Now, in the second year of their marriage, Ann Dexter asked herself more than once a day just why she'd married him in the first place. Their affair had created such a stir in the private junior college that she'd been forced to leave, the Dean of Women having politely asked her to enroll elsewhere. Something about intellectual men had always turned her on. Maybe it was because of her journalist father, she wasn't sure, but whatever that magic ingredient was, she'd wasted no time finding it in the man who was to serve as her protector – her security blanket to replace the loving father who was now dead.

So, having left school, Ann had become Carl's part-time assistant, helping him in the lab by typing up reports, most of which were case histories, in preparation for the final report that the sponsors would most certainly demand to read after two years of financing. It got her out of the house, if nothing else, and there were people to meet at the lab. But God, all Carl did was work; there was none of the typical chase-the-secretary-around-the-desk games that you see in magazine cartoons. Not Carl! He was all research and study.

Ironically, from the case histories she'd typed up in the past months, she'd learned that there was always a sexual problem between a middle-aged husband and a young wife. And it was true! She was about to lose her mind! She was twenty-two and Carl twice that. It wasn't the paunch he was showing traces of that bothered her, but his performance in bed. He was destroying the most intimate of her possessions – her sensuality!

She turned the bacon now, listening to her husband's voice calling to her from the hallway.