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Great…

She looked at Amy, silently pleading with her eyes to help her, but Amy seemed too amused to want to do anything like that.

“Amy,” Pam began, “you did such a great job with that interview! Your questions were…perfect.”

“Thank you, that means a lot.”

“Goodness, did you two start dating after that interview?”

“Yep,” Amy answered.

“I could tell there was chemistry between you two! Everybody was commenting on it afterwards.”

This was true. Once Sally’s “secret identity” was revealed, her social media feeds had been full of remarks by people commenting on how obvious it was that her and Amy had the hots for each other during the interview.

If they only knew…

“Excuse me,” another woman said, approaching the trio. “Did I hear you say you’re Jillian Ashley?”

Sally nodded, glad that her face mask was hiding her clenched jaw. She really didn’t feel like being Jillian today.

“Huh!” The woman uttered. “I’m actually not a big fan of your books.”

Sally didn’t know how to respond to that.

“No…Actually, I hate them. I stopped reading them after the second one.”

Oh, good lord!

“No,” the woman went on, “I’m more of a Kitty Karlyle fan myself.”

It took all of Sally’s self-control to not burst out in righteous indignation. Kitty Karlyle? This…person…preferred Kitty Karlyle to Jillian Ashley? It was like comparing the sonnets of Shakespeare to the instructions on a bottle of shampoo!

But Sally smiled and said, “Well, to each her own, right?”

“But my wife is a huge fan of yours!” the woman stated. “Too bad she’s not here with me.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Sally murmured.

“Hey, can you do me a favor, though?” The woman held out the book in her hand. “Can you autograph this for her? She’ll get a kick out of that.”

The book was a collection of lesbian sex positions—exactly what someone who was a fan of Kitty Karlyle would buy. Taking the proffered pen, Sally didn’t bother trying to come up with a cute message and simply scrawled Jillian’s name inside the front cover before handing the book back.

The woman then turned to Amy.

“Can you autograph it too?” she asked, holding out the book. “I overheard…You’re the one who runs that podcast, right? My wife listens to that too.”

“What about you?” Amy inquired.

“Nah. No offense, but your show’s too smart. I lose interest after five minutes.”

After Amy had autographed the book and the woman went away to pay for it, Sally said, “Well! Her wife sounds like a perfectly delightful person!”

Chapter 31

The next night, Amy and Sally went on a romantic sunset wine-tasting cruise in San Francisco Bay on a catamaran which left from Fisherman’s Wharf and sailed past Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. There were three other couples on board with them and they all got to sample some fabulous wines from the nearby wine-producing counties of California, like Napa.

At one point on the boat, while Sally was embracing her from behind as they stood at the port gunwales looking out over the water at the twinkling lights of San Francisco, Amy wondered if she could possibly feel happier. Perhaps it was the wine but Amy simply felt as if the woman who was now holding her was the woman who was meant to hold her and all those other women who had come before Sally had just been…what, exactly? Practice? That idea almost caused her to laugh out loud but she didn’t want to ruin this moment. Her and Sally were both quiet, silently enjoying the view as the boat rocked beneath their feet; both of them obviously feeling that not only was there nothing to be said, but also that there didn’t need to be anything said.