Greetings from your Italy-based insomniac author ;) Time for the next bit now that I've typed it up. I swear, the more I write the longer the remaining plot summary gets ;) – I am at 10000 words of a summary right now (though it is really adding more details rather than altering the plot)

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xxx

She wouldn't have thought that regular employment could ever be fun, but she's been having a fantastic time for the past two weeks. Once her mostly-male colleagues got over, or pretended to get over the facts that the new alarm systems consultant was an accomplished ex-cat burglar, a very attractive female, and very definitely unavailable being the thinly veiled girlfriend of the company owner, things started settling into a pattern of daily challenges in the office, daily Italian practice (both Bruce and Theo were impressed with how seriously she took that resolution), and daily adventures, in bed and out, with Bruce. She could definitely get used to this.

And she wouldn't have thought that one of the first things company owners discussed with new employees were said employees' detailed views of vacation spots and long weekend getaways they wanted to visit in the immediate future. It helps, of course, when said company owner is sitting in a hot tub on the terrace of his villa trying to pull you in with him.

"Stop it." She looks stern, but does not move away. "You'll ruin my pyjamas."

"They're yours now?" Bruce's reply is all mock indignation.

She pretends to consider the sky overhead. "You start living with a thief, you find that a few things change hands. Besides, you yourself said that items of clothing don't count."

This earns her a plunge in the tub, pyjamas and all. She does not mind one bit.

xxx

They've put together a list of destinations to go to in the coming year, though it is still a work in progress; she has not really travelled much beyond North America and now, Hong Kong and the Italian-Swiss border. As Selina Kyle, she often had reasons to want to avoid airport ID checks, depending on how dodgy her ID du jour happened to be.

Now as Canadian Céline with a passport beyond reproach, she is looking forward to seeing Venice in a month's time in mid-June when the days are longest, Kyoto and Hanoi in early July before the rains start in earnest, Machu Picchu in springtime November, Sydney in summertime January and Rio for the Carnival… with another half-dozen options and a few tropical islands bounced back and forth in between. And, of course, Italy all over, considering that they are sitting right on the border.

His first destination in Italy is, somewhat conventionally, Florence. "I promised Alfred I'd be there in early June, before the tourists arrive," he reminds her, apparently thinking that he needs to justify the choice, when they are out of the tub and sitting on the terrace. "He knows I'm alive and well, and we deal with each other indirectly, but he had this particular wish that I really owe it to him to fulfil, and he picked the place. And I want to see him, even if we don't talk."

"Why wouldn't you talk?"

"He said he didn't want us to. I kind of hope that someday later we do. But for now, I suppose he wanted us to... let go of each other, of the history."

More the history than each other, Selina thinks, and she can't blame Alfred for wanting that.

"Then we can go to Venice for a week after that, and go to Liguria for long weekends in July and August when we aren't travelling."

"What's in Liguria?" Not that she wouldn't want to go, but she is curious to see what he sees in it.

"Some pleasant little towns on the coast," he replies, a bit too vaguely for her liking. "Plus there's this Italian client of ours, Cassini, who has been inviting me to go kite surfing with him."

That, she thinks, is the more likely draw.

"Do you have a lot of thrill-seeker clients?" she inquires innocently.

"A few," he replies, coyly. "Though it's more the clients' kids in their late twenties and early thirties, the clients themselves tend to be too old for that. Cassini's an exception, he is about my age. And they're mostly into mountain sports here in Switzerland, skiing and climbing and paragliding and the like."

"And you're busy making friends with them."

"Something like that."

Not that she could begrudge him that. "Is Theo going kite surfing with you two?"

"He probably would, late forties and all," Bruce concedes. "But his wife would never forgive him if he went off on holiday and left her to deal with the kids. I hope you'd join us," he adds, in a rather obviously hopeful tone.

"I'll think about it," she makes it sound a lot less certain than she is. "Maybe you could also ask Theo if his nephew would be interested?" She tries to present it as a perfectly innocuous suggestion. That, not surprisingly, is met with a vaguely murderous stare for an answer.

"Anywhere else you want to go?" he asks a few seconds later, trying to change the subject; she is willing to let him. "I don't really need to be here for anything important between now and late June, and your hacker colleagues can survive a few days without ogling you. We could take a week off somewhere between now and Florence and see something else."

She is trying to come up with a more or less interesting idea when she remembers their mountaintop date of mixed messages and hidden agendas of two weeks ago, and decides that she still wants to see his expression when she suggests it. "You know, the first time we had dinner at San Salvatore, when you started praising Outer Mongolia, I actually wanted to ask you if we could go there."

His expression, as it turns out, is one of faint regret. "Why didn't you?"

Because I thought you'd make some glib excuse and leave me looking silly. "I didn't know if I could trust your judgement back then, when you said it wasn't that bad."

"And now you do," he suggests, a bit too smugly for her taste, but she'll let it slip.

"I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"When do you want to go? I have to go back to the clinic tomorrow but we can leave the day after."

She still doesn't really care if she sees Outer Mongolia, but seeing the excitement in his eyes, she is happy she asked.

xxx

No such luck, as they soon find out: a quick check of visa formalities shows that the modern-day state of Mongolia that lies, more or less, within the ancient Outer Mongolia borders, grants visa-free entry to Americans and a couple of dozen other nations... but neither Swiss nor Canadians. Selina is a bit disappointed, Bruce calls them fucking bureaucrats, and she is about to suggest that they go to Jordan instead when Bruce gives her that half joking, half challenging look and says, "But if you have a valid Chinese visa, we can go to Inner Mongolia instead. As in, northern China. If you want to."

She does have a Chinese visa, thanks to a couple of days spent in Shanghai as a short getaway from visa-free Hong Kong, and she does want to, if only because it is hard not to be tempted when he is looking at her like that; and the next half day is spent in planning and phone calls to put together the logistics for what is now looking like a ten-day round trip from Lugano.

"We can charter a two-seater, or better still, a four-seater," he suggests, "that way we won't depend on commercial flights and big airports and won't have to drive around on the shitty roads there."

"Who will fly it?" she asks, only half joking; she is well aware of his proficiency with aircraft, but for anything officially chartered, the pilot needs to have a license specific to the type of craft being flown.

The question, perhaps not surprisingly, is met with a long disdainful stare.

"So much for joining the mile high club while the pilot's busy at the controls," she quips.

"It's overrated," he says matter-of-factly; she files away the knowledge for future teasing but does not retaliate immediately.

"Are you really sure you want to charter and fly a plane four thousand miles to China and back and while we're there?"

"I wouldn't do that. We'd spend a week just getting there," he corrects her. "We'll fly commercial to Beijing and charter it there. Anyway," he adds, looking uncharacteristically sheepish, "if we were talking about flying from here, I wouldn't need to charter one."

"Don't tell me you –"

"I have a four-seater Cessna Skyhawk here, just for short trips in Europe. I don't fly it that much; I haven't really had time to, and now flying has become a major pain, with the detectors. I have to carry around a pile of X-rays and show it to the idiots at security to explain why I set off every single scanner. Besides," he adds, seeing her saddened expression, "I prefer the Sesto. But sometimes it's still fun to take the plane."

Boys and toys, indeed. If he can't have the Bat, he'll settle for a Skyhawk. "Is there any means of transport you do not own?"

"A train," he readily replies. "Not directly, anyway. Also, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have a space shuttle."

"Which means that you do have a boat somewhere," she concludes.

"Guilty as charged," he smirks at her. "A Falcon off the Ligurian coast."

So that's the other big reason, other than kite-surfing, that he wants to go there for weekends.

"What, the boat you had an orgy with the Russian Ballet on?"

"No, it's a different one. That one was a sailing yacht, this one's a motor yacht. I sold the other one a couple of years ago and got this one. And it's technically Alfred's now. And it wasn't really an orgy," he adds, as an all-too-casual afterthought.

Well, that's something else to needle him with later. "Admit it, you wanted a faster boat."

He grins at her accusation. "Faster, and smaller. The other one was too big, really. I wanted something I could handle without a crew if I wanted to."

"How small?" She suspects that it is a very relative term.

"115 feet," comes another deliberately-casual reply.

"That's tiny," she comments, sarcastically.

"You should see the boats the Russians have," he counters.

"What, the ballerinas?"

"No, their boyfriends. I swear one of them has a boat four times as long. You are welcome to make all the appropriate remarks about overcompensating."

She wants to say that 115 feet isn't particularly short either, but lets him get away with it.

xxx

At daybreak three days later they land in Beijing. He has chartered another Skyhawk four-seater to go with his license, and they leave almost at once on a two-hour hop north to Xilinhot in the middle of Inner Mongolia. She takes in the view from the cockpit, the striped expanse of land beneath dotted with hills, the cotton wool of the clouds sailing by. It is good to just be flying alone with him and not have to save cities and outrun villains. She did not realise how much she has been looking forward to this.

In the end they only spend a couple of days in Inner Mongolia itself but they are a good couple of days. She has always been a city girl, by circumstance as much as, if not more than, by choice, and it all feels new – the endless grassy plains, the blue hills, the breeze, the horse rides, the quiet in the evening and the insanely starry nights. They don't talk much but they touch a lot. She is content to just soak in the sensation of peace, and, she suspects, so is he.

On the third afternoon they fly over the ruins of legendary Xanadu and a further 500-plus miles southwest to the mysterious 108 Dagobas, set in the desert in gleaming rows overlooking the Yellow River, on the border between Inner Mongolia and Ningxia. Early the following morning, after an overnight stay in the lively, leafy old town of Yinchuan, they fly further west, more or less following the Mongolian border, to the stunning, remote Jiayuguan Fort, once China's farthest western outpost on the Great Wall, sitting on a striking barren plain overlooking snow-capped mountains, and then continue further west to Turpan in Xinjiang. The next day they wander around the haunting Jiaohe abandoned city ruins and drive over toward Urumqi to spend a few hours on the shores of deep-turquoise Tian Chi, Heaven Lake, surrounded by meadows and pine forests and the towering Tian Shan peaks. She has never seen so much beauty and so much variety in so little time, and makes no attempt to hide her amazement. They walk, they take in the sights, they forget about the rest of the world. And they talk.

They don't ask each other questions; there is a time for that, and they've already asked each other a few and will keep doing so. After all, the two of them were complete strangers until they were briefly and fatefully brought together by circumstances so extreme that they will probably be the stuff of Gotham legend for centuries. And apart from the instant and continuing attraction, it takes getting to know each other, likes, dislikes, habits, moods, tastes, morals, whatnot, to really learn to live with each other. But part of that is just listening and not pushing or prying, and trying to understand.

He tells her about his life and travels in Asia, where he went and what happened and what he learned, the adventures and misadventures, the odd jobs and fights and discoveries and Chinese prison and training. He does not talk much about the months he spent in the Tibetan retreat, apart from the fact that he learned a lot of useful things from the wrong people. She wants to know more, but knows that the time for that is yet to come. He talks, briefly and with difficulty, about Rachel and the eight years after she died; the time for knowing more about that may never come, but she also knows that she should let it be, should not try to open the Pandora's box of history until and unless he is ready to do so himself. And she finally works up the confidence to tell him about her younger years, confesses how she came to regard theft a thrilling escape from a dreary life and a guarantee that she wouldn't go hungry or have to sell her body for food, and is grateful when he listens and does not judge.

The more she learns of his history, the more she is struck by how much pain there is in it – and how a lot of it, at least on the surface, might seem avoidable. His destiny was shaped by childhood tragedy, but here is a man who could have had everything, who has so much intelligence and curiosity and, when he does not suppress it, so much lust for life – and who spent years turning himself into a weapon, then battling the underworld, then mourning something he never really had. In very different ways, they both have lost years of their lives doing questionable things, and she is both happy and not a little amazed that he is even able to contemplate, and set about building, a life beyond the cape.

On the second evening in Xinjiang, after he has told her about his prison stint in the province of Qinghai, between Mongolia and Tibet, and his long hike into Tibet and further on into Bhutan, she tells him that she would be curious to retrace his footsteps and they decide, almost on a whim, to do just that – figuratively speaking, as they would be flying rather than walking or hitchhiking – and go south toward the Bhutan border. And so on the afternoon of the next, the sixth day, they come back from Turpan to refuel at Jiayugun and fly a further two hours on to Xining, passing by Qinghai Hu, China 's largest lake, remote and eerie, with colourful Tibetan prayer flags on its shores. He chooses the less developed Xining rather than the more accessible and crowded Lanzhou on the banks of the Yellow River as their stopover point, allowing them to spend the next day looking at two magnificent monasteries located in the area before they fly a further 700 miles from Xining to Lhasa. They start with nearby Ta'er Si, a huge hillside temple complex dazzling with the golden roof of its great hall, and later fly southeast to Labrang Monastery in Xiahe with its dramatic mountain valley setting and its backdrop of almost-alpine mountains around Langmusi in the distance.

It has crept up on her before she even noticed. The better she gets to know him and the nicer he is to her, the more the beginnings of their history become an insidious torment. She cannot shake away the memory of having been an instrument of suffering for him; instead of going away, it burrows deeper into her mind. She knows that telling him about it will only invite dismissal, but ends up with a heavy suspicion that she has somehow been given this reward she does not deserve, that the day will come when she will have to pay both for her past deeds and for this unexpected happiness, and that he deserves someone better than her. Maybe, she argues in her thoughts, her purpose in his life is to help him enjoy it and protect him from himself. But whatever it is and whatever he thinks, one thing is clear. Selina, always a cool-headed and independent girl until he turned her life upside down, finds herself, for the first time in her adult existence, falling desperately in love, and knows that it is already too late to do anything about it.

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You may be familiar with my habit of sneaking in photo links. Here is another one that is somewhat relevant and not easily found: a few pics of an apartment above Lake Lugano for an idea of what I had in mind for the Carona villa, above all in terms of the terrace. I imagine it sleeker and more spacious, less 90-degree angles and more oblique, sloping lines, plus of course the hot tub, and definitely better furniture inside, but in this overall setting and style, even though this apartment sits on the "wrong" side of Lugano, on Monte Bré. I just wanted to convey the general sense. Replace asterisks with dots.

(http www) interhome*ch/english/switzerland/ticino/lugano+aldesago/ch6974.300.1

And here is an indoor pic of another villa that looks about right: (http) i47*tinypic*com/14sprb9*jpg.

Also, as the principal instigator of this sequel knows, the original plan was to have them travel to Outer Mongolia ; but the Mongolian authorities are, in fact, to blame for changing the couple's travel plans ;) My remarks on the Mongolian, Hong Kong , and Chinese visa regimes may seem contrived but reflect the real state of affairs. Likewise, the implied Cessna travel times and distances in China are real.