Total Package by Cait London

invisible male-female protocol lines.
    Sidney thought of what she would be getting in return—quite a sizable commodity. “I’d be fine with that,” she managed unevenly.
    “I wouldn’t be.”
    “Oh, your wife. I understand.”
    “I doubt it. You see, I need a little bit more than Ben apparently did.”
    Danya turned and walked into the bathroom and the shower began to run. When he emerged, he walked naked to the bed, and lay down with the sheet covering him, his back to Sidney. “Go to sleep, Sid.”
    Restless now, unsettled by the sight of Danya’s naked body, it was a long time before Sidney could sleep.
    He’d said “lovemaking,” not “sex.” Lovemaking had big connotations that Sidney did not want.
    She had loved Ben, and she had been hurt.
    Plain old sex served good enough in tight situations.
    She tossed onto her stomach and fought the ache there and in her breasts. Sex was good enough, she repeated to herself. She’d leave “lovemaking” and “romance” to women who got soppy when they watched old movies and who wept at getting a bouquet of flowers. All those things were for people who had time for them; she didn’t.
     

    Sidney’s restless turning, the muttering of Ben’s name, had caused Danya to leave the cabin early. He walked down the beach and out onto the tourist pier where the row of shops was quiet and shadowy, the bright flags overhead flapping gently in the breeze. His father was sitting in a camping chair, a bucket of bait on the boards beside him. Dawn caught the thin silvery line stretched from Viktor Stepanov’s pole into the huge dark waves.
    “My son,” Viktor said quietly. “I like this peaceful time. It reminds me of the old country, before my brothers and I leave. I am glad to be here with Fadey and my sons—my new granddaughter, Danika Louise. Someday, she will come fish with me, just as you and Alexi did as boys…. You want this woman, Sidney, for your own? I am glad. It is time. Sit. Talk with me.”
    “I want to marry her, Father. I want a home and children with her.”
    The Russian language flowed freely between Danya and his father now, the intimate quiet talk. “What is the problem then, my son?”
    “She has not left the love she feels for another man. She moves quickly and will soon be gone.”
    “Then you will follow,” Viktor stated with a shrug.
    “Of course.”
    “Of course. But I think she fears what she feels for me. That it is confused with what she feels for this other man. I need time—”
    “Give her what she needs. She will find you to be a good man and she will love only you, this I know. You bring her to your uncle Fadey’s home, my home now. You let her meet us,see what we are. Pretty soon, you love, you marry, you have my grandchildren.”
    Danya smiled at his father’s simple picture and looked at the gray sky foretelling morning and a clear day. The urge to make love to Sidney was strong, but he intended to move slowly, surely, into a relationship where she thought only of him—
     

    Sidney had started working early, making use of wind and water to paste the model’s swimsuits against their curves. The salt-scented ocean breeze lifted those masses of textured and colored hair up and away from beautiful, sculptured cheekbones. Earl was at his best, bronzing faces and long, bikini-clad bodies.
    Sidney shot automatically, focusing on the best advantage of each face. Marvelous Calendars wanted every shot possible, for potential use in other sales promotions. They also wanted natural shots, the behind the scenes stuff for a potential documentary.
    While Earl was working on Miss November, a blue-eyed sweet farm girl type from Wisconsin, Sidney swung her focus to Miss June. Alice Ann Michaels, in a worn flannel robe and huge black rimmed glasses, was absorbed in a thick book on law; Alice Ann was worried about passing the bar exams and she crammed every available moment.
    Miss April sat in a beach chair, crocheting something big and