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I can take you to The Corral in town to dance and enjoy a beer, because I already know your answer.” He leaned over and kissed her lips, a regretful look on his face. “Can we play here again next week?”
    “I’d like that.” She met his gaze and smiled sadly. “Truth be told, I’d like to be able to go out with you in front of God and everybody else, but I’m not brave enough to stir up that ancient feud. I don’t think you are, either.”
    “Fuck the feud. I just don’t want to put you through the torment Four might think up for us if we started turning up in town as boyfriend and girlfriend.”
    “Four?”
    “My old man. That’s what everybody calls him.”
    Karen grinned. “Why don’t they call you Five, then?”
    Bye had to think about that for a minute. “Because Mom doesn’t like the number thing. She’s the only person I’ve ever heard call Four by his actual name. I guess she started calling me Bye when I was a baby, and it stuck.”
    “I guess that makes sense,” she said.
    “Yeah. You don’t have a nickname, do you?”
    “No.” When she looked away from him, he wondered if he’d hit a sore spot with her.
    He took her hand. “I guess most girls don’t. Deidre doesn’t, unless you want to consider ‘Funny Face’ a nickname. I used to call her that when she was little.”
    “You’re probably right about that. But I’d better go now. I’ll see you here next week.” She stood and retrieved her see-through skirt and blouse from the floor then looked at him, a sad look in her beautiful eyes. “Bye, I’m pretty sure your father wouldn’t do anything quite as extreme as what mine would do if he ever got wind of us being together.”
    * * * * *
    Bye went home pretty soon after Karen left. He wasn’t up for watching his fellow members gettin’ it on with each other while he sipped Coke and munched on the chips and fiery queso dip Buck made out of cheese spread, canned tomatoes and green chilis. The loud country and rock music from the jukebox had given him a fierce headache. Rubbing at his throbbing temples, he watched the stars from the front porch of the ranch house.
    If Mom had been home, he’d have joined her in the garden room and listened to her encourage him to find a nice girl and settle down. He knew she worried about him playing around, drinking and partying. She’d fret a lot more if she realized just what kind of playing went on regularly at the Neon Lasso among the moneyed twenty-something crowd and some older folks as well.
    It was good she didn’t know, because she’d just worry more. At least Deidre hadn’t started playing sex games at the Neon Lasso since she’d come home from college a few months ago. Bye figured he owed Jack for having passed on his little sister in spite of her blatant flirting. Deidre had turned into a cock tease, and that was likely to get her in trouble if she wasn’t careful. Not every cowboy around here had developed a healthy fear of getting on the wrong side of Byron Caden IV.
    Bye laughed out loud. Four irritated the hell out of him with his constant criticism and absolute refusal to accept that Bye was a grown man with at least half a brain cell. That didn’t mean Bye wasn’t at least as careful as most of the Bar C wranglers were not to invite Four’s wrath. After all, he had a lot more to lose, potentially, than anybody else. He glanced over toward the garage and noticed his father’s Escalade was still gone, which meant he’d probably stayed in Lubbock for the night.
    Four did business there almost every week, and much of the time that business involved an overnight stay. For a long time Bye had wondered why contracting with the feed lots where Bar C cattle were fattened for market required personal visits, much less twenty-four hour stays in a town known as much for the pungent odor of its feeder lots as it was for anything else. Then he’d figured it out. Four must have a mistress stashed over there. There was no other