Free Connected Hearts - Four Lesbian Romance Stories by Jae, Joan Arling, Rj Nolan Page A

schoolgirl on her holidays, and unless I’m mistaken, it’s not the season anyway.”
    She laughed. “Schoolgirl! No, that’s been some time. I’m a freelance programmer who has decided to take some time out to refill her batteries. I have no fixed schedule, and I might well take you up on your offer to take me to Sicily.”
    After I had finished my meal, she retrieved her backpack from a locker room, and we walked up to Tiny. As she reached out for the door, she slowed down a little, looked at me over her shoulder, and said, “Oh, you’re family?” She arched one eyebrow, which made her expression really cute.
    Aaarrgh! Those stupid stickers! Even though Rita’s question indicated that she might be gay as well, I felt heat rise to my face. “Ummh ... I guess you could call me that,” I managed to get out of my suddenly very dry mouth. To cover my bewilderment, I climbed into my seat, patted Tiny’s dashboard, and said, “Tiny, meet Rita.”
    “Enchantée, Tiny.” She patted the dashboard, too, and did not even try to hide her amusement at my suffused face.
    I pressed the starter button, then pulled from the parking lot out onto the A3, glad I had something to occupy myself with until I could regain my composure.
    Meanwhile Rita studied the interior of Tiny’s cabin, the small bouquets of silk flowers, dark red, blue, and white, that I had fixed to the dashboard and the window frames. John Collier’s picture of Lilith with the serpent entwined around her body on the visor. “Hey, I’ve been inside a few trucks, but yours is the nicest I have seen so far.”
    “Glad you like it. I spend so much time in here, I might as well make it cosy.” My nerves still tingling, I was glad to show her my small fridge and the electric kettle that I used to prepare tea. “I also have a gas cooker for when I can’t stand restaurant food any longer. In fact, you are looking at the grand master of improvised stews. I believe they’ve not yet put up my portrait on Wikipedia, but it’s only a matter of time.”
    Her laugh had a lovely ring to it. She pointed to a padded pigeon-hole next to the glove compartment. “You carry a netbook around?”
    “Oh, sure I do.” I proceeded to tell her about my fascination with reading and how that little machine had solved my library problems. “I can also use email and access the contract pool, but aside from that, I’m a complete idiot with computers. I had the shop set it up for me.”
    “So you use hotspots for access?”
    Hotspots? Oh, I remembered. “No, I’ve been advised not to. They told me that you only have those in larger cities, and with me roaming all over Europe, I’d be better off with a satellite connection. It’s supposed to be rather slow, but since I use it for mail and online reading only, it should be sufficient. So far, I’ve had no reason to complain.”
    She grinned. “You know, it’s not actually a satellite. They use the cell-phone net. But that might indeed use a satellite to connect.” She dug around in her backpack and produced a little computer much like mine, only hers was pink.
    “Oh, I didn’t know that you could get them in different colours. Mine, as you can see, is boringly black. But why do you have one with you? You told me that you are a programmer, but why take work with you when you want to get away from it?”
    “Much the same reasons as you, mail and online reading, mainly. Hey, show me the sites you visit, and I’ll show you mine!”
    Her grin had something salty to it, and it took me some control to agree with a straight face. Meanwhile Cologne was coming up, and I told her that she was welcome to use the 220-V socket to recharge the batteries of her netbook in case they were running low.
    She accepted with a smile.
    I went over to the office and worked my way through the documents to clear me for taking the trailer to Sicily. Two hours later I had unwound the red tape, and inspection of the trailer hadn’t come up with any