The temptation to see her again was building up deep inside him again. He didn’t realise until he left the store late one afternoon that he felt somehow part of him was missing. Well not really missing. He somehow felt incomplete and empty. She had engendered a driven need in him he had never felt before.

He unhappily wended his way home through the morning rush hour, distraught, knowing it was wrong at his stage in life to feel this uncontrolled desire. He was affected so badly for a moment he forgot what side of the road to drive on he was so preoccupied with his private thoughts.

The more he thought about it the more he realised that recently he had started to go into the store a little earlier each day ostensibly to buy his “English” paper, but he had to admit it was simply to steal a furtive glimpse at her in the brightly lit Deli part of the store where they hung up all the cured hams.

When he walked nonchalantly past the counter the object of his desire was, if not in his possession, at least close by. It came as a shock to his system, the impact of her shape, colour, texture even the very smell of her had on him, yet he could not put out his hand to caress the sweet sweep of her curves, to look openly and longingly at her. There was so much more he wanted to explore and find out about her that the very thought of it made his teeth water.

He found himself fantasising about what he would do if he was free to make his own choice without this terrible feeling of guilt and the betrayal of a promise. He wandered around the store avoiding temptation, but the thought that he could have her all to himself was driving him mad until he thought about his wife.

If she knew of his fantasies and daydreams, his hopes and secret thoughts of lust and temptation, they would be grounds, no doubt, for an acrimonious divorce. At times he nearly had to run out of the store, his passion and lust became so strong and uncontrollable.

The previous day he had even sat panting in his car holding the steering wheel in a death grip, trying to gather himself together and behave in a more normal manner, before he bought his morning paper. He just hoped he would catch a glimpse of her before he left.

“Some day” he thought to himself, “Someday you will let your animal lust carry you away and you will make an exhibition of yourself”.

Having decided that he was under control, he entered the store and there she was in all her beauty. He took another secret look at her hoping nobody was watching and at that moment decided that he would come into the store the next day, when his wife was at work, and have her on the spot.

He decided that he would lift her in his arms and hope nobody would pay too much attention to him and he could smuggle her quietly home.

He no longer cared what his wife or family thought. She would be his that evening, the most beautiful and attractively presented Spanish Cured “Serrano Ham” he had ever seen in his life, and to hell with his diet.