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.
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 y
ou 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.
FIVE
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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.
Lucky In Love Page 6