And of course there’s an outdoor shower and hot tub, but you don’t need to worry about anyone spying on you using them naked, because the whole place is surrounded by a completely private beach, and there are no other living beings for miles around, except exotic seabirds and the occasional flash of silverfish leaping from the water against the pink sunset and a pod of dolphins that live nearby and come nosing around, curious about what we’re doing.

Dolphins. DOLPHINS.

And then there’s Mo Mo, the personal room-service butler assigned to us by the resort, who brings us succulently prepared meals three times a day by boat, and then also restocks the minibar and cleans our snorkel masks, before leaving us completely to ourselves. He rings the bell on his boat very loudly whenever he’s approaching to let us know he’s coming so we can put on our clothes.

Not that I don’t always have on clothes when I’m outside of the cabana, because I’m not about to pull another Me-Ah-My-Ah! and get spotted topless by a passing Google satellite or camera-equipped drone copter (though I know Lars and the rest of the security squad are stationed on the closest island with long-range sniper rifles, looking to take any of those out. This has become Lars’s favorite new hobby).

At first when I got here, I was like “Michael, this is insane. This is way over the top. How much is this costing you? You are spending way too much money. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but at least let me split the—”

Michael stuffed a rum-soaked piece of pineapple into my mouth and asked, “Can’t you relax for five minutes?”

So then I concentrated very hard on relaxing, which it turns out isn’t that hard to do when the sand is so white and soft and the waves so small and mild that you can simply walk a few steps out onto the beach, lie down, and let the warm water lap gently around you while the sun and sand sweetly embrace you until you finally fall asleep (fortunately having remembered to put on SPF 100).

When I woke up the tide was coming in, so the waves were a bit stronger and the beach had gotten a little smaller and Michael was leaning over me without his shirt on asking if I liked it (and also if I wanted to reapply my sunscreen), and I said sleepily, “Okay, Michael, I guess I can do this . . . just for the weekend.”

And he laughed and said, “I thought so,” and kissed me.

Then he asked if I thought I smelled smoke . . .

CHAPTER 16

7:00 p.m., Saturday, May 2

Sleepy Palm Cay, The Exumas, Bahamas

Rate the Royals Rating: Don’t know/don’t care

It is amazing here. We are doing nothing. Nothing except kissing and eating and sleeping in the sun and playing Fireman and snorkeling (which is quite easy to do once you get the hang of it) and looking at birds and dolphins through the binoculars.

Although you don’t even need the binoculars, that’s how close the dolphins swim up.

I’m so relaxed, my eye has even stopped twitching. It could be because of the massive doses of magnesium I’ve been taking, or it could be because of leaving all that stress behind . . . or it could be because of love.

I’m voting for love.

But the most amazing thing is the sight I’m looking at right now, and I don’t need the binoculars to see it either: Michael wearing nothing but board shorts as he lies in the hammock across from mine, reading a book on microprocessing (I do hope the micros and the processors end up happily ever after at the end).

I know how lucky I am, so I shouldn’t brag, and of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but was there ever such a stunning piece of masculinity in all of history? I don’t think so. I happen to like dark-haired men (we won’t talk about that brief unhappy period in my past when I was attracted to a fair-haired boy since thankfully I soon came to my senses), the darker the better.

And while I know some girls who like guys without hair on their limbs and bodies, I frankly find that very odd. Fortunately Michael has quite a lot. If he ever started waxing it (like Boris, who, the less said about him, the better), I think we would have to have a serious talk.

But the best thing about him isn’t his looks; it’s that he is someone around whom I can be totally myself. When I’m with Michael, I don’t ever have to worry about saying the wrong thing, because to him, everything I say is funny or interesting.

And no matter what I have on (or don’t have on), he thinks I look beautiful. I know because we’ve been together for so long, he can’t be faking it when I worry that I don’t have any makeup on and he goes, “You actually look better without makeup on.” (I don’t, without mascara I look like a lashless marsupial left too long in an experimental government lab, but amazingly, even in my lashless marsupial state, he’s still quite interested in pursuing carnal relations with me.)

Plus, when we snuggle our bodies fit together perfectly, almost as if they were made for each other.

And he never complains when Fat Louie climbs up onto the bed and snuggles with us, even though Fat Louie has gotten quite smelly in his old age, having completely given up bathing (I have to dip him in the bathtub every once in a while or he’d simply never get clean).

Fat Louie, I mean. Not Michael. Michael takes two to three showers a day, depending on whether or not he’s done yoga.

Fortunately we no longer have to deal with Michael’s dog, Pavlov, climbing into the bed at Michael’s place anymore, since Pavlov passed away in his sleep after a long and happy life. Dogs generally don’t live as long as cats, except Grandmère’s miniature poodle, Rommel, whom she will never allow to die. Rommel’s gotten a little dotty in his old age, but because Grandmère never got him fixed, he still has a very active sex drive.