Helena could not keep a relationship to save her life.  She was one of the wealthiest women under thirty-five years of age in the country; she was well-educated at the best schools in England, yet there wasn’t a soul who loved her passionately, intimately, intensely.  There wasn’t a woman whom she felt matched her intellect and confidence.  She hadn’t found a lover whom she could conquer but who could sometimes overpower her.  She wanted to have it all and that was her problem.  Here she sat in this beautiful residence, a home that Bette Porter had described as the quintessential California beach house utterly alone.  The view from every room was impressive.  The décor was luxurious, high end, and remarkably comfortable and homey.  It was inviting, yet she sat alone, facing an empty love seat with an opened bottle of one hundred and fifty dollar wine that only her mouth would taste. 

This is why yoga had become important to her.  It wasn’t that yoga was the hip exercise to do, but Helena realized that she needed some inner peace.  Her personality was cut-throat; she could be ruthless, but she had no intentions of changing that.  That personality was well-suited for her business transactions.  It got things done and done quickly.  But she thought that she could and should make a slight change in her personal life.  She needed to learn how to be less demanding in romance, in the bedroom, in love.  She had to find that place. 

Helena hadn’t been in Los Angeles long enough to have a reputation as a difficult lesbian; no one knew of the problems she had had with women in New York and London.  She could start anew.  Tina had been a calculated change of type for her.  The blonde was a nurturer, a good-hearted woman who seemed to delight in kind gestures.  She recalled that Tina was most impressed with a home-cooked dinner that Helena had created than the five thousand dollar dress Helena had purchased and insisted Tina wear to the awards dinner.  Tina was different, but even that hadn’t lasted and Helena had fallen into her old habits–tracking her down, demanding an audience, only to be told by Bette with a haughtiness that was both obnoxious and painful to hear that Bette and Tina were together and that Helena’s stalking was pathetic and inappropriate.  It had infuriated the heiress on many levels.