Chapter Two

Christina called all morning long, trying to get interviews on her video piece about the disappearing wetlands just off the Bay. So far, no one was available: there were three phones slammed in her ear—the same number as the doors that were slammed in her face the day before. She had no idea what a sticky issue she'd settled on for her documentary. Three pieces of hate mail didn't help, and if she so much as breathed a word to Dale about her problems with the project he'd be on her to change her subject matter. Not that he tried to control her video work, he was just so adamant about her safety. He already thought this subject was too hot for her to cover.

When Christina first took on the project, there was Rikko to help; but when he split with her best camera equipment, her safety and the quality film work she needed were gone.

At noon, Christina gave up on the project and plopped in down her favorite overstuffed chair. She looked out on a string of apartment roof tops and tall buildings making up the city landscape. When she and Dale got married, she'd be moving out of this cozy place. She'd miss her crows-nest home, the little hideaway from the weird rest of the world. Dale had helped her find the studio just after she took the job with his company fifteen months before, and she could finally afford something nicer than her seedy flat in an"impossible" part of town, as Dale had called it. Her new home wasn't huge, just one enormous room with a video work-space at one end, and a living area and kitchen at the other. The best part of the studio was her rumpled bed in the corner by the windows. Framed on two sides, one side looked out on the skyscape, the other side looked out on the rooftop patio. She liked making love to Dale in the windows, even with the lights on, as if she was flaunting their love affair to the world—the affair that never should have been, but was.

Sitting in her chair looking across the bed to the gray day outside, Christina was feeling lonely. She missed not going into the office. She missed seeing Dale nearly every hour, even if it was just to get a glimpse of his sexy physique and think of it naked, or get a thorough dressing down for one of her many faux pas. She especially missed the stolen moments in their day when his office door was closed and they would ravage each other's bodies for a few brief minutes before the demands of their jobs called them back to work.

When the doorbell suddenly rang, Christina jumped from the chair and answered it.

"Dale!" she exclaimed."What are you doing here?"

"I missed you," he