Jane called Sophia from Los Angeles to let her know they were on their way, and she was in luck as what she got was a recording, so she didn’t have to suffer questioning from Sophia on how things had gone. It would give her a couple more hours to worry about it. Their flight was direct from Los Angeles to Denver; there wasn’t any need to stop at Las Vegas this time.

On their way to Denver they talked about it a little. “I’m just dead sure that Sophia is going to want all the details,” Rick sighed. “I don’t think she should know everything.”

“Me either,” Jane agreed. “I think we have to let her know that things went pretty well, but there’s a limit. I wouldn’t be surprised if a little handholding and cuddling would tell her as much as she needs to know. You know, body language cues, but I don’t think we want to overdo it there, either.”

“You’re probably right. I’m sure she’ll eventually worm out of us all she needs to know and then some. After all, I’m going to be working with her every day, at least as much as I actually work. I’ll tell you what, Jane, I’m not looking forward to going back to that, but I know I have to.”

“Rick, I don’t know all that much about your financial situation, but I can’t believe from what Rob said that you can’t just turn your back on Comsector and walk away.”

“Oh, I could,” he replied, shaking his head. “But while I have money tied up in investments and options, the income is really good for not doing anything. The hell of it is that if I walked away, then I’d still be stuck with nothing to do that I like doing. Don’t get me wrong, Jane. I like being with you, but not having anything to do otherwise would get old pretty quickly. I mean, it would be just as bad as I have it at work now. At least now I can look forward to getting home to you.”

“That’s something we’re going to have to work on, I guess,” she sighed. “Rick, I don’t have any bright ideas just hanging out there, but at least we’ll have two heads working on the problem.”

“I almost hate to ask this, but what do you plan on doing while I’m at work? That’s going to be about as boring for you as being at work will be for me.”

“That’s a damn good question, and one I haven’t thought about very much. In six or eight weeks I suppose I could go back to the Mountain Grove if all else fails, but I really don’t want to. At one point I was thinking about going to grad school, but I don’t know what I want to study, other than the fact that I have no interest in doing anything more with art history.”

“Well, if you want to, financing it isn’t going to be any big deal.”

“Thanks, Rick. I appreciate that. But at least there’s no rush. I think there has to be some better idea laying out there, something that will interest me a little. But right at the moment, I think working out something for you is more important. Once we know that, what I’m going to do might be pretty obvious.”

After a while their conversation fell off. Rick occasionally glanced at the country below them, which was pretty wild and empty, while Jane turned back to her book. She was up to Okinawa now, almost through the book, but it wasn’t holding her interest as well. She was much more concerned about what was going to happen in the next few weeks.

The honeymoon had been about all she could have asked for. The two of them had gone from being total strangers barely two weeks before to being comfortable with each other – in love with each other. But that had been in what would be very abnormal circumstances. As intended, the honeymoon had thrown them together and allowed them to get comfortable with each other very quickly. But under the pressure of a “normal” life – whatever that was for them – the comfort and the bliss could go away quickly, she realized.

One thing was clear: they were going to face some tougher times ahead. Building a “normal” life might not be easy, but it would have to be done somehow. Rick had come a long way in a couple weeks and a lot of his shyness had gone away, at least with her. But again, those were special circumstances. The road ahead seemed muddy, with plenty of bumps and rocks. Sure, if things fell apart in the near future she’d come out of it pretty well off, at least for her, but right at the moment she wanted to make a go of things. She’d come to like Rick a lot, and maybe even understand him a little, but the story was hardly at an end. It seemed to her that the next few days were going to be critical in building their lives together, and for now that had to be her prime interest.

They were still high above the Rockies when the throttles of the plane were pulled back, and they started a long descent into the airport. Jane tried to get interested in her book again, but only managed it lackadaisically since her mind was on what she would have to do to build a solid, long-lasting relationship with her husband.

It wasn’t much longer before they were on the ground, heading through the terminal to get to the baggage pickup. Not too surprisingly, they found Rob and Sophia waiting for them. “So,” Sophia asked right off the bat, “How did it go?”

“Pretty good,” Rick smiled. “We had a good time and saw a lot of interesting things.”

“How did it really go?” Sophia asked with a bit of concern in her voice.

“Not badly,” Jane smiled. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen Rick looking so tanned.”

“Well, no,” Sophia shook her head, realizing that she was being stonewalled a little. “I guess you must have been out in the sun a lot.”

“A bit,” Rick conceded. “The resort was pretty nice. You did a good one with that, Sophia.”

“What was it like?”

“Quiet,” Jane replied, deciding to concede just a little to Sophia. “We got to be together a lot the first few days. Honolulu was nice but not quite as relaxing. Rob, Pearl Harbor was pretty interesting. I’m glad you suggested we go there. So did you get everything set up with our new place?”

“Jane, you’re being very frustrating,” Sophia charged.

“I know,” she smiled, determined to not give an inch more, at least not now.

“Sophia,” Rick said, coming to Jane’s rescue. “Let’s just say we had a good time, and your idea didn’t turn out to be at all bad.”

“Rick, I think you learned a few things from her, and maybe they’re not all good. You’re being just about as frustrating as she is.”

“I know,” he laughed. “So what’s the story on the apartment?”

“It’s mostly set up,” Sophia replied, conceding defeat, at least for now; her curiosity obviously wasn’t satisfied, but she would have plenty of opportunity to work on Rick in the future. “We probably didn’t get everything the way you’ll want it, but you should be able to finish it without too much work.”

“Thanks, we appreciate that. I don’t think either Jane or I were looking forward to getting back to a pile of boxes. It’s been a long flight and I think both of us are looking forward to some sleep.”

“Right,” Jane agreed. “My butt is tired from being in an airline seat, first class or not, and my time sense is all screwed up.”

“It happens,” Rob commented. “I’ve been on enough trans-Pacific flights to know. Let’s grab your stuff and get out of here.”

A few minutes later they were in Rob and Sophia’s big and comfortable car, heading to Boulder. When they’d come to the airport two weeks before, Rick and Jane had been sitting in the opposite corners of the back seat; now they were close to each other, with Jane leaning her head on Rick’s shoulder. They were holding hands, and if that didn’t tell Sophia what she really needed to know, then nothing would.

Neither Rick nor Jane had been to the apartment before; in fact, it hadn’t been selected and arrangements made when they’d left for Hawaii. It proved to be on the top floor of a multiple-story apartment complex of several buildings. It was large and comfortable, with some nice furniture. “Rick,” Sophia explained, “we didn’t think you’d want to put any of that old junk furniture from secondhand stores you had into your new apartment for use by a nice young lady like Jane, so we spent a little of your money. I hope you don’t mind, and we tried to not go overboard.”

“No, this is fine,” Rick said, eyeing the strange new place. “I’m glad you thought of it.”

“I didn’t think that would be the kind of thing you’d want to do as soon as you got back,” Sophia continued. “Jane, is this going to be all right with you?”

“Looks good to me,” she replied.

“We put your things away. They may not be how you want them, but you’ll have time to figure it out and get things where you prefer. Jane, we bought a few basic groceries for you, along with some things for the kitchen that neither you nor Rick had. That’s something you’re going to have to work out for yourself in the next few days.”

“I ought to be able to manage that. Sophia, it looks to me like you really did it up right.”

“We tried. We were just trying to be helpful where we could. Oh, by the way, Jane, one of the down sides to this place is that there’s only indoor parking for one car, so we put yours in it. We left Rick’s car out behind our house since we were afraid if we left it in the overflow parking area someone would want to tow off a wreck like that.”

“I know it’s not much, but it’s all I’ve needed,” Rick shook his head.

“Jane’s car isn’t very new either, but it’s in a lot better shape,” Rob put in. “You ought to be able to get along with it.”

“Probably,” Rick agreed. “I haven’t needed my car very much.”

“You might want it a little more,” Rob said. “Another of the downsides is that this place isn’t near a bus route that will take you to Comsector very easily. You’ll probably find it easier to drive.”

“I can drive him to work and pick him up, at least for now,” Jane suggested. “We’ll have to see how it will work out in the long run.”

“I could probably pick him up or bring him home if you need the car for something then,” Sophia smiled. “So is this going to be all right?”

“Looks like it ought to be,” Rick told her.

“It’s really a very nice apartment, and it ought to be pretty quiet,” Rob added. “There’s even a pool in the plaza downstairs. The rent is pretty reasonable under the circumstances. From what I’ve been able to see this place isn’t full of young, noisy people. There are a few kids around, but not many.”

“It ought to be very nice,” Jane nodded. “I think you did very well.”

“All right,” Sophia replied. “Now that you’ve seen the apartment and like it, would you care to go to dinner so you can tell us a little more about your trip?”

“Can we put it off?” Rick asked. “I really am pretty tired and I think Jane is, too. We need to get a nap and try to get our time sense and schedules in order for tomorrow. I hate to say it, but it looks like I’m going to have to go to work. Is anything happening at the office?”

“Not much,” Sophia said. “On Friday, there was someone asking when you’d be back since they had some problem they wanted to consult with you about.”

“I’d love to do it. It beats doing nothing. Maybe we could have dinner later in the week or something.”

“That sounds good to me,” Jane agreed. “I’m with Rick, I could use a nap.”

“Honey,” Rob said to Sophia, “I think they’re hinting that they’d like us to leave. They’re newlyweds, and you know what that means.”

“I suppose,” Sophia sighed. “I’d really love to know more about your trip and how things went for you, but I guess that’ll have to wait.”

“Sophia, they went just fine,” Rick told her. “In fact, I would have to say they went much better than I was expecting.”

“That really is good news to me,” she smiled. “In fact, that’s what I was hoping to hear.”

They spent a few more minutes going over the details about the apartment, but soon Rob and Sophia were on their way. “Well, Jane,” Rick said once he was sure their friends were gone, “I guess we’re home.”

“I guess we are,” she said. “I have to admit that this is a nicer apartment than I was expecting, although I’m not sure what I was expecting. Nice view of the mountains, though.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “I figured she’d go a little overboard and I suppose she did, but there’s no reason we can’t be comfortable.”

“It’s going to take a while to get used to it, but at least I get a roommate out of it who I like better than Madelyn. I’m sort of wondering what she’ll think when she finds out what happened.”

“She’ll be surprised, not that I’m not a little surprised when I stop to think about it. Are you going to go look her up to tell her about it?”

“I’m in no great rush,” she said. “Sooner or later. Look, I really am tired and your idea of a nap sounds pretty good to me.”

“How about something else along with the nap?”

“You really do have a one-track mind, don’t you?”

“Maybe I do. Jane, I always dreamed of having a woman to love, and I never realized just how nice it would be. Now that you’ve opened the gate, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to let go, but to enjoy it. I love you, I love being with you and I love making love to you.”

“It’s pretty much the same here,” she smiled. “The bed sounds pretty good to me, so maybe we’d better go try it out.”

“In spite of what I just said, maybe we ought to hold off for a few minutes,” he laughed. “I mean, enough time for Rob and Sophia to get in their car and get on the road. I don’t think I’d want them to discover they’d forgotten some important little tidbit and come back to tell us.”

They spent the next few minutes exploring their dressers and closets, just to get an idea of where everything had been put. They agreed some changes needed to be made, but that none of it needed to be done right now. There would be time for that; right now they had more important things on their minds.

It was getting to be late in the afternoon before they got out of bed. “I don’t think we want to overdo it right now,” she told him. “We’re going to have to go back to bed in a few hours to get a good night’s sleep so you can be ready for work tomorrow.”

“I was thinking something like that,” he agreed. “Back in the good old days I didn’t worry too much about whether it was morning, noon, or night. I’d sometimes work fifteen or twenty hours at a stretch, go cork off in the corner for a while then get back to coding. It could go on like that for days at a time, and when I finally came up for air I’d usually be way out of synch with the world. But it’s not like that at Comsector. There it’s strictly eight to five, and there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to come in early or stay late. I don’t like it a bit, but that’s the way they do things.”

“I’ve only rarely had that kind of luxury,” she shook her head. “In fact, I suppose I tend to be a little early to bed, early to rise, and working at the Mountain Grove didn’t help matters much when I had to be to work at six in the morning to be ready for the breakfast crowd.”

“So what are we going to do this evening?” he asked. “I mean, there are things I’d like to do, but we’re going to have to learn to not overdo them.”

“You’re right, we’ve been able to do that the last couple weeks,” she agreed. “That could get habit forming, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I don’t see sitting around playing Scrabble or Monopoly as a real alternative.”

“Not one that would last for long, anyway. We’re going to have to come up with something else, that’s for sure.”

“We’ll just have to work on it,” she smiled. “Now, what would you say if I looked around out in the kitchen to see what they left us for food? If there’s something I can make a dinner out of, we can eat in. Or, if there’s not, we could go out somewhere.”

“Yeah, we probably ought to eat something, but I’m not real hungry right now.”

“Tell you what, let’s get on swimsuits and go try out that pool,” she suggested. “Looking down on it from here, it looks like there’s a hot tub next to it. I’m a little surprised that Lee and Sabrina didn’t have one. Then we can come back up here and I’ll make some dinner, or we can get dressed up and go out.”

“If there’s something here I think I’d just as soon eat in. After the last week I could stand a break from restaurants. We could order in a pizza, I suppose.”

“Not wanting to sound snippy, but don’t you think you’ve had enough pizzas to hold you for a while?”

“Yeah, I suppose I did more or less live on them for a while, and I guess that’d be something else you’d want to change. You’re right, that did get to be a little automatic. Let’s go check out the pool.”

Since it was late on a warm summer afternoon, the pool was fairly crowded. They weren’t sure of the propriety of swimwear around the place, so Jane put on her most conservative bikini, while Rick put on the board shorts he hadn’t worn since their first day at Lunahilo Bay. They splashed around in the pool a bit and gave the hot tub a try, joining a few other people from the apartment complex. For whatever reason, they didn’t talk much more than superficially with anyone, although Rick spoke up enough that he didn’t seem quite as shy as he had once been.

While hanging around the pool was nice, and it seemed to Jane that there were people there who it would be possible to know better, after an hour or so they’d had enough of it and went back up to their new apartment. They pulled off their wet swimsuits, and for once being nude with each other wasn’t quite enough to get them going, although the jury was out on whether that would last through the evening.

One of the things Jane had made up her mind about early on – although she hadn’t spoken of it to Rick – was that she was going to try to dress attractively when he was around, at least for now. Just pulling on a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt might do for most people if they were just going to lay around the apartment, and it had for her in the past, but she had now come to realize that she really needed to work on keeping up Rick’s interest in her. So she pulled on one of her sundresses, and made sure he noticed that she hadn’t bothered with underwear. There was more than one message she wanted to get across with how she’d dressed – being sexy, of course, but setting a good example for him, too.

With that, she headed for the kitchen, which was more than adequate. After a look around, she discovered a salisbury steak tray meal that only had to be popped in the microwave, and a bag of potatoes. She spent a few minutes peeling them, and set them to boiling. She found a can of mixed vegetables Sophia had bought, and set them to warming. It wouldn’t be the greatest meal, but it would be a good one for the absolutely first one she’d cooked for him.

As she had told Rick halfway across the Pacific, she was not the world’s greatest cook and she knew it. But then, he had been a crappy eater and admitted it, so with a little luck – and maybe some help from Sophia – she might be able to stay ahead of him as he learned to appreciate a better diet.

Rick stood in the kitchen watching her as she made dinner. “So,” he asked, “What do you plan on doing tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I see I have to do some laundry. It looks to me like Sophia or someone must have done some for both of us, since I didn’t notice anything much dirty, but we brought back quite a bit that needs attention. Beyond that, I need to go grocery shopping. Sophia did get some things for us, but not very much. If you have any suggestions about what you like, I want to hear them.”

“I really don’t know what to tell you. I’m pretty much a meat and potatoes eater when I bother to eat at all. If you’re not going to allow order-in pizza very often, I guess we’re just going to have to try different things and see what happens.”

“That’s pretty much my style, too,” she agreed. “I’m not much on exotic or ethnic stuff. Oh, I don’t mind an ethnic restaurant or something once in a while, but that’s only once in a while. Like, the night Sophia brought this whole deal up to me Madelyn suggested we go to some Persian restaurant she’d heard about, and I thought it might be all right to try out except for the fact that I wasn’t in the mood to go out at all. We might have to give it a try sometime.”

“We could, I suppose. But why don’t you just make things you like? If I like it or don’t like it, I’ll tell you. After a while you ought to know what works for me.”

“I could do that, I suppose. But I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be different for me to do the cooking for the two of us. I mean, left to myself I might just open a pack of ramen noodles.”

“They’re not bad, but they’re not good either, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean and I agree. Rick, I don’t ever plan on serving you ramen. I have to be able to do better than that or I won’t feel like I’m holding up my end of the deal.”

“I think you’ve done fine so far,” he told her. “Like I told you, I used to dream about being married, but I could never imagine it happening. Now, it’s so much better than I could have dreamed, and I just hope it doesn’t go away.”

“I hope so too, Rick. I really hope so, but we’re both going to have to work at it to keep it that way.”

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