On to Vancouver.

You don’t get much done the rest of that day—unless doing each other counts—but all the same, you manage to find places for more of Amber’s belongings over the course of the week than you would have expected. Just to be safe, you engage a little extra security for the house while you’re gone. You can’t really imagine April trying anything illegal, but you decide to honor your paranoia. Besides, having Amber’s things piled in front of your house might have attracted some of the wrong kind of attention.

The flight was shorter for you than it would have been for most people. Your charter consortium has a small fleet of Cessna Citation X+ medium-sized business jets; they aren’t the roomiest things out there, but if you want to go any faster, you have to be in the military. When the group of you were deciding what you wanted to buy, you and your mentor both pushed for maximizing speed first, then range, and only then focusing on creature comforts, and the two of you carried the day.

Amber enjoys herself immensely. Flying on a private jet removes just about everything unpleasant about airline travel, leaving only the speed and the joy of being in the air. You spend much of the time talking about all the places you’d like to see together. The weather is predicted to be lovely for Vancouver—and most of the West Coast—for the two weeks you’ll be there, so everything is on the table. Amber even wonders if you’d be willing to lie on the beach with her for a while. “Maybe Wreck Beach?” you ask slyly.

“What’s Wreck Beach?” she asks suspiciously.

“Oh, just the most famous sunbathing beach in Vancouver,” you say airily. When she continues to regard you with suspicion, you grin and add, “. . . because it’s something like the biggest nude beach in North America.”

Fortunately, Amber has just swallowed her drink of water when you say that, or else you would have gotten the whole thing in your face. Even as it is, she splutters most impressively. “You— you— you—”

“OK, OK, OK, I admit, it’s a bad idea. It would be terribly unfair to make all those poor people have to try to compete with you,” you offer in mock apology. That sends her off into another wave of splutters; but she starts to see the humor in it, and before long, her splutters change to laughter. You lean close to her and say, “No, I don’t want to take you to a nude beach. I want to get you nude where I can take advantage of you properly.”

That makes her blush. After a few moments, she says, “How about right now?”

“No,” you say. “It would be most inconsiderate to the crew to have sex in the passenger cabin, and the washroom works very poorly for sex. Honestly, the whole ‘Mile-High Club’ thing is seriously overrated.”

“Oh,” she says, a little disappointed.

“Don’t worry,” you tell her with a lustful grin. “I’ll make it up to you.”

*******

Once you land, everything seems normal to Amber until you reach the Pan Pacific Hotel. Her instinctive reaction is obvious: “We can’t afford this.” When you walk in and claim the privileges of your Pacific Club membership, she doesn’t know what to think. Then you lead her into the Opal Suite, which will be your home away from home for the next two weeks or so, and she’s stricken to silence.

“But . . .” she finally says. “Do we really need this much space?”

“For just ourselves? Possibly not; although we are going to be here two weeks and a weekend, and a regular hotel room can get mighty claustrophobic over that length of time, believe me. Partly, it’s a matter of what the hotel had open for this period. The thing is, though, that it’s entirely possible that we’ll need to do some entertaining here of business guests. For that, yes, we need something like this—which makes this a reasonable business expense. Better to pay for more room than we need than to need more room than we have; it’s not even close.”

“Wait,” Amber says, looking panicked. “We—as in, me—may need to do entertaining?”

“Yes, but don’t worry about it. That responsibility won’t be on your shoulders. Even if, twenty years from now, we’ve been doing this together for twenty years, it won’t be on your shoulders, unless you want it to be. I’ve done this before, and I didn’t have your mother with me, because she didn’t want to come. Evidently not for the reason I thought,” you say in a flatter voice, and break off. “Anyway, just relax and be yourself. All will be taken care of, and if it comes to it, you’ll do fine. You’re intelligent, thoughtful, curious, insightful, considerate, and,” you grin, “extremely pleasant to look at.” Amber grins back at you. “You’ll be fine.

“So, what would you like to do first?”