Despite Emmy’s protestations, she didn’t wake up in the middle of the night at all. In fact, she slept in until eight or so, when her need to use the bathroom finally forced her out of bed. When she stumbled into the kitchen wearing nothing but her undies and a camisole that was distressingly loose on her, I could really see what Angela had been talking about.
Emmy had always been naturally thin, but this was too much. A loss of five pounds on her frame was a serious decrease and it really showed.
“Em, baby,” I said, rushing over to help her sit down on one of the bar stools. “What would you like for breakfast?”
“I am not very hungry,” she replied, but I wasn’t having it.
“You might not feel hungry,” I said, kissing the top of her head, “but Emmy Jr is, and she needs her breakfast. Even if all you eat is a smoothie, you have to have something.”
“I could not tolerate a smoothie right now,” Emmy said, making a face.
“A chocolate croissant and some juice, then?” I suggested.
“We have croissants?” Emmy asked, perking up.
“I got them this morning from the bakery down on Sunset,” I told her. “I can warm one up for you if you want,” I said, taking one of the flaky pastries from the bread drawer.
“Please?” Emmy asked in a grateful voice.
A couple of minutes later she was eating her croissant and sipping the pulpy orange juice I’d just squeezed for her. Both things seemed to sit well, and to my relief she actually wanted more.
“Where is Angela?” Emmy asked as she worked on her second croissant, already looking a little bit better.
“Working out downstairs,” I replied. “She woke up early today and couldn’t wait to get back into her routine.”
“It has been hard for her,” Emmy said. “Many of our hotels have not had any fitness facilities, and those that have, have generally been of low quality. I have felt guilty, since she has been at the mercy of my schedule but I have not been able to do things to accommodate her needs.”
“Well, we have ten days here at home before we take off for Seoul for her to get her rhythm back,” I said.
“We?” Emmy asked, and the hopeful look on her face broke my heart a little.
“Yeah, we. I’m going on tour with you guys,” I told her. “It’s been too hard, being away from the two of you.”
“But what about your work? And your classes?” Emmy protested, but it was obvious that she was elated by the news.
“I’m going to have to spend a fair bit of time on both of those things while we’re on the road,” I admitted. “But there’s no reason I absolutely have to stay here. Worse comes to worst, I’ll fly back if I have to take care of something. But I can’t stomach the idea of not seeing the two of you for another month and a half.”
“Oh, Leah,” Emmy sighed. “It will be so good to have you with us. I- the time you spent with us was the best part of the whole tour, and I hated to leave London without you.”
“I hated it, too,” I agreed. “I was glad that you two had each other, but I really wished I’d gone on with you guys.”
After eating, Emmy went back to bed for a morning nap and I resumed my analysis of the analysis provided to me by the owners of Evergreen Property Management. I wanted to see how their numbers looked compared to the market trends I could discern from my own research. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust their work, mind you. I was sure that it really was their in-house projection of local conditions, since they hadn’t had time to fabricate anything this comprehensive in the short time between when I’d asked for it and when it got emailed to me. No, the question was whether or not they had the same grasp of rental dynamics that I did, and therefore how much of their work could I use with confidence.
“Hey, Lee,” Angela said, wrapping her arms around me from behind as she nuzzled my neck. “Did Emmy eat?”
“Good morning, babe,” I said, kissing a sweaty bicep. “Yeah, she had a couple of chocolate croissants and some orange juice, then went back to bed. How was your workout?”
“You have no idea how much I missed our gym,” Angela said, resting her chin on my shoulder.
“Emmy told me you haven’t been able to work out consistently.”
“Hardly at all is more like,” Angela griped. “I’ve been doing sit-ups and using those rubber bands in our room most of the time. Our gym is like heaven compared to most of the hotels, if they even have any workout rooms at all.”
“Yeah, that’s what Emmy said,” I agreed.
Angela stood up, but left her hands on my shoulders. “So, are you starting a Porsche collection now, too?” she asked, giving my shoulders a squeeze to show that she was teasing.
“You saw the new one, I guess,” I said with a chuckle. “I don’t know if I’m going to keep it, but it’s fun for now.”
“You and your cars,” Angela sighed.
“Hey, there’s a Porsche Club dinner on Friday night. Want to go?” I asked, hopeful.
“Yeah, sure, why not?” Angela replied. “We’ll take your new one, right?”
“Of course!”
“Of course,” Angela said with a nod as she got the ingredients for a smoothie from the fridge. After she threw everything in the blender and ran it for thirty seconds or so, she poured the thick mix into her favorite insulated tumbler.
I was rapt, watching her do all this, enjoying the way her body moved in the minimal spandex outfit she was wearing.
“I told Emmy I’m coming on tour with you guys,” I said, admiring the play of the muscles of Angela’s back and shoulders.
“That means you can’t back out now,” Angela said as she sat down at the counter.
“I wasn’t going to back out. It has been Hell here without you two. I missed you so much.”
Angela’s smile melted my heart, affirming that I was making the right decision.
“I’m really looking forward to Australia,” Angela said. “I’ve always wanted to go.”
“We’ll only be there a week and a half,” I protested. “We won’t really have time to see much.”
“No, but it will be summer! After all those freezing cold cities in Northern Europe, it will be glorious!” Angela said dreamily.
As much as I would have liked to stay home that evening, I did have to go to class. After all, I was going to miss six weeks, so I needed to tell my instructors and make arrangements to do my work from the road. My grades had been excellent and I had been an active participant in the classroom, so my professors were all happy enough to accommodate my needs. That said, I was going to attend right up until the last minute to minimize the absence, even though that meant taking a later flight to Korea than Emmy and Angela.
Being home seemed to agree with Emmy, and although I would have liked for her to eat more than she did, at least she regained some of her vitality over the next few days. She slept a lot, but that was fine. By Wednesday she’d declared herself ready to have guests over, but we kept it minimal with just Andy and Jenna. Even so, Emmy ran out of steam and went to bed early.
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“She’s so skinny!” Jenna remarked after Emmy said goodnight and went to our bedroom to sleep. “She really needs to put on a few pounds, for the baby’s sake.”
“Yeah, she does,” I agreed. “I guess her morning sickness has been pretty bad the last couple of weeks. She’s been eating O.K. here at home, though, so I hope the worst is behind her.”
“I think it might be,” Angela said. “She has been sleeping better since we got home, and like Lee said, she’s been eating more, too.”
“They say the first few months are the hardest, until the last few months, that is,” Jenna said. “The middle part is the easiest.”
Angela looked down at her still mostly flat tummy, resting a hand just above her belly button. “I’ve had it really easy so far,” she said, her voice tender.
“I can’t believe you’re four months in and still have a flatter tummy than me,” Jenna griped. “Life isn’t fair.”
“Have you guys thought about having kids?” I asked.
“We’ve talked about it, and we want to have kids in a few years- maybe when I retire from pro football,” Andy said. “My schedule during the season just wouldn’t be fair to Jenna or the kids, you know?”
After Jenna and Andy left, Angela and I cuddled on the couch for a bit and caught up on things. I asked her if her parents were going to come in the next few days, but she said they were going to wait until after the Asia tour was over so they could spend some real time in California. Of course, Angela would be that much closer to her due date, and I could easily imagine Mamá Castro staying for a few months.
That idea didn’t bother me at all, to be honest. She was a sweet lady, and obviously she’d been through the whole process twice, so she could lend the voice of experience and comfort to our two mothers-to-be.
When I told Angela as much, she snuggled up closer and made a satisfied little noise.
“I love you so much,” she said. “We both missed you so bad in Europe. I’m so happy you’ll be going with us to Asia.”
“I missed you guys a whole lot, too,” I said, kissing her forehead.
“Not too much to buy a new car, though,” Angela said, giving my boob a little squeeze.
“You didn’t miss me too much to go sightseeing in Scotland, either,” I replied, giving her butt a squeeze in return.
“It would have been better with you there,” Angela sighed.
Emmy and the boys (along with their sound and lighting guys and all the rest of the touring performers) had a discussion and rehearsal day on Friday, so she didn’t mind that Angela and I were going to the Porsche Club dinner without her. The whole car thing had really turned into something exclusive with Angela, since Emmy had managed to find more and more excuses to not be involved.
Honestly, I didn’t mind. If she really wasn’t interested, that was fine. I wasn’t going to twist her arm and make her suffer through something she didn’t actually enjoy, especially since Angela did seem to have fun with it. It was O.K. that it was our thing together, as long as Emmy didn’t feel left out.
It was funny to me how attitudes had changed among the good old boys of the club after my track performance, and despite just a couple of assholes the rest of the guys (yes, it was almost entirely guys) had warmed up to me.
Of course, I usually had Angela with me, too, and she could charm anyone, so that helped. In any case, we’d become regulars and part of the group, not just members on paper.
Our new Safari was a huge hit when we pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot. We got more eyes than we ever did anymore with the Spyder, never mind it was only about five per cent of the price. It was a cool custom well-done modded rig, and that got everybody’s attention.
“I think I heard about this car,” Rick, the event organizer for the club, said. “You got it from a guy in Riverside or Perris or someplace like that, right?”
“No idea,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I could look at the paperwork- the guy kept every receipt. But he traded it in at my dealership in Temecula, so I snapped it up.”
“Your BMW dealership?” he asked, his voice dripping with feigned disdain.
“That would be the one,” I said. “I’m toying with the idea of picking myself up a Porsche dealership to add to the collection, though.”
“Which one?”
“I can’t say, but it’s here in the Los Angeles area,” I told him.
Rick shook his head in mock dismay. “Rich people problems,” he said.
Dinner was nice, and during the mixer afterwards it seemed everybody wanted to talk about my new (to me) Safari 911. It generated far more discussion than my 918 Spyder had ever done, which I found amusing. Mike, the guy with the butterscotch-colored Targa, seemed to be absolutely in love with the rally-modified Carrera.
“Leah,” he said, “all other things aside, that is one sweet ride.”
I told him how my crew chief had given me a hard time for finding the dirt and gravel so often on my last track day and suggested I get myself a rally car if I wanted to make it a habit. Coincidentally, this Carrera Safari had been traded in at my dealership not long after, so I scooped it up for myself.
“It’s not really a competitive rally race car,” I said with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure it was built as a styling exercise, but the guy did everything right, according to my crew chief. In any case, it’s a fun play car, and yeah, I can run it through the gravel all I want.”
“I have mixed feelings about that,” Mike said. “On the one hand, it would be a shame to not use the car like that, but on the other, it’s too pretty to trash.”
“I had the paint corrected and then wrapped with that really thick vinyl paint protection film,” I assured him. “It’ll shrug off any small rocks and gravel with no problem.”
“But it won’t do you any good if you roll the car into a ditch,” he cautioned.
“No, I know, but that’s a risk to manage, right? Actually, my biggest problem is where to take the thing. I have no clue where to find the right roads for the car. I took it on South Main Divide down in Orange County and that was a blast, but there have to be some closer options.”
“I’d have no idea,” Mike said with a shrug.
“Yeah, me, either, and that’s the problem,” I told him.
“What’s the problem?” Angela asked as she and Linda, Geoff’s wife, joined us.
“Places to drive the Safari,” I said. “There have to be good mountain dirt or gravel roads, but I just don’t know any of them.”
“We’ll just have to go exploring,” Angela said with a shrug and a smile.
My eyes watered a little as I was hit with a wave of love for my dark-haired beauty. “I’m so lucky to have you,” I told her quietly as I pulled her in for a kiss, not caring what anybody might think. The entire club knew she was my wife, and to Hell with them if they were offended by an expression of our love.
“And I’m lucky to have you, mi cariña,” she replied when our lips parted.
The next morning Angela and I showed up for the Saturday morning drive group in the Safari, which raised eyebrows from Jimmy and Stephen, but most of all from Stein.
“I did not see this coming,” Stein said, walking around the olive green Carrera Safari. “It’s old and probably slow, and the suspension is probably soft, which means a lot of body roll in the turns,” he said, peering in the open window at the giant rally-style shifter. “But I’ll bet it’s hilarious to drive.”
“It sure didn’t feel slow when Leah drove it back from the dealership,” Teddy Bear said. “I thought we were gonna die at least half a dozen times.”
“You should have said something,” I chided him. “I could have gone slower.”
“No way! I was loving it!” Teddy Bear protested.
“I love the look,” Jimmy said, admiring the Porsche, “But doesn’t it have, like, half the horsepower of your M6?”
“Less than that, according to the dyno,” I said. “More like forty per cent of the power. But it weighs a lot less, so that makes up for some of it.”
“Still, it seems like a real change for you,” Jimmy protested. “You’re such a horsepower queen.”
“He’s got you there,” Stephen agreed with a smile.
“Hey, where’s Steph?” I asked him. “I thought you were going to bring her?”
“She’s working,” he said with a grimace. “I guess there have been some snags getting everything lined up for the Australian shows and she needs to get it sorted out ASAP.”
“I saw how hard she worked in Paris and London,” I said. “She’s going to need a month off after the tour is over.”
“That’s no lie,” Stephen agreed.
“The entire tour!” Angela said. “She was everywhere, making sure everything got done. I have no idea how she did it all.”
“She is definitely a hard worker, alright,” Stephen agreed.
After our usual post-drive group lunch, Angela and I went back to check out several promising dirt roads she’d spotted shooting off from Big Tujunga and Aliso Canyon roads.
The road she’d seen from Big T was excellent- reasonably rut-free, good sightlines, and no other traffic. It wound up climbing into the pines at higher elevations, and Angela found a spot that she deemed perfect for a photo session.
We spent well over an hour there, me using her nice Nikon to shoot pictures of her behind the wheel, posing with the car in her safari-esque outfit of lace-up boots, khaki cargo pants and oversized white button-front shirt (which she’d probably stolen from my section of the closet, I mused).
I even got a few good photos of Angela throwing up a huge cloud of dust as she spun the car out on the dirt road, after I’d shown her how to do it.
As the ‘golden hour’ progressed and we hadn’t seen another human being since we arrived, Angela stripped down to nothing but her boots and broad-brimmed hat for some glamour photos. Even though I was trying to do my best to take just the right photos, I found myself losing track of what I was doing and simply admiring her lovely form on more than one occasion.
After we lost the light and Angela called the photo session done, I took her nude body in my arms and kissed her.
“You are so damned gorgeous,” I said, my hands roaming up and down her back.
“And cold,” she said.
“I can warm you up,” I replied, my voice husky.
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, gazing up into my eyes.
“Yeah,” I said, giving her another kiss. “Get your clothes on and get in the car. I’ll turn up the heater.”
“Oh, you!” Angela said with a laugh, her smile making her look so very young and so, so very beautiful.
“As much as I hate ever telling you to put your clothes on, we probably should get home for dinner. We can maybe have some fun sexy times later, if you’re in the mood.”
“I’ll be in the mood,” she assured me, and as she turned away to get her clothes from the car she gave me an adorable little butt wiggle.
Unable to help myself, I copped a feel as she leaned over to grab her stuff from the driver’s seat.
“I thought you wanted to wait?” Angela asked, looking over her shoulder at me.
“What? No! I never want to wait,” I said, running my hands over her muscular rear. “But I don’t want you to get cold, and Em is probably wondering where we are.”
“You thoughtful, considerate beast,” Angela said as she stood on her toes to give me another kiss.