turned fifteen, and with me aged 42. Fringed beaded doeskin dress and kilt again - traditionalists we. I was fairly sure about it anyway, but I spoke to the lawyer, and he confirmed that we'd established a common-law relationship with that twelve months of co-habitation. We were, in a way, officially married, with her aged fifteen, even though we couldn't get married officially for at least another year. In fact, I'd spoken to him about that as well, and it wasn't looking like a good chance. The law said that we could marry when she was sixteen, with parental consent and the concurrence of a judge. It gave no guarantee at all that we'd get a judge's permission. We were certain of Jim's permission, of course. However, there were a lot of judges who thought they were better judges (ha, ha) of a couple's fitness to marry than were the couple themselves. If we got some fifty year old woman who thought sixteen year old women shouldn't marry 43 year-old men (that was the probability - there were two of them in that jurisdiction, and apparently they were very close friends), then we'd either have to appeal or make a new application. Either way we'd fast end up getting towards the stage where Joanne was eighteen and didn't need a judge's permission anyway.

Didn't really surprise me. It was exactly the same way in Australia, and there was a solution available there that we could use as well. I determined that we'd do that, too. It needed preparation, and it needed Jim to take time off work, so we needed to make arrangements well in advance.

I decided we'd get married in New Zealand. It would make a good honeymoon as well, even if it was going to be approaching mid-winter there. You could get married at the age of sixteen in New Zealand, with parental consent. No judges mixing in - just do it. Once we'd made a legal marriage, it would be a legal marriage in Canada as well. I spoke to Jim about it, and that was OK with him - he booked his vacation to overlap Joanne's sixteenth birthday, and we were set. In fact, he had a lot of accumulated leave, and they'd been niggling at him about it, so he booked eight weeks - he'd take a lot of time off in Tahiti on the way home.

Then I did the "Bad news, good news" scenario with Joanne. Jim was sitting in a lounge chair watching when I told her - nearly had hysterics - which would be a first for him. Bad news: it will be impossible for us to get married in Canada when you turn sixteen. Good news: it will certainly be possibly for us to get married when we go to New Zealand on your sixteenth birthday. Ungrateful child - she hit me! Several times. Just as well she wasn't putting her heart into it. Unlike the kissing I got afterwards, which she definitely meant. And which turned Jim redder. Serve him right!

Well, having made arrangements about our marriage, the next thing we did was to arrange for my Texan mistress to move in with us. Katrina was still recovering slowly from having her chest crushed. She'd run out of savings if she stayed there, so we insisted she come and stay with us for a few months. At least it gave her time out at no cost, and time to recover with people who loved her. So she moved into Joanne's old room (Joanne's insistence), and she swam in the pool, and she slowly recovered. No sex - this was Joanne's house, and in any case Katrina would not have been fit for it. Just concentrating on getting her better. Which she slowly did. With the pool to start with, and the gymnasium as well, and time to spare and no pressure, she put the time into exercising, and she began to regain her fitness. She joined us in our morning workouts, and the Tai Chi wasn't a strain. The sprints were, but she did them, if only at half-pace; and over time they became not so bad. She worked the Nordic track gently during the day, so she got the benefit of the air conditioning in the gym; and she started doing light aerobics as well. After about six weeks, we took her to a commercial bridle track, and gave her an hour on a gentle mare. Then the same each day, except she chose the horse. After a month, they'd stopped charging her every second time, and were giving her their hard cases to school, and we knew she'd be going back to work soon.

Then, towards the end, Joanne surprised me again. Well, I guess in a way I'd been expecting it, but still... Anyway, we'd all been swimming in the pool. We were all topless - what's the point when you're as fit and slim as my girls are? There certainly wasn't anything they had that I hadn't examined very closely, and could probably draw in photographic detail from memory. We were all lying on that postage-stamp lawn, and she slapped me on the hip and told me "lift yer bum". Well, this wasn't an unknown command from her, so I did, and she skinned me out of my swimming costume in about half a second. Then she skinned Katrina's costume down to the knees, then the ankles, and pointed at me and said "Climb on and see how he rides". Well, I was frozen. She needed to give me a good deal of assistance - accompanied by some ribald commentary to Katrina while she was sucking - before I could raise anything worth the interest. Well, eventually I did raise something, and Katrina did hop on, and things got somewhat vigorous. And Joanne hopped on behind and I was deep in their minds again, and Joanne was cuddled-up behind while Katrina's back was slithering up and down on little sister's tits. And a jolly good time was had by all. But this was definitely new - it was the first time things had happened while the girls were together physically.

So that was that. Katrina was more or less recovered - at least enough so to return to work. We had a date for eight month's time - she was going to stand beside us as bridesmaid (well - hardly a maid - maybe matron of honour. Well, she wasn't married either, but she was well used, and she'd used well. I told her to pick her own title, so Superwoman it was) while her little sister got married. Jim was going to be my best man and father of the bride as well, which isn't your standard scenario, but that was the way it was going to be. In fact, when you get down to it, how could any man except the bridegroom be better than being father of the bride?

We'd stand Katrina her fares - we'd have to. It was going to be a long time before her finances recovered - one of the joys of the American medical system. The company fund had covered her medical expenses, but not her living expenses. We'd passed a semester mark - I was doing two units of Biology now, and Joanne was doing Botany, and Chemistry, and Physics, and Applied Maths, and Pure Maths, and still chipping away at the last remnants of high-school History and English. Katrina returned to Texas, and got an apartment back in the complex she'd lived in before.

I made a call to Cam as well, and got him to put Gemma on the speakerphone (blackmail in the making, but I never claimed I had a conscience) then invited them both to a celebration of marriage. Note the wording - they already knew we were wed. No treat in their case - if anyone I knew could afford a couple of fares to New Zealand it was Cam. They said yes, and then he had the hide to say they accepted with a great deal of relief. I told him he was a cheeky young pup, and Gemma laughed at him. Then she said she'd always enjoyed cuddling up to young pups, and it was getting late, wasn't it? Near bedtime. Joanne was listening in, and I went about three shades of crimson, then riposted with "Well, I think I'll let you two get about your affairs, then", and Gemma sniggered and said "Have a lovely evening, you two. We will", and the phone clicked.

And Joanne and I did have a lovely evening, and I'm fairly convinced that Cam and Gemma did too.

Chapter 21.

Time rolled along, and we passed our exams for that semester, and passed midwinter, and started next term. Joanne had decided what she was going to do with her life - other than making love to me, that is; and it wasn't an easy choice. Well, some would say making love to me wasn't an easy choice either, but anyway.... She was going to do a double degree as well, but it wasn't one of those pre-packaged ones. She was going to study Forestry and Agriculture - neither of which is nearly as easy as people assume. If you've done any solid reading in soil physics and chemistry and biology, which I had during the last few months, then you know what tension headache means. There is nothing as complicated as interacting living organisms, and trying to control the way they interact at anything down to the molecular level - well - not simple. She'd pulled together her culture, and her time on the homeland and at the lodge, and growing tomatoes and melons at home, and the garden in general, and who knows what all else. In fact, she was going to go into silviculture - which basically means farming trees.

In short, there was a growing move to plant (or replant) more trees. In pioneer days, a lot of land was cleared which shouldn't have been - or at least shouldn't be cleared in today's terms. These days a better use of the land was to grow trees again. Many hectares were being returned to trees. Hedgerows and shelter belts alongside roads, trees in the corners of fields, plantations beside watercourses, wood-lots on poor, steep and stony land. These farmed forests were becoming the farmer's superannuation policy - in twenty or thirty years they'd provide a retirement income for the farmer, but in the meantime they cost almost nothing except establishment and fencing costs, because those parts of the land were almost unproductive anyway.

There was a second wave of development building up. People would use their planted woodlands more extensively. They could plant a hectare or two to conifers each year, then thin them drastically over two years, selling the thinnings as Christmas trees. They have to prune the trees, leaving a long unobstructed trunk, so the prunings could be chipped and sold as mulch, or used on the farm. Very acid, particularly good for blueberries. When it became evident which were the best trees, at about seven years, the others could be thinned; the tall skinny trunks used for firewood or fence-rails, and the crowns would yield useful firewood and mulch as well. After that, the branch prunings would be more substantial, and they could yield useful firewood before the rest of them were chipped. It would not really be saleable firewood, but useful for those that could use it on the farm. A final thinning at about fifteen years would yield more firewood, or fence posts; and the final harvest at 20 or 30 years would be commercial lumber.

There was another movement building up. This was permaculture. Basically it recognised that plantings were most productive when they most closely mimicked natural systems. Mixed species, lots of boundaries between forests and clearings, that sort of thing. They weren't the easiest to harvest, but they did produce the most. This just happened to be most easily applied to small-scale tree plantations. People could plant their conifer plantations with high-value low bulk items like gourmet mushrooms, ginseng, and goldenseal. They could plant the edges with a variety of blueberries, hazelnuts, and fruit trees. At the right season they'd go out and harvest. It wasn't much, but it was steady, it was all extra income, and it gave diversity.

That was what my Joanne was going to do. Become the Joanne Appleseed of Ontario. A long time before she'd graduate, but when she did it would make some sense. She'd be anti-commuting. It would take a distance to travel to get out into the country, where her work would be. However, she'd be travelling against the commuter traffic - it wouldn't take that long. So her next semester's courses included Mycology and Forestry and Agronomy and Animal Husbandry and Applied Statistics - all by correspondence and the Web, although she was still doing them at school. Still with the tag ends of high-school English and History. Not that she really needed the Animal Husbandry for what she wanted to do, but it was an essential part of the Agriculture degree, and she'd have more credibility talking to farmers if she had the degree and the experience behind her. In any case, she didn't want me to get ahead of her, and I was doing Agronomy and Animal Husbandry that semester - I was getting serious about retiring to a hobby farm, and I wasn't real sure I'd keep it a hobby either. At least I'd have more options if I knew how to do it well.

Another divisional meeting in Texas, and more time with Katrina. I wasn't handling her condition well, so she telephoned Joanne - from bed - and told her to tell me she wouldn't break, and I should get stuck in and do a job on her - so to speak. You know - the standard sort of telephone call - "Hello, Joanne. Katrina here. I'm in bed with your husband, of course, and he isn't doing a good job of fucking me. Fact is he seems to be scared I'll break. Can you please tell him to get stuck in and do a proper job of it?" This was only Tuesday - the first day, not the last - but I did do a job on her anyway. She didn't break: in fact it was just about back to the good old days. Joanne told us no more excuses - if that was what we could do to start with, she expected full performance, full time, and no let-off. And I told her not to be greedy. She got ninety days on a run; Katrina deserved a day or two to herself - well, ourselves. And she gasped, and then thought about it, and apologised. But anyway, Katrina got well and truly fucked, which was the main aim of the exercise. And Joanne enjoyed it as well.

We passed another semester - the last one for High School. Nothing much new for classes this time, although Joanne had retired her last high-school classes. For the most part, we were just going to do thing-02 instead of thing-01; although Joanne had passed Mycology and was doing Entomology now, and started that damnable Soil Science I'd been reading for "fun".

And I made a decision that we'd come out of the closet. So when I collected her from school at the mid-point of that final semester, I slipped her engagement ring on her finger while I was kissing it, and held it up. Took about two seconds for the first one to notice, and then they were on us like crows on a cornfield. And it was congratulations. None of them thought it was odd - in fact, most of them knew I loved her, and had certainly been told she loved me, and they generally loved their fathers, and thought that was exactly the right age for a good man to be.

It was strange, that. Within a day all the girls in the school knew we were engaged. In fact, they knew - or assumed - we were sleeping together, and had been for 22 months. They all knew about the 14-year age limit, even if I hadn't. However, it took almost forever for the news to seep back to the teachers, and when it did only the semi-respectable bit did. I don't think any of them found out I'd been fucking their little star student while she was still at school. Of course, given the arrangements, they must have suspected - maybe they just weren't looking very hard. Maybe they were working very hard at not looking.

Well, that was that, sort of, but we were on a short time frame here. Eventually, we settled on marriage three days after Joanne's birthday. I'd thought about paying extra fees for early exams, but she'd been strongly against it. Actually, I didn't mind - it meant we could greet the sun on that East ridge again, then do the last of the exams, then fly out. And if we were talking alternatives, then that was the option I favoured. I'd got rather fond of that ridge.

Chapter 22.

We greeted the sun on our wedding day, with me past 43 and she at the age of 16. Then we finished our exams, then off we went to New Zealand to get married. We weren't worried about the exams - you know when you've written a good exam, we'd made very sure to put in good preparation, and in any case we'd scored bare pass marks on the basis of our assigned work. Writing our names at the exams was enough to secure a pass. In accordance with my Scots heritage, and Joanne and Jim's native heritage, I'd booked a Maori Presbyterian Church in Auckland. Maori's were relatively relaxed about age differences between couples as well, and the pastor had all the details (download documents from web, fill in, fax off), and hadn't objected.

So we went to New Zealand, and we got married. Beaded doeskin and Johnston kilt again. I'd expanded my wardrobe, though. You've got to do it right in New Zealand - lot of Scots influence there. No other country in the world has a higher proportion of redheads. Even a Maori would laugh at you if you wore a Scots outfit and didn't do it properly. What I'd had before was correct, but it was informal. Now I had kilt and linen shirt and - well, shoon (buckled shoes, to be precise); plaid and sporran and stockings (that's long socks, for you Sassenachs). Black jacket with silver buttons. And a skean dhu in the top of the stockings, in a glove-leather sheath - a two-edged dagger with a three-inch blade - just long enough to cut a throat or put out an eye. Which was really totally superfluous in my case - there was nothing I could carry which would be more deadly inside ten metres than my own body, but it was traditional, and you never know when you'll need a sharp blade. Anyway the cairngorm (a yellow stone like topaz) on the pommel looked good.

We'd settled for Sunday morning, after the regular service. The pastor had given us a wrap-up - American Indian maiden and Scots borderer - so we had most of the congregation and their children there. They got a bonus. My parents were ageing, but they made the trip from Sydney, and Dad wore full regalia, as did Cam. Jim wore his traditional costume as well, and looked most impressive; and Katrina wore a traditional Russian costume - we felt if were doing ethnic we might as well do it thoroughly.

I promised to love, honour and cherish; which I'd always done and always would - well, except for the time she got in front of that bastard's pistol, and even then I'd crushed his skull before he'd cleared the holster - quicker even than she was, for once, when it was necessary. Which I guess was a particularly vigorous form of cherishing, but under the circumstances I wouldn't have settled for anything less. We'd had some brief rehearsal the afternoon before, and Joanne had spoken to the pastor. Now she promised to love, honour and obey, which was definitely not what I was expecting. I actually stopped the service - basically along the lines of "Hold on a minute here - I love you, and I honour you, and I always have and always will cherish you; but this obey business isn't something we've discussed before. Are you sure this is something you want to say?" The pastor looked at me and said "her deliberate choice - yesterday". And she looked at me again and said loudly and clearly "I, Joanne Ravenwing, do right willingly accept you, Rodney Nigel Johnston, as my beloved husband. I vow to love you, to honour you, and to obey you - from this day forth, forever. Where you go, so shall I go. What you command, so shall I do. I love you and trust you unconditionally, and I always have. What is your will so shall I do, my love, forevermore."

Well, not much doubt about that. Puts "love, honour and obey" into a new category. Not a dry eye in the house. Not Cam's or Gemma's anyway, and certainly not mine. Katrina had mascara down her cheeks, and the stone-faced Indian had shiny cheeks as well. Most of the congregation were impressed, and I thought there were a number of little girls who'd made new decisions; and a few boys who'd reached new insights about mutual commitments as well. One of whom was only about twelve, but he reached out and grabbed the hand of the little girl beside him very firmly. She was only about ten, but her eyes widened, and then she held his hand just as firmly. And a young teenage couple whose parents may just not have known they were looking at each other, who'd fallen into each other's eyes. And I had trouble completing my vows. Bad case of snuffles. But I did manage to fumble all three of her rings onto her finger, and she put my plain gold band on me with deft and sure fingers. Obey or not, there was little doubt which party was in command here. And I was particularly glad I had the pastor's daughter running a video camera at the front of the church - that performance was worthy of an Oscar. Besides which, I wanted to keep it for evidence.

Well, as it happened, I never needed the evidence. She'd made her vows, and she never went back on them. There were certainly times when we didn't agree, but if that was going to be the case, she foresaw it, and talked it over with me in advance. In the rare cases where she hadn't foreseen something in advance, she simply asked my opinion, then complied. In the really rare cases where she hadn't foreseen something, and had to act on my behalf, she never got it wrong. That sort of thing is awe-inspiring. For anyone who takes their vows seriously, you could never do anything else but love, honour and cherish anyone who has made that sort of mutual commitment to you, and lived up to it. In so doing, you always take their wishes into account.

Anyway, we had our marriage, and we had our wedding breakfast (well, marriage feast) - a Maori hangi for the whole congregation in this case - pit-roasted pig, and a butt of beef (which really wasn't traditional, but was popular), and roasted root vegetables. Chicken and turkey as well, and salad and fruit (which were not really traditional either, but tasty).

I took the opportunity to take those two young couples around a corner, away from their parents, with my bride, and wish them well. The teenagers were terrified - they hadn't realised they might have given themselves away. The twelve and ten-year olds looked at us solemnly, and he said "Thank you Sir. I will always love her." And she said " Miss, uhm Mrs Ravenwing, you said it so much better than I could. He is my love and always will be." And I told him "You'd better deserve her, boy! Ones like that are so much better than we rate." And he said "Yes, Sir, I know that. But all I can do is love her. I'm like you - I don't have anything more to give - she already has all I have and all I will be." That was the point where Joanne broke down and cried.

Chapter 23.

It was early winter in New Zealand, but much of New Zealand's climate is moderated by maritime influences. There were massive winter sports resorts in the South Island, but I'd never been much for winter sports. I'd seen snow - it's cold and wet. We started our honeymoon with a five-day cruise around the Bay of Islands - sheltered waters, very picturesque, and about as close to the Equator as you could reasonably get in New Zealand. Then we did tourist things for a ten-day guided tour, then flew out to Tahiti for a week, and then home.

Oh, matter of detail - she kept her maiden name for ordinary use, but tacked "Johnston" onto it on appropriate formal occasions.

I didn't see Katrina again after the marriage for months. She'd only been able to take six day's leave, which made ten with the two weekends, and she'd spend a day of travelling each way, and she'd spent two days on the rehearsal and the marriage. She needed the time she'd pick up re-crossing the International Date Line to get home in time. We'd shoe-horned her onto a five-day fully catered tourist tour, so no cost to her, as the groom's present to the bridesmaid - well, Superwoman.

Jim did some guided touristing as well, but starting earlier than we did. He'd also tapped his native peoples contacts to spend some time with Maoris and later Tahitians. We didn't cross his path again until Tahiti, and then only briefly. He arranged for us to have a traditional Tahitian meal with one of his contact's families - looked a lot like that Maori hangi that had been our marriage feast.

Got home and almost immediately into the mad social whirl. That is to say, dropped into the office. I'd sent some photos in a mini-album back to Susan, with a short note saying "'What I did on my Vacation' by Rodney Johnston. Joanne and I were married in this Maori Presbyterian Church in Auckland, New Zealand, on such-and-such a date. Some photos of the wedding enclosed - please use the one I've labelled for such as the one for the 'Hatches and Matches' section of the company newsletter. They're duplicates - you can circulate them. Having a lovely time - glad you're not here." Joanne and I walked in, and the room buzzed. I'd decided to brazen it out - yes, we were married; see the rings. Yes, we were happy - what sort of a question is that to ask young newlyweds anyway? Yes, that was her father giving her away in that photo - and being best man too. Yes, the bridesmaid was Katrina from head-office. That's enough, I'm still not back at work until next week, is there anything that won't keep until then?

More social whirl. Joanne's school scheduled their graduation ceremony for a Saturday morning as soon as possible after all results were out. They didn't believe in graduating students who'd failed, although they would give a statement of attainment privately to students with partial passes. They did believe in giving full credit on the diploma for the highest level of all courses passed. That meant waiting for some college-level course results - in fact, a lot of college-level courses in this case. We'd come back a few days early to attend her graduation, and there was more excited twittering and viewing of the rings and photographs and so forth.

They also scheduled the graduation ball for the Saturday night. Girls could invite their own escorts, or there was a corps of young men who could be drafted from an associated school. I'd thought we'd wear her hostess dress and my evening suit, but she asked a favour. They'd had some Asian students at the school a few years back, and a precedent had been established that national costume was accepted as formal wear if it looked formal. A couple of European girls had kept the ruling alive. Joanne wanted us to wear our wedding outfits. Well, fair enough - the Scots regalia IS formal wear; and there was nothing informal about that doeskin dress down to below the knees, with days of carefully matched beadwork, and a pair of lace-up fringed doeskin boots to mid-calf. She wore her hair in two simple plaits as well, which made her stand out even more. Knocked their eyes out. Got some very cold glances from some of the staff, though. I didn't care - she'd done very little socialising while she was at school. If she wanted to take this final occasion to monopolise an entire social event by showing off her new husband and her newly married status; it was fine by me.

Epilogue.

That was, in a real sense, the end of the beginning of Joanne's and my life together. We'd finally achieved a legal marriage. Even though we felt we'd had to do it outside Canada, it would be legal in Canada. Well, there'd be some paperwork to do, but that was just paperwork - no one was entitled to interfere.

The rest of our lives proceeded at a much slower pace, and may be of less interest to readers. However, for the sake of those who are interested, I'll summarise it here.

* * * * * * *

Jim had been quite cautious prior to Joanne's and my marriage, but once that was done he became a lot more open about a relationship he'd been having. I'd been right - I had recognised the girl from our Human Resources group. He married Hanna about a year later. She became the second great love of his life. Reached the stage for him where spending time away from her was almost more painful than being stuck in the city - but not quite. What they both did was to take post-graduate diplomas in Education, then get teaching jobs in a small college city, where they could live in the country.

Joanne completed the rest of her double four-year degrees in four years, with the aid of her existing credit, a couple of correspondence units and some credit for subject overlap. She worked as a public servant for five years while she gained experience, built up contacts, and also had our first son, James. Then at the age of 25 she went into private practice. She also had our first daughter, Diane, both children named after her parents.

I completed my agriculture degree at the same time, at age 47. I kept up active reading and research, but didn't do much else with it except put it on my business cards until I turned 51. I had decided that I would retire at age 55, while I was still young enough to handle physical work easily. Also at age 51 I took up Aikido. The time was rapidly approaching when Taekwon Do alone might be too demanding for me, but there was a non-mainstream school of Aikido in which I could incorporate what I'd learned.

We started looking for our farm then, and almost miraculously found it immediately - 64 hectares (160 acres) surrounded by forest at the end of a road about 10 kilometres out of a small town. Took a lot of work and money getting fences in and planting trees, then we took a leaf out of Cam's book and built a "log cabin" over a basement dug into a hillside - the old house was basically a wreck. Joanne took time while the house was being built to have our third child - who turned out to be twin boys, Nigel and Robert (my grandfather's and father's names).

Katrina now visited us for a week each year, spending time with Jo and I, and with Cam and Gemma. The girls were becoming increasingly sisterly, although between them it never developed into anything more. I don't believe I would have minded if it had - after all, we all loved each other. However, it was just physical fondness, hugs and kisses and cuddles, and occasionally three in a bed. Well, often three in a bed - Katrina would come in for a cuddle, or we'd go to her room, when we woke up in the mornings. Or Joanne would invite Katrina as well when we went to bed. Not surprisingly, if two beautiful naked women were cuddling me, I'd often react sexually, and if the potential was there Joanne would decide who got the use of it. Again, she was generous - Katrina would be isolated in Texas again in less than a week.

Katrina was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with "big city attitudes". She was also getting passed over, purely because she was a women, for jobs she had earned and for which she was obviously the best candidate. They tried hard to control that in the company, but the word hadn't sunk in to the management group in her area, and they were the ones who administered the sexual discrimination unit.

When I saw that one of our big customers was advertising for someone to head their Administration Department, which was basically Finance, Accounting and Legal, I asked Joanne if she thought we should point it out to Katrina. She said "of course", and called her immediately. Katrina got the job, and a 50% increase in salary. She moved in with us for a while, but she knew that was temporary - I'd be resigning in two years time.

As it turns out, she only kept the job a shade over five years. We'd said a tearful farewell to the mansion two years before, then moved to "the cabin". The girls had been having deep and meaningful discussions, then Katrina came up one Friday night, and Joanne sat us all round the table with glasses of beer, and I knew something was up. I held up my hand and told her "Don't speak". I took two mouthfuls of beer, making sure they went down (she was giggling by now - I'd overplayed it to blazes), then I said "NOW you may speak".

"Well", she said, "Katrina feels her biological clock is running, and she's decided she wants children before it's too late. Obviously you should father them. It's the least you owe her in return for all the use you've had out of her. She's gone off the pill, and I made her get a thermometer, and tonight is the first night she might be fertile, so she's staying with us over the weekend."

I was really glad I'd gone through that pantomime with the beer.

I actually got Joanne pregnant again first - with Marie. But I did get Katrina pregnant, although we had to keep trying for three months. You can have some really hot sex when your beloved wife is helping you try to get your mistress pregnant, and your mistress is begging you to "Take us to bed again, please. I want your baby in me right now". Katrina kept working until the last month of her pregnancy, then moved up with us, and had Anna. She got pregnant again with Ivan three months later - girl in a hurry.

My theories about small farms turned out well, although we've been leaning on the forests to conserve our resources. We get a lot of fallen wood there, and venison, rabbits and squirrels, wild food like nuts and mushrooms and berries. There's a big beaver pond about 1½ km into the forest, and we can get cattails and wild rice and ducks and geese and fish there as well. The farm provides well for all ten of us though, and it still will when the children are big hungry teenagers. Milk and cheese and cream and butter and yoghurt and honey and eggs and poultry and mutton and ham and bacon and beef and wheat and barley and oats and home-brewed beer and vegetables and fruit, and we put up a lot of stuff to eat out-of-season. Turns a small profit too - mostly selling beef cattle; and about twenty dozen "free range" eggs a week, and fresh fruit and vegetables in season. We run a small U-pick blueberry and bramble berry operation along the edges of our woodlots in season, and sell the pickers Devonshire teas with scones and bramble jam and clotted cream. In fact both the feeding and the profit from the farm will improve when the children grow enough to play a bigger part in farm work. James is a useful helper even now, and Diane is good with the younger children.

I wouldn't like to have to live off the farm profit now, but it could be done. However, I've got a syndicated weekly column - "On the Family Farm" - that pads that out. I do the occasional lecture as well. The column became popular with other farmers and their wives - teaching them through entertainment that they can spend less, save more, live better, and get out of debt. That's always the secret to a good life - being debt-free. As things stand, we don't need to touch our investments, and there's still Joanne's business, and Katrina works two afternoons a week in a local accountancy practice. We're accumulating funds towards the children's education.

To sum up, to my surprise I have one of those inclusive Indian-style marriages Joanne mentioned earlier. I don't think we'll have any more children though. I'm 60 now, Joanne is 33, and Katrina is 45. I come from long-lived stock, but just the same it will be a terrible trial for an old man like me to cope with all the teenagers we'll have around here in about ten or twelve years.

A sexy young thirty-three year-old might be able to sweet-talk me into almost anything, though.

At least, that's my story.

* * * * * * *

All material is copyright of the author, © 2004-2005 Aidan McGill, and may not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission. Individuals are hereby granted permission to use one copy for private reading, not-for-distribution and not-for-profit.

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