Permission To Love. PENNY JORDAN

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      ‘No … as a matter of fact, I was remembering how I fell in the lake the year I was twelve, and how you fished me out.’

      It was no less than the truth, and just for a moment his mouth softened slightly and she was almost able to persuade herself that he was once again the old Lucas whom she had loved so much … and who, she had once thought, loved her in return.

      ‘Yes … You don’t know how close you came to being walloped. You’d been expressly forbidden to ride your bike along the lake path.’

      The bike in question—a brand new two wheeler had been a birthday present and she had desperately wanted to try it out. It had been raining heavily for several days though and the lakeside path had been dangerously muddy. She had known all this, but still she had defied Lucas’ suggestion that she wait to try the bike until he could go with her. She had paid for her defiance with a thorough soaking and a bad fright … Lucas had been furious … she remembered grimacing faintly, and she could well remember sensing how angry he was with her. But he had taught her to ride … and then she had known instinctively that beneath the anger there was a deep vein of caring. Where had it all gone?

      ‘Dinner’s ready,’ she told him, forcing herself back to the present. ‘If you sit down I’ll go and get it for you.’

      ‘Buttering me up, Lindsay?’ he asked unpleasantly, and then as though sensing her lack of comprehension he added drily. ‘I’m not used to being waited on these days. Dinner is normally a meal I manage to grab somewhere between ‘phone calls. No doubt in the ordered household you intend to run after your marriage, things will be very different. Why are you marrying him, Lindsay?’

      He sounded so derisive that she almost lost her own temper. ‘Because I want to.’ She held his gaze levelly, and then asked softly, ‘What do you expect me to say Lucas? Because we’re madly in love with one another? I can’t pretend to emotions I don’t feel, but I can honestly say that I don’t trust that sort of sexual fascination … it dies … and I don’t believe it to be a good foundation for an enduring marriage …’

      ‘And you of course, have a vast wealth of experience,’ he mocked her suddenly savage in the way he looked and sounded. His fingers closed painfully around her wrist as he yanked her round so that the light from the window fell sharply across her pale face. ‘Just how often have you experienced sexual desire to be able to talk so knowledgeably about it Lindsay? How often have you been savaged by the sharp teeth of frustration … How often have you lain alone in bed at night, burning up with the need for another human being.’