Authors: Carolyn Brown
“Well, is someone here going to introduce me to this lovely lady?” Matthew had asked softly. “Or did an angel just fall out of heaven and no one knows her?”
“My daughter, Camillia,” her father had thrown over his shoulder and went back to talking with the elderly gentlemen about the bull.
He’d bowed deeply and kissed her fingertips. “And I am Matthew. I’m sure they can decide whether this bull is of the quality they need for our ranch. Come, walk with me and show me your ranch. This country is very different than our valley.”
She was smitten from the moment he bent over her hand and heard his soft Texas drawl with just the faintest trace of Spanish accent. They bought the bull and before they left, she had a date with Matthew for the next week. He flew into Amarillo from south Texas and took her to a steak house. Her mother said they made the cutest couple in the world, and Matthew treated her like a China doll.
Two months later he’d proposed, drawing a threecarat diamond solitaire from his pocket. “My darling, I love you with my whole heart,” he whispered seductively and kissed her passionately. “I want things to be right between us, but I don’t want to wait forever to hold you in my arms and make love to you.”
She almost told him at that very moment that he didn’t have to wait any longer than it would take them to drive to the nearest motel, but his family and hers wanted one of those old-fashioned real weddings where the bride wears white and deserves it. “I know. Let’s have a short engagement and get married soon. A huge wedding with satin and roses and the whole works. Our mothers will love it and we’ll be so busy the time will go fast.”
He’d wrapped his arms around her. “With a reception afterwards at the Lazy T. We can leave at dark, just as the sun is setting, and go to Amarillo, where we will fly to an island paradise and stay for days in a cabin. Just the two of us making wonderful love.”
It was perfect. Not one thing could ever go wrong.
Until one of Milli’s friends called one evening.
She had been coming home from a dinner date in Canyon when she saw Matthew slipping into a motel on the outskirts of town. A tall blonde was hanging on him as they opened the door to a room. At first Milli didn’t believe a word her friend told her, but the friend was adamant. So, more to appease her than anything else, she drove fifteen miles to the motel. She parked beside his Mercedes and must have sat there an hour, staring at the motel door. Her wedding dress hung in the guest bedroom from a hook in the ceiling - the train falling from a bow in the back and reaching all the way across the room.
She wiped the sweat from her forehead just like she had when she had slipped into the dress in the bridal shop. She had giggled with her sisters-in-law that day about how hot satin could be.
“It’ll be hot in the church. Can’t get it cool enough for a bride. Must be the thoughts of what is going to happen later that night,” one of them had teased with a twinkle in her eye.
Anger replaced numbness in front of the motel as Milli looked at her engagement ring, an emerald-cut diamond solitaire. Without love, it was nothing but a glass cutter. It sparkled by the light of the moon, but glitter didn’t bring trust. She moaned. Her mother was going to crucify her. Just yesterday her engagement picture had been in the newspaper. Now everyone in the panhandle of Texas would know that she was engaged and then, suddenly, not engaged. Maybe she should forgive this indiscretion. After all, they weren’t married yet. She hadn’t gone to bed with him when he mentioned not waiting forever to get married because he wanted her so badly.
What was the matter with her? Great God in Heaven, was a diamond and a newspaper article worth going through life without trust? No sir! It was not.
She would not marry a man and pledge to love him until death parted them, if she couldn’t trust him. She wanted the kind of marriage her grandparents had - both her Torres grandparents in Oklahoma and her Jiminez grandparents in Rio County, Texas. The kind her parents had. She didn’t want to wonder every time Matthew called to tell her he was working late, or every time he left for a few days on business, if he was in a cheap motel with some other woman.
She knocked on the motel room and listened to the giggles and heavy breathing, then knocked again, this time louder.
“Who is it?” Matthew’s voice was breathless.
She called loud and clear, “Room service.”
“Just a minute,” he said.
She heard shuffling and imagined him finding his expensive pants among a pile of tumbled clothing on the floor.
His eyes were big when he opened the door and zipped his pants all at the same time. His chest was bare and dark circles showed on his neck where the blonde had marked him during sex.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” he demanded roughly.
She handed him the ring. “I came to bring you back your property.”
“Damn it, Milli,” he said. “This don’t mean nothing. We can’t do anything until we’re married. You can’t expect me to do without for six months.”
She looked him right in the eye and didn’t blink. “It means something to me, Matthew. It means a lot to me. Don’t call me. I never want to see you again.”
“It’s a deal!” He slammed the door.
It was the last time she had seen the man. His father called her father with an apology, but Matthew never called. The dress went back to the bridal shop and most of the gossip mongers quit talking a few weeks later.
Two weeks after the engagement was broken, she received an invitation to attend a high school friend’s wedding in Texarkana, five hundred miles away on the other side of the state. She and Lisa had been friends from junior high until graduation two years before. Lisa had gotten a scholarship to East Texas State University and Milli was enrolled at West Texas State University. Milli RSVP’ed the very day she got the invitation. It was exactly what she needed to get over the Matthew doldrums. She would fly into Texarkana for the wedding and stay in a motel for a couple of nights.
Lisa Thomas married Darrin Luckadeau, an air force captain, on Saturday night, and Milli envied her the wedding, the love, and the marriage. After the reception another party was held at the Luckadeau ranch and Milli went with a whole group of Luckadeau cousins, their relatives and friends. Sometime during the course of the evening a tall, good-looking cousin glued himself to her side. He was drinking too much champagne and talking much too loudly, but he was the exact opposite of Matthew Sanchez.
“Mommy?” Katy said, breaking into her thoughts.
Milli opened up her arms and Katy toddled toward her. “Come here, baby.”
Katy laid her face on Milli’s chest and stuck her thumb in her mouth. In a few seconds she was sleeping soundly. Milli sat down in the big, comfortable rocking chair in the corner of the room and let her thoughts go back again to the night of Lisa and Darrin’s wedding.
******
“Who is that man?” She’d asked a girl when the goodlooking stranger left her side for a few minutes.
“That’s Beau Luckadeau. Cousin of the groom. Handsome old thing, isn’t he? All them Luckadeau men are good-lookin’. They come from down around Shreveport. Big family of them. His daddy is one of about six or eight boys and only one girl. And there’s a whole scad of Luckadeau brothers in Beau’s family. Lord, it’d be impossible to remember all their names. But they’re all damn good-lookin’, blond and blue-eyed. All except for Griffin, the one with the white streak in his black hair. He’s the oddball. Beau usually doesn’t drink much. Somebody said his latest girlfriend dumped him for another man. Guess he ain’t so lucky when it comes to love,” the girl said and headed toward the champagne fountain.
“Understand your name is Jiminez,” he’d said when he sat back down in the chair beside her. “Lady over there told me your last name. But I don’t know your first one.”
“Camillia,” she said softly. “And they call you Beau and your family is from Shreveport.”
“My dad’s family is. I’m from wherever the wind takes me. I might just be from Timbuktu next week.” He slurred his words. “Why don’t me and you get away from this place and go over to my cousin’s trailer where I’m stayin’, and talk where it’s nice and quiet?”
She was playing with fire. She was using the man to get even with Matthew, who didn’t give a damn if she got revenge or not. She didn’t ever know him. He could be a prisoner on parole. He could be married, despite what the girl had said. Right then she didn’t care. She tipped back the champagne he’d handed her and smiled up at him.
“All right. It is pretty noisy here, isn’t it? I can’t even hear myself think.”
He’d handed her the keys to his truck. “You better drive. I don’t usually drink and I never drive when I do. Trailer is a mile down the highway. First turn to the right and second trailer on the left.”
“Okay,” she’d said.
Memories continued to tumble around her as she nuzzled her face into her sleeping daughter’s soft hair. Sometimes at night when she awoke, her body ached for his touch, her mouth wanted to be kissed like that again, but it was all a fairy dust night. He hurt because he’d been dumped. She hurt because Matthew couldn’t be trusted. In their pain they’d found each other for one night only.
He’d used a key to open the trailer door and when they were inside he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately. She remembered feeling a jolt unlike anything she’d ever experienced before or since, until today when he shook her hand out in the backyard. Matthew’s kisses hadn’t affected her like that, and neither had any of the other boyfriends she’d had along the way.
She’d shaken her head when the kiss ended. “Whew, that champagne is some potent stuff.”
He led her to the sofa and pulled her down to sit on his lap. “I think! saw some stars. Don’t know if it’s the liquor or the kiss.”
A hundred kisses later, they found their way to the bedroom at the back of the trailer, where he threw his white western shirt and freshly starched and ironed jeans in a heap on the floor with her off-white, lace dress. An hour later he was snoring loudly beside her and she was staring at the ceiling wondering what she’d just done.
Sex. It was more than she’d ever expected. Even the pain of the first time didn’t dull the glow all around her. She pulled the sheet up to cover her nakedness, as if he could see through shut eyes and a drunken haze. He looked more like a little boy than a grown man, with blond ringlets framing his angular face. Heavy eyelashes brushed the top of his cheeks, which needed to be shaved again. She ran a finger over the rough beard, an anomaly for a blond man. Most of them had little facial hair. She was about to tangle her fingers in the fine curly brown chest hair when she heard the front door rattle and someone, presumably another cousin, came in. That jerked her into reality so quickly she drew back her hand as if she’d been scalded.
Just before daylight the trailer was finally quiet. Using the dim light of the moon, she found the number of a cab service in the directory under the phone on the nightstand. Very gently she crawled out of the bed and slipped into her lace dress. She firmly resisted the temptation to kiss him on the forehead and eased out of the trailer to patiently wait on the porch for the taxi.
She drove from the church parking lot to the motel where she’d stayed the night before and changed into traveling clothes. She checked out at daybreak, gave the rental car back to the Hertz folks, and waited for two hours until she could board her plane, taking her back across the state to Amarillo.
The next month she went back to college for her junior year. She hadn’t even finished the first nine weeks when the doctor confirmed her suspicions. She was pregnant. She couldn’t believe it. Chances of pregnancy the first time out of the chute were slim to none - or so she’d thought.
Beau Luckadeau wouldn’t even remember her name. He sure wouldn’t remember that night she laid in his arms and saw a whole galaxy of stars explode as they made wild, passionate love. He certainly wouldn’t want to be forced into a marriage with a woman who was so easy all he had to do was kiss her and she fell into bed with him. Not even if that woman was carrying his child. Whoever said you didn’t get pregnant the first time had cow chips for brains and even though the idea of abortion flitted through her mind - to save the family from embarrassment - she didn’t think about it very long. She had acted without a lick of common sense, and now she’d pay the fiddler for her actions.
She’d gone home at Christmas and told her family she was pregnant. In April, Katy Scarlett Torres had been born in Canyon, and before she was a week old, she’d had the whole Torres family wrapped firmly around her little finger.
Milli remembered that night in Louisiana often but she’d never uttered a word about Beau Luckadeau. She’d come close to having a full-fledged heart attack when she turned to find him cussing a blue streak about his precious bull. Thank goodness there hadn’t been the faintest sign of recognition in his eyes. She’d just have to be very careful that he didn’t see too much of Katy. Because if he ever looked at her close, he’d have to be blind as a bat not to know he was looking at his own child.
************************************************************************************************
“I THINK I’LL JUST STAY HERE WITH KATY,” MILLI said when the talk got around the supper table about the Spencers’ barn dance. “She’s not quite used to the place.”
“She’ll be fine with Hilda. You need to get out and socialize with the folks. Bet you haven’t been dancing in months. The Spencers have a barn dance four times a year. We have one four times a year and the Bar M has one four times a year. So we’ve got something going once a month to keep us all from going plumb crazy. Katy will be asleep most of the time we’re gone anyway, and Hilda’s been rocking her to sleep for her afternoon nap, so she won’t be afraid.” Mary didn’t leave room for argument.
Besides, Mary wanted to see Beau and Milli in a social setting. She’d noticed the sparks when he shook her hand out in the backyard, and she also saw the sheer fear in Milli’s eyes. It was as if a magnet drew Milli to him while her good sense wanted her to bolt and run like a jackrabbit. It was the first time in all her life that Mary Torres had ever seen her granddaughter fear anything, anyone, or anywhere. She could ride a bull, barrel race with the best of the best, and make her little airplane do stunts that took a person’s breath away. So why would she be afraid of Beau?
Milli nodded, afraid to put up too much of a fuss, and listened halfheartedly all through supper about cows and who would be at the dance. It would probably do her a world of good to see Beau dancing and flirting with his girlfriend, Amanda, who was as worthless as tits on a boar hog according to Hilda. Even that thought couldn’t conjure up a smile.
Later, she opened the closet doors and stared at the hangers without seeing anything. Finally she pulled out a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a sleeveless, turquoise and hot pink western-cut shirt and tossed them on the bed. She chose turquoise and diamond stud earrings and a small T-drop necklace encrusted with diamonds hanging on a gold chain. She tied her long, dark hair back with a turquoise bandanna, and lightly dusted her nose with powder.
“Long as I can keep him from recognizing me, I’m fine. But what the devil difference does it make, anyway? He was so drunk he probably doesn’t even know he spent part of a night with anyone. He just woke up the next day, grabbed his aching head, and thought he’d had a dream. Probably even a nightmare, because I sure didn’t know what I was doing. Just whatever came natural when a girl is mad as the devil and hotter ‘n the furnace door in hell.”
Jim whistled through his teeth when she came down the stairs. “Whooeeee! If you don’t cause a couple of fights out behind the barn tonight, I’ll be surprised.”
She lit up in a brilliant smile - but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Oh, Poppy, you just love me. Besides, cowboys don’t fight over women like that anymore.”
“Yep, I love you, but I ain’t blind. And don’t fool yourself darlin’. Cowboys still draw lines, spit on their knuckles, and decide who’s goin’ to court a good-lookin’ woman. Mary, let’s go visit the neighbors and show off my favorite granddaughter,” he said.
“Poppy, I’m your only granddaughter other than Katy,” Milli reminded him.
“Yep,” he said. “And when she gets to be twenty-three years old you might have to move over and she’ll be my favorite. But tonight you’re the fair-haired child.”
Milli laughed, her spirits lifting. “Fair-haired? That’s something you sure can’t ever call me. Maybe you can call Katy fair-haired, but I’ve got too much of your blood showing through to be your fair-haired baby. I’m a black-haired, brown-eyed Mexican.”
A live band played country music from a platform in the south end of the Spencers’ biggest barn. Fresh hay covered the floor and several couples were already out on the floor when Mary pushed Jim in his wheelchair through the doors and settled him in front of a table. She kissed him on the forehead and said she’d find him a tall glass of tea to sip on while he listened to the music.
“I don’t want tea,” he said. “Bring me a longneck beer.”
She shook her head. “Not with your medication. In a couple of weeks you can have a beer, but not now. Remember: no alcohol or dancing.”
“Don’t remind me,” he groaned. “I feel like an invalid. No dancing, no beer, no nothing.”
“You’ll survive, and just think how much fun it’ll be when you can dance again,” Milli said when Mary headed toward the refreshment tables. “I’m going to the ladies’ room and don’t you be flirting while I’m gone.”
When she came out, she stopped in the shadows. She had spotted Beau right away, dancing with a tall, fair woman who must have been Amanda. The woman looked as out of place as a hooker in the front row of the church in a revival meeting. She wore a pink business suit with high-heeled shoes to match, and a triple strand of pearls around her neck. Her expression told everyone there that she’d as soon be in bed with a migraine as dancing the two-step with Beau.
“Oh, well,” Milli muttered under her breath. “That’s his stupid business.”
A voice behind her made her jump. “Talkin’ to yourself? It’s all right. I like to stand back and watch things myself. Sometimes I’ve even been known to mutter a bit. Ain’t seen you in a few years, Miss Milli.”
She hugged the man. “Buster, you come near to scarin’ me into heart failure. Thought I was the only one hiding in this corner. Tell me what’s been going on with you and Miss Rosa and all the crew. And how’s Alice?”
“Poorly. Alice don’t know anybody. Ain’t much use in goin’ in that place to see her anymore. She’d rise up and shake the liver outta that boy out there if she knew he was courtin’ that woman. Amanda ain’t ranchin’ material. She’s liable to be the ruin of Beau,” Buster frowned.
“Why?” Milli asked.
“Just something I feel in my bones and see with my eyes. But even if I was stone-cold blind and couldn’t see a thing, I could still feel it. Just look at her, Milli. She’s window dressing for town livin’. Boy’s smart about everything but women, but when it comes to them he ain’t got a lick of sense. You better get on out there on the dancin’ floor. Pretty girl like you don’t need to stand in the shadows all night. I’ll dance the first one with you and then I’ll step aside and watch the young fellers beat a path to your side. You sure are a pretty sight.”
“I’ll just stand here and watch,” Milli said.
Buster grabbed her hand and pulled her out in the middle of the floor, then picked up her hand and put it on his shoulder. “Over my dead body. Now smile and make this old man feel real good, just thinkin’ he’s done beat all the good-looking feller’s time with the prettiest woman in the barn.”
Beau looked over Amanda’s shoulder and saw Milli. Buster looked as if he had died and gone straight to heaven. A surge of jealously filled Beau from the silvertipped toes of his light-gray eel cowboy boots all the way to the top of his feathered-back blond hair. His eyebrows knit into a solid line across the top of his big, round blue eyes, and his square jaw set in a firm line. Two forces battled inside him and all he could think was run… and run.., and run. He needed to go out to the back forty or to Lake Murray, lie flat on his back, and sort out all these crazy emotions. He hadn’t been so confused since the night Darrin got married. The night he met the lady of his dreams: Amelia Jiminez.
He remembered leaving her side for a minute at the party after the wedding.
“Who’s that beautiful woman?” he’d asked an older relative.
“That’s one of the Jiminez girls’ daughters from west Texas. Those Jiminez girls were all pretty. The grandfather married a white woman, and they had three or four girls, or maybe it was five or six. A whole passel of them, anyway. Seems like she might belong to the oldest one.”
Here he was about to ask Amanda to marry him and a spitfire from west Texas falls out of the sky to torment his mind and body. It was just because she reminded him of the lady at the wedding, and she was nothing more than a figment of a drunken imagination.
What was it Buster said? Milli was full of spit and vinegar. Well, he could sure enough believe that. Even when he’d dreamed about her last night, she’d been a pure witch. She’d had that rifle on her shoulder and was looking down the barrel, just daring him to take one step toward her. He had awakened in a cold sweat with desire surging through his veins. He’d wanted to take the gun away from her and kiss her fiercely to see if he’d get the same response as he did when he kissed Amelia that hot Louisiana night. He’d reminded himself one more time that Amelia didn’t even exist except in his imagination. It was a long time before he went back to sleep.
Amanda wanted to finish the silly dance, put in enough of an appearance to keep Anthony from getting angry, and then plead a headache so she could go home. Lord, she hated these backwoods boonie affairs, and as soon as they were married, they’d never go to another one. That was a fact, and they could drag out the stone, chisel the words into it, and prop it up beside the ranch house porch post. Country music gave her a headache and the only thing she hated worse than barns was that old ranch foreman who was dancing with the dark-haired gypsy-looking woman.
After she and Anthony were married, the foreman would be the first thing to disappear from the ranch.
God, she hated the way he looked at her. Even the six months she planned to stay married to Anthony before she filed for divorce and took half his property was too damned long to put up with that old man.
A tight little smile turned up the corners of her mouth - but it didn’t last long. Buster tapped Beau on the shoulder and said something. Then suddenly Amanda was dancing with the old man.
Beau put his hand on Milli’s back and a strong jolt of chemistry rattled around in his tall, lanky body like a dynamite blast in the side of a rocky mountain. “Miss Torres? So how’s Jim today?”
“Fine.” Her heart pounded.
“You know, it seems to me like I’ve met you somewhere before. I used to come to the Bar M when I was just a kid - did I see you here back then?”
“No. I visited Granny and Poppa every summer, but I never met you here,” she said honestly. He danced well and she fit into his arms as well vertically as she had horizontally. High color filled her cheeks at that thought.
The song ended and Beau tipped his hat to Milli. Thank you for the dance. Be seem’ you around.”
You’re a fine dancer. It was my pleasure,” she said.
Amanda wasted no time crossing the floor and grabbing Beau by the arm. “Anthony, take me home and don’t you ever ask me to dance with that old fool again. You know how I feel about him. He stinks like tobacco and cheap shaving lotion and I hate him.”
Milli wanted to slap the woman until she was cold for talking about Buster like that and had to hold her hands tightly behind her back. The Bar M was in big trouble if Beau didn’t wake up soon.
“Now, Amanda, darlin’, don’t say things like that about Buster. He’s been on the Bar M so long he’s family. Stay a little longer, honey. I’ve got a surprise for later. And please call me Beau,” Beau pleaded.
She tossed her blonde hair back with a sweep of the hand. “Only an hour. I’m going to sit at that table and in an hour I’m going home. And I will never call you Beau. It sounds like a redneck hick name. You’ll always be Anthony to me.”
He put his arm around her and started to lead her to the floor. The singer crooned a song by Martina McBride, “Safe in the Arms of Love.” Amanda set her pink, highheeled shoes firmly in the fresh hay and refused to be led back to the middle of the barn.
“Dance with me again?”
“No, I’m sitting down until you are ready to take me home. This is not my idea of a social outing. You know I hate these things.”
He shook his head. Surely, she would change when they were married. Given a little time she’d be shopping in the western stores for something new to wear to the barn dances once a month, and she’d get excited when a new baby calf was born. She’d learn to like Buster and love Rosa and maybe after this next year she’d even be ready to quit teaching and stay home to raise their son. The. first one would be a boy, and probably all the rest after that. Luckadeaus just didn’t throw girl babies. As much as his mother would like to have a granddaughter, it wasn’t about to happen. Luckadeaus made boys, and that was a fact.
Looks like that woman is feelin’ as out of place as she looks,“ Jim whispered to Mary. ”I sure wish that boy would boot her on out of his life and find someone who’d fit in with his way of livin’ a little better. She’s (Tot dollar signs in her eyes instead of love.”
Mary nodded but didn’t say anything.
A young man stopped at their table and tipped his hat toward Mary and Milli. “Evenin’ Mr. Jim. How’s the hip? Like you to meet Cindy. She goes to school with me. Folks has got a little spread up over by Lone Grove. I saw where you had a fence cut the other morning. I should’ve stopped and fixed it, but I didn’t have my fencing stuff with me. Did you get it taken care of?”
Jim nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Cindy. Make this boy bring you over to the Lazy Z and we’ll show you around.”
“I’ll do it. Hear you raise some white-faced cattle. My dad likes that brand, too. He’s got a few Angus, but he’s partial to the white face. We had a calf last week and I had to crawl out of bed at four o’clock and help pull the stinker. It was a fine heifer, though, and I’m glad we could save it,” Cindy said.
“Well, we gotta get on around the room and make Cindy known. Both my sisters, Amy and Rachel, are comin’ in next week for a visit, you know. I expect they’ll run over to say hello. Ask Hilda to brew up some peach cobbler and I’ll even come with them.” Tyler Spencer patted Jim on the shoulder and the two young people went on to the next table.
Milli tried to watch the dancers. She tried to listen to the band. She tried to think about cattle, Wild Fire, West Texas - anything but Beau. But it didn’t work. She watched Amanda pull away from him and start toward th ladies’ restroom on the south side of the barn. Milli was still itching for a catfight, so she followed her. Amanda and a red-haired woman were both leaning toward the mirror above the lavatory, reapplying mascara, opening their eyes wide and seeing nothing but their already caked eyelashes. Neither of them appeared to know that the door had opened and there was another woman in the restroom. Milli went into the first stall, put the lid down on the potty, and sat down.