The one thing that does bug me more than anything is that I don't have a steady girl of my own. Oh sure, there's Brandy, Claret, and Portia, but they ...on't count. I've kissed all three into unconsciousness a dozen times but that's all I am to them, an open bar with no tab, and to me, they're just three of the most enthusiastic, creative, passionate, and beautiful kissers I've ever met, and that's all they can ever be. We have an arrangement, the four of us, I kiss them till they're hammered,. She raised her voice slightly, and said in a firm tone, “Atsa! You need to calm down.”I realized I was trembling and took a deep breath, my brain considering all the possibilities.Cathy would not betray me, at least not in this. She knew how I felt about my captivity. She cared about me. She was my friend.But then, before today, she had never let escape a single word about the identities of those who had seen fit to imprison me. She was deathly scared of them. There was a real possibility her. “Kenny,” she turned away from her hands and looked at me, “do you love her?”I closed my eyes to think, listening to my heart’s rhythm.“Yes,” I paused for another thought. “More than life itself.”“Why?”“Why do you?” Another pause followed before I added, “why does Sherry?”Kim broke into a half-smile and said with a forced laugh, “she’s like that, isn’t she?”“Yes, she is.”“She loves you.”With wave crests boiling into a froth of white over steel gray, surf crashed with some force into the near. In fact, given who the adversary is here, I don’t believe it!”“How much would it cost us in fees to Allen & Baker, not to mention the lost good will with our clients? It makes sense, even though it’s three times what I said was my maximum. Get the check to Jamie, please. And other than the board, this is between you and me and nobody else. If they’re under an NDA, we’ll act the same way. I’ll just tell our team we reached a settlement and leave it at that.”“I’ll take care of it. You have a.