Oh, my god! When this stuff hits bottom it’s going to set me on fire again.
It took all the trust he had to believe her. He bit off a chunk of the tortilla and was amazed at the soothing effect it had on its way down to his stomach.
“It’s the butter. It takes the fire out. Here, give me your burrito and I’ll eat it. I made one with jalapeño for you.”
He finally found his voice. “That was the hottest sumbitch in the world. I’m not so sure I do like you right now. You damn near killed me, woman.”
She pointed her fork at him. “Don’t be calling me woman. I’m Milli or sugar or honey or sweetheart, but I’m not ‘woman.’ That’s what white trash call their wives. Pretty hot little sucker, ain’t it?” She bit off a second bite of the burrito and then followed it with a piece of buttered tortilla.
“I ain’t about to fight with anyone who can eat something that hot. Where do those things grow? On the back forty in hell?”
“Somewhere close to that, I’m sure. And I ain’t about to fight with anyone who can whup a big mean spider, so I guess we aren’t in trouble, yet. Chow down. I promise I didn’t even cut up the jalapeño with the same knife I used on the habanero, so it’s mild.”
“There is a heaven!” He took a bite of the burrito she put in front of him. “I’d begun to think there was only hell.”
She grinned.
She remembered when she was a little girl at her grandparents house on this same property and they introduced her to the habanero pepper. She thought she would suffocate to death before she chased it with a buttered tortilla. She thought about the hacienda where they were probably taking an afternoon siesta right now: her very brown grandfather, who was full-blooded Mexican, and her grandmother, who at the age of seventy-two was as blonde as Beau and had eyes just as blue.
He refilled their tea glasses. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“Remember, pennies don’t buy my thoughts. They cost you a helluva lot more than that.”
“I see where Casey gets her sweet little feminine way of saying things,” he laughed.
“Got a problem with the way I talk?”
“No, ma’am. You ready to swim off some of these calories?”
“Peppers ain’t got no calories. That’s the one good thing about them. Eat them all day and never worry about weight. Do you think I’m fat?”
“What in the world brought that on? Of course you’re not fat.”
“I told you the story already. I was in the sixth grade and a couple of blonde-haired snooty little girls called me a fat Mexican bitch. I got expelled from school for three days.”
“Why did you get expelled because they were rude?” He led her to the door, picking up a couple of beach towels from a hook beside the door on the way.
“Because I knocked Myrna’s front tooth out and broke Lisa’s nose.” She said it as if she was telling him the sky was blue and the clouds were white. “And I decided right then nobody was ever going to call me that name again. You really don’t think I’m fat? Wait a minute. I’ve got to put my bikini on.”
“Why, you can’t tan in the nude?”
She dropped the robe in the middle of the floor and stretched a bright yellow bikini top on. “Not on your life. If Grandpoppy decided to sneak a peek at us with his binoculars I’d better have something on my body, even if it’s a bikini. Besides, stretch marks from the baby aren’t all gone.”
He trailed a row of kisses down to her naval. “Hey, you’re beautiful, stretch marks and all. Sure you want to swim?”
“No, but we’d better at least put in an appearance on the beach.”
They laid on their stomachs, holding hands across the warm sand separating them, for an hour. He was glad, as he laid there in the warm sand with the hot sun beating down upon his back, that things had worked out the way they did.
“Hey, tell me about your grandparents who live just two blocks back there.”
Her grandmother had told Milli the love story so many times, Milli knew it by heart. She wondered if her grandfather ever tricked her English grandmother with a habanero pepper, and chuckled at the memory of Beau’s blue eyes swimming in tears.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, darlin’. I was just thinkin’ that if you get hateful with me and start calling me ‘woman,’ I can always just dump a few habaneros in your supper.”
He picked her up and waded out into the water. “You’re a vixen. Say you’ll never, ever be mean to me or I’ll dunk you.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “And when you do, you’ll go down with me. Where I go, you shall go. My dunking shall be your dunking.” She intoned like a preacher at a revival.
“Then we shall go together.” He fell backwards with her and water covered them both.
She came up spluttering. “And now we are no more Methodists, but full-fledged Baptists. And my hair will be a fright for the rest of the day. We’ll see if you like a wicked sea witch by the end. Which reminds me - I forgot to tell you, there is no phone, no television, no radio, no CD player, or anything else from the outside world in the cabin. I do believe there are a few cattle books left there by Grandpoppy, who must have a little reprieve from boring sex when he brings my grandmother here.”
He kissed her neck and saw a glimmer of light behind the cabin. “Well, maybe I won’t get so bored I have to read old cattle magazines. Don’t look now, but I think he’s checking to see if you have on your bikini.”
She wiggled closer to him and saw the light reflecting. So one or both of them couldn’t wait to see what the new grandson-in-law looked like. She bet her grandmother was dancing a ring around herself as she looked at this goodlooking blond giant. She’d wanted a blond, blue-eyed son so badly, and all she got was a house full of darkhaired beautiful daughters.
“You were going to tell me about them,” Beau reminded her.
“It’s a love story with a bittersweet ending. Grandmother came from Rio County, Texas. That’s one of the border counties over in Texas. Anyway she came to the University of Mexico to study Spanish. She made friends with my grandfather’s sister and went home with her for a weekend and there was her older brother. She says they were both thunderstruck. She says he looked like a darker version of Clark Gable and he says she looked just like a goddess with her blonde hair and blue eyes.”
“Blue eyes?” Beau was stunned.
“Yes, blue eyes. They were in love, but do you know what it was like in the ‘40s for a rich, white Texas girl to fall in love with a full-blooded Mexican boy? Even if his parents were every bit as rich as hers? I can tell you, it wasn’t easy. I guess her father came close to a heart attack when she told them she was marrying a Mexican. He disowned her and refused to have her name mentioned in his house ever again. So they lived in Mexico, right back there for about eight years; then her parents both died in a plane crash and, since she was the only child, the property was hers. So she and my Grandpoppy took all five girls to Rio County to raise them in the United States. They kept their place here and came for vacations and holidays. Now that they’re retired they spend a lot of time here and less in Rio County. Momma is the oldest. You met some of the sisters at the party Saturday night. When Momma went to college in the panhandle, she met Daddy and they settled down right there. Aunt Gloria met a man in college a couple of years after that. His parents were of the hippy generation and never married. Anyway,! guess Grandpoppy like to have died when he found out Uncle Jim was illegitimate. I figured he’d go up in smoke over Katy, but he didn’t. I guess after Grandmother set him straight about Uncle Jim’s heritage, it didn’t matter about Katy so much.”
“I sure wouldn’t want Katy dating some lowlife, either.”
“Hey, Uncle Jim is a medical doctor now. He’s not a lowlife, even if his mother is a little eccentric and never got married,” she snipped back.
“Well -” he snapped.
“And Katy is illegitimate, too. Or had you forgotten?”
&
nbsp; “She won’t be for long. Besides that’s not what I asked. What changed his mind?”
“Grandmother reminded him about what happened to them and he straightened up pretty quick. I guess Grandpoppy didn’t want to lose a daughter.”
“Smart man. I can’t imagine doing anything to lose Katy.”
Milli resisted the urge to wave at them. “Now stand up gently and carry me back to the cabin, kissing me all the way. Let’s at least give them something to make a long distance call back to west Texas about. It would be a shame if they missed their siesta and didn’t see anything. Make it look just like a scene from the movies. Betcha we can hear them sighing if you do.”
He rose to his full height then swooped her up with one arm to hug her close to his chest. Then as if she were no more than a feather pillow, he picked her up dramatically and kissed her long and sensuously as he carried her to the porch. If they turned their heads just right both of them imagined they really could hear sighs.
“That’s enough. That should fry the telephone wires between here and Texas. Bet they’re racing to the house to see who gets to talk first. And Grandmother will be in hog heaven when she tells them how beautiful you. are.”
His eyes never left her face as he reached around and unhooked the top of her bikini. “It’ll be enough when I say it’s enough. Besides, they might be waiting out there to see if’n we come back out and they’ll know it was all a farce.”
“Was it a farce, Beau? It felt pretty damned real to me.”
“Darlin’, everything between the two of us is real, and right. Even a little exaggeration for your grandparents is real, and don’t you ever doubt it.”
TWENTY-TWO
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BEAU FOLLOWED THE PREACHER FROM THE BACK DOOR of the sale barn to the platform. All five of his brothers walked slowly behind him. James, who was in charge of the music, put a tape into the stereo system and Conway Twitty’s gravelly voice came through singing “The Rose.” Three of his sisters-in-law, and both of Milli’s brothers’ wives, appeared at the front door of the barn. All of them had been bridesmaids several times and they floated down the aisle with grace and dignity even in their flannel shirts, jeans, and sneakers. Then Casey, who was standing in for Milli, appeared at the door on the arm of John Torres.
An hour later the wedding rehearsal was over. They practiced the whole thing twice with Milli watching from the front row of folding chairs. The entire building had been transformed from a cattle sale barn to a wedding chapel. The walls were literally draped with thousands of yards of ivory illusion. Hurricane lamps burned brightly on all the tables already laid with ivory lace tablecloths, and tomorrow the florist would bring fresh roses, freesia, and trailing English ivy to encircle the lamps. Huge pew bows with silk roses held drapes of tulle from the balcony where buyers usually looked down upon the cattle being offered for sale.
“Well, son, this is sure enough a transformation.” Milli’s maternal grandmother took Beau’s arm and smiled at him, still in awe that she finally had a relative who looked like her. And even more so that in the past half century, society had changed enough that two cultures could meet in the middle of this barn tomorrow night, and all that would be offered would be blessings and love.
“Yes, ma’am.” He searched for Milli in a sea of dark hair and every shade of blond in the world.
“So did you decide you like each other?” The grandmother’s blue eyes glittered.
“Yes, ma’am,” Beau smiled. “But there was a moment there when I wasn’t too sure when I was trying to figure out if she’d plumb killed me graveyard dead with that damn hot pepper.”
Grandmother Jiminez laughed loudly. “I remember the first time Carlos talked me into eating one of those demons. Lord, I thought the devil had grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me straight down to hell. It told him I would never trust him again.”
“I know the feeling,” Beau nodded.
Milli appeared from nowhere to hug him close. “You monopolizing my groom?”
“If I could, I would. Pretty as he is, you’d better not let him out of your sight. But that old Mexican over there wouldn’t let me stand close to him for very long without making an excuse - to see what we were talking about. He’s still jealous, you know, even after more than fifty years. Now, where have you two put my fair-haired great-granddaughter? All this time I thought my genes had finally come through to mark one of the Jiminez children. Then I find out Katy’s father is a fair-haired, blue-eyed cowboy.”
“Oh, Grandmother, you know she got those pretty eyes from you. Beau gave her the dimples.”
“Don’t you believe it. She’s the spitting image of this man. Now go on and get some food. Just before midnight you two have to go your separate ways, you know. You better enjoy these moments, and besides, tradition has it that the bride and groom must be served first. You, are holding up the line.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Beau said.
Milli whispered as they made their way to the tables, “Aren’t you glad we’ve already had the honeymoon? It would be a helluva thing to endure all this and be thinking of nothing but a bed in a motel room.”
He tilted her chin up for a kiss. “Hey, I’m always thinking of ways to get you to the bedroom, but tomorrow night it will be legal, the paperwork will be finished and formally filed, and honey, it don’t matter where we are, it will be a wonderful honeymoon.”
“Oh?”
“That’s right. Our bedroom will be a honeymoon for the next fifty or sixty years. And then maybe we’ll go back down to the beach to refresh our memories of when we decided to like each other.” He bent forward just enough to kiss her again, oblivious to all the relatives.
“Oh, I’ve got a present for you.” She pulled an envelope from her purse and handed it to him.
“To open now?”
“Yep, right now. They’ll wait another minute for us. I was going to give it to you in private later, but we probably won’t have a more private time than right now. They’re going to eat. and visit and then it will be midnight. They all say I can’t see you from midnight tonight until the wedding tomorrow night. Momma says it’ll bring bad luck to the marriage. And she’s not about to have something happen right here at the end to sabotage the marriage. So open it.”
He tore into the envelope to find a check made out to the Bar M Ranch for a hundred thousand dollars and it was signed by Milli Torres.
“What is this?”
“That is what my herd brought. You are going to reinvest it in Angus cattle. I know you said that you’d fence off a section for my cattle, but a house divided cannot stand. So we won’t have a ranch divided, either. Katy is legally a Luckadeau as of today when the papers were signed, and I’ll be legally a Luckadeau tomorrow night. The Luckadeaus raise Angus cattle. So buy more Angus cattle for our ranch, darling.”
“But.”
She laid a finger over his lips. “No buts. And don’t be thinking I’m going to let you go buy cows all by yourself. Remember, whither thou goest, I shall go, if it’s under the water or to the cattle sale. Besides, I know a good Angus as well as you do. And you’re not using my money for a bunch of low down, useless culls.”
“You sayin’ I don’t know how to buy cattle?” he challenged.
“I’m sayin’ you might be a Luckadeau, but I’m a Torres and we cut our teeth in a sale barn, so I’m goin’ With you. Besides, by damn, you never know when Amanda or Jennifer or some barroom rosy just like them might take a fancy to what’s hiding under your belt buckle. And darlin’, I don’t share what’s mine with nobody. And that’s a fact.”
John Torres heard the last of the argument as he came to inform them supper was ready to be served. “Just say ‘Yes, dear.’ She gets that temper from the Jiminez side of the family. And I’m tellin’ you right now, it don’t mellow with age. The only redeeming quality is that they’re passionate in everything they do.”
He winked and looped an arm through his daughter’s arm and his son-in-law’s, and walking between them, he led them to the table laden down with a combination of Mexican and Anglo foods.
Beau lay on his back in the bunkhouse, surrounded by the snores of both his and Milli’s male relatives. Soft rain peppered the metal roof and then a low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Thank goodness, the wedding was going to be inside the barn. It wouldn’t matter if the grass was wet or if it stormed - like it had that morning when he found Milli in the pasture putting Jim’s tractor in the barn.
One memory led to another. There she was in the off-white lace dress, sitting in a chair on the edge of the reception room at the wedding; in his arms at the trailer; cussing at him and threatening to shoot him; when his heart remembered her and he couldn’t; hot habanero peppers; three wonderful days of honeymooning; and coming home. Suddenly he wanted to ride out to the barn where they met that morning when they made love for the second time. She wouldn’t be there, but he could stand in the doorway and smell the soft rain and hay and besides, he couldn’t sleep anyway. Call it nervous jitters or just plain fear that something would go wrong at the last minute, since it always did. Like they all said, “He’s lucky in everything but he sure ain’t lucky in love.”
Milli turned the covers back on the four-poster oak cannonball bed, and heard the low rumble of thunder just as her head hit the pillow where she would spend every night for the rest of her life. Only starting tomorrow night, Beau would be right beside her, and the bed wouldn’t seem nearly so big and empty.
Before she turned out the light, she looked at the dress hanging in the closet. She’d argued with her mother, declaring the whole time she was going to be married in the off-white lace dress Beau saw her wearing first, but in the end she lost the argument. Although she steadfastly refused to wear a big, white dress and veil, she did let her mother talk her into a simple ivory satin sheath with a wide portrait collar of lace. She would wear satin lace-up boots and Jana was styling her hair in a French roll with rosebuds worked into the curls at the top of the twist.
Lucky In Love Page 24