Milli hopped up into the truck and threw her purse on the back seat. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t glued on right tight. Did you know that fellow?”
Beau’s eyebrows drew down in a fine line. “Nope. He was inviting us back to church anytime we want to come.”
“Oh, you don’t come to this church all the time? Guess I just thought because Granny and Poppy and the Spencers come over here, y’all did, too.”
A cold shiver of reality climbed up his backbone and made the blond hair on his neck prickle. “Buster and Rosa go to the Catholic church over in Ardmore. I was going with Amanda to the Baptist church in Ardmore ‘til last week. Aunt Alice went to one in Lone Grove. Never been over here befofe, but I sure do like these people and the atmosphere.”
“They are sweet folks. I’m starving. I think I could eat a whole Angus steer - hoofs, horns and all.”
“Calf fries?”
“My favorite. Rolled in beer batter and deep fat fried. Served up with pinto beans and fried potatoes.”
He started the engine and eased out on the road, heading south until he reached the highway taking them back east to the ranch. “You’re a girl after my own heart. How ‘bout you, Katy? When you get to be a year old, you goin’ to like calf fries?”
“Katy is fourteen months old already. And honey, she can eat her weight in calf fries if I cut them up in little pieces. She quit eating baby food months ago and started eating whatever I am.”
Beau did the math in his head. “Birthday in April? What day?”
Milli turned the music down low. “April 20.”
Beau had always been good with figures, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how long it was from the last of week of July to April 20, and it didn’t take a physics major to know what had been evident to the old man at the church was the pure truth. He peeped up in the rearview mirror at the baby sitting in the car seat, reality hitting him in the chest like a tornado ripping up a one-hole outhouse. He remembered the copy of his Own baby picture his mother kept on the mantle in the den. Take off the blue-checked bonnet and put on a little baseball cap and it was Beau all over again, except for that lightly tanned skin.
“You’re pretty quiet. Hungry?” She asked when they were nearly back to the Bar M where Rosa was supposed to have lunch ready. She had packed a small duffel bag with shorts and a top, along with a two-piece bathing suit - if she had the nerve to wear it in front of him. Her stretch marks were still visible across her tummy, even if they were fading away slowly. Katy’s diaper bag was stuffed with everything she needed plus a few of her favorite stuffed toys.
Oh, rot, I forgot her little plastic pail and shovel.
“Yep, I am,” he said icily. “But more than hungry, I’m madder than pure hell, right now.”
He pulled the pickup off the road and faced her. His eyes were slits behind long lashes, and his nostrils flared. There wasn’t even a single sign of a dimple in his cheek, and his eyebrows were one straight line. It was beginning to look as if she’d been right all along. They couldn’t breathe the same air for more than a couple of hours without one of them getting angry.
“Well, what in the world got your dander up?”
She hadn’t done a single thing to rile him. Just like she’d promised her grandparents; if they didn’t tell her secret, she wouldn’t give him the cold shoulder. It looked as though he was about as stable as water. One minute leaning close to her in the church services and making her fairly well swoon with lusty desire right there in front of the preacher and the Almighty, and the next, jerking the truck to a standstill. Jim and Mary Torres could forget about happy endings. It wasn’t happening with Beau and Milli.
He touched her cheek with his hand and turned her face toward the back of the pickup truck. “Look in the back seat and tell me what you see.”
She slapped his hand away from her face. “My purse? Are you mad because I forgot my purse? Well, that’s a stupid, ignorant thing to get so worked up over. I forgot Katy’s plastic pail and shovel, too. Good grief, Beau, haven’t you ever forgotten anything before?”
“It’s not your damned purse, Milli. It’s Katy.”
“Why are you mad about Katy? She didn’t puke on you or leave a wet spot on your jeans…”
“Twinkle star,” Katy said.
“She calls all music twinkle star. She wants me to turn up the volume,” Milli said.
He clenched his teeth and slapped the steering wheel. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me Katy was my daughter? Why didn’t you at least make an effort to get in touch with me when you found out you were having my child?”
She exhaled so long her lungs ached. “Oh.”
“That all you got to say, just, ‘oh’? I think we’ve got a lot to talk about. And all you can say is ‘oh.’ I want some answers.”
Her eyes narrowed and steam could practically be seen coming out the top of her head. “Don’t you talk to me in that tone. And don’t you ever raise your voice like that in front of my daughter again.”
“She’s mine, too, damn it,” he whispered loudly. “And just how long did you think you’d wait before you told me? Until she was grown?”
“Hey, you were the dumb jackass who was fixing to marry Amanda. What was I supposed to do? Come waltzing in with a baby daughter and say, ‘Oh, Amanda, meet your new stepdaughter’? Hellfire, Beau, I damn sure didn’t know you was going to show up across a cut fence from me, yelling and shouting about an Angus bull. When I found out I was pregnant, was I supposed to put out a bulletin with your picture on it and say, ‘I slept with this man one night and he’s the father of my baby. Can you help me find him? He doesn’t hold his liquor well and he’ll go to bed with any woman who’s willing.’ I didn’t know anything but your name and that your family was from Shreveport.’
“There’s a whole page of Luckadeaus in the phone book in Shreveport. All you had to do was call anyone and ask for Beau and they would have told you how to get in touch with me, since I’m the only one named Beau. Besides, we’re all related. Luckadeau is not such a common name.”
She raised her voice almost as high as her eyebrows. “Sure, I could call anyone of them. Can you please tell me where Beau Luckadeau is so I can tell him I’m pregnant from a one-night stand? And what would you have done? Crawled up on your fancy little tricycle, put on your shining armor, and ridden all the way to west Texas to rescue the loose-legged woman who said the baby she carried was yours? Get real. Even you wouldn’t have believed a story like that.”
Beau fumed. He wanted to turn around and stare at his daughter until his eyes memorized every detail from her unruly blonde curls to her toenails peaking out from the ends of white leather sandals. With one breath he wanted to slap thunder out of Milli for depriving him of his daughter for a whole year, not to mention the joy and anticipation of waiting for her for nine months. With the next breath he wanted to reach across the seat and draw her close to his side and make her vow never to leave him again.
“Why don’t you just take us to the Lazy Z? I don’t think this is a good day for a picnic after all. As a matter of fact, it might be a good day for me and Katy to go back to Hereford. I think both of us need a lot of space to get this worked out. It’s pretty damned evident that the lady you kept talking about last night was a figment of your imagination. And darlin’, I never did think you were such a great knight-in-shining-damn-armor.”
Well, it might not be good day, but I promised my daughter a picnic and by damn she’s having a picnic. I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep,” he declared.
“Beau, be realistic. You didn’t even know until a few minutes ago that you had a child. When the newness wears off and the air clears, your common sense will tell you there’s more to a baby than just picnics and…”
“And what, Milli? I’m thirty years old. I think I know what there is to a child. And today we’re going to the ranch for dinner and to the park for the afternoon. Lord, wait until Buster sees Katy. If I
hadn’t found out this morning, I would have known before the day was out, because Buster knows about the dream I had about you, even though he doesn’t know just how far things went that night. He knows you ran away and I found your earring. And besides, he knew me when I was a little kid. One look at Katy and he’d have been telling me how stupid I was. Guess what they say about me is true. I’m lucky in everything but love.”
“That’s the gospel truth. And it don’t look like it’s going to get a whole a lot better in the near future. I told you last night you’d be kicking me across the state line when you got to know me. Like I said, you can just take me to Granny and Poppy’s right now. At the end of the summer, Katy and I will go back home, and you can forget you figured it all out this fine June morning.”
“Huh,” he snorted. “Miss Katy, I think your pretty momma has got cow chips for brains. Let’s go see your daddy’s ranch. Betcha it’s bigger and better than your Poppy’s, and I bet you like Angus cows better, too.”
“When cows fly…” she snorted right back at him. “No Torres in the world would pick a fool Angus cow over a white-face.”
He started the engine and pulled back out onto the highway, bound for the Bar M. “But a Luckadeau would, and Katy is a Luckadeau - or haven’t you noticed that dimple in her cheek?”
“But the part that has bovine sense is Torres, and don’t you forget it.”
Beau just grinned real big.
TEN
************************************************************************************************
MILLI WATCHED THE GREEN OKLAHOMA COUNTRYSIDE speed past at sixty-five miles an hour and wished her heart was going that slow. She wondered if Beau could see it pumping faster than a gushing oil well when he stole glances toward her. Every time his eyes traveled from her sandals to her forehead she felt as if a red hot iron had touched her bare skin. Why in the hell did he affect her like this? She dealt with cattle buyers, farmers, ranchers, bankers, and hundreds of other men on a daily basis, so why did this one long, tall cool drink of southern water have her panting like she’d just spent eight seconds on the back of a mean bull?
Probably because he was the only man she’d ever known sexually and she didn’t have anyone else to compare him with. What she needed to do was get the hell out of Dodge - or Oklahoma, as the case may be - and find a lover. One who would kiss her until her knees were weak and all she wanted to do was fall backwards and pull him down with her. Someone who would take Beau’s face from her mind and send it back to the Texas-Louisiana border where it belonged. Someone who would erase the indelible mark he’d left on her heart. Where could she find a man like that? She didn’t know right then, but she wasn’t going to find him until she started looking, and that would be tomorrow morning. In Hereford, Texas. Not in southern Oklahoma where she would run into Beau every time she turned around.
Beau glanced up in the rearview mirror to make sure his daughter was still there and hadn’t faded like a dream, and kept a watch on Milli for the same reason. This was sure enough a twenty-four hours to remember. Yesterday at this time he was thinking about his engagement party with Amanda and wishing he hadn’t been so hasty about buying that big diamond for her. Today he was sitting in close quarters with the woman he’d begun’l to believe was just a crazy piece of his imagination. Last night he really thought he had an angel in his arms while they danced. He breathed in the essence of Milli and wanted more and more and more. Today she was more than a puff of angel dust. She was a real woman, full of spit and vinegar, and she’d have him toeing the line if they ever did get into a relationship.
And he had a child. Wait until his parents got wind of this whole thing. His mother would probably be so upset with him she wouldn’t even talk to him. Not for having a child out of wedlock; Luckadeau men weren’t perfect, by any means. But for not taking time to make sure there wasn’t one on the way after that night. But she’d damn sure forgive him the minute she found out she had a granddaughter. A girl baby in the Luckadeau family - now that was a pure miracle.
It wasn’t his fault. He’d tried to find Amelia and had even called information for several towns in the Rio Grande Valley and in Brownsville, too. There were lots of Jiminez folks down in that part of the world. It was like looking for a Smith in downtown Dallas. If Joann Luckadeau wanted proof that he had tried, he still had an enormous telephone bill in his file cabinet.
After a houseful of sons and several grandsons, Katy just might be the very thing that got him out of hot water over this to-do. It didn’t matter that he was thirty years old, had his own ranch, and ran it well. There were some things that were unforgivable. And this was number one on the list. His father didn’t care how modern the world was; could care less that lots of men and women chose to have children without the sacrament of marriage. The old standard was upheld in the Luckadeau family and there wasn’t a lot of room for argument about it.
His mind ran in circles so fast it made him dizzy. Milli was so blessed straightforward and bossy, he didn’t know if he could ever live with her every day. They couldn’t even keep company for a few hours without making each other mad enough to chew up railroad spikes and spit out thumbtacks. It’d be a topsy-turvy world and they’d argue so much they’d end up spending half their time making up. A shock went through him from the ends of his boots all the way to the stitches on the top of his head when he remembered her snuggled up beside him in the bedroom the night Katy was conceived. Now, wouldn’t that be just like dying and going to heaven, to have to make up with her like that on a regular basis?
No matter what they decided to do about their own violent tempers, he fully well intended that the whole world know from this moment on that Katy was his daughter. If Milli didn’t feel that same magic he did every time their hands brushed together, then he’d just have to live with her decision. But Katy was his, the next in line for the ranch, and even if he lived to be an oldi bachelor and his luck never did change when it came to women, she was going to grow up knowing him. They’d just have to come to some understanding about child I support and visitation rights.
Milli bit the inside of her lip until she could taste blood. That fool man, anyway. They could no more be a family than she could sprout wings and sit on the clouds with a. golden harp. Just because she was physically attracted to him didn’t mean they could run a ranch and ever make a marriage. But then, he hadn’t mentioned anything like that, had he? Well, he had fertilizer for brains if he thought for one minute he was going to step in and take Katy Scarlett away from her even for one week out of the summer. Katy was her daughter and she wasn’t sharing her with him. Not even if he offered to pay child support and acknowledged her and the whole nine yards. Not even if he hired the best lawyer in the state and the judge said she had to let him have her so many weeks out of the month. Milli could disappear so fast it would make his old head swim, and by golly she’d do it.
Despite the vibrations and thoughts bouncing around like feisty, hyperactive two-year-olds in the cab of the pickup, neither said a word from the time he drove back out onto the highway until they pulled into the circle drive in front of the ranch house on the Bar M.
He gently put his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him. “Milli, the way Aunt Alice set up her will means that when I’m dead, everything on this place will belong to Katy someday. She’s my firstborn…”
She stared him right in the eyes without blinking. “Not necessarily. If you just back off and forget all about today, you can marry later on and have a son. I won’t ever come back to haunt you, I promise - well, I’ll be damned.”
He followed her gaze to the porch. “Well, I’ll be damned, too.”
Amanda wore a long denim prairie skirt with a westerncut lace blouse and actually had a pair of brand new Roper boots on her feet. A turquoise and silver necklace hung around her neck and a wide bracelet of silver with accents of turquoise jingled on her arm as she walked. She looked like she was playing dress up in someone els
e’s clothing as she sashayed off the porch and toward the truck. She put on a big smile and Milli just sat there in silent awe.
About the time Amanda reached the driver’s side of the truck, Milli finally found her tongue and whispered, “Whatever is she trying to prove?”
Amanda opened Beau’s door. “Hello, darling. I think you and I better have a little talk. I was too rash.” She stopped and glared at Mill. “What the hell are you doing in his truck? You’re that bitch from the next farm over, aren’t you? The one who Anthony felt sorry for and danced with because your grandfather lives on the next ranch. The one who took him to the hospital but looked like hell. I told you at the hospital you aren’t welcome around him.”
Beau set his jaw. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Amanda. It’s finished, but you do owe Milli an apology. I might have died if she hadn’t found me and took care of things. Besides, you’ve no right to call her names.”
“Oh, shut up. And besides, darling, it’s not finished. I’m ready to sign that little piece of paper. You know I was just angry last night, and now I realize how much I love you. So let’s go in the house and I’ll sign the papers and set a date for the wedding and I’ll put my ring back on. How about the end of July? We won’t have to wait until fall after all. Who knows, we might even get a jump start on that son you were talking about.”
Beau stepped out of the pickup. “Too late.”
When Amanda put her hand out to touch his arm, he sidestepped and she let her hand fall limply in the folds of her skirt. “I don’t love you, Amanda. I’m not sure I ever did. You were there and I was in love with the idea of being in love. Besides, you made the choice last night and now you can just live with it. I probably wouldn’t ever have broken up with you since I’d given you my word and a Luckadeau’s word is gold, but you broke it off when you threw my ring on the floor, remember?”
Amanda put her hands on her hips and planted her boots in the dirt in front of him. “I suppose that bitch in the car has something to do with this? Tell her we’re going in the house to talk and she can call her grandfather to come get her. God, Alice Martin would rise up and pitch a fit if she knew you were bringing a low-class Mexican bitch like that on her property.”
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