Authors: Carolyn Brown
Milli stopped dead in her tracks. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Sarah saw him with her for a few minutes and she knew. And someday soon, Beau’s going to see it, too. So you better think about just how you’re going to handle that. Sarah’s liable to be the very one to tell him next week if you let him back in the nursery,” Mary said.
“I think maybe the thing for me and Katy to do is forget about a picnic in the park this afternoon. We need to just pack our bags and go on back to west Texas.”
“Can’t run from it. Beau would search the ends of the earth for you now, girl. Besides, you’re a Torres and you don’t run from your problems. You stand up and face them. Grab them by the horns just like they was a charging bull, stare them right in the eye, and spit on them if you have to. But you damned sure don’t run from them. Now get on out there and have a wonderful afternoon. Beau ain’t stupid and he ain’t blind. He’s a good man, and evidently you saw something good in him at least one time. But I expect he’s going to be pretty upset when he finds out he’s got a daughter and you didn’t tell him a thing about her,” Mary said bluntly.
Milli stopped in the hall. She wanted to cut and run to the farthest corner of the earth. Somewhere no one knew her or Katy and had never heard the name Luckadeau. She could always make a living for the two of them on a ranch, and there were lots of ranches scattered over the United States.
She finally kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “I love you, Granny. But I’m not about to tell him about Katy just yet. This whole thing is so new it’s got me baffled and I need to sort out my feelings before I confront him with a thing this big.”
Beau was waiting right outside the church door. “Hey, I thought you ran off to the Land of Oz with Miz Katy. Come here, baby, and let old Beau carry you out to the bronc and put you in the saddle. We’ll go find us some lunch and play all afternoon. Do you like minnows? We’re going to find a creek bed with water so shallow you can play with the minnows.” He took Katy from her mother, propping her up on his hip with one hand as he reached down and took Milli’s hand in his other one.
Milli put the diaper bag in the back seat and looked around hopelessly. “Oh, no! I’ve left my purse in the church. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded and finished strapping the baby into the seat as Milli headed back into the church. “Katy and I’ll put on some music and we’ll be fine, won’t we baby? Now, what do you want to hear? Are you a Clint Black fan or do you like Miss Reba better?”
“Twinkle star,” Katy said.
“So you like twinkle star, do you?” he asked and was thumbing through CDs when an old man knocked on the window of his truck. Beau rolled down the window and raised an eyebrow.
“Mornin’, son. I’m Tommy Rogers. Been goin’ to church here with Jim and Mary for a hun’erd years, give or take a few. Just wanted to tell you that you and your little family is welcome here. We need you young folks in our church, and any kinfolks of Jim’s is friends of ours. One thing’s for sure, you sure got a pretty wife and little baby girl.”
“Thank you, but…” Beau tried to set him straight but it was like pouring water on a duck’s back, and the old fellow kept talking.
“Little baby girl is the spittin’ image of you. Even got your dimple on the right side there when she smiles. Maybe the next one will look like her momma. Pretty woman, that wife of yours. Bet she can put you around the corner. Them brown eyes look like they… oh, here she comes right now. Just come on back with Jim and Mary any time and we’ll make you feel right at home.”
“Yes, sir.” Beau rolled the window back up.
Milli hopped up into the truck and threw her purse on the back seat. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t glued on right tight. Did you know that fellow?”
Beau’s eyebrows drew down in a fine line. “Nope. He was inviting us back to church anytime we want to come.”
“Oh, you don’t come to this church all the time? Guess I just thought because Granny and Poppy and the Spencers come over here, y’all did, too.”
A cold shiver of reality climbed up his backbone and made the blond hair on his neck prickle. “Buster and Rosa go to the Catholic church over in Ardmore. I was going with Amanda to the Baptist church in Ardmore ‘til last week. Aunt Alice went to one in Lone Grove. Never been over here befofe, but I sure do like these people and the atmosphere.”
“They are sweet folks. I’m starving. I think I could eat a whole Angus steer - hoofs, horns and all.”
“Calf fries?”
“My favorite. Rolled in beer batter and deep fat fried. Served up with pinto beans and fried potatoes.”
He started the engine and eased out on the road, heading south until he reached the highway taking them back east to the ranch. “You’re a girl after my own heart. How ‘bout you, Katy? When you get to be a year old, you goin’ to like calf fries?”
“Katy is fourteen months old already. And honey, she can eat her weight in calf fries if I cut them up in little pieces. She quit eating baby food months ago and started eating whatever I am.”
Beau did the math in his head. “Birthday in April? What day?”
Milli turned the music down low. “April 20.”
Beau had always been good with figures, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how long it was from the last of week of July to April 20, and it didn’t take a physics major to know what had been evident to the old man at the church was the pure truth. He peeped up in the rearview mirror at the baby sitting in the car seat, reality hitting him in the chest like a tornado ripping up a one-hole outhouse. He remembered the copy of his Own baby picture his mother kept on the mantle in the den. Take off the blue-checked bonnet and put on a little baseball cap and it was Beau all over again, except for that lightly tanned skin.
“You’re pretty quiet. Hungry?” She asked when they were nearly back to the Bar M where Rosa was supposed to have lunch ready. She had packed a small duffel bag with shorts and a top, along with a two-piece bathing suit - if she had the nerve to wear it in front of him. Her stretch marks were still visible across her tummy, even if they were fading away slowly. Katy’s diaper bag was stuffed with everything she needed plus a few of her favorite stuffed toys.
Oh, rot, I forgot her little plastic pail and shovel.
“Yep, I am,” he said icily. “But more than hungry, I’m madder than pure hell, right now.”
He pulled the pickup off the road and faced her. His eyes were slits behind long lashes, and his nostrils flared. There wasn’t even a single sign of a dimple in his cheek, and his eyebrows were one straight line. It was beginning to look as if she’d been right all along. They couldn’t breathe the same air for more than a couple of hours without one of them getting angry.
“Well, what in the world got your dander up?”
She hadn’t done a single thing to rile him. Just like she’d promised her grandparents; if they didn’t tell her secret, she wouldn’t give him the cold shoulder. It looked as though he was about as stable as water. One minute leaning close to her in the church services and making her fairly well swoon with lusty desire right there in front of the preacher and the Almighty, and the next, jerking the truck to a standstill. Jim and Mary Torres could forget about happy endings. It wasn’t happening with Beau and Milli.
He touched her cheek with his hand and turned her face toward the back of the pickup truck. “Look in the back seat and tell me what you see.”
She slapped his hand away from her face. “My purse? Are you mad because I forgot my purse? Well, that’s a stupid, ignorant thing to get so worked up over. I forgot Katy’s plastic pail and shovel, too. Good grief, Beau, haven’t you ever forgotten anything before?”
“It’s not your damned purse, Milli. It’s Katy.”
“Why are you mad about Katy? She didn’t puke on you or leave a wet spot on your jeans…”
“Twinkle star,” Katy said.
“She calls all music twinkle star. She wants me to turn up the volume,” Milli said.
He clenched his teeth and slapped the steering wheel. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me Katy was my daughter? Why didn’t you at least make an effort to get in touch with me when you found out you were having my child?”
She exhaled so long her lungs ached. “Oh.”
“That all you got to say, just, ‘oh’? I think we’ve got a lot to talk about. And all you can say is ‘oh.’ I want some answers.”
Her eyes narrowed and steam could practically be seen coming out the top of her head. “Don’t you talk to me in that tone. And don’t you ever raise your voice like that in front of my daughter again.”
“She’s mine, too, damn it,” he whispered loudly. “And just how long did you think you’d wait before you told me? Until she was grown?”
“Hey, you were the dumb jackass who was fixing to marry Amanda. What was I supposed to do? Come waltzing in with a baby daughter and say, ‘Oh, Amanda, meet your new stepdaughter’? Hellfire, Beau, I damn sure didn’t know you was going to show up across a cut fence from me, yelling and shouting about an Angus bull. When I found out I was pregnant, was I supposed to put out a bulletin with your picture on it and say, ‘I slept with this man one night and he’s the father of my baby. Can you help me find him? He doesn’t hold his liquor well and he’ll go to bed with any woman who’s willing.’ I didn’t know anything but your name and that your family was from Shreveport.’
“There’s a whole page of Luckadeaus in the phone book in Shreveport. All you had to do was call anyone and ask for Beau and they would have told you how to get in touch with me, since I’m the only one named Beau. Besides, we’re all related. Luckadeau is not such a common name.”
She raised her voice almost as high as her eyebrows. “Sure, I could call anyone of them. Can you please tell me where Beau Luckadeau is so I can tell him I’m pregnant from a one-night stand? And what would you have done? Crawled up on your fancy little tricycle, put on your shining armor, and ridden all the way to west Texas to rescue the loose-legged woman who said the baby she carried was yours? Get real. Even you wouldn’t have believed a story like that.”
Beau fumed. He wanted to turn around and stare at his daughter until his eyes memorized every detail from her unruly blonde curls to her toenails peaking out from the ends of white leather sandals. With one breath he wanted to slap thunder out of Milli for depriving him of his daughter for a whole year, not to mention the joy and anticipation of waiting for her for nine months. With the next breath he wanted to reach across the seat and draw her close to his side and make her vow never to leave him again.
“Why don’t you just take us to the Lazy Z? I don’t think this is a good day for a picnic after all. As a matter of fact, it might be a good day for me and Katy to go back to Hereford. I think both of us need a lot of space to get this worked out. It’s pretty damned evident that the lady you kept talking about last night was a figment of your imagination. And darlin’, I never did think you were such a great knight-in-shining-damn-armor.”
Well, it might not be good day, but I promised my daughter a picnic and by damn she’s having a picnic. I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep,” he declared.
“Beau, be realistic. You didn’t even know until a few minutes ago that you had a child. When the newness wears off and the air clears, your common sense will tell you there’s more to a baby than just picnics and…”
“And what, Milli? I’m thirty years old. I think I know what there is to a child. And today we’re going to the ranch for dinner and to the park for the afternoon. Lord, wait until Buster sees Katy. If I hadn’t found out this morning, I would have known before the day was out, because Buster knows about the dream I had about you, even though he doesn’t know just how far things went that night. He knows you ran away and I found your earring. And besides, he knew me when I was a little kid. One look at Katy and he’d have been telling me how stupid I was. Guess what they say about me is true. I’m lucky in everything but love.”
“That’s the gospel truth. And it don’t look like it’s going to get a whole a lot better in the near future. I told you last night you’d be kicking me across the state line when you got to know me. Like I said, you can just take me to Granny and Poppy’s right now. At the end of the summer, Katy and I will go back home, and you can forget you figured it all out this fine June morning.”
“Huh,” he snorted. “Miss Katy, I think your pretty momma has got cow chips for brains. Let’s go see your daddy’s ranch. Betcha it’s bigger and better than your Poppy’s, and I bet you like Angus cows better, too.”
“When cows fly…” she snorted right back at him. “No Torres in the world would pick a fool Angus cow over a white-face.”
He started the engine and pulled back out onto the highway, bound for the Bar M. “But a Luckadeau would, and Katy is a Luckadeau - or haven’t you noticed that dimple in her cheek?”
“But the part that has bovine sense is Torres, and don’t you forget it.”
Beau just grinned real big.
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MILLI WATCHED THE GREEN OKLAHOMA COUNTRYSIDE speed past at sixty-five miles an hour and wished her heart was going that slow. She wondered if Beau could see it pumping faster than a gushing oil well when he stole glances toward her. Every time his eyes traveled from her sandals to her forehead she felt as if a red hot iron had touched her bare skin. Why in the hell did he affect her like this? She dealt with cattle buyers, farmers, ranchers, bankers, and hundreds of other men on a daily basis, so why did this one long, tall cool drink of southern water have her panting like she’d just spent eight seconds on the back of a mean bull?
Probably because he was the only man she’d ever known sexually and she didn’t have anyone else to compare him with. What she needed to do was get the hell out of Dodge - or Oklahoma, as the case may be - and find a lover. One who would kiss her until her knees were weak and all she wanted to do was fall backwards and pull him down with her. Someone who would take Beau’s face from her mind and send it back to the Texas-Louisiana border where it belonged. Someone who would erase the indelible mark he’d left on her heart. Where could she find a man like that? She didn’t know right then, but she wasn’t going to find him until she started looking, and that would be tomorrow morning. In Hereford, Texas. Not in southern Oklahoma where she would run into Beau every time she turned around.
Beau glanced up in the rearview mirror to make sure his daughter was still there and hadn’t faded like a dream, and kept a watch on Milli for the same reason. This was sure enough a twenty-four hours to remember. Yesterday at this time he was thinking about his engagement party with Amanda and wishing he hadn’t been so hasty about buying that big diamond for her. Today he was sitting in close quarters with the woman he’d begun’l to believe was just a crazy piece of his imagination. Last night he really thought he had an angel in his arms while they danced. He breathed in the essence of Milli and wanted more and more and more. Today she was more than a puff of angel dust. She was a real woman, full of spit and vinegar, and she’d have him toeing the line if they ever did get into a relationship.
And he had a child. Wait until his parents got wind of this whole thing. His mother would probably be so upset with him she wouldn’t even talk to him. Not for having a child out of wedlock; Luckadeau men weren’t perfect, by any means. But for not taking time to make sure there wasn’t one on the way after that night. But she’d damn sure forgive him the minute she found out she had a granddaughter. A girl baby in the Luckadeau family - now that was a pure miracle.
It wasn’t his fault. He’d tried to find Amelia and had even called information for several towns in the Rio Grande Valley and in Brownsville, too. There were lots of Jiminez folks down in that part of the world. It was like looking for a Smith in downtown Dallas. If Joann Luckadeau wanted proof that he had tried, he still had an enormous telephone bill in his file cabinet.
After a houseful of sons and several grandsons, Katy just might be the very thing that got him out of hot water over this to-do. It didn’t matter that he was thirty years old, had his own ranch, and ran it well. There were some things that were unforgivable. And this was number one on the list. His father didn’t care how modern the world was; could care less that lots of men and women chose to have children without the sacrament of marriage. The old standard was upheld in the Luckadeau family and there wasn’t a lot of room for argument about it.
His mind ran in circles so fast it made him dizzy. Milli was so blessed straightforward and bossy, he didn’t know if he could ever live with her every day. They couldn’t even keep company for a few hours without making each other mad enough to chew up railroad spikes and spit out thumbtacks. It’d be a topsy-turvy world and they’d argue so much they’d end up spending half their time making up. A shock went through him from the ends of his boots all the way to the stitches on the top of his head when he remembered her snuggled up beside him in the bedroom the night Katy was conceived. Now, wouldn’t that be just like dying and going to heaven, to have to make up with her like that on a regular basis?
No matter what they decided to do about their own violent tempers, he fully well intended that the whole world know from this moment on that Katy was his daughter. If Milli didn’t feel that same magic he did every time their hands brushed together, then he’d just have to live with her decision. But Katy was his, the next in line for the ranch, and even if he lived to be an oldi bachelor and his luck never did change when it came to women, she was going to grow up knowing him. They’d just have to come to some understanding about child I support and visitation rights.
Milli bit the inside of her lip until she could taste blood. That fool man, anyway. They could no more be a family than she could sprout wings and sit on the clouds with a. golden harp. Just because she was physically attracted to him didn’t mean they could run a ranch and ever make a marriage. But then, he hadn’t mentioned anything like that, had he? Well, he had fertilizer for brains if he thought for one minute he was going to step in and take Katy Scarlett away from her even for one week out of the summer. Katy was her daughter and she wasn’t sharing her with him. Not even if he offered to pay child support and acknowledged her and the whole nine yards. Not even if he hired the best lawyer in the state and the judge said she had to let him have her so many weeks out of the month. Milli could disappear so fast it would make his old head swim, and by golly she’d do it.
Despite the vibrations and thoughts bouncing around like feisty, hyperactive two-year-olds in the cab of the pickup, neither said a word from the time he drove back out onto the highway until they pulled into the circle drive in front of the ranch house on the Bar M.
He gently put his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him. “Milli, the way Aunt Alice set up her will means that when I’m dead, everything on this place will belong to Katy someday. She’s my firstborn…”
She stared him right in the eyes without blinking. “Not necessarily. If you just back off and forget all about today, you can marry later on and have a son. I won’t ever come back to haunt you, I promise - well, I’ll be damned.”
He followed her gaze to the porch. “Well, I’ll be damned, too.”
Amanda wore a long denim prairie skirt with a western-cut lace blouse and actually had a pair of brand new Roper boots on her feet. A turquoise and silver necklace hung around her neck and a wide bracelet of silver with accents of turquoise jingled on her arm as she walked. She looked like she was playing dress up in someone else’s clothing as she sashayed off the porch and toward the truck. She put on a big smile and Milli just sat there in silent awe.
About the time Amanda reached the driver’s side of the truck, Milli finally found her tongue and whispered, “Whatever is she trying to prove?”
Amanda opened Beau’s door. “Hello, darling. I think you and I better have a little talk. I was too rash.” She stopped and glared at Mill. “What the hell are you doing in his truck? You’re that bitch from the next farm over, aren’t you? The one who Anthony felt sorry for and danced with because your grandfather lives on the next ranch. The one who took him to the hospital but looked like hell. I told you at the hospital you aren’t welcome around him.”
Beau set his jaw. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Amanda. It’s finished, but you do owe Milli an apology. I might have died if she hadn’t found me and took care of things. Besides, you’ve no right to call her names.”
“Oh, shut up. And besides, darling, it’s not finished. I’m ready to sign that little piece of paper. You know I was just angry last night, and now I realize how much I love you. So let’s go in the house and I’ll sign the papers and set a date for the wedding and I’ll put my ring back on. How about the end of July? We won’t have to wait until fall after all. Who knows, we might even get a jump start on that son you were talking about.”
Beau stepped out of the pickup. “Too late.”
When Amanda put her hand out to touch his arm, he sidestepped and she let her hand fall limply in the folds of her skirt. “I don’t love you, Amanda. I’m not sure I ever did. You were there and I was in love with the idea of being in love. Besides, you made the choice last night and now you can just live with it. I probably wouldn’t ever have broken up with you since I’d given you my word and a Luckadeau’s word is gold, but you broke it off when you threw my ring on the floor, remember?”
Amanda put her hands on her hips and planted her boots in the dirt in front of him. “I suppose that bitch in the car has something to do with this? Tell her we’re going in the house to talk and she can call her grandfather to come get her. God, Alice Martin would rise up and pitch a fit if she knew you were bringing a low-class Mexican bitch like that on her property.”
He stepped around Amanda and the pickup, and opened the door for Milli. “I’ll get the baby, sweetheart. She’s been asleep for the past ten minutes. I hate to wake her, but…”
Amanda stepped between him and Milli and glared down at Milli like she was a fresh cow patty on a hot day. Her nose curled and her upper lip sneered. “Get out of here. You’re nothing but a cheap Mexican hitch. Alice would never want the likes of you on this ranch.”
Milli took a deep breath and tried to will the red-hot blur of rage from her eyes. But it didn’t work. She tried to think about Katy waking up and the fresh look on her face, but all she saw was Amanda’s sneer and mocking eyes. Finally, she gave in to her own anger and rocked the woman’s jaw with a hard right hook, then slapped her on the other cheek as she fell backwards to sit down in the dry dirt.
“Don’t you ever call me a bitch again. You don’t even know me, but I know you and I heard what you said about divorcing Beau in a year if he didn’t do just what you, wanted. Remember what you said to your little friend in the bathroom the night he asked you to marry him? And remember what you told Granny and me at the mall just a few days ago?”
Amanda just sat there bewildered and confused. She was right about the dark-haired, low-class woman. She didn’t have an ounce of dignity. Not a single lady she knew would have done something as base as actually hitting another woman. They might try to kill each other with barbs, but to actually double up her fist like a man? It just wasn’t done in polite circles.
“Now crawl your sorry old scraggly ass out of here, and don’t come back. This ranch is my daughter’s inheritance, and if I ever catch you looking at Beau again, I’ll break that expensive nose job. Now get out,” Milli said between clenched teeth.
Amanda popped back up to a standing position and wiped at a big brown stain across the front of her lace blouse. “I’ll have an assault suit filed on you by tomorrow morning. You could have broken my jaw. My lawyer will be at the courthouse when the doors open in the morning. You ever hit me again and
Milli turned around to find a wide-eyed, grinning man holding her child. “Be careful and don’t wake her up, honey. I damned sure don’t want her tender little eyes to look upon such filth as this.”
She turned back to Amanda. “You’ll what? Darlin’ if you think you can whup me, you better run along home and get your supper and maybe even bring your red-haired friend. You’ll need the help and food because it will be an all-day job. If I wanted to break your jaw, it would be flapping like a pair of underwear on a clothesline. And if you don’t get off the Bar M, I’m going to do more than slap fire out of you, honey. I’m going to beat you until your body is as cold as your heart. That is not a threat. It’s a solid promise. Torres women don’t make promises they can’t keep and when we make a promise, it’s every bit as gold as the Luckadeau word;”
Amanda stomped away hard enough to boil the dust up around her skirt tail. She opened the door to her big, gray car parked at the end of the house. What on earth had gone wrong? She’d intended to play up to Anthony and convince him she wasn’t herself the night before when she got so angry. Things hadn’t gone well when she stopped by the hospital and caught her doctor introducing his fiancée to the staff. When she realized she’d just been a passing fancy and not a long-term arrangement, she decided maybe Anthony wouldn’t be such a bad catch after all. Good lord, what in the world had happened in less than twenty-four hours? It really had been just that long, hadn’t it? She revved up the engine and left a dust cloud in the yard as she sped away.
“You got anything to say?” Milli asked Beau before they opened the front door.
“Nope. Guess you can take care of yourself. Remind me never to call you a bitch,” he grinned.
One minute she was ready to find another lover to erase Beau from her mind, the next she was fighting for him like she was ready to put her brand on him for life. The whole situation was enough to make her want to crawl into a hole and pull the entrance inside with her so she could figure out just what she was going to do.
“That’s right. Or you’ll find yourself on the ground, even if I have to find a two-by-four to help me make up the difference in size. That’s one thing I hate to be called. First time I got into trouble for fighting was over that. Girl kept saying I was a wet-back bitch and telling me to go back home to Mexico that Texas didn’t need any more of my kind in it. We were in the sixth grade and I whipped her soundly. I got a black eye and a bloody nose but she looked just as bad. I had to stay in from recess for three weeks for slapping her first, but it was worth it. Guess I should have given Amanda a fighting chance. I might have just warned her about my aversion to that word, if she’d have said it once and at least given me time to speak my mind.”
Rosa opened the door before Beau could turn the knob. She wore a white, bibbed apron, her hair pulled back in a bun, and a smile so big a Cadillac could have driven through her mouth and not touched a single tooth. “Miss Milli, so glad to see you put that woman in her place. She got here about ten minutes ago and Was sure ugly to Buster when he told her Beau went to church over at Ringling this mornin’. She told him he’d just as well start packing his sorry belongings because his days on this ranch was numbered. He told her that when Beau kicked him off the ranch he’d go without a word, but he wasn’t listening to any of what she had to say. Buster didn’t even mention you. Oh, look at that precious little baby!”