Riding the Thunder - Deborah MacGillivray [1]
For Monika Wolmarans, Leanne Burroughs,
Dawn Thompson, Diane White, Carol Ann Applegate
Sandi
and
Bobby “Boris” Pickett
Riding The Thunder
PROLOGUE
June 1964, Kentucky
“I don’t believe you want to marry me!” Laura cried.
Not crocodile tears either, Tommy Grant knew. Laura Valmont felt things more deeply than most people, one of the special traits that first attracted him to her.
She had just moved to the small Southern town of Leesburg, Kentucky, when he first laid eyes on Laura. Not there one day, she’d taken on three bullies cruelly tormenting a stray cat. Fifteen, womanhood blooming on her body, she failed to recognize the peril she’d stepped into on that hot summer afternoon. With singular determination, and wearing the aura of a warrior princess, she had placed herself between the mangy cat and the older thugs—Monty, Reed and Ewen.
They were dangerous, not typical bullies, but out-of-control, budding psychos—especially Monty. There was something seriously wrong with Montague Faulkner. Raging hormones saw the situation as combustible as tossing a lit match into gasoline. Tommy doubted Laura noticed all three had serious hard-ons as they watched her, almost licking their lips. It wouldn’t have slowed her down. Her sole focus was on rescuing that piteous cat.
At nineteen, Tommy was a shade taller than the younger Reed and Ewen, but not Monty. Monty had three inches and a few pounds on him. Nevertheless, the punk stepped back when Tommy moved before Laura, shielding her. Monty was a bully, and like all bullies a coward at his core. Once you crossed him, there would be trouble down the road. Tommy would have to watch his back. There’d be hell to pay—one didn’t clash with Montague Faulkner and not expect to find his tires slashed or his windshield shot out. Or worse.
Tommy had asked drolly, “Is there a problem here?” The steel of his words had instantly diffused the volatile situation.
It never occurred to Tommy until much later that with her act of rescuing the cat, and his rescuing her, their lives had changed in a single heartbeat. He might’ve as well gone down on his knee and proposed then and there. The die was cast, as the old-timers loved to say.
During the following two years, she’d made his life hell. In the small town of Leesburg there was no escaping Laura. Anytime she caught him on a date, she’d stared until he had this strange fear his balls would shrivel and drop off. She’d buzzed around his home, brought flowers for his widowed mother, and aided in planning tea parties and summer barbecues. His mother wore a knowing female smile saying, bide your time, son, you’re already hers.
At first, he’d fought the inevitability. What red-blooded, twenty-year-old male wanted a wide-eyed teenager mooning around him, even if that sweet seventeen-year-old had a pair of world-class breasts and an ass that made him swallow his tongue? Heaven to look at, she was a severe pain in the groin and numerous cold showers to get over. Seventeen still had that sign: Look but don’t touch. Sane males ran for their lives. He ran. Only, Laura had made up her mind. He never stood a chance.
Last summer when she turned eighteen, she’d come at him, no-holds-barred. In short order, everyone in the jerkwater town knew they were a couple and would marry soon. It was only a matter of setting a date.
Precisely what now had Laura in a tizzy. She had graduated Leesburg High back in the spring. With no intention of going to college, she wanted to get married, and next week wouldn’t be soon enough. A year seemed a lifetime away to her.
“Damn it, Laura, I want to get married, too. I have one more year of law school—which you know well. What? You want to marry and move in with my mother and uncle? That’d be fun. I can’t swing it, honey. Let me graduate. My uncle will take me into his practice then.” He explained the facts—as he had weekly since her graduation. “My part-time clerking isn’t enough for us to live on.”
“Maybe your uncle would help us if we got married—”
Tommy gritted his teeth. This