Authors: Carolyn Brown
Milli laughed with him. “When cows fly. She’s just like me. She tolerates men but she doesn’t like them.”
“Hmmph. Calf make it?”
“Of course. I was there.”
“Good thing Beau’s woman wasn’t there. She’d of scared it to death. One look at a newborn calf and she woulda set up a caterwaulin’ to scorch the hair off Lucifer’s horns. I still say that boy is out of his monkey-assed mind if he thinks he’ll ever turn her into a ranch wife. Lord, even a deaf and dumb, blind fool knows you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Did you see her face at the barn dance? She hated bein’ there worse than anything in the whole world.”
“Thanks for taking care of my horse.”
Halfway to the house Milli could still hear him, muttering about Amanda. Everyone in the county could see the mismatch mistake but Beau. Evidently he wasn’t very lucky in love. At that point, it didn’t matter what kind of luck the man had or lacked. He’d made his choice and he was cowboy and man enough to stand beside it. He’d many that woman no matter how worthless she was because he’d given his word, and that was a fact as solid as the ones Moses brought down from the mountain.
“Lands, child, did you hurt yourself?” Hilda exclaimed when Milli pulled her dirty boots off at the back door. Hilda and Slim were as different as night and day. Where he was so slim a good north wind could blow him all the way to the Gulf, she was short and stocky with a big, round face. They’d been married forever and never had any children - other than claiming Milli and her two brothers, and they only had come for a while in the summer when they were younger.
“Nope, just had to pull a calf while I was out.”
Hilda stirred a pot of chili on the back burner. “Did it live?”
“Sure it did. I was there. You think I’d let it die?”
“Well, go tell your Poppy he’s got a fine, healthy calf, and don’t track up my clean floor. Shake the dust off your jeans right where you stand. You want jalapeño corn bread with this chili for dinner?”
“You bet I do, and double the peppers. I like it hot enough to make my nose run. But it’s not Poppy’s calf. It was one of the Bar M cows.”
“Then call Beau and tell that idiot he’s at least lucky when it comes to ranchin’. Tell him Hilda said he’s not lucky in love, though. Tell him if he got any unluckier than he is right now, he could just call the undertaker and arrange his own funeral, because he’s just as good as dead if he really marries up with that blonde-haired witch. Tell him…”
“You tell him. But he already knows about the calf. He arrived on that play pretty he rides on and I made him help me. He said I was bossy. But I’m not. I just know what to do and…”
“Well, you’re the kind of woman he needs. You’re the kind of woman the Bar M needs. And here you are right next door and he’s blind as a bat and crazy as a drunk skunk. That Amanda is a city girl and she’s got dollar signs all over her body. Why, she ain’t no better than one of them high-dollar whores in the big cities. Them kind that stand on the street corner. They sell what’s in their underpants for a dollar and she sells what’s in hers for what she thinks she’s goin’ to get him to buy her. And by the time he gets through buyin’ and buyin’ there won’t be a Bar M. It will be dead and gone. Just a few bunkhouses and a lot of weeds. She might not be able to touch the ranch, but she can sure bleed him dry. Just a high-dollar whore.”
“Hilda, what do you know about a high-dollar whore?”
Hilda shook a spoon at Milli. “Never you mind what I know or don’t know. You just go get cleaned up. You ain’t comin’ to my dinner table lookin’ like a..
“High-dollar whore?”
She shooed her away with the flap of her apron. “Get on out of here and quit your smart mouthin’. I can still bend you over my apron. Any kid what begs for a whippin’ can find one. Get on up them stairs.”
Milli bypassed the den, where she could hear her grandfather talking to Katy. If she went in, she’d have to hold the baby and love her, and she wasn’t clean enough to do that. She peeled out of her work jeans, socks, T-shirt, and underwear and stepped into a hot shower, letting the water run down her back and through her hair.
The shower in the motel the morning after she’d spent the night in Beau’s arms had felt like this. Hot and clean. But it hadn’t washed away the guilty feelings she’d had that morning, any more than it washed them away this morning. When she had looked up and seen Beau riding toward her, she’d wanted to take her arm out of the cow and hug him. And after the calf was born, and she did hug him impulsively, her body had wanted to drag him down behind the trees and make love with him again. Just once more to see if it was as good the second time as she remembered it being the first time; if the look in his eyes would be as soft as when he pulled her to him, her naked breasts touching his furry chest, the sensation making her beg for another bout of lovemaking.
For that she felt guilty. He had asked Amanda to marry him, and it didn’t matter what she or the rest of the ranching world around him thought of her, she was still the one he’d chosen. The one he truly wanted to wake up beside for the rest of his life, and Milli had no light to the feelings that surged through her.
She should be honest and tell him that she was the woman he’d slept with after Darrin’s and Lisa’s wedding - at least he’d stop asking where he’d met her. It was just a matter of time, anyway, because someday things would click and he would remember. Even in his drunken state that night, he would have remembered the next morning that he didn’t spend the night alone in the back bedroom of that trailer. And something, somewhere would trigger a little memory, which would set off a chain reaction, and Beau would remember she was only a one-night stand. A woman who’d been willing to fall into bed with him without very much seduction, and who couldn’t even blame her actions on liquor, since she had only had one glass of champagne and was stone-cold sober when she peeled that lace dress over her head. She’d have to tell him that she hadn’t given a damn about him for anything except erasing Matthew from her mind and she’d used him as much as he’d used her that night. He would look at her with a different look on his face - one of disgust and shame.
She wrapped herself in a fluffy pink towel. She pulled a pair of jean shorts and a bright red knit shirt from the closet. This afternoon she and Mary were going to Ardmore to shop. When she used to come to the ranch as a teenager, Granny had always taken her there at least one day and they’d eat ice cream after they’d shopped until their feet hurt. They’d take Katy and the stroller and push her through the stores. Then maybe they’d have a banana split at the ice cream store before they came home. It could be a tradition thing… every time she and Katy came to Oklahoma…
She shook her head violently to erase the image. “Oh, no! Tradition ends right here. If I ever get back to west Texas without having to bare my soul, I’m not coming back here. I’ll fly in by myself, pick up Poppy and Granny, and they can visit us in Hereford, Texas. And that’s a fact.”
But maybe if she and Granny got away and shopped a while, she would at least forget all about Beau and this precarious situation she was in. Even that much would be a blessing today. Just to look at baby clothing for Katy and maybe a pair of dress shoes or sandals for herself.
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Not pink high heels. I’d break my neck if I tried to walk in those things
Amanda wears. But I can get away from ranching and thinking about him.”
Forget Beau? Good luck Even if you do, it won’t be for long. You’ll remember him every day for the rest of your life, girl, because you can never look at Katy without remembering who her father is… and that he is right next door to the Lazy Z forever.
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HILDA SHOOED THEM OUT THE DOOR. “You GET ON outta here. Lord knows, you ain’t been outta Jim’s sight in weeks, and you girls need an afternoon out. Go find something new to wear to that party Beau is having this weekend. I’m glad I don’t have to go. I’d just feel like it was my God fearin’ duty to set that boy down and give him a talkin’ to. But it ain’t a bit of my business if he wants to ruin his whole life. You two just get on outta my way. Go eat a banana split at the ice cream store. It’ll do you both a world of good.”
“Are you sure, Hilda?” Mary asked for the tenth time. It had sounded like a perfectly wonderful plan when Milli came in asking if they could go shopping over in Ardmore. But she hadn’t left Jim alone since he’d been home and she was having second thoughts about doing so right then. What if he tried to get up and do something stupid, like drive the truck out to the back forty to check on the cows? Or worse yet, heaven forbid, if he insisted Slim saddle up a horse?
“Yes, I’m sure,” Hilda fussed. “It’s just Ardmore, for goodness sake. You can see everything in the mall in an hour, eat your ice cream, and be home by suppertime. Now, go and don’t worry. Me and Slim will watch one of those old John Wayne movies with Jim. We won’t let him do anything you wouldn’t.”
“I worry too much,” Mary said as Milli strapped Katy into the car seat in the back of her club cab pickup. “But if anything happened to him and I wasn’t there…”
“He’ll be fine, Granny. Now it’s off to look at pretty stuff even if we don’t buy a single thing. I’m not about to spend money on something to wear this weekend. You and Poppa can go if you want to, but I’m not planning on it. I just plain don’t like that woman, so why should I go? She’s a gold digger in the worst sense. Did I tell you what I overheard her say in the bathroom? She hates ranching, hates cows, hates the smell of a lot, and doesn’t even like kids.” She inhaled with intentions of keeping up the tirade but her grandmother butted right in on cue.
“Of course you’re going. We’re all going. It would be rude, even if we don’t like the hussy. We’ll be there with smiles on our faces for Beau’s sake. But right now we’re not going to worry about that. I’m not about to spend money on something just for that occasion, either. But it will be nice to run around a few dress racks. Maybe I’ll find something new for church, and I’m looking forward to going to the ice cream store where we can gain twenty pounds and then bitch because we can’t wear a single thing we’ve got in our closets.”
“You’re good for me,” Milli patted her grandmother’s hand - but she was not going to that party.
Maybe if she fell down the steps and broke a leg and couldn’t dance? But then her sharp old Granny would probably just put her in Poppy’s wheelchair and take her anyway. And to think, she’d actually thought she was coming to Oklahoma for a summer of hard physical work but that there wouldn’t be any emotional strings that far from the panhandle of Texas.
Milli was busy pushing Katy and telling her she had to stay in the stroller, that she could not get out and run through the mall, and didn’t even realize she’d walked right past Beau until her grandmother spoke.
“Well, hello, Beau,” Mary said cheerfully.
Milli felt a slow, hot flame rising from her neck to her cheeks. By the time she turned around she had a high color she couldn’t disguise and only hoped he thought it was the result of just coming inside out of the blistering summer heat.
“Whatever are you doing here?” Mary asked.
“Oh, Amanda wanted to shop after we went to lunch. I don’t get into running around clothes racks a hundred times, so I’m practicing waiting out here like a dutiful husband.”
He squatted in front of the stroller and touched Katy’s chubby hand. “Hi, you little doll. You remind me of my nephews down in Louisiana with all that blonde hair and them big blue eyes. But you got your mother’s pretty skin for sure.”
Milli held her breath until her chest hurt. Surely, he would feel something when he touched his own flesh and blood. He stayed squatted down beside the stroller so long that Milli feared he had recognized his own reflection in the baby. Finally, he stood and she was dizzy with relief.
“So what are you doing in Ardmore this afternoon? Did you bring Jim out for a bit of different scenery?”
“Getting out away from the ranch for a little while. Left Jim at home with Hilda and Slim to watch John Wayne. Just hope he don’t get any foolhardy notions like he can sit a horse just because I’m not there. Every once in a while we have to get out and be something other than cattle women, so we’re going to run around those dress racks. And then we’re going to Braums to eat banana splits until we groan and moan.”
Milli was glad Mary kept up a running conversation. If she’d had to choose between saying a word or standing before a firing squad, she would just have reached for the blindfold and put it on herself.
“Well, don’t be spending Jim’s money on something to wear to my party. You two would look just fine in a gunny sack tied up in the middle with a piece of bailing twine. Too bad we already ate or we’d join you for ice cream.”
“Don’t you be flatterin’ me. A gunny sack, indeed! Now, you might be telling the truth about Milli, and if I was thirty years younger, I might give her a run for her money when all those cowboys are just slobbering to get to dance with her,” Mary said.
It worked. He set his jaw and drew his eyebrows down in a frown.
“We’ll be seeing you,” Mary waved. She’d gotten exactly the response she’d hoped for. There was chemistry between them, by golly, and she intended to fan the flames every chance she got. After all, all was fair in love and war and that hussy hadn’t gotten him in front of a preacher man yet.
Milli gave a short, silent prayer of thanksgiving that Beau and Amanda had already eaten. She couldn’t bear to sit so close to him that she could smell that wonderful aftershave and watch him drape his arm around Amanda while they shared a banana split. Amanda might even feed him a few bites, at which time Milli would upchuck right there in the middle of everyone’s dessert. The very thought of him taking ice cream off the very spoon Amanda had eaten from made her stomach churn in agony. She didn’t even let herself think about the fact that he’d probably kissed the witch quite passionately in the last few hours.
“Hey, Milli, why don’t you let me walk around the center of the mall here with the baby? I need to walk off part of this supper and she’s not a bit interested in all those dress racks. She didn’t cry when I was talking to her, so I think she’d be comfortable with me,” Beau offered.
“Oh, I…” Milli stammered.
Mary pushed the stroller two feet forward and put the handle in his hands. “How nice of you. If she gets fussy, just bring her to the store and we’ll take her off your hands. She loves to ride so I doubt you’ll hear a peep out of her.”
“Sure thing. Now off to your right is a shoe store, sweetheart. You’ll probably grow up to buy eighty million pairs of shoes and not wear any of them. You’d rather wade in the water in your bare toes, wouldn’t you, honey? Of course you would - or else go out to the pasture in your boots and jeans and ride a little pony. I bet Jim buys you a pony by the time you can walk…”
“Now why did you do that?” Milli hissed when he was out of hearing distance.
“Because Katy will love it and so will he.”
Mary looked as innocent as a newborn kitten. Maybe, just maybe, if he spent enough time with the child, he’d finally look down and see that she was the spitting image of him. And if he didn’t, then someone might come along and say something like, “My, don’t that baby look just like you,” and then he’d wake up and smell the roses, or baby powder, or whatever new fathers smelled when their eyes were opened.
Milli wondered if she could get back to the panhandle of Texas by midnight.
They went into the store, past the perfume counter and to the lady’s department. She flipped a couple of hangers around the round rack as she fought down the urge to turn around and confess everything to her grandmother. If Mary knew what was actually happening right under her nose, she might not be so eager to turn Beau loose with Katy, and she might even help her get away from the Lazy Z without too much fanfare.
“Well, hello, Amanda,” Mary said in a sticky sweet voice. “Have you met my granddaughter? She was with us at the barn social the other night but I don’t think you were formally introduced. This is Milli Torres, and this is Beau’s fiancée, Amanda.”
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Milli said, but she couldn’t even force a smile to her face.
Amanda wore a baby blue business suit with a very short skirt and a jacket with a wide white lapel. A gold pin shaped like an alligator with sapphire eyes crawled up the lapel on the left side and her engagement ring glittered in the fluorescent lighting.
“Oh, so you’re the neighbor?” Amanda started at Milli’s toes and sized her up, literally curling her nose by the time she got to her hair, which Milli had pulled back with one of those new plastic clips.
Milli bared her claws and got ready for the catfight. Granted, she wasn’t very classy in her jean shorts and T-shirt. But she wasn’t sweating underneath panty hose and a business suit and the clip kept her long black hair out of her eyes. Even with a shot of self-applied confidence, she still felt like an ugly June bug that Amanda was about to step on with her fancy high-heeled shoe.
“When is the wedding? I suppose you’re already up to your elbows in preparations and wedding books,” Milli asked in a sticky sweet tone.
Amanda looked down on Milli, trying to intimidate her, but it wasn’t working. Instead of shrinking and cowering like a little whipped puppy, Milli gazed right back up at Amanda.
“Oh, I’m not sure. Of course Anthony wants to get married tomorrow. He’s so much in love with me it’s just plain sickening. But I really must have a big wedding. You know all of Ardmore expects it. A social affair with a long, long honeymoon afterwards. Maybe the Bahamas or Paris, France. I haven’t decided. Definitely something by early fall, though. I’m not going back to school this year.”
Milli raised a dark eyebrow. “Oh, really.”
“I suppose you will be busy at the ranch,” Mary managed to say without too much acid. “There’s a lot for the wife of a rancher to do. I know. I’ve been one for a long, long time. It’s good that you’ll be arriving in the slow season where ranching is concerned. At least you’ll get your feet wet before the real busy part begins next spring.”
“Oh, honey, I’d never live there. Not that far from civilization. I must have a social life or I’d just wither up and die. No ma’am, ranching is not for me. Anthony and I will live in town. I’ve got the cutest little two-story mansion picked out. We’ll make a bid on it next week, and then..
Milli couldn’t believe her ears. The woman had said those things to her friend in the privacy of the restroom, but this was a very public place.
“Oh, I figured Beau would want to live on the ranch,” Mary said.
“He probably does. God, I wish everyone would stop calling him Beau and refer to him as Anthony. Beau is so hickish,” Amanda said curtly. “But what he wants and what he gets are most definitely two different things. He loves me. I hate cows and hay and the smell of barns, so he will do what I say. Besides he’ll look so nice in a formal tux at social affairs. I’ve even looked at dress pants and suits in the men’s section tonight. Of course, there’s nothing there that’s quite right. We’ll have some real clothes custom made. Won’t he just be delicious in Italian silk? I’m thinking chocolate brown. What do you think?”
“Frankly, I like blue jeans and a nice white western shirt. And you’ll just have to get used to us calling him Beau. It’s what we know him as,” Milli said.
Amanda sniffed and raised her chin another inch. “Well, it takes all kinds. Not everyone can be born with good taste. I’ve got to run. He’s probably just panting, thinking about me while he sits out there and waits so patiently. But it’s wonderful training, don’t you think? We’re going to a movie tonight. Such a crazy way to spend an evening. When we’re married there will be golfing and all kinds of social events we’ll have to take in, but for now we’ll just do things his way. Dinner and movies a couple of times a week. Such a simple little way. I just can’t wait to remake him into a GQ man. All my friends will be so jealous when they see him decked out in the newest styles. Ta-ta.”
Milli conjured up a picture of Beau in an Italian silk suit and a chuckle began down deep in her bosom, erupting as a full-fledged giggle which she had to stifle with the back of her hand. She got the hiccups and fanned her red face with the back of her hand.
“Guess we’d better go get our baby.” Mary said.
“Good grief,” Milli gasped. “She’ll be fit to be tied if she finds him pushing a stroller around the mall. Beau with a baby, and she hates kids.”
Amanda’s heels clicked on the tile. “What the hell is that and where did it come from?”
He squatted down in front of the stroller and touched Katy’s hair. “It’s Milli Torres’ little girl. Isn’t she the cutest thing you ever saw, Amanda? Maybe by this time next year, we’ll have one like her. Probably a son, though. Us Luckadeaus usually throw boy babies, but I wouldn’t complain if we had one like this.”
“I hope to hell not. God Almighty, I don’t want a baby to ruin my figure and make me fat. You better be wishing for something else.”
“Oh, you’ll change your mind. Here comes your Mommy, sweetheart.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” Amanda said bluntly.
“Of course you’ll want children. We’ll get a nanny to take care of the baby when you go with me around the ranch, and you’ll get your girlish figure back in no time. Riding is good for that. I’ll bet. But for now we’ll think about the wedding and the honeymoon.” He kissed her on her neck.
She brushed the warmth of his kiss away. “Give that kid back and let’s go.”
Milli and Mary overheard the last sentence as they walked up behind them. Milli reached for the stroller handle and her hand brushed Beau’s. The sparks were almost visible as they both jumped back. Mary saw them; Amanda didn’t.