Thanks again for the wonderful, thoughtful comments. And yeah, all pretty much spot on vis a vis Looch/Krech (I even love their nicknames together, don't you?). And Milan really is a terrible liar, isn't he? ;-)

Couple of funny little "author's notes" here - Dominque is a pun, a play on words for "Dominant," and Milan asks to call her "Nicky" partly because, as she notes when she enters her number on his cell phone, he has a lot of male friends named Nicky. ;-)