Playing the Joker. Caroline Anderson

the person he had known four years ago. It would be strange if all the things that had happened had left her quite untouched.

      She closed the wardrobe door and stood back to study herself with a critical eye.

      Her hair was thick and heavy, falling over her shoulders and framing her face with a tumble of wild flame. Her skin was pale and smooth, though cursed with freckles, and her full breasts were firm and creamy, tipped with rose-pink nipples. Below them her waist was neat, her tummy smooth and flat.

      Beneath the gentle swell of her hips her legs were endless, long and shapely, and at their juncture the soft, thick curls clustered enticingly.

      She was all woman—strong, healthy, designed to tempt a man and lure him to her bed, and there to conceive his children in the wild ecstasy of passion.

      Her mouth twisted and her gaze returned to the curls that hid the hated scar.

      It was just an illusion, that mother-earth look of hers. She wasn’t a woman at all, just a cardboard cutout, an android, an imposter.

      How could you be a woman without a womb?