"Ohhhh, Fernando!" Maxcine purred, the sound of her voice fleeing her bedroom and flooding the hallway. "You are so big and so strong; the night could not possibly be too long!"

Isabel, who was on her way to the exercise room in their sprawling, southwestern style house, stopped beside the closed bedroom door to eavesdrop. Not nice, but she was of a mind to know exactly what her sister was going to be doing with that very handsome man.

"Fernando? Why are you looking at me that way? Am I not the best lover you've ever had?" Maxcine cried out breathlessly.

Isabel simply had to dish up suggestions. After all, sharing a home meant they were sharing lives. So grabbing the knob, twisting and shoving the door open, she then grinned when Maxi looked up in startled surprise.

"When are you going to admit that Fernando is a jerk and kill him off?" Isabel cut right to the mustard.

"Don't you believe in knocking?" Maxcine's fingers drew back, their gentle touch halted.

"I didn't mean to startle you."

"You are a snoopy old bat!" the sixty-nine year-old woman declared to her younger sibling.

"Maxi, it's time to get rid of Fernando!"

"Who's the family writer?" Maxi countered angrily, her hands smacking down onto her keyboard. An assortment of letters appeared on the computer monitor. "Now see what you made me do?"

"You've been on that same manuscript ever since before we went to California and solved the Ming Thing. Hasn't Fernando broken enough hearts by now?"

"I want the novel to hit nine-hundred pages. He'll probably have to seduce three more women."

"How are you going to end it?"

"He'll be served with thirty-seven paternity suits. Child support will be awesome."

"Maxi!" Isabel doesn't know whether to laugh or be appalled.

"Well, you've got to admit that's a one of a kind ending for a book."

"Stale. You need a change of scenery to add fodder to your writing."

"Very poorly put."

"But very true. You need a vacation."

"To me, a vacation would be you doing all of the housework for a couple of weeks."

"Hold your breath!" Isabel protested so loudly that she startled both of them. "Oh, forget I even brought up the subject of a vacation."

Blast it all! Maxcine thought in dismay. Whenever her sister said to forget something, whatever it was would remain the topic of conversation until a lake of lava froze over. Or until a certain someone gave in, and right about now, that certain someone wasn't particularly happy about it.

HALF AN HOUR later, Isabel had chalked up five miles on the exercise bike, and Maxcine had Fernando lusting after yet another pretty face. It was time to relax.

They shared a snack of green grapes in the cozy kitchen, then wandered out onto their raised front porch. They sat side by side in their suspended wooden swing, facing the metal rockers. Of a mind to converse, their attention avoided noisy neighbors washing a car across the street. The forbidden subject was the first one to come up.

"I think we'd have a great time on the beaches of Tahiti," Isabel declared with an elongated sigh.

"What happened to your tightwad tendencies?"

"I'm still a penny pincher. We'd better go to Alaska. You know, the call of the wild and all."

"You know I don't like snow. Besides, the cost would pay our utility bills for the next two years."

"Disneyland. We can go to Disneyland," Isabel cheered.

"Do you know how much they're charging for tickets these days?"

"The cost of a motel would be astronomical, too."

Nodding her head, Maxcine agreed without so much as one split second to think about it. "Yup."