Authors: Carolyn Brown
“So how much longer you stayin’?” The redhead asked.
Amanda’s voice was high and shrill. “One hour. Not a minute longer, Brenda, and I wouldn’t agree to that but he said he had a surprise for me. I figure he’s going to propose tonight, so I’ll stay around for that. If he doesn’t, then I’ll be damned if I ever come to another one of these country bumpkin affairs. God, I hate the whiny country music and the smell of hay. Only thing I hate worse than country music and barns is kids.”
“And you a schoolteacher?” Brenda chuckled.
“Yep, but I can put on a fake show for the administration and send the little urchins home at three thirty. And I don’t plan on being a teacher all my life. It was just something to get me through college while I looked for a husband.”
“What do you intend to do after the wedding? He’s got a ranch, you know,” Brenda asked.
“And he can keep his ranch. God knows, it makes enough money - I damn sure don’t want him to give it up. But he can commute every day from Ardmore if he’s going to sleep with me. I’ve got a sweet little brick house in mind. Not too big, just two-story with a triple garage with the maid’s quarters over it. Only time I’m living on that ranch is while the paperwork goes through for us to buy something else. And that half-wit foreman of his is getting his walking papers the first week. I’ll live here a month and then we’re going to town. Six months after everything is signed and legal, Anthony is giving me half of his kingdom. Then I’ll go looking for a sophisticated husband number two. By the time I get to number five, I might even marry for love.”
“Well, good ‘luck.” Brenda giggled.
Milli had to hold her hands tightly in her lap to keep from knocking down the restroom door and charging out like a bull from a riding chute. Forget fight! God wouldn’t even lay murder to her charge if she shot that sorry excuse for a woman and laid her carcass out for the coyotes to feast upon. Poor, poor, ignorant Beau.
When the two finally left and she could trust herself to stay within the law, she opened the stall door and stopped long enough to check her hair in the mirror, surprised to find a haunted-looking woman staring back at her.
“Oh stop it,” she muttered. “You knew you’d never see him again from the beginning, and he’s never, ever been yours, so just stop it. Katy and I will go back to west Texas at the end of the summer. You’ll only have to see him three times this summer and he’s going to be so wound up with his wedding plans he won’t even know you are around. You knew what you were doing when you let him lead you back to the bedroom of that trailer. So get on back out there and dance with that tall, dark fellow who’s been trying to catch your eye ever since you got here. In ten years, Beau will be just a pleasant memory.”
And you’re a damned liar.
She ignored the comment from her conscience and went back out to the table where her grandmother and grandfather sat, holding hands and acting like two young people in love.
“Can I claim your granddaughter for another dance?” Beau asked just as Milli sat down. “We didn’t get a whole dance last time. And then I’d like to ask permission to dance with your wife, Jim?”
“Sorry, I was just about to call it a night, and go home,” Milli said.
“Oh, posh,” Mary chided. “We ain’t nearly tired out, yet. Go on and dance. Loosen up and relax. Enjoy the evening.”
Milli figured she’d be more relaxed in a den of hungry rattlesnakes. “Okay then, Mr. Luckadeau, let’s dance.”
“I know I’ve met you before. I think I might even have danced with you before. I can almost remember holding you in my arms, and I wouldn’t forget someone as pretty as you,” he said.
“I would remember dancing with someone as smooth as you, Beau. And we’ve never danced before tonight.” She didn’t lie. They hadn’t danced. They’d spent the night wrapped up in each other’s arms, but they definitely had not been dancing.
“You ever been to Louisiana?” he asked.
“Flew into the airport one time,” she said.
“Well, I sure thought I knew you.”
Everyone stopped dancing and formed a circle around them, watching as they kept perfect time. His hand on her back guided her so well that she knew exactly what his next move would be before he turned and she moved gracefully with him. When the song ended, everyone clapped and whistled for them.
“Wonder who the bitch is?” Amanda asked her redhaired friend, Brenda. “I’m thinking she better go on back across the border where she belongs or I might have to kick her that far. I haven’t worked six months on this project to have some dark-haired bimbo step in on my territory and take what’s mine.”
Brenda tapped her on the hand. “Don’t worry. Anthony’s only got eyes for you. He’s not interested in anyone else. It’s just a dance. Can you just see him bringing something like that to the Bar M? The woman is Mexican! Their kind might be friends with Alice and Anthony, but to marry one… hey, get real, girl.”
“That’s the truth. After Anthony proposes tonight, I guess that little hussy will know that he’s taken and she’ll quit lookin’ at him like she could eat him up.”
“Jealous?” Brenda asked.
“Hell, no!” Amanda exclaimed. “Just protecting my new house and that new Jag I’ve got my eye on. He’s not about to get out of my clutches. Six months after the ”I do,“ I’ll take my half of the ranch in cash.”
The woman fanned herself dramatically with her hand. “Looks like you got things figured out really good.”
“Yes, I do,” Amanda smiled sweetly and waved at Beau.
He grinned back at her and went to the bandstand where he commandeered the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, this next song is for Miss Amanda, sitting over there looking beautiful. Honey, if you’ll join me for one more dance while they sing our song?”
Amanda whispered behind a fake smile. “I guess it’s going to be a public announcement. Oh, well, the things we women have to do for future security.”
She walked toward Beau, who waited in the middle of the floor. The band played “The Battle Hymn of Love,” and she swayed to the music, but it wasn’t the graceful sight he and Milli had made when they danced together.
The song ended and he dropped down on one knee, still keeping her hands in his. “Amanda, I want to ask you to be my wife,” he said loudly enough for everyone in the barn to hear.
A pregnant stillness floated down from the rafters that reminded Jim of the day he heard the announcement on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been fired upon. No one clapped. No one rushed to their side. He choked on a bite of barbecue and swallowed several times before he could make it go down. He should’ve talked to the boy. Now it was too damned late.
Mary’s big brown eyes almost popped right out of her head. His mother was off in Louisiana and neither of his parents had met Amanda, so they didn’t know he was about to make a big, big mistake. She should have gone over to the Bar M and made him listen to her. She picked up her beer mug and downed the whole thing, froth and all, without coming up for air, to get the bitter taste out of her mouth.
Milli’s chin quivered. She wanted to hit something. Anything would do. A brick wall. Amanda’s nose, preferably. Beau’s sexy mouth. She looked at the rough wood ceiling of the barn as she tried to get her bearings before she disgraced herself in front of her grandparents by letting tears stream down her face. Things were so quiet that a feather floating through the air to the strawstrewn floor could have been heard a block away.
Amanda played it to the fullest, smiling like a beauty queen in the middle of an eight-foot walkway on the way to get her crown. “Why, darling Anthony, you’ve caught me totally by surprise. But, of course, I will marry you, darling. I’ve been in love with you forever. I thought you’d never ask.” She bent down and kissed him gently on the cheek.
She squealed when he pulled the box from his pocket and snapped it open. “It’s lovely. Look, everyone, what this sweet man has given me.” She pivoted all around the room, a huge diamond solitaire flickering in the sparkling lights of the candles set in the middle of the tables.
You’ve made me very happy,” Beau said with a big grin on his face as he stood to his feet and signaled the band. He put the ring on her finger and drew her close for a slow dance around the floor. Still no one clapped. Few people even breathed. It wasn’t really a surprisehe’d been dating her for months. But it wasn’t right and everyone was stunned speechless.
“Let’s go home,” Mary said staunchly. “I might have to get used to this, but I sure don’t have to like it, and I’m going home before he expects me to congratulate them tonight. Maybe next week, when the whole thing has sunk in a little better, I can fake a congratulations, but tonight I can’t.”
Beau had the microphone again. “In two weeks we’re having an engagement party at the Bar M. On Saturday night. Rosa and Buster will barbecue a side of beef and you’re all invited.”
Milli heard the invitation and swore she wouldn’t be at that celebration if it absolutely hare-lipped the president himself. Beau might be about to make a fool out of himself, but she didn’t have to participate in the thing. Maybe she’d be fortunate enough at least to be back on the Lazy T before the wedding. Knowing what she did, she could never sit in the congregation at the church and watch him marry a woman who was already planning to take him to the cleaners. He might be blind, but he sure didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.
Mary fumed all the way back to the Lazy Z and found a new ear to bend in Hilda, who was reading a romance novel. “Well, he proposed right out there in front of everyone and God. She acted just like you’d expect. We made a hasty getaway before he started bringing her around for everyone to see the ring and tell them how happy they were. Lord, lightning would have come down out of the blue skies and struck me down if I would’ve uttered such words.”
She sucked in a Iungful of air and started again. “That fool. Can’t he see she’s just a gold digger? If he didn’t own the Bar M she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Why, Tyler Spencer’s got more sense than that boy. At least the little girl he had on his arm tonight knew the difference between a bull’s balls and the udder of a’ nursing heifer.”
Jim waited until Mary folded her arms across her chest and put his two cents worth into the pot. “Bet that girl wouldn’t touch a bait of calf fries if they were served up to her on a silver platter. I sure can’t see her helping him run the Bar M. She belongs out here like a horse apple in a church social punch bowl.”
Hilda clucked like a hen gathering in her chicks during a storm. “I’m just glad Alice Martin knew the boy didn’t have much sense when it comes to womenfolks. Buster said that she fixed it so the ranch can’t never be sold and there’s some kind of agreement the lawyers will make her sign before they get married. It says she won’t never, ever be able to get a square foot of the Bar M. Be right interesting to see if she signs those papers.”
Mary threw up her hands. “I’d forgotten about that. Alice did tell us when she went to the nursing home, but it slipped my mind. Well, now that puts a whole new spin on the merry-go-round. Bet you dollars to donuts that the engagement will be off the day she finds out.”
Milli climbed the stairs without saying good night to any of them. Amanda might not have a leg to stand on when it came to making Beau sell the ranch, but she could stay married to him, make his life miserable, and bleed him dry as she demanded more and more material things. In the end, the ranch wouldn’t be worth much, anyway.
She found Katy curled up in her crib, a thumb in her mouth and a floppy, old teddy bear drawn up close to her chubby little body. She leaned on the crib and wondered just what Beau would think of his daughter. Would he make a good father?
But those were questions that would never be answered, because Beau - or Anthony, as Amanda seemed determined to call him - and Amanda would be married in a few months, and the only children he would ever know about would be those they produced. The ones that Amanda already declared she would hate. Even if she didn’t love him and even if she hated his way of life, she would probably realize the way to keep the money rolling in for fancy houses and expensive cars would be to appease him occasionally. A child would glue her to his side so tightly that he would never leave her, even when he figured out he’d made a bad mistake.
And what about when Katy is eighteen and she comes to you demanding her right to know who her biological father is? her conscience nagged.
“I’ll either cross or burn that bridge when I get to it,” she whispered.
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MILLI AWOKE THAT FINE TUESDAY MORNING BEFORE dawn and padded down the stairs in her faded Mickey Mouse nightshirt. She carried a glass of orange juice to the deck and sat down in a chaise lounge, enjoying the morning sounds of a ranch waking up from a night’s rest. A hungry calf was crying for its mother somewhere in the distance, and the crickets were singing in fine form. A couple of tree frogs added their voices to the cricket’s concerto and she thought she heard a faint whisper of a Spanish accent when a fat toad frog put in his baritone croaking.
Pulling her muscular legs up under her, she sat cross-legged, Indian fashion as she sipped the icy cold juice. She flipped her tangled hair over her shoulder and wiped the sleep from big, brown eyes. It might be half-decent cool right then, but the day was going to be another scorcher and the first of June was nothing to what July and August would be in southern Oklahoma. In August, the horny toads, rattlesnakes, and green grasshoppers would be hunting the shady side of a fence post. But the morning air was pleasant, and she marveled again at the peace in the hours just before the sun peeped over the trees on the eastern horizon.
Five years before, she’d graduated from high school and gone away to college. She couldn’t wait to get to the city where she didn’t have to look at cows; where she could wear fancy shoes instead of boots and nice dresses instead of jeans. A month of dorm life had proven what was really important in her life, and by the end of the semester, she had ached for the smell of a cow lot in the early morning hours. Three years later she went home for Christmas and stayed. She’d never regretted her decision.
A whimper floated down from her bedroom and she quickly drank the rest of her juice before heading back upstairs to change Katy’s diaper and bring her down for breakfast. No, she wouldn’t trade the joy of her daughter for anything this world had to offer, and raising her on the ranch, just like she’d been raised, was the best gift she could give her. Katy might not have a father, but she had two uncles who doted on her, a grandfather who thought the sun came up each morning just to shine upon her fair hair, and a great-grandfather who was deeply. in love with her. She certainly did not lack for a male role model in her life, even if she didn’t have a real daddy around twenty-four hours a day.
By the middle of the morning, Milli and Wild Fire were on their way to fix another section of fence those pesky kids had cut while they were out chasing coyotes with their dogs. She’d like to give those boys a piece of her mind.., maybe even a piece of leather applied firmly and harshly across their backsides. They had to be city boys who had absolutely no idea what chaos could be created when fences were cut. They might even be related in some way to Amanda, as stupid as they were.
Milli moaned aloud. “Why did I have to even think her name? It’s too pretty a morning to mess up with thoughts of that varmint.”
She found the cut fence and was mending it when she noticed the big, black cow on the other side of the fence. She was evidently in labor, so Milli eased over to her side.
She crooned to the heifer, whose eyes rolled in fear. “Hey, pretty baby. It’s all right, old girl. This must be your first time around,” she kept talking as she petted the cow’s head. “Hurts like warmed-over hell before breakfast. Kinda makes you wonder if all that short-lived good time was worth it, don’t it? I’m going to check this out, now, lady, and see if everything is going like it should, then I’ll back right out of here and let old Mother Nature and you do your jobs.”
Milli rolled up her right shirtsleeve, baring her whole arm, and had it shoved shoulder deep up into the cow’s uterus when Beau rode up on his three-wheeler.
“That’s my cow. What in the hell are you doing?” he yelled as he dismounted from the vehicle and set his jaw in a firm line.
She pointed her left index finger at him. “Stop shouting. She’s young and she’s scared and this damn calf is too big. What’d you do, breed her to that big fancy bull? Bet you didn’t even think about how big the calf would be, did you? She’s wore out from labor and if you don’t help me, you’re going to lose her and this baby calf, both. There’s rope on my saddle horn. Go get it.” She barked the order like a military captain to a green recruit.
“What makes you think you’re so damned smart?” He threw the rope back to her.
“I’m not arguing with you right now. Get back here and help me.”
“This is my land. This is my cow and that’s my calf.” Anger stewed in a bubbling rage inside him. How could this woman be so sweet at a dance and so abrasive when she was out in a pasture and close to that horse of hers? And now she’d cut his fence just to come onto his land… to poke her nose into his business and tell him how to do his job.
“If you don’t help me all that will be left is your damned land, because this calf and cow are going to be dead. I’ve got the rope around it and I’m going to monitor the contractions. The next time she’s got energy to push, you’re going to pull. And damn it, you better pull hard.”
“I happen to know how to pull a calf. Who died and made you God of all the Angus in the world?”
She took off her shirt and wiped the slime from her arm. She wore a grungy, old grayed T-shirt under it and there was a long bloody smear across the right arm. “Nobody… yet!”
She patted the cow, “Now,Bossy, work with me, baby…’
He held the rope. “Her name is Betsy, not Bossy.”
She cut her eyes around at him. Now where had he seen that look before? Mercy, but he knew he’d seen Milli before somewhere, and it was right on the edge of his mind. Any minute he was going to remember dancing with her at…
She yelled at him even though he was only two feet away. “Pull, damn it, pull hard! She’s pushing with all she’s got left. Didn’t do much good, did you? You’re going to have to pull harder than that or I’ll hook the rope up to your tricycle and you can back it up.”
“You sure are bitchy this morning. Don’t you like to get out of bed and face the morning?”
“I probably do a day’s work before you ever even open your baby blue… pull again, and this time put some muscle into it,” she shouted.
He pulled and felt something give. One second he was jerking on a rope and the next he sat down hard on the baked earth and a baby calf was on the end of the rope. Milli was everywhere at once. Swabbing the calf’s nose and mouth with her shirt and barking orders at the cow and Beau both.
She slapped the calf. “Breathe, damn it. Your momma didn’t lay here and hurt like hell all these hours to have a dead calf.”
Beau figured he’d breathe if she slapped him that hard. By damn, if it was him lying there, all wet and slimy and she said for him to breathe, he’d suck up enough air to fill his lungs in a New York minute.
Finally the calf sighed, took its first breath and bawled all at the same time, and Milli giggled. A light chuckle at first that erupted into a belly laugh of happiness. She wrapped her arms around Beau in a bear hug and knocked him backwards, laughing the whole time. “We did it, Beau. We did it! It’s alive.”
He hugged her back, reveling in the magic of birth. “We damn sure did. Look at her, Milli. She’s a fine new heifer and next year, she’ll be big as her momma.”
He kept his arm around Milli even after they’d stood up.
“Where’d you learn all that? You’re pretty damn handy to have around, even if you are bossy as hell.”
“I’m a ranch girl, and I’m not bossy as hell. I just happen to know what to do and you were being obstinate. I’ve been pulling calves since I was a kid… or at least helping. Daddy said I could get a rope around a calf better than the boys,” she said.
“I believe it. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I might’ve lost that cow and calf, but couldn’t you just have crawled under the fence or jumped over it? Did you have to cut it?” He moaned as he looked at the tangled barbed wire.
She glared at him. “I didn’t cut your fence. Tyler called Poppy this morning and said those same kids who chase coyotes had cut it. If I ever catch them, I’m going to put the fear of Milli Torres into them so deep they’ll circle the whole state to keep from cutting my fences again.”
He let out a whoosh. “Whew! Well, let’s get the sumbitch fixed before our cattle mix it up and me and Jim have a bunch of half-breeds.”
“Okay, and I’m still not bossy as hell.”
“Yes, you are. Only person in the whole world bossier than you is Aunt Alice. I’ll get my wire and -
“Don’t forget the stretcher,” she said.
“See… bossy as hell.”
Her knees turned to jelly. “Oh, hush!”
Someday he was going to remember just where he’d seen that sassy piece of baggage, and the two of them would laugh because neither of them had remembered it before. They worked together just like they danced. She held the wire while he stretched it tight, and she clipped it. When they finished the job, he was on his property and she was on the other side, on her grandfather’s land, with four strands of barbed wire between them.
And that’s the way it will always be, she thought.
He’ll marry that bitchy Amanda and she’ll eventually cause him to lose everything his feet are standing on. And I’ll always be close enough to see him… but separated from him by barbed wire.
His tongue was suddenly glued to the roof of his mouth and the moment turned awkward. “Thanks, again.”
She pointed and he turned to see the calf making her wobbly legs support her while she stood for the first time and found her mother’s udder. The cow was on her feet and licking the calf.
“Everything’s well that ends well,” she said.
“Philosophical, as well as a good ranch hand.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He felt a sudden urge to keep her there, and recapture that memory of just where he had met her or someone who looked a whole lot like her. “You just come by all this natural, or did you go to school for it?”
“Both, I guess,” she said. “Poppy and Granny were both ranching folks, and they raised my dad right here on this place. John Torres - don’t know if you ever met him or not? He’ll be sorry to hear about Alice if he doesn’t already know. Granny might have already told him and I just didn’t get the message.”
“Nope, never did meet him. Heard Jim talk about him a lot at the poker games. You’d think he had a halo or something.”
“Well, he married Angelina Jiminez from down in the valley and they bought a spread out in west Texas back before I was born. It’s all I ever knew. I went to college and majored in business the first semester, then changed it to vet-tech with an agri-business minor the second semester. I’ve got an associate’s degree in vet-tech, but I never finished up to get my bachelor’s. But, honey, I could pull a calf without a piece of paper in my hands saying I knew which end it was coming out of.”
“Well, I’m glad you were here today,” he said. Jiminez? Wasn’t that the name the man had said in connection with Amelia? Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Jiminez, like Torres and Gonzalez, was as common in Mexico as Smith, Jones, and Williams were in America. The day he put the ring on Amanda’s finger was the day he’d made up his mind to completely forget the brown-eyed lady whose memories made his heart ache and set his body on fire with desire. “Guess you’ll be at my engagement party Saturday night?” he asked.
It was her turn for acute awkwarditis. “Don’t know. Katy hasn’t felt real good this week, and Hilda may want the weekend off.”
“Katy? That would be your daughter?”
“Yes, and she’s teething. Hilda’s good with her, but if she can’t stay then I wouldn’t want to leave her with a stranger,” Milli walked away from him toward Wild Fire. “Congratulations, though. I hope you are very happy.”
“Oh, I will be. Amanda will learn to fit right in when she spends a little more time out here. Thanks again, and tell Jim and Mary hello for me.”
“Will do.” She waved as she and Wild Fire disappeared over the rise.
So much for thinking she wouldn’t have to see Beau except at a few social affairs. Evidently all the guardian angels in the whole sky had gone on vacation and left her to her own defenses, because not a single one seemed to be around when she was in desperate need. Drat their little naked, winged bodies anyway. She was about to get to the place where she didn’t believe in angels, anyway. If they were really up there, she would never have met Matthew Sanchez, and if she’d never met him, she wouldn’t have been so angry when she went to her friend’s wedding. If she hadn’t been mad, then she wouldn’t have fallen into bed with Beau and wound up in this bed of thorns today.
Beau watched her until he couldn’t even see Wild Fire’s tail anymore. It would sure be wonderful when he and Amanda could bring a calf into the world like he and Milli just did. When Amanda would whip off her shirt to wipe off her arm and wouldn’t even notice the bloodstains on her T-shirt.
When pigs fly and don’t crap on your head, his conscience told him bluntly. Amanda will never, ever ride a horse or a three-wheeler, and she will never get close enough to a cow to pet it, much less take a rope inside a cow’s uterus to help bring a calf out.
“She might,” he stuck his chin defiantly in the air. “She loves me, and when she realizes how much it means to me to have her by my side all the time, she’ll learn, and that’s a fact. And when our son is born, she’ll see how much he loves the land and by then she’ll be as at home as Rosa and Buster,” he said with determination, leaving no room for that niggling little voice to bother him anymore.
Slim was in the corral when Milli rode in. “Get that fence fixed?”
“Yep,” she nodded.
He noticed the blood smudge on her sleeve. He grabbed her arm and checked it as she crawled down off Wild Fire’s back. “You hurt yourself on the barbed wire, Milli? Let me see. You need stitches?”
“I’m fine. One of the Bar M cows was down and I helped Beau pull a calf while I was out there.”
“Well, go get a shower.” He ordered her around just like he’d done since she was a little girl. “I’ll take care of this horse. She likes me better than she does you, anyway.” He grinned, showing off two oversized front teeth with a big split between them.