Kyle laughed. “All right. I spent the night in the city.”

“Oh?” Nancy inquired, arching her neatly contoured brows. “A little wanderlust?”

“Is it all right if I go out once in a while, Nance?” Kyle asked, suddenly not sure she wanted to talk.

“Of course. I’m always trying to get you to go out!”

“You mean you’re always trying to fix me up with someone!”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Nancy feigned a hurt look and reached for a cigarette. She looked expectantly at Kyle, who reached into her pocket on cue and pulled out her lighter.

Kyle leaned forward and touched the flame to her friend’s cigarette, catching the twinkle in her eyes. “Don’t be dense, Nancy.” Kyle answered. “First of all, I can choose my own companions. Secondly, half the time the people you’re trying to fix me up with are men.”

Nancy drew deeply on her cigarette and looked out over the two acres of her prime coastal property.

“Men aren’t all that bad, you know.”

Kyle sighed. “Nance, we’ve been having this conversation since our freshman year in college. I never said men were bad—I just don’t feel the same way you do about them.”

“I can remember when you didn’t mind sleeping with them.”

Kyle could tell her old friend was in a mood to bait her. Whenever the subject of Kyle’s sexual preferences came up, they went through the same arguments. Underneath Nancy’s superficial-appearing exterior, Kyle knew there was a very complex woman. They often didn’t agree, but they did care for one another. Not only were they business associates, they were close friends.

“It’s not that I mind sleeping with men, Nance. You know that. It’s that I prefer women. There is a very real difference. Women are not substitutes, alternatives or second choices for me. They’re…”

“…a positive first choice,” Nancy finished for her. “Did you read that somewhere, or are you writing propaganda for all the lesbian groups in the area?”

“Nancy!” Kyle exploded.

“Oh, all right,” her friend replied contritely. “I know, I know. It’s important to you—that distinction. I just don’t see why you have to be so hard-line about this gay thing. You could settle down with some nice, unassuming guy, get a few of the advantages it would bring, and have a lover on the side.”

Kyle knew Nancy was serious and tried for the hundredth time to explain.

“I don’t want to do it that way. I don’t want to live with someone I don’t love. I want the person I live with to be the only one. And I don’t want to hide!”

“Isn’t that a little unrealistic? After all, people aren’t perfect, you know. No one person would ever be enough.”

Kyle knew very well that her business partner had affairs outside her marriage, and she also knew that Nancy’s husband, Roger, was aware of them. Roger and Nancy had agreed years ago that both of them were free to explore as long as they weren’t serious about anyone. It seemed to work well for them, and Kyle respected that. But not for her.

She shook her head stubbornly.

“It’s not right for me.”

“Oh, Kyle,” Nance said in exasperation. “You’re impossibly romantic!”

Kyle smiled and refilled their glasses.

“No, I’m not.”

“Do you think you’re going to find the woman of your dreams in those bars you go to—when you can’t stand the silence of your own home any longer?”

Anger flashed in Kyle’s eyes. Nancy was getting a little too close to the quick today, of all days.

“It’s not as easy for me to meet people as it is for you, you know. I can’t just go to some respectable university function and pick someone up.”

“Touché,” Nancy replied softly. She leaned back in her lounge chair and sipped her wine. “All right. So you have to go to gay bars to meet gay women. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Is it any different this time than all the other times? Did you find someone you can stand to be with the next day?” Nancy knew she was pushing Kyle’s limits, but she didn’t care. She had watched Kyle struggle with her loneliness for years, and she truly wanted to see her friend find some kind of happiness.

“Can you always stand them the next day?” Kyle retaliated.

Nancy laughed. “Usually I don’t have to worry about it. They have to go home to their wives. Besides, I asked you first.”

Kyle drained her glass and reached for the bottle.

“The wine is gone.”

“In the kitchen. I put two more on ice.” Nancy followed her friend’s muscular form into the house, noting with a practiced eye the sensuous way she moved. She thought about how Kyle’s body would feel on top of hers, and she knew she would like it. She also knew Kyle would never consider such a thing with her. Roger and Kyle were friends, and Kyle, unfortunately, was a woman of integrity.

Kyle returned carrying a fresh bottle of chilled white wine. She removed the cork, filled their glasses again and leaned her back up against the railing of the deck.

“Nancy,” she said seriously, “Why are you always going on at me about this? I don’t bother you about your life, do I?”

“Why should you? I have a great home, plenty of security, all the money I need and a husband who doesn’t mind my—ah—flirtations.”

“I don’t believe for a second that’s all you want,” Kyle replied. “You’re intelligent, talented, warm and loving. All those nice things you have can’t be enough, or you wouldn’t be sleeping with every good-looking, horny guy you meet.”

“I haven’t slept with all of them, Kyle,” Nancy said demurely. “Not yet.”

Kyle laughed. “Oh hell, I give up.”

“Good! Now tell me about your latest. Was it any different?”

“Yes, for me at least.”

Nancy waited expectantly. “Well?”

Kyle turned to look down across the bluff to the ocean, stretching for miles before them. “I went to a leather bar last night.”

Nancy sat up straight in her chair. “Do you mean an S /M bar?”

“I guess you could say that.”

Nancy was surprised, and intrigued. “So, tell me.”

“I met this woman. I went home with her. A lot happened. I felt differently with her than I’ve ever felt before. I felt things about myself I never felt before.”

“Did she beat you or something?” Nancy asked in amazement.

“No, it wasn’t like that. It was like being in another world. We were making love, except so much more was happening. I almost didn’t know myself. It was physical, and emotional, and something else, too.”

“What else?”

Kyle sighed in frustration. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how I’m going to find out.”

CHAPTER SIX

KYLE LOOKED UP from the chair she was stripping and sighed.

“Nance.”

“Hmm?” Nancy replied absently, her mind on the design she was outlining on a tabletop.

“About that party tonight—”

“Yes,” Nancy murmured, still engrossed in her painting.

“I don’t think I can make it.”

Nancy looked up quickly. “Bullshit. You don’t want to.”

Kyle tossed her stripping knife onto the counter. “It’s not that I don’t want to; I just don’t feel like meeting a lot of straight doctors from the hospital.”

“Well, all those straight doctors have wives, you know.”

“I don’t want to meet somebody’s wife!” Kyle said. “I don’t even want to meet the doctors who are women. Roger does know a few female doctors, doesn’t he?”

Nancy laughed. “There might be one or two of those! I don’t usually notice! So, will you come?”

“Well—”

“It’s been a month since you went into the city. I know, I’ve counted. You must be ready for a little diversion by now.”

Kyle looked uncomfortable for a moment.

“Actually, there was something else I wanted to do tonight. I read about this meeting in the city. It’s a discussion group. I thought I might go.”

“Oh, that sounds like lots of fun!” Nancy said sarcastically. “You could spend Friday night sitting around talking about how tough it is being gay, or single, or green, or whatever tonight’s topic is.”

“Oh, give me a break, Nance!”

Nancy was suddenly serious. “Well, what is it about, then?”

“It’s about power, and how we use it.”

Nancy looked at her astutely. “You mean sexual power, like S/M? Right?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Are you serious about this thing?”

“I’m serious about finding out about it.”

Nancy turned back to her design. “Well, I suppose I’ll have other parties.”

Dane strode rapidly across the room, her voice tight, her back stiff with contained anger.

“There is no way, no way, that I’m going to some discussion group tonight!”

Caroline sighed resignedly and led the dog into the open crate.

“Why not?”

Dane turned toward her, blue eyes flashing.

“Because it’s always the same thing. A bunch of intellectuals sitting around discussing the ‘politics’ of power and what they think about it. It’s always what they think, never what they feel. It’s an academic discourse by people who are afraid to do more than just talk about it. And they always have such a superior attitude about anyone who actually does something to find out what it’s like.”

Caroline looked at her friend in surprise. The vehemence in her voice was startling. Dane was usually so cool.

“That’s not fair, Dane. Anne and I are going—and we do more than talk about it.”

“Good! You can be the guinea pigs, then.”

“How do you expect women to discover how they feel if no one who knows something will get it out in the open? It’s like refusing to talk to straights about being gay. Ignorance doesn’t go away by itself!” Caroline crossed her arms and sat down on the corner of the desk.

“Let them come to the bar, then, and see what it’s all about if that’s what they really want,” Dane persisted.