HOT SET: Playing with Fidelity (A romantic suspense novel) by Kerry Northe Page A

surpassed by something different, unusual and warm.
    It was… addictive . Very addictive.
    I t had been an unbelievable seven days. He had made love to her (she could think of it no other way) three times and if anything, it had gotten better. At the thought of him, Amelia felt lust slither under her skin and she wished she could hop into a cab right now for another session, but he was at Dean’s to watch some stupid-sounding game called rugby. He’d told her enthusiastically Australia was playing England; she’d shrugged, not getting it.
    Amelia pressed a small silver button on the bath edge and euphoria imploded with the gentle pounding of her pink skin by a dozen perfectly placed jets. She zoned out and for some reason, thought of her mother, whom she hadn’t called for a couple of weeks. She immediately felt guilty, usually calling at least once a week. She resolved to do it in the morning.
    After all, her mother was the only family she had left.
     
    Amelia Rhein came from a lower-socio economic area of Chicago. Her mother, Karen, was a woman old beyond her age from years of caring for Amelia’s disabled father, Sam, and raising her wilful daughter.
    Sam was a proud man, very active , athletic and handsome and he loved things that moved fast, especially his motorbike. In school, he was the popular ‘jock’, a prominent member of the lacrosse team and an unapologetic attention seeker; his adrenalin-churning exploits getting more and more elaborate. Karen Richmond was in the popular girl’s group. Blonde and gorgeous, she did not possess much scholastic ability (“one must marry well, dear”). It was the stereotypical popular girl dates stereotypical popular boy and they married soon after graduating senior year in an overpriced extravaganza funded untraditionally by Sam’s parents as Karen’s weren’t rich enough to give their daughter the wedding expected. Karen fell pregnant in their second year of marriage with Sam earning reasonable money in a lower level of a large bank with future promotions guaranteed. When Amelia arrived, Sam was ecstatic and Karen the doting stay-at-home-mum.
    They were happy, prosperous and the envy of many .
    Sam had the accident just as Amelia was developing into a sunny, adorable, snow-blonde three-year old. He wasn’t even going fast when it happened. He was riding his bike up a blind-cornered windy road he’d ridden a hundred times before. On this particular trip, he was stuck behind a rusty petrol tanker that unbeknownst to Sam, was leaking oil heavily from a faulty sump. On an upward hair-pin, the truck was going so slow it was almost stopped and a large pool of oil streamed onto the road as the driver changed gears. Sam was accelerating at the same time his wheels entered the puddle and the bike fell sharply, pinning his leg hard against the tarmac and sliding across the road with him trapped under it. Sam slammed into the Armco railing, twisting his lower back and fracturing his lower vertebrae.
    He would never walk again .
    Sam c ould have lived a productive life as banking required the use of the brain, but his pride disintegrated when he became a paraplegic, pushing him into a depression so deep, even his beloved daughter couldn’t get him out of it.
    S am’s medical bills were enormous and insurance didn’t cover them when the family could no longer afford the premiums. Karen tried to find the owners of the truck to sue for compensation but the driver was never located, so she had no choice but to shoulder responsibility. Sam’s parents helped only occasionally and reluctantly, hating that their son was no longer ‘whole’ and Karen’s were only able to provide small amounts occasionally. She worked in a supermarket and took in washing but it was inevitable that they move from their affluent suburb into a small, dumpy house in the outer reaches of Chicago.
    Sam used his disability cheque to bury himself in the drug of the miserable . As alcohol took over his