Lucky In Love (16 page)

She set her empty glass on the rough wood cart beside the swing. “Cost you a lot more than that.”

He brushed the back of his hand across her bare arm as he put his glass beside hers. The next second he gathered her into his arms and kissed her. No fanfare, no talk, no asking. Just a kiss that made both of them shudder like it always did.

“Could we try that one more time? I know one of these times it’s going to lack pizzazz,” she said.

“It’s always the same. Always has pizzazz. Just like the first one at the trailer that night.”

She pulled his mouth back down to hers for another kiss, amazed that even without the desire to get even with Matthew, without the liquor, the chemistry was still there. She tasted sweet lemon tea with just a faint tinge of the peppermint gum. Every bone in her body turned to jelly as she longed for more than just kisses and pressed herself against him so tightly she could hardly breathe. She’d be in the cold shower at least an hour after he left.

He slid his tongue over her bottom lip and savored bare lips with a touch of lemon on them. Desire surged through his body. He’d have to throw himself in a tub of ice cubes when he got home.

“I think we better stop that,” she pulled away.

He kept his arm around her. “Why? I thought we were doing it just right.”

“Too right. And besides, if you look to your right don’t turn your head, just your eyes - you’ll see Granny and Poppy peeking through the curtain.”

He tipped her chin back for another kiss.

She shook her head when the kiss ended. “I told you, we have an audience.”

He kissed her again. “Then let’s not disappoint them.”

She saw stars exploding like a Fourth of July fireworks show.

“Think we’ll survive this courtin’ process?” He finally hugged her close, pulling her head down to rest on his shoulder.

“Ain’t damn likely,” she said with a sigh.

************************************************************************************************

MILLI AWOKE EARLY THE NEXT SATURDAY MORNING. It was barely dawn and for the first time in weeks, she could sleep late. With a moan, she slammed the pillow on top of her head and tried to will herself back to sleep, but it didn’t work. She’d been out past midnight with Beau the night before and there was nothing pressing on the ranch to make her rise before daybreak. Finally, in exasperation, she sat up and looked out the window. The moon was disappearing and the sun was still just a sliver of orange in the eastern sky. She picked up the monitor so she could hear Katy and carried it to the kitchen, where she made herself a cup of strong, black coffee and carried it out to the deck to watch the birth of a new day. When she should have seen the rounded end of a bright ball coming up on the horizon, dark clouds scuttled around, covering what few rays there were.

Jim walked slowly out onto the deck. He set his coffee cup on a round table and eased down into a padded chaise lounge. “Mornin’. Doin’ pretty good for an old man with a steel hip, now, ain’t I? Don’t tell Granny I left the walker in the living room. She’s scared I’ll fall.”

She handed him the mug when he was settled. “Poppy, you ain’t never going to be old.”

A low rumble heralded the approach of a storm.

“We might get that summer rain we’ve all been praying for so hard these past weeks,” she said.

Jim slapped the arm of the chair. “Well, damnation. Saddle up Wild Fire and run out to the north pasture before it hits and put that tractor in the barn. I told Slim there wasn’t no way in hell we’d get a rain this early and not to worry about leaving it out. Guess it wouldn’t hurt nothing for it to get wet, but I sure hate to see a rusty piece of machinery.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have it in the barn and be back by the time Hilda has the sausage fried for breakfast. You listen to this monitor. When Katy wakes up, tell Granny to change her diaper and bring her downstairs. If I’m not back by breakfast, save me a biscuit. I’ll be waiting out the storm in the barn.”

“Take your slicker,” Jim said.

Milli was already on her way into the house and shoving her feet into dusty boots beside the back door. “Oh, I won’t need it. Just a summer rain and it’ll probably feel good, but if it’s lightning, I won’t bring Wild Fire back ‘til it finishes. Don’t want to take a chance of letting my favorite horse get hit.”

She stuffed the tail of her nightshirt with a picture of Taz on the front into faded jeans with holes in the knees.

“Don’t you take no chances, either, girl, and be damned sure you don’t rein up under a tree. That’s more dangerous than being right out in the lightning,” Jim reminded her. “Barn is good and dry so stay there if it’s a bad storm.”

She kissed him on the forehead. “Yessir, and don’t you try to get up out of that chair ‘til Granny helps you.” She jogged off toward the corrals.

******

Buster shook Beau awake that morning. “Wake up, son, there’s a storm brewing off in the southwest, and the television weather man says it’s comin’ this way at a fair speed. Your prize bull is out in the pasture where all those damned pecan trees are, and if it starts lightning it could kill him dead as a doorknob.”

Beau was up like a shot. “Three-wheeler got gas?”

“Yep,” Buster said. “Guess the fastest thing to do is to move that bull to the west pasture over there where the hay barn is and house him up ‘til this has blown over. Who’d ever thought we’d have a storm like this in July? Lord only knows how bad the gardens need it, and the pastures too, but that bull don’t need to be out in it.”

Beau dressed in the same clothes he’d dropped beside his bed the night before. “I should have already moved him. Thanks for waking me, Buster. Tell Rosa to save me some breakfast. I might have to ride out the storm in the barn with the bull.” He combed his unruly blond curls with his fingers.

He found the bull hugged up to a tall pecan tree and rumbling thunder told him the storm was approaching fast. It wasn’t an easy feat to convince him to abandon his security tree and be herded into an adjoining pasture with a nice big barn. With lots of creative cussing and just plain stubbornness, Beau finally got him inside the barn.

He could smell the rain, even if he didn’t feel a single drop falling yet. He jumped on his three-wheeler making plans to call Milli as soon as he was back at the ranch. Rain would put the hired hands in the bunkhouse for the day. He could listen to them moan about how much work they were missing, how hot and muggy the rain was going to make the rest of the week, and how boring it was to be locked up inside. Or he could spend the day with Katy. The latter sounded much, much better.

He had just topped a rise when he spotted Milli riding Wild Fire like the devil was chasing her. Her ponytail was straight out behind her, just like the horse’s tail. The way she sat a horse was as graceful as a ballet.

“Ballet, nothing. More like a sassy gypsy from a hellcat movie of some kind. Now just where do they think they’re headed in this kind of weather?” Beau wondered aloud. Then he saw the tractor parked in the field.

It might not be brand new, but Jim didn’t like his equipment left out in the rain. If it had a full tank of gas, it could be dangerous with lightning dancing around the country. He drove his three-wheeler back into the barn with the bull, slammed the door shut and bolted it with a cross bar, and then trotted over to the fence separating his land from the Lazy Z. He put the palm of his hand on the top of a post and hopped over the fence like a little boy playing leap frog with his father.

He got Milli’s attention about the time she reached the tractor and the first giant rain drops fell behind a blinding flash of lightning and the roar of thunder. “Get Wild Fire inside. I’ll drive the tractor in.”

She nodded and raced the horse to shelter. She dismounted and swung the huge doors open, led her horse to the back of the hay barn, and tethered her to a support pole. She stripped off the saddle and her blanket, and rubbed her wet hide down with hands full of hay. By the time she finished, Beau had the tractor inside and the doors closed. A crash of thunder and a sudden downpour of rain sounded like bullets on the barn’s tin roof. Milli shuddered even though she wasn’t cold.

“Thanks. Guess we almost got caught,” she said.

He shook his hair like a wet puppy and water sprayed in all directions. “Glad Buster heard an early report. I had my bull out in a pasture with a whole grove of pecan trees. When I went to check on him, the sorry sucker had hugged right up to one like it was his brother. Seen a lot of stupid cows die because they tried to hide under a tree.”

She nodded. “We’ve lost a few, even though trees are few and far between out in my part of the world. They don’t have much sense when it comes to finding a safe spot. Well, guess we might as well sit a spell. It don’t look like it’s going to wear itself out for a little while.”

Beau grinned and started toward her with a mischievous look in his eye.

She backed up until she felt the ladder leading to the loft. “Don’t look at me like that. It reminds me of the night in the trailer, and you’re not drunk and I’m not getting over a broken engagement. So just sit down over there on that bale of hay and don’t get closer than six feet to me. I don’t trust me any more than I trust you.”

He took two long strides and pinned her against the ladder. “I’m stone cold sober. But if I had one right now I’d drink a double just to loosen up a little.” He inhaled deeply, taking in the clean smell of hay, rain, and the faint smell of Milli’s perfume leftover from the night before.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. If he wanted to play games she’d sure give him a run for his money or hormones or whatever he was willing to put on the betting table. “Feeling a little tight, are you?”

“You’d never know just how tight. I’d be willing to fall off my wagon if you’d fall off yours.”

“But I just don’t like the stuff. I’ve never been blind drunk,” she argued as he brushed kisses across her eyes, her cheeks, her ears and neck. “And I’ve never been on a wagon.”

“Haven’t you? I quit liquor and you quit men. You get off yours and I might get off mine for a shot of Jack Daniels every once in a while.”

He picked her up and carried her to a mound of hay at the far side of the barn, kissing her all the way. He grabbed a horse blanket from a nail on a support beam and threw it on the hay, then laid her down gently. “Feeling like somebody upstairs must think you and I belong together. What’s the odds of both of us getting cooped up in this barn all by ourselves? Not very good. But here we are.”

“Not really. Wild Fire is here.”

“Wild Fire don’t tell secrets,” he whispered. “She didn’t tell about the day at the creek, did she? I bet she won’t even watch us. We’d be boring to her.”

“Ain’t damn likely.” She used his favorite phrase between fast heartbeats and quick short gasps as she tried to control her fevered body.

He covered her mouth with another kiss and both of them forgot about the horse on the other side of the barn. The rain played music on the tin roof, but they couldn’t hear the thunder for the loud beating of their hearts. He removed her T-shirt as gently as if it were the silkiest-lingerie. She moaned and for a fleeting moment knew she should put a stop to what they were about to do. She still hadn’t gotten any form of birth control, but right that moment nothing seemed to matter except satisfying that dull, aching need filling her whole being.

He removed her jeans slowly from her hips, kissing her belly button above her cotton bikini underpants. Looking deep into her brown eyes, he pulled her down to a sitting position, facing him. Planting soft kisses on her eyelids, forehead, and the tip of her nose, he reached around behind her and unhooked her bra.

She flipped the bra away and leaned forward to undo the first button on his shirt. “It’s my turn.”

She’d envisioned several scenarios for that moment. A motel room with satin sheets and candles. A cabin on the banks of a river. Certainly not a hay barn with a raging storm outside. But what better place for two ranchers? The smell of fresh-cut hay and a raging thunderstorm only heightened desire as she buried her face in the soft hair on his chest.

Then fear grabbed her in a vice grip and for a fleeting moment she panicked and almost called a halt to the whole thing.

“I’m in love with you,” he whispered into her hair as his hand caressed the soft feminine flesh on her bare back and she moaned.

Desire and fear fought for a few seconds. Desire won the battle. She unzipped his jeans and peeled them off his slender hips and gasped.

“Milli, we don’t have to do this. We can wait,” he whispered.

She put her finger on his mouth and kissed his eyelids. “Don’t say anything. Just make love to me like you did before.”

******

Later, when the thunder ended and their hearts were beating normally, Beau propped up on an elbow. “I meant it. I do,” he whispered as if Wild Fire might tell everything he knew.

“Shhh.” She didn’t know why she didn’t want him to tell her that he loved her. Maybe it was because Matthew said those same words and that’s all they were - just empty words.

Beau twirled a strand of her long, dark hair around his finger. “What are we going to do about us?”

Milli snuggled closer to him. “I don’t want to talk about any of that right now. I just want to lie here beside you for five more minutes, then I have to go home and pretend this never happened.”

“Why?”

“Because breakfast is ready.”

“No, why pretend this didn’t happen?”

“Beau, I’m still sorting things out. I’ve been trying, honest I have. But there’s got to be more to it than just the physical part. Give me some time.”

He stood up and began to dress. “It’s yours, sweetheart. But I betcha Jim and Mary both can tell by that glow in your face that you didn’t spend your whole morning watching a storm go by.”

“And I suppose Buster is going to believe that you spent your morning talking to that stupid, ugly Angus bull?”

He knelt down beside her. “Hey, that bull made more than enough money last year to put Katy through her senior year of high school. By the time she’s ready for college, the money will be ready for her. Where I come from, if you borrow a feller’s knife and it’s closed, you hand it back closed, but if you borrow it and it’s open, then you hand it back opened.”

“Or it’ll bring bad luck.”

“You unbuttoned this shirt, madam. I think maybe you better put it back the way you found it. I sure don’t need to take any chances where love is concerned. You know what they say about me, and this is one time I want them to be wrong.”

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons and it took every ounce of will power she had to keep from peeling the shirt from his wide chest and throwing it to the side. “There, even though that’s the hardest job I’ve ever done we sure wouldn’t want you to be unlucky in love, now would we?”

He bent forward from the waist and kissed her on the forehead, sending a new wave of hot chills down her body. “Thank you. I’ll saddle up Wild Fire for you, and you can get on home to your breakfast. I’ll see you tonight at the dance over at the Lazy Z. You wearin’ that lace dress again?”

“No, I am not. Folks would think it’s the only thing I own.” She pulled on her boots as she watched him put the blanket and saddle on her horse. He wasted few motions and had led the horse out by the time she had her shirt tucked back inside her jeans.

He handed her the reins. “Have I told you today that you’re beautiful, Milli Torres? And you can wear exactly what you have on to the dance tonight and you’ll be the prettiest woman there.”

“Bet you say that to all the girls.”

He watched her sling a leg over Wild Fire’s back. “Nope, just the ones who button my shirt back up. Hey, you ever think maybe that’s why I’m not lucky in love? You didn’t re-button my shirt two years ago? Seriously, I only say it to the one who has been my dream angel for two years. I’ll open the door. See you tonight.”

The creek was swollen to the top of its banks, so she spurred Wild Fire, dug her knees in, and the two of them jumped the raging water at the narrowest place. Even flying over the creek didn’t lighten the tight feeling in her chest. Something was wrong. Now wouldn’t that just be a hoot… if she’d gotten pregnant again on a one-time love affair. Surely the odds of that happening twice in a woman’s lifetime were slim to none.