The Passion Play by Amelia Hart Page B

stung, more than a little.
    Still, it was his loss. Other men fit those criteria. While she had not found another last night she might if she went out again. Despite the discomfort, the awkwardness, she had felt pulsatingly alive. And that was the point: To live her life. To carpe that diem . That club was too dark and noisy, so she would try another. Would that be tonight, or would the previous failure be allowed to frighten her off for the time being? No, the life lived in fear was the life half lived. That could be a motto to keep her from falling back into old, stale patterns. Perhaps she would take Caroline with her.
    Even if her approach to Luke had been an embarrassing failure, there had been one benefit: she knew with absolute certainty her sexuality had not withered for lack of nurture. In fact it had been astonishingly easy to find a man who could make her wild with desire.
    Really it made her question what she had experienced with Dan, and with her high-school boyfriend Jacob before him, if Luke Barrett could get her so worked up with a bit of dancing and an almost-kiss. Perhaps she was some closet hedonist, and she was on the brink of finding out.
    The thought was exciting. She was so tired of being sedate, rule-abiding Floss King who did everything that was expected and was utterly proper and conventional. Far better to try out a few different personae to bring balance and self-knowledge to her choices as she went ahead into single adulthood. Maybe into parenthood. An early midlife crisis. Ideal to get it out of the way now rather than later. It struck her as very well organized.
    Though she snorted at the thought, and paused in her scrubbing of the pan.
    Even when I'm being wild and reckless I'm doing it in an organized way. I've trained myself too well. Or been trained , she added darkly, before pushing the thought away. There was nothing inherently evil about good organizational skills.
    It's just when I seize on them obsessively in an attempt to control a life over which I actually have no real say that they are unhealthy. And that was a genuine insight, worth noting down .
    She finished the pan then made her note, pleased with her progress for the hour. And while she was at it she resolved if she should ever happen to run into Luke Barrett again she would be coolly, flawlessly polite, and make it clear she held no grudge but there was also no opening for him to fill in her life. She would find the next hunky male and finish what she had started with him.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    "So you're married, Felicity?"
    "Yes." It gave her a twinge of guilt to lie, but she didn't feel like delving into the dynamics of the alternative with the doctor this precise second.
    "Well you can tell your husband there's nothing at all the matter with you. Perhaps he'd like to come in so we can run some tests and see that everything's in good working order. There's a whole range of steps that can be taken to help couples now, and you're wise to get started while you're still quite young. Thirty-two is a fine age to begin a family. I see too many people who've put it off until the last possible moment and frankly, through her thirties a woman's fertility decreases rapidly. You've picked a good time, Felicity. Don't you worry."
    "Thank you for that. I'll let my husband know." She nodded politely, took the sheaf of notes and pamphlets the woman offered her and backed out, feeling uncomfortably conspicuous as she paid her bill and exited the clinic. She had chosen a place in a different suburb where there was no chance of being recognized.
    As she sat in her car, the watery sunshine coming through the windshield warming her lap and cold hands, she wondered briefly if she should tell Dan. It would be the right thing to do. The compassionate thing, to let him know he needed to get himself sorted out. Or that he might never be able to have children.
    If she wanted him back she would do it. If she preferred to be with him rather than have a