A Young Woman Discovers Sex--and Romance! A day after her eighteenth birthday, Nola James is introduced to the joys of sex by her common-law stepbrother. Because of a nosy neighbor, Nola is mistakenly identified as underage and hauled away to a child welfare home. The innocent young woman is assigned to a room with a disturbed ward of the court who smokes pot and runs naked.

  Nola's plight worsens when she is assigned to a woman as a prospective adoptee, where she is treated like a maid and accosted by the woman's lover. She escapes and, after ominous sexual misadventures, gets a job as a waitress at a bus station snack bar, where she becomes friends with the owner. This older woman becomes a second mother to her.

  Rape and pregnancy follow, but when all seems lost and Nola feels she must sell herself to survive, Robbie Douglas returns to town. He operates a successful delivery service and finds Nola when he delivers goods to the cafe. Nola realizes she still loves Robbie but can't find the words to tell him she has a baby, so she rejects him. Will Nola find love? Could Robbie forgive another man's child? Is there any hope for a young woman forced to go wrong by circumstances, or is she doomed to sink lower? You'll discover the answers in a frank novel. 

  The day after my 18th birthday, Robbie licked me. I was sitting on the toilet drying myself after taking a shower. The lock on the door was broken, and he barged right in. The sweat from my morning run was washed away, and I smelled of Dial soap. I pulled the towel up to cover my breasts. He stared at the hair between my legs.

  "Robbieeee," I complained.

  He started to close the door, held it halfway open for a second, and opened it wider.

  "Let me see your, you know, lower the towel for a second."

  "There's not that much to see," I said.

  I dropped the towel to my knees. He stared. I should have demanded that he get out of there, yet I didn't. I had dreamed about such a moment soon after my mother and I moved in with him and his dad, Mr. Douglas, two years before.

  I smiled, put the towel over as much of my body as it would cover, and said, "All right, Robbie. Now you've seen everything. Let me finish drying and get dressed."

  My voice betrayed me, revealing how nervous and excited I was. I started to stand. He pushed me back down on the seat and pulled the towel from my grasp. He kneeled before me, pulled my crotch toward him, and tried to spread my knees. I resisted, I'm sure I did, but he was so strong.

  I shouldn't have been surprised at his strength. I'd watch his muscles glisten with sweat often enough as he lifted weights in the basement. At first, he ran me off, but in the last year, he seemed to like to have me there so he could show off. I was fascinated by the black hair on his chest and couldn't help wondering if it was that black everywhere. He usually wore shorts and a jockey strap. I saw part of it under his shorts when he did leg exercises.

My mother cried when she told me of her efforts to find a decent man to be my stepfather after my real father left when I was six. We had lived with seven different men before she met Robbie's dad, Ralph Douglas.

He was nice. So much nicer than the others. He never shouted at or hit my mother and me. We had moved in the day before he left on a two-week trucking trip. He drove for Consolidated Moving and was gone much of the time.

  Mother worked as a waitress at the Downtown Diner. She worked days mostly but sometimes worked nights too. She made almost enough for us to get by on our own. But it was always a struggle to pay the rent, keep me in school clothes, and everything else. So, whenever she got the chance, she let some guy help support us. They always seemed to disappear after a few weeks. To Order CLICK HERE OR ON THE BOOK COVER.