"Who was that guy?" Joey asked as he jerked his arm out of his mother's restraining fingers.

Tiffany heard the question, but she didn't have the answer, at least, not one that would satisfy her son. "What guy?" She calmed the tremor in her voice and added. "Telli's was full of guys, I didn't notice anyone particular."

"Yeah, sure, like you two weren't doing that eye thing." Her son's intuitive nature never ceased to amaze her. He read people better than she generally did.

"Look, it's late. Let's get home and we'll discuss this tomorrow."

"All right, but I don't like him."

"You don't know him, how can you dislike him?"

"It's easy. You either like someone or you don't, and I don't."

She was thankful when he let the conversation drop and slipped his favorite disc into the car's CD player. After adjusting the volume to a tolerable level, he slumped deeper into his seat. She knew he had to be exhausted. He always was after competing in the rodeo's junior bull-riding competitions. Tonight's event had kept him on an adrenaline high for the past several hours, and now he was crashing. Her son's love of everything to do with the rodeo came with a reckless streak that no amount of mothering could temper. She didn't share his passion, the same way she hadn't shared his father's passion for the same thing.

Memories rolled out in front of her as clearly as the highway taking her home. Her eighteenth summer she had been drowning in the ecstasy of first love, a love that Corey Donovan had returned. The miracle of it had been no less wonderful for all its secrecy. She remembered all those Saturday nights when Corey had competed in the bull-riding events while she suffered in silent fear of the danger he loved so much. More than that, she'd hated sitting with her father in his private box, unable to show by even a twitch that the eighteen-year-old boy atop the "Killer of the Century" was the center of her world.

Her father's rules on dating had been simple. She was not to dally, as he'd called it, with any of the farm boys of Deliverance. "We come from a long line of the landed gentry," he would lecture. "I intend to make sure our family line remains uncontaminated by the likes of them." Corey Donovan had definitely been one of "them."

For the first time in her life, she'd lied, schemed, and deceived her parents on a daily basis. None of which, when measured against her need to be with Corey, had seemed wrong at the time. How foolish she'd been. How utterly unaware of the forces that had been about to rip apart her life.

She would have to see him, of course. He was not stupid; he would have recognized Joey as his son. Besides that, there had been retribution written in his cold eyes, a straightforward statement of unfinished business. No doubt, he thought she owed him. Well, in many ways, she did, and she was ready to pay. The question was whether he would accept her currency of exchange.

_____________________________________

Sad to say but it takes more than stars to support someone who needs to make an income from their writing. For that reason, I'm moving this book to a commercial distributor so that I can be paid for my work.

I'm leaving the first 4 parts here on Wattpad so that those who think they might like my story well enough to purchase it for $1.99 will be able to get a feel for the story before they decide to buy.

The purchase link for this book is: https://books2read.com/u/mgEQev