That trip to Portland marked two milestones for us. First, our little Nation of Strays was expanding, and I could see that with time and effort we could probably bring most (if not almost all) North American Night Children into our fold. Clearly our strategy of boots on the ground combined with Emmy’s increasing public visibility was making it easier to recruit newcomers. Our plan to start with the West Coast was yielding dividends right away, and with the numbers we were seeing, we could only imagine that the larger, older cities on the East Coast would have even more Strays to find.

Of course, that presented its own challenges. It was certainly easier to deal with the Strays that were local to us than those that lived hundreds of miles away, but that was an organizational issue that was going to have to be sorted out. Thankfully, Michael’s willingness and ability to step up and assume more of a role in that regard was of immense help.

On a personal level, Emmy started spending more time at home, and that meant more time with me. On my side of things, though, I couldn’t see any easy way to spend more time with her.

True to her word, Emmy cut back her hours to match my schedule. Since my routine was determined by my classes and V Ball commitments which were not flexible, Emmy talked to the boys and the band stopped working until late into the night, sticking to hours that corresponded to mine. This meant that we actually got back into the habit of dinners together, and even more important, our sex life came back to life, pun intended. Going to bed at the same time is key, as it turns out. Who would have thought?

We talked about me quitting V Ball, since I certainly didn’t need the scholarship anymore. “You enjoy it, do you not?” Emmy asked when I brought the subject up one night over dinner. Yes, we were actually having dinners together again when my game schedule allowed it.

“Well, I mean, sure I do. But you know, it was always a means to an end, you know? I played in high school because I was good at it and had fun doing it, but then when it looked like a good way to get into a decent college…” I replied.

“What would happen if you quit?” Emmy asked me.

“For me, or for the team?” I asked to clarify what she meant.

“Both,” she answered. “First, what would it mean for you, personally?”

“Well, I’d have a bunch more free time,” I said. “Now, during the season, it takes about 12, 15 hours a week between practice and games, not counting travel.”

“I meant for you, personally, Leah. You have played for so many years, played hard, and made it a big part of your life. What would you do without it?”

I didn’t really have an answer, and I admitted as much. “I’m not sure. I mean, I do like it, but it doesn’t define my life, you know?”

“So what would it mean for the team?” Emmy asked, not willing to let the topic drop.

“I’ve already given up my scholarship spot so Coach could recruit another player, but as much as I hate to say it, none of the freshmen are ready to play yet, so my quitting would leave a hole in the rotation.” I replied, thinking about it. “I know Coach doesn’t like stealing upperclassmen from other schools, and I’m probably the best player on the team now that Janie, Stacey and Kerry graduated, so I guess that’d be a big blow to the program…”

“How would you feel about leaving them?” Emmy asked, getting to the heart of her questioning.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’d feel shitty about leaving the team in the lurch. Coach went out on a limb for me, and I’d feel as if I’d be betraying him, to just quit,” I realized.

“It would not be in your nature to abandon your team like that,” agreed Emmy. “You are not that person.”

“No? What kind of person am I?” I asked as I cleared the table.

“I think you are a person who needs a long, hot bath with another person who enjoys long, hot baths,” she replied, giving me a mischievous grin.

“Hmm? Who would that other person be?” I asked I pulled her into my arms.

“Moi, bien sûr,” she replied, burying her face in my chest.

“And how hot would the bath be?” I asked.

“Très, très hot,” Emmy replied in a sultry voice.

“What about the dishes?” Emmy squeaked as I scooped her up in my arms.

“The dishes can wait until tomorrow. We have more important things to do right now,” I growled as I carried her upstairs for that long, very, very hot bath.

Settling in to the very hot water, Emmy beckoned me to sit with my back towards her. It took me quite a bit longer to ease in to the very nearly scalding tub than it had Emmy- she was always much more heat tolerant than I was.

After slowly inching my way down until I was finally submerged, Emmy started working on my shoulders.

“You are so big now!” she exclaimed, soaping me up. “So very strong,” she murmured, sliding her hands down my arms, then up my lats and back to my shoulders. Pulling me back against her, she slid her hands down my chest, cupping my breasts. She used the tips of her thumbs to circle my nipples, which felt heavenly.

“You have gotten so lean,” Emmy said, nuzzling my ear. “I love the way you look now, but I do miss the breasts you had before.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. She’d never mentioned it before, and it wasn’t as if my losing a cup size was a sudden thing.

“They are still beautiful,” Emmy replied. “There is simply a bit less to adore.”

“Maybe I should get some work done,” I joked, but Emmy took it seriously.

“The doctor who did mine is excellent,” she said, nibbling on my earlobe. “We should wait until after volleyball, though,” she said, thinking about it.

“Hmm…” I said, rolling around to face her and sliding down a bit. “I think I might need to examine his work a bit more closely” I said, finding her nipple with my tongue. “Very closely.”

As much as I hated to get out of that bed when my alarm went off at 4:15, I rose to greet the new day same as always. There was no way I was going to skip my workout, since I was paying Ruben Da Silva for personalized training sessions before the kickboxing club opened in the mornings.

After Emmy’s attack I’d determined to take it up to the next level, and Ruben was just the guy to teach me what I needed to know. As a former MMA champion he knew how to fight in the ring, of course, but even more important than that he’d grown up in Brazil’s underground vale tudo fighting scene so had no qualms about teaching me to fight like I really meant it. I had two hours with him every day, split between speed and strength training and actual fighting technique. It left me tired and sore for the first few months but soon enough my body had gotten used to the stress and found myself invigorated by the workouts, even though Ruben threw me around like a rag doll and beat me like I owed him money. I was getting better, though, and I could feel it.

Sammy, the team’s strength and conditioning trainer, couldn’t believe the gains I was making. My jumps were higher and my spikes harder than anybody else on the team, so she gave up on assigning me any strength work or gym plans of any kind. “Whatever it is you’re doing, just keep doing it,” she said one morning at the weekly weigh-in and strength eval.

I enjoyed my status as the team’s powerhouse, the intimidator. Other schools were coming to recognize that they needed to match their best against me at the net, and more often that not I dominated anyone who tried to go toe to toe. It was rare that opposing players ever went for jump blocks on my spikes, which opened up different hitting options for me.

As a result of my strength on offense, Coach Burke made me work on defense drills harder than anybody. He explained to me that a one-dimensional player is useless at top level competition, and if I was known as a strong offensive player other teams would target me assuming I was weak away from the net. Of course this reminded me of high school and our game against West Temecula High and SmAshley’s inability to defend once I started taking the game to her.

So ultimately, Emmy and I agreed that V Ball was important and I should continue to give it one hundred per cent, even though my career at Stanford was in no way dependent on my performance on the court.

I’d given up on trying to maintain any sort of A average in my classes, figuring that Bs were just fine. There was going to be no need to impress any potential job interviewers with my academics, so all that really mattered was that I learned the material and not whether I made the Dean’s List or whatever. This freed up a few hours a week, which I used to spend more time with work.

Our property management division was pretty much self-maintaining, so I mostly focused on the real estate development side, and building and maintaining relationships with our investors.

As it turns out, there are a whole lot of stunningly rich people in the area, and plenty of them want to park their funds in investments with a more stable earning potential than the tech industry offers. Sure, our REIT (real estate investment trust) was never going to propel any of these people into being the next Warren Buffett, but as a way to backstop against any potential losses in the tech companies that were their main focus our company performed admirably. All we had to do was keep making our solid profit margin and these tech multimillionaires were happy.

As odd as it may seem, there’s also a sort of cult of youth in the Silicon Valley money crowd. They respect old guys (yes, they are mostly guys) who’ve made bank, but somebody young who makes a place for herself at the table garners a lot more attention. It got so that my contact list was full of the names you wouldn’t necessarily know if you were outside that bubble, but if you were an insider, you knew these were A Listers.

It became obvious to me quickly enough that it didn’t matter what you knew, or who you knew that mattered. No, what mattered is who knew you. It was one thing to have these phone numbers and be able to call to talk to these heavy hitters- that was a sign that you were a player. Much, much better, though, is to be the one they call. If your phone rings and it’s Apple’s Head Of Development or the Chief of one of Google’s many Departments, well then, you have arrived.

Of course, at this level almost all relationships are transactional and I knew they wanted to talk to me as a result of my success at making them money in a field most were utterly clueless about. I also knew that I had a certain appeal as an attractive young woman, and more than one of these guys admitted that they liked the idea of working with me because of some sort of group-think. I was making money for this guy, so that guy wanted to get on that train, too. Honestly, I was totally O.K. with that. As Stephanie’s mom said way back when, money makes money.

An unexpected result of spending time with a lot of these tech bros was that I wound up getting involved in the high-end car culture that seemed mandatory in that crowd. There wasn’t a single one of them that didn’t have a McLaren, Audi R8, or Porsche Carrera 4 at the minimum. The Aston Martin that Emmy had bought me fit in perfectly with this scene, and the first time I was invited to do a track day up in Sonoma I was hooked.

Sure, I may have been the slowest around the track, but by the end of that first day I was a lot closer than I’d been during the morning sessions.

That first day on the track was one hell of a rush, and a couple of sessions with the driving instructor really showed me what the car could do. I mean, I couldn’t drive it nearly as well, but I knew that with some practice I could improve greatly, and by the time the track went cold (that means the end of the day in track day vernacular) I’d already looked into signing up for driving schools.

There were four couples at dinner that night at The French Laundry, and while I was busy talking cars with the guys, Emmy totally charmed the three wives. I wasn’t really listening to what they were talking about, but it struck me that I was clearly ‘one of the guys’ as far as these people were concerned.

Soaking in the great big tub at the hotel that night, Emmy asked me “Could this be our life?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, enjoying the way she was really getting into the muscles of my shoulders with her thumbs.

“Well, this,” Emmy said, gesturing at the room we were in, but I understood her to mean everything in general. “You, doing business, making connections, me making my music. Us, living our lives, being adults, taking care of responsibilities, but still taking time to enjoy things…”

“I’m not too sure I get what you mean,” I murmured, just basking in the moment. “This is our life.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Emmy replied, kissing the back of my neck. “We could do anything, anything.”

“No, we can’t,” I replied. “You have your duties and I have mine. There are things we need to do, and we are doing them. I’m gonna keep doing what it takes to keep us on track and working towards our goal.”

“What is our goal, Leah?” Emmy asked, and I finally understood what Emmy was getting at. “Why are we doing all of these things?”

I turned around to face her, taking her hands in mine. “Emmy, you are the queen your people need right now. I didn’t really understand it when you first told me about your people and your parents’ plan, but now that I’ve met a bunch of Night Children, it’s really driven it home. You need to lead them, and you need my support. It’s that basic.”

“Do I have your support? Leah, you are doing so much just so that I can play at rock star… Is this really the right way?”

“It’s what we have committed to, Em. It might not be the best way, but it’s the way we’ve committed to. Your ever-increasing fame is helping to bring more Night Children into the light all the time, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes, it does seem that way,” Emmy admitted.

“Then we should keep at it,” I said, and I meant it.

At the track the next day the instructor helped me improve my lap times even more, and by lunch I was doing well enough to stay on the wheel of almost any of the others in our little group.

“Part of what’s going on is pride,” the instructor scoffed. “These guys grew up watching the Fast And Furious movies and think that they can drive like that. They really need somebody to show them how to do it right, but won’t admit to themselves that they need any sort of coaching to get better. You, though, know you need help and you’ve listened to what I’ve been telling you. That’s a bigger deal than you might think.”

“I realized a long time ago that I can learn a lot from people who know more than I do,” I told him. “I don’t pretend to be an expert at anything.”

“Well, keep learning. Don’t ever stop,” he said.

Back home, Donny loved hearing about the track day, and I promised him I’d take him when an opportunity arose. Sana wasn’t so thrilled with the idea of her boyfriend risking himself and the Mini that we had given them, but when I assured her that it was actually safer than trying to cross the Bay Bridge on any given afternoon she relented and gave her blessing.

“Just- be careful,” she told Donny. “Don’t get hurt.”

It was great to see the two of them so in love. I never saw Donny treat Sana with anything but care and respect, and she was crazy for him, too. I had asked Michael what he thought about their relationship, and he told me that he saw it as a very positive thing, but he did admit there was a bit of grumbling from some of the other Night Children men that they were losing a potential mate to a day walker.

“It’s ridiculous,” he told me. “None of them would have ever been able to attract her attention under any circumstance anyhow. It’s her right to chose her mate, and not theirs to ever have any say in the matter simply because she chose someone other than them.”

“What do they think of Emmy and me?” I asked, curious.

It took a bunch of prodding, but finally Michael relented. “Everyone adores Queen Emmy. She is seen as the purest example of what our kind should be.”

“What do they think of me?” I asked, really wanting to know.

“Everyone is… intimidated by you,” he finally said. “Terrified, really, but at the same time, everyone respects you enormously and wants your approval. You are the stern taskmaster, and nobody wants to earn your wrath, but kind words from you are worth more than gold.”

Emmy’s reaction when I told her what Michael had said was unexpected. Her expression softened, and she wrapped me in her arms. “I knew it,” she breathed. “I knew you would be perfect.”