But the ironical part had come later when her lover, who had turned out to be a prominent, local political hack, had engineered an attempted murder charge against him and made it stick, netting him a year and a day in prison. When it was done, a bitter ex-baseball player named Andy Connelly was advised by a benevolent warden that he might do better in another part of the country… or even another country. Had he thought about that?

In fact, he'd thought about a lot of things, and that was but one of them. Divorced, broke and overflowing with hate, he had migrated north of the border, found employment in a small factory in Ontario, then, fumbled a stupid attempt to hijack its payroll.

So, once again here he was, five-years later, no less bitter, but seasoned, and happy to be breathing free air once more as he walked along a side street off St. Catherine in the warm September sunshine, enjoying the pleasurable sounds of Montreal's bustling activity. Twenty years had passed since his last visit to the fabulous city… since that exhibition game with Montreal's then International League team, and he was satisfied that its stellar attraction had not changed… the women were still beautiful… and God, how he needed one.

A half-dozen times he paused to ogle after a pair of pretty legs or a voluptuous figure wearing a piled-up, exotic coiffure… radical, ridiculous, but beautiful… slender ankles, rounded calves and curvaceous hips and buttocks… tripping off on high, needle-like heels in every damned direction. Christ, it was enough to set him wild; his love-starved cock jerked uncontrollably in his pants. He didn't intend that another day would go by without him knowing the satisfaction of a woman's warm, soft, receptive body. How he'd gone these last forty-eight hours since his release was almost more than he could fathom right at the moment, but then, with a little thought that wasn't too difficult to reason either.