We were home, in our own little nest, the door closed behind us. I touched her shoulder to wrap my arms around her and she beat me to it, pressing her jeans and sweatshirt-clad self against me. Long kiss.

"You know what time of the month it is, don't you?"

"Yeah, I kind of thought so. You taste a little different right before, ' I said. "So just starting?"

"Yep. Darnit!"

"Uh-huh. Like THAT'S the only thing I love about you."

Another kiss, green eyes sparkling. "Lemme get my shower. You're scratchy..."

"Shower, then, cutie," I said.

"On the way, babe," she said.

I heard the water running as I sorted a couple of days' worth of laundry into piles, debating on whether to sacrifice a handful of quarters in the park Laundromat or to spend the better part of a day using the miniature washer-dryer combo in the trailer. The water stopped and in a minute she stepped out of the tiny bathroom, her hair dark from the moisture. She was wearing panties, her concession to that 'period' thing.

I undressed and slid past her, nude, a move that got me a good groping from a giggly teen. I started my own shower, mindful that the hot water supply was not only finite, but likely half gone, and January wasn't the time to be taking a cold shower, and if I was desirous of warm water to shave with, I needed to be careful. I wet myself down, turned the water off as I lathered and scrubbed and shampooed, then turned the water back on to rinse off. When I stepped out of the shower, I heard the hair dryer blowing.

I shaved and stepped out to help her with her hair. Oh, yeah, she was perfectly capable of drying that short copper-colored style, but to me it was almost the level of a fetish. When I finished, she turned to me, smiling, and she was perfect.

"Come on, baby, it's late," she giggled.

Her period. Every time she had one, she steadfastly refused to harbor the thought of intercourse, and honestly, I wasn't that heated on the idea myself, but I'd do anything for her. So on Period, Day One, at almost midnight, I surmised that we'd do a little kissing and cuddling and slide off into slumber.

I shut the lights off in the trailer except for the little overhead light above the head of the bed, and she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of it as I made my way there.

That wasn't what she had in mind. "Lay back," she said, her eyes laughing.

"Baby," I started.

"Hey, sometimes it's not about YOU," she giggled. "I like this, too, you know..."

"Well, if you insist..."

More giggles. She crawled up and kissed me passionately, stroking my hardness as she insinuated her slim form atop me, then she bit my chest, sliding downward, and then she started working me over with her lips and tongue and teeth, knowing what made me work. Of course my moans and involuntary thrusts might've given her some ideas, too. Her tongue was urging the spurts as I came. She kept me in her mouth until I began to soften, then she crawled up beside me.

"Now, don't you feel better?" she smiled.

"You have no idea," I sighed.

"Yes I do, guy. 'Cuz you do the same to me..." She molded herself into my side as I set up some music to fall asleep with and turned off the light.

Wonderful winter Sunday morning. The trailer was below sixty degrees, our "Let's snuggle" temperature. As the vestiges of a winter sunrise made it past the edges of the blackout curtains on the windows, I stirred, wakened by my internal clock, and then I realized what day it was, where I was, and most importantly, what that warmth was, pressed against my hip. I turned over to drift back into sleep and that motion precipitated one from my delightful partner. A tiny "mmmm" came from her lips and then soft motions as she twisted to find her own version of comfort.

We drifted back off together for another half an hour before pressure from my bladder made me have to get up. As I stood, happy with the feeling of an early morning piss, I felt the trailer shudder slightly with the footsteps of my young love. Her hand touched my back as I finished and she took her turn.

"Breakfast?" I asked. "Here or..."

"The diner," she said.

"Got it," I said. That put me on the path of dressing for the trip. She came out and took her own tack toward that goal and when I finished, I watched her buttoning a long-sleeved flannel shirt, then brushing her short hair.

I put the first load of laundry in the little washer and then we made the short dash out the door and shivered in the cab of the pickup until it warmed enough to defrost the ice on the windshield. And off we went. The diner had the expected Sunday crowd, including Mona and Jeff Simmons.

They saw us walk in and waved enthusiastically for us to join them. We slid into their booth.

Mona was smiling today. "Ya'll, we had a wonderful night. Ya'll do pretty good on the music! And I actually got HIM to dance with me."

Jeff grinned. "We don't do the clubs and it's been a long time since we went to a family thing where there was any kind of dancing." He patted Cindy's arm. "When I saw you an' ol' Bill, I figured if YOU could dance with HIM, then I could give Mizz Mona a whirl around the floor."

"We had a good time!" Mona said. "I think everybody did."

"Well," I said, "The Hardesty's are good friends, and we certainly enjoy playing together."

We enjoyed our breakfast with them, talking, laughing. They left for church, inviting us to go with them, but we were in jeans and flannel and we respectfully declined. Jeff picked his ticket up to leave and I grabbed it.

"Hey..." he said.

"Hey, yourself. We enjoyed sitting with ya'll. I got this." I smiled.

"Well, I get the next one, then..." he replied.

"That's fine, but I'm not worried."

"Thank you," Mona said.

Cindy just smiled and said, "You're welcome!"

Cindy and I finished our second mugs of coffee after they left, then got up and paid our ticket and got back in the truck. As was a general rule, yesterday's nasty, blustery day gave way to blue skies and a brisk north wind. As I turned to get into the truck, I faced into the breeze, letting the sting make me feel even more alive. I slid in and Cindy was already in the middle of the bench seat, waiting on me.

I bent over and kissed her. She giggled. "I remember how much I wanted to be able to kiss you in broad daylight, Dan," she said. "Remember? When we first got started?"

"Oh, yes, sweetness, I do." I thought back to those days when I thought I must be absolutely crazy, but couldn't stop myself from adoring this girl. "I'm glad we don't have to hide now..." I cranked the truck and we drove back to the trailer. We spent the rest of the morning doing laundry and ended up having canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. And after lunch...

"It's sucha pretty day, don't'cha think, babe?" she smiled. "The sky's just soooo blue..."

"That somebody should be carving a hole in it?"

"Can we?" she grinned.

"Of course we can," I answered.

"Then let's swap the laundry and we can go..." she said.

We were on the road again and a half an hour later we were dragging the plane out of the hangar to spend a couple of hours making a grand loop out of a chunk of Alabama, as well as some interesting arrangements of climbs and banks as I showed her the sort of maneuvers she'd be learning once she got old enough to actually log time for her own license.

"Maybe I oughtta go back to Louisiana an' let Hanna teach me in the Extra," Cindy said. "That little thing ... the controls are so easy..."

"I've never heard of somebody getting a private license in an Extra," I said. "Of course, most people don't do it in a 180, either, but you're doing pretty good with it." Yeah, I still followed her pretty close on landings and take-offs, but she was getting pretty good. Sadly, the law said she had to be sixteen to be an official student so my wife could neither drive nor fly on her own.

"Show me that 'stall' thing again, honey," she said.

Four thousand feet over the Alabama countryside I talked her through pulling the throttle back and holding the nose up. "Feel the controls get mushy?"

"Uh-huh," she said.

"Now hold the nose up, and the wing is going to stop flying..."

The nose dropped. opped.

"Now release the back-pressure and add power and let the wing start flying again."

"Ooooo-kayyyy, I see," she said.

"Climb back up to four thousand," I said.

The Continental engine pulled us back to altitude. We talked about the maneuver and how simple it was. "Unless you get stupid when you're close to the ground, and you don't have the altitude to let your nose down to recover. Stalls are usually fatal near the ground. Let's do another and see how much altitude it takes you to recover."

This time she did it all. "Four hundred feet," she said. "We lost four hundred feet."

"You can do better than that with practice, but remember, you wouldn't be practicing stalls near the ground. You'd be doing something like trying to make the end of the runway without adding power or something, and it'd catch you by surprise..."

"I see," she said.

"Now let's look at another kind of stall..." And I showed her some more. "Let me know if you get queasy," I said.

"Oh, please, baby," she huffed. "Hanna an' me did lomcevaks!"

"That was then. This is now. I don't want to have to clean up a mess."

She looked at me. "So, okay ... Full power. Forty-five degree bank. Establish the turn. And pull back!" Accelerated stall. The plane shuddered and rolled as the wings lost lift. "An' release the back pressure." And we were flying again.

"That's the same scenario, Cindy. You're on approach to the runway and you misjudge, and you haul back too hard to tighten a turn, and you're in the trees."

She got us back to four thousand feet. "Okay! One more. Other direction."

"And then home. It's gonna get dark." I folded my arms and let her play and then she flew us back home. The shadows were getting long as we left the airport in search of fried catfish. The restaurant, at least. I got mine grilled.

Sitting there sipping iced tea while we were waiting on the food to show up, she was grinning. "D'ya know how much fun THAT was?"

"What?" I asked.

"Stalls. Learning more stuff." She was glowing. My baby loved to learn. Life was her adventure. She was mine.

By the time we got back to the trailer, the wind had died down, the temperature dropping fast after sunset. While she showered, I folded laundry from the dryer. And put the wet clothes from the washer on to dry. She was out of the shower, wearing her panties and nightshirt, and she started drying her hair. I did my nightly ablutions and we cuddled up on the sofa, a blanket and our body heat fighting the chill as the temperature dropped.

I wrapped my arms around her. "You know, little girl," I said, "I've spent many a cold night in my life, but none of them was ever as enjoyable as being with you, all cuddled up." Her red head came back against my chest. I kissed the crown of it, and rubbed my cheek against that outrageous bronze thing.

She giggled. "Ya know," she answered, "Me too ... Last winter, Mom's heater used too much propane, so we had a little electric thing and I'd get so cold sometimes that I'd just curl up under the blankets and not wanna come out." Giggle. "Now I snuggle with YOU an' don't wanna come out..." She rolled from laying back in my arms to facing me. "Just like this!" And our mouths melded.

"Oh, yesssss," I said. "wonderful!"

"Yes we are, aren't we!" More kisses. TV was being ignored. The computers hadn't even been booted up. THIS was entertainment, even though she was 'stupid period!'.

"When we get that last load out of the dryer, we can move this to the bed, okay?" I said.

"Uh-huh. Hold me." She turned her freckled face to mine.

I don't know if she knew exactly how perfectly delightful I found her face but I knew. It was like somebody'd scanned my brain for every neuron that ever fired on 'cute' and then built HER to hit them. I had her in my arms. She was lying on me and our legs were entwined, and it was love.

"You're perfect," I said, planting little kisses on her face.

"I'm not, except to you," she smiled, "and you're perfect to me, an' that's the way it's s'posed to be..."

"You betcha, babe," I said.

"Turn that TV off," she said. "Let's get some music going..."

That's when the dryer buzzed and I folded the rest of the clothes as she turned back the bed's covers and selected some music for us.

I lowered the thermostat to 'snuggle' temperature and then joined my little sweetie under the comforter in our bed. I was reaching to turn off the light when I felt a hand slide up the inside of my thigh and she softly said, "Nuh-uh."

I looked at her and she was smiling.

"Would you mind terribly if we played with this for a little bit? Hmmm?" she smiled.

"Yeah. I'm gonna refuse that," I laughed. "I belong to you, little one," I said.

"Good," she giggled. "Like, I know this TRICK," she said playfully. "If I do THIS," and she started stroking me from the base to the tip, her hand sliding lightly over my shaft, then her grip tightened and she was sliding the skin up and down. "an' If I do THIS," and her head bobbed downward, the head of my dick disappearing into her mouth, and she turned her head so I could see her eyes twinkling mirthfully, "I think I can get SOMETHIN' to happen..."

In a matter of minutes, something did indeed happen, and when it was over, her head popped back up, green eyes, red hair, and a sublime smile. We kissed, not because of some fetish about swapping semen, but because she was mine and I was hers and we were supposed to kiss.

As she pulled the comforter up to cover us, I said, "Baby, you know..."

She stopped me with another kiss. "Dan, don't even start. You KNOW I'm not doing this 'cuz of anything but I love you and I LIKE doin' it with you. You say you get happy that you can make ME come so hard an' so many times," she said, kissing me again, "Well, I'm the same way about you."

"I love you, little one," I said. "You make me so perfectly happy."

Her head was on my chest. "Dan, it's been US since August, and you've never made me feel like I had to do anything. We satisfy each other. You. I'm just happy with YOU. And I like doin' stuff with you. Okay?"

"Okay, love of my life," I said. "And you make me feel wonderful."

She cuddled up against me. "And you do that to me, baby," she purred.

Monday morning the alarm put us back in contact with the rest of the world. I rushed out and cranked the truck up to get it warm while Cindy dressed. I took her to breakfast and after cups of coffee we went back to the park and we sat in the truck, staying warm until she got on the bus. Incongruity. My wife. Fourteen. Getting on a school bus. I shook my head, thinking of the strange twists that life could take.

I wasn't but a few minutes late getting to work. Well, actually, I was on time instead of the half-hour early that was my norm. Sub-freezing temperatures slowed the outside work down, but my crews had most of their outdoor tasks completed. The staff meeting was nothing unexpected. We went over plans for the first firing of the boilers. That wasn't a big deal to me. My stuff was already proven. There was a 99.9% chance that any hurdles that came up would be something wrong with somebody else's piece of the huge and complex pie.

Like one of the process engineers announcing that some water lines were exposed and had frozen and ruptured.

"And once again, we prove that water does INDEED freeze below thirty-two degrees," I said, under my breath. Bill heard me.

That was a delay right there as crews had to start covering exposed equipment with plastic and directing portable heaters into the areas to thaw things out. Then SOMEBODY had to replace broken pipe and fittings and valves. That was money. I was fortunate. Electricity doesn't freeze.

With another cold night coming and temperatures staying below freezing all day, I had my crews assist in siting some electric heaters on other critical equipment, and when I left at four-something, I was sure that we'd be firing the boilers the next day.

Out the gate, I flipped my phone open and called a little cutie. "Hi, babe," I said.

"Oh, his, sweetie," was the answer. "I'm at the office with Mizz Helen an' Mister Charlie."

I was there with them in twenty minutes. We visited for a while, making pleasant small talk, and then I collected my little wife and we headed up the road for the elusive Alabama salad. As always, that was a pleasant move. One of the elderly owners told us, "You must try our soup tonight!" She was right, but adding a rich, creamy soup sort of wiped out the gains we might have made by going for salad. Still, the ladies were just so sincere and charming, we couldn't refuse.

Tuesday I got a call from Jim Hardesty. "Hey, man," he said, "How's the project?"

"Right now they've got a few burners lit off on the boilers. It's a milestone," I said.

"Are you gonna get off at the regular time?" he asked.

"Barring any disasters, I will."

"How about you an' Cindy joining us for dinner? Ann left a crockpot full of soup going, and we'd be glad to have you two."

"Jim, that sounds wonderful. We'll be there."

"'Kay, buddy! Go back to work." He laughed and hung up.

I visited the site of the big excitement, watching colorful lines showing flows and temperatures on flat-screen displays in the control room, prompting the operator to pull up screens that showed me how my power system was working and how much energy was flowing to run the big motors and blowers that fed air and water into the boiler. My stuff looked good.

I was eating a sandwich at my desk when I heard the sound of escaping steam. Under some circumstances, that would've been cause for concern, but not today. Venting steam was normal at this stage of the game.

I left the job and picked up Cindy and we went to visit our friends. Jim let us into the house and Ann stuck her head around the corner from the kitchen as Cindy went to join her.

"Darn, Jim, what DID she do to that crockpot?" I asked.

"I don't begin to know, buddy," he laughed. "Smells magical, though."

"Talk about!" I said.

"She wants to loan you our kitchen one Saturday for you to cook us a gumbo, though. Wants to watch."

"We can do that," I said. "It's not rocket surgery, you know."

Jim laughed.

Cindy stuck her head around the corner. "Table's ready!" she said.

We merged our two families for dinner: mashed potatoes, beef shortribs, a couple of vegetables, and family. Life was good. After the table was cleared, we were all sitting in the living room.

Cindy related to Jim the Sunday practice session. "I know it's not your Harrier, Mister Jim, but it's very exciting to me."

"Oh, Cindy," he said. "I remember the first time I did those things, and I wasn't flying MUCH more than your 180," he said.

"Cindy, baby, be careful," Ann said, "Or you'll start dragging YOUR knuckles on the ground like them."

"Oh, don't worry, Mizz Ann," Cindy countered, "I shall remain the epitome of femininity and refinement in spite of Dan's Neanderthal tendencies." She giggled.

"Oh, shucks, Dan," Jim said, "Now YOU have one a'them uppity wimmen!"

Teresa rolled her eyes. "Comedians! I'm being raised by comedians."

"Yeah," Cindy told her. "Ain't it wonderful?"

Ann said, "On a serious and pleasant note, I found out about a concert you guys might be interested in. It's a chamber orchestra out of Europe, and they're doing a concert in Charlotte."

"Like in North Carolina?" Cindy popped up.

"Yes," Ann said. "they're going to do Bach's Brandenburg Concerto Number Three," she continued. "We'd love to go, but Teresa's got a choral festival that weekend."

Cindy looked at me. "Brandenburg Number Three? That's like a musical avalanche. Baby, d'you think..."

"Weather. Work. But we'll try. Why not? We can all do another one, can't we?"

Jim smiled. "Oh, yeah ... I sure liked the last one we did together." He winked at Ann. Cindy caught that and giggled.

Ann simply smiled at her. "Uh ... Kids?"

"Mom, that's not MY music," Teresa stated. Teresa put up with the bluegrass thing because she was participating, but she was not a fan of classical music.

Bill was sitting there with his Gameboy. He looked up. "I can stand another weekend with my cousin," he said.

"And so a plan forms," Jim said. He smiled at Ann and winked, getting another giggle from Cindy.

We talked about that a bit and the conversation drifted to the progress at my project.

Jim said, "Take 'er with you tomorrow morning. She probably wants to see that."

"You interested, Cin,?" I asked.

"Of course. I wish I could've been there today when they lit it off."

"It's not that impressive, sweetie," I said. You have to go out to the boiler and look in a little hole to see the flames. I just watched the temperature on the monitor in the control room."

"Still," she said.

"Well, lemme check with Bill in the morning, and if he okays it, I'll call Jim and then come get you, okay?"

It must've been okay. She gave an excited little bounce. "Ya'll have to understand, I've been out there a lot. I wanna see it run!"

Jim grinned. "So do the people that paid for it, I'm betting."

"You got that right," I countered.

Conversation drifted to school. Teresa was doing straight A's a year behind Cindy and Jim and Ann were appropriately proud.

"And my son, Bill," Jim said, "COULD be doing straight A's as well ... He just needs to pay more attention in social studies."

"Daaddddd! It's BORINGGGGG!" he whined.

"Boring or not, it's a hoop you need to jump through," Ann spoke. "Just apply yourself a little more."

"I'm tryin', Mom," he said. "I'll do better. I promise."

And it was time to go home.

The next morning I posed the visit idea to Bill. "Go get 'er," he said.

Forty-five minutes later I was coming through the door of the office trailer behind Cindy.

She stopped at Sara's desk. "Hi, Mizz Sara."

"Hi, Cindy," Sara said. "Sounds like I really missed a performance Saturday night. I wish we could've been there."

"Maybe next time," Cindy smiled.

At the sound of Cindy's voice, Bill came out of his office. "There's the pretty girl got to dance with. Hi, sweetie," he said.

Sara chuckled. "How come you don't call ME sweetie? Huh?"

Bill laughed. "Oh, let's see. First, she can't file a harassment suit against me. Second, her husband's not gonna whack me with a wrench. And third, she doesn't go out of her way to bring misery upon my head..."

"And she actually IS a sweetie, ' I added.

"Hunh!" Sara said. "Johnny thinks I'm sweet." Johnny was her husband, running a mechanical crew on the project.

"He has to. He married you," I said. "Come on, Cindy, before this person corrupts your mild and pleasant demeanor."

That got me the rare privilege of having the project administrator stick her tongue out at me.

Cindy got her hard hat and some ear plugs and off we went, touring the boiler outdoors in that area where one side felt the heat of combustion, the other the nip of the winter air, all overshadowed by the constant roar of escaping steam as pipes were pressured up and checked and the interior of the boiler was brought to operating temperature for the first time. We had to bake it, just like a cake.

She recognized some of the big motors that were part of my world, except now they were working hard. Racks of control equipment, once sterile collections of dead electronics and banks of wiring now flashed seemingly random sequences of tiny lights as they reacted to the various inputs and outputs, and now the deskfull of flat screen displays showed the ongoing operation in colorful graphic detail.

She was interested. Sure, there was a certain amount of 'oooh' and 'ahhhh', but she'd followed along with us on frequent visits and she asked questions, and to my co-worker Phil Geary, the controls engineer, she paid extra attention as he gave her a little demonstration of the programming behind the controls.

"Here," he said. "Sit here, and let me show you the mock-up." He had a second, redundant set of control equipment sitting there, not connected to the real world, where we tested changes inthe programming. I backed up as Cindy sat at the console.

"Are you REALLY interested in this?" he asked Cindy.

"I sure am," she chirped. "An' you say we can play with this one?"

He turned to me. "Does she have time?"

"All day," I said.

Cindy grinned.

"Tell ya what. I got a couple of things to go check on. If she's not keeping you from REAL work, I can go do that. If you finish, call me on the radio. I'll be back."

"She'll be okay here," Phil said. He was already letting Cindy into his world as evidenced by the changing background on the console monitor before them.

My tasks took me to a few 'loose ends' jobs going on, those 'Wow, I didn't think THAT would happen' events that creep into jobs, often because they guys in offices hundreds of miles away don't actually get to see how entire systems work together.

When I returned to collect Cindy, Phil was shaking his head. "You know, Dan, I've HIRED people who don't know as much as she's picked up in an hour." He turned to a grinning Cindy. "Cindy, let's take this pushbutton and make that buzzer sound, for one second, no matter how long I push it."

She giggled her 'I'm having fun' titter and said, "Okay, that button is on input 1-1. The buzzer is on output 3-1. So I map the input to the output through a one-second one-shot." She clicked, dragged typed. Then she turned to me. "Push the button, baby!"

I pushed. Buzzzzz.

"Easy," she said. "and you can do logic. You know, if this AND that happen, then do this other thing..."

"yes, sweetie," I said. "That's all 'small-wire' stuff."

"Interesting stuff," she said. "Thanks, Mister Phil!"

We took off to look around some more, then returned to the office at lunchtime.

She walked in, and Bill saw her. "Well, little apprentice, what'd'ya think?"

"Impressive. It's like I have a part of it, as many times as I've been here." She was smiling.

"It's lunchtime. Dan, I think we need us a business lunch, don't'cha think?" He eyeballed Sara. "Sara, don't'cha want to talk to us about progress reports?"

She huffed. "Bill! You know I'm on a diet!"

"So come eat a salad, then. Project's buying..."

"If you put it like that," she said, grabbing her purse.

We beat the crowd to the nearest decent restaurant and were already eating when several of the gang walked in. Seeing us, we were subjected to the requisite amount of ribbing, all in good fun, and G-rated, too, because we were sitting with Cindy and Sara. Without them, the language would have been a little bit different.

After lunch, Cindy became Sara's assistant for an hour, to Sara's delight, taking care of some of the 'dog work' of filing, and then she took a ride with the mechanical engineer as he checked on the running pumps and blowers. I ended up in view of them as they watched a vibration analyst collecting data. She stood safely back out of the way until he motioned for her to step a little closer to see the readings.

Three-thirty, we were back in the office, winding things up for the day. Phil came in. "Bill," he said, "Cain't you fake a birth certificate for HER? She's better'n two of the guys we hired to do the programming!"

"Nuh-uh," Sara countered. "I got first dibs."

"I'll pay more!" Phil said.

Cindy took her hardhat off and gave the head of auburn hair a shake.

"A LOT more..." He laugh