ing a kiss to me. "Don't forget I've got the gimmick that'll take the love-light out of your husband's eyes -and put contempt there instead."

My heart iced. Could that be true? If Granger should find out the truth about me and react as Bob had predicted, could I endure it?

I treasured Granger's protective friendship. I honestly loved him. And even though I couldn't be in love with him, because he was a man, and I am a lesbian, even so, I did try to make him happy. And he was happy. I could keep him happy if only I could find some way to prevent Bob from carrying out his threat.

At that moment the only sure way seemed to kill Bob. But, as Bob had pointed out, I wasn't the murdertype. Then fury surged inside of me. Or was I?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As the days passed, like a cornered mouse waiting for a crouching cat to pounce upon it, I waited for Bob to strike. Would he actually tell Granger about Jan and me? About what had happened before Granger even knew I existed. If Bob did carry such stories to my husband, how would Granger react?

I recall the afternoon I was strolling along the beach gathering shells. I saw Bob in swimming. As I watched him he swam out farther than was safe. For an instant a mixture of self-preservation and savagery rose within me. If only he'd not be able to make it back to shore!" I thought. If only he'd sink beneath those graygreen waves-my secret love would be forever safe from Granger's discovery.

Then I mentally shook myself. "No! No, no!” a voice in my mind was shrieking. “I don't want anyone dead. Not even my enemy." Then I ran to the water's

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edge, and cried out, "Bob! Come back! Bob! Come back!"

When he turned and swam to shore I knew that no matter how much I despised him, I did not want him to die. Bob was right. I am not a murderess. Not even in thought..

When he came to me, his handsome tanned body dripping salt water, I turned away.

"You called me as if you cared," he said jokingly. "You're a married woman, sugar. By gossips, that sort of emotion could be blown up big!" He roared with laughter.

“I—I—I just didn't want you to drown," I said sheepishly. "I'd yell the same way to anybody who is fool enough to swim out as far as you did."

After that instance, for a while Bob no longer tormented me. He soon began going rather steadily with Elena Hammond, who had moved to our town from back east. I was delighted. My tension lessened.

Ever since I'd become Mrs. Granger Macy, Beth, Mother and Hal came socially to my new home. And Granger and I were often invited to Mother's house. The relationship between my folks and myself appeared so smooth that Granger had no idea of the rift that had been so wide between us, before I had married.

Now, even Hal blinked behind his glasses and tried to be very friendly and brother-in-lawish to me.

But none of them fooled me. It wasn't me, just Melba, to whom they showed new respect and friendliness. They were being nice to Mrs. Macy, the respectable married woman.

"Fools," I thought impatiently. "Can't they realize that being married to a man hasn't altered my basic. instincts?"

If I had been "freakish", (as they called it,) in my love for Jan, being with Granger hadn't changed me. Only now the bright lesbian fire inside of me was

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