DESIGNED FOR HIS PLEASURE

Chapter 7

'Seednee, how wonderful to see you again!'

Sidney laughed.  She and Akio had become firm friends when he had patiently answered her hundred and one questions about this tree house concept surviving in the Western world. When he discovered Sidney was an architect, he bowed to her curiosity and hunger for knowledge and offered to mentor her, to her heart's delight.

She hugged him warmly now, 'Hey Akio, how are you?' she grinned happily.

'Your timing is perfect,' he informed her enthusiastically, 'we have some American scientists and environmental scholars here and this week is going to be a West meets East exchange of information week.

'I can't believe my luck, that's fabulous,' Sidney was ecstatic.

Something to keep her wayward mind occupied.

It would be evening in London now, and she could not recall how many times her thoughts kept going to Chase wondering where he was, what he was doing. Was he thinking of her or would he cut his losses and moved on?

Chase did not strike her as a man who moped for a woman, when the world was his oyster.

'So you looking forward to roughing it out?' Akio broke into her thoughts. And roughing it out is exactly what one did in Gankoyama. Water was collected from the natural spring or bought at a nearby store. Wood was cut by hand and food was cooked over a wood fire. And to Sidney nothing tasted better that food cooked over an open fire. They lived off the land, edible herbs, fruit, vegetable from the forest, and fish from the lake, and if available, chickens that the local grocer sold.

Talk about roughing it out, on her first visit, she had established there was no electricity, nor plumbing to provide any creature comforts either. But ingenious girl that she was, Sidney just had to make a plan to have hot running water to shower. She was appalled that none of the cabins had running water. But then she did not know that the log cabins were used for a few days or weeks and then stripped down and recycled. The whole fun of visiting the log cabin forest was building your very own log cabin, and because it was stripped down for the next batch of users, there was no thought of building infrastructure like shower facilities. All the visitors generally bathed au natural in the forest waterfall or the lake. Then the ingenious Sidney struck a deal with Akio.

'I have a proposition for you,' Sidney had started.

'I see your brain is running at a hundred miles an hour in my forest Seednee, and that is dangerous.'

She had laughed and had casually informed him, 'I'd like to build a shower facility here.'

"A shower?" 'No city girl. No plumbing, no electricity. No can do.'

'Yes can do.' Sidney persevered.

'How you going to build a shower with no plumbing Seednee?' He enquired giving her the dumb blond accusatory look.

'I knew you'd come around,' she hurried on, 'all we need is a fifty gallon tank, a wooden box to house the tank, a tap or preferably a shower head,' she cast a cursory glance at him as his eyes grew wider and wider.

'A few other pipe fittings and we have a shower!' she had exclaimed excitedly.

"We,  Seednee?" he had questioned.

'I'll let you use my shower,' she bargained.

'What is wrong with the lake?' he had demanded.

'Well for one, it's kind of short on privacy,' she could see him testing her concept in his head.

'And, how better to market your solar heating concept?' She had played her trump card.

'Seednee, Seednee, what is a pretty girl with a brain like yours doing in my forest?' he had caved in.