Lucky In Love (6 page)

“Mommy, look!” Katy popped her thumb out of her mouth and pointed toward another child in a stroller.

Amanda snarled. “Slobbers. Yuck. There’s a good enough reason right there for me never to want kids.”

“Thank you for pushing her around,” Milli said. “Amanda says you’re off to the movies. We’ll take her now so you won’t be late.”

“My pleasure. Anytime this girl needs a chauffeur you just call on me. I love kids.”

Amanda jerked his arm possessively. “Come on.”

“Be seeing you ladies.” He tipped his hat and followed along beside her like a pet hound on a leash.

Mary frowned and grunted. Milli just watched, mesmerized. He must be drugged to let Amanda treat him like that. He surely didn’t act like that when he was alone with Milli. That first day he’d acted like a madman, and when he found her helping the cow deliver the calf they’d had another shouting match. Just the brief touch of his hand made her knees go weak, and she could tell he was affected by it too. And all that Amazon witch had to do was tug on his arm and he followed two steps behind her like a servant. Something just wasn’t right somewhere, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it.

Mary finally found her voice. “Well, I do declare. This has been an afternoon, now hasn’t it? I can’t believe Beau knows what that bitch has got planned, and I don’t know who needs to tell him.”

Milli put her hands up in defense. “Well, don’t look at me. It’s not any of my business if he wants to make a complete jackass out of himself.”

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MILLI RODE THROUGH THE PASTURES TO COUNT COWS, see if there were any new calves, and check the fence lines. The sun was a piece of an orange ball on the eastern horizon and morning dew made the grass blades glisten like they’d been kissed by diamonds.

Diamonds. Now why did she have to think about diamonds and that ring Beau put on Amanda’s hand last weekend? It was every bit as big as the one she’d handed to Matthew through the motel door. She wondered what her life might have been this fine summer morning if her best friend hadn’t seen him going into the motel. But, that was water under a bridge that had been blown to smithereens long, long ago.

Two new bull calves were in the north pasture. She pulled a small notebook from the pocket in her shirt and wrote down the tag numbers of the cows who’d given birth since the first of the week. In the east pasture, she found a calf, just minutes old, with the umbilical cord still dangling as it tried to stand up on its wobbly legs to get its first taste of mother’s milk. Again, she pulled out the notebook and wrote down which cow had given birth, remembering the morning just two days ago when she and Beau watched a calf do the same thing.

Poppy was going to be happy when she reported back to him today. And Granny, bless her heart, just might find something to talk, about other than Beau and Amanda. Granny and Hilda had talked it so firmly to death, Milli thought about having a funeral for the issue complete with a preacher and floral wreaths. Just bury the whole thing and get on with life. Jim just huffed and snorted around, declaring that when that gold digger got finished with Beau he’d be worth as much as a newborn kitten in the snow. And this morning as she was leaving the corral, Slim said again that the boy was just plumb out of his mind to be thinking about bringing a city slicker like that to the ranch.

She was sick to death of listening to it, and if they didn’t stop, she and Katy were going back to west Texas, no matter what she had to tell Granny and Poppy. Just when she thought she’d gotten over it, there he was, bigger than life, sober as a judge on Sunday, and fussing about some Angus bull he thought was capable of sprouting wings and sitting right up there in heaven next to the angel Gabriel. Talk about a small world!

She crawled down off Wild Fire to check the fence she’d repaired and found it still as tight as it was the day she’d popped the barbed wire for Beau’s benefit. How dare he hide up there like some kind of detective out of a book. She looked to see if there was the glint off binoculars that morning, but instead saw a three-wheeler lying on its side about halfway down the hill.

“Good enough for him. Depend on those big boy tricycles when a horse can do…” Then she saw a buzzard circle just above the tree tops and light not far from the three-wheeler. It waddled a few feet closer and she saw a tattered red shirtsleeve flap enough to send it back into the sky.

She put her foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Wild Fire cleared the fence with grace and kept trotting until she felt the reins tighten and Milli fly off her back.

“Beau, what happened?” She hurried to his side.

The three-wheeler had his left arm and leg pinned and he’d hit his head on a rock when he overturned. Dried blood covered his face, and only one eye opened a mere slit when he realized she was bending over him, then he closed it slowly and figured he’d really died and his soul was on its way to heaven. Instead of his whole life flashing in front of him, a mere portion of it played out again. He was back in Texarkana at his cousin’s wedding. He knew he couldn’t hold his liquor - but then who cared, anyway? Jennifer had just dumped him for his cousin.

“Hey, Beau, you better lighten up. You’re going to have a demon headache in the morning,” Darrin had told him.

“Good. Then I won’t be able to think.”

“Well, I won’t be here to listen to you moan and bitch about it,” Damn said.

Then the most beautiful lady in the whole world dropped right out of the sky and sat down beside him. She wore an off-white lacy dress with a slit up the side and long, dangly, silver earrings shaped like teardrops. They’d left the party and gone to the trailer, where they wound up in the back bedroom. When he woke up she was gone.

He remembered stumbling out of the bedroom the next morning to find two of his cousins, Slade and Griffin, drinking coffee around the kitchen table. “Where’s my dark-eyed lady? Is she in the bathroom?”

Griffin poured him a cup of hot coffee and handed it to him. “What lady? You must’ve drunk half the champagne at the wedding. There ain’t nobody here but us boys and hasn’t been all night. You drove yourself home and passed out in the bedroom. We could hear you snoring all night, and ain’t nobody come out of there but you this morning. Didn’t no one come home with you, Beau. You must have been dreaming.”

“But she was here. She was wearing a lace dress and her eyes were big and brown and…”

“And I’m going to start drinking champagne if that’s what you dream about when you do,” Slade said.

“I swear it. She was here. Right there in my arms, and I fell in love. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“You fell in love with a dream. Have a cup of coffee and forget it. And remember what too much champagne does,” Griffin said.

“I’ll never drink again,” Beau said seriously.

“I hope not. It’s not worth it the next morning, is it?”

When he went back to the bedroom he found one of the teardrop earrings lying on the floor beside his boots and he knew down deep in his heart that it wasn’t a dream. He remembered that someone said her name was Amelia Jiminez and she was from down in the valley. He talked to several people who had been at the wedding and one lady thought she remembered one of the Jiminez girls’ daughters being there, but she couldn’t recollect where all those girls had ended up after they were married. Seemed as though one of them was out in California and one of them in Mexico City.

The next month he went to Oklahoma when his aunt called. He’d worked hard at the ranch and met Amanda.

She wasn’t Amelia, but then maybe Amelia was a just a dream and the teardrop earring was left in the room by another woman. He really believed it until right now, when he opened one eye and there was Amelia bent over him, showing him the way to eternity. He closed his eyes and got ready for the trip.

Milli wiped the blood with the tail of her cotton shirt, then ran back to Wild Fire and grabbed a cell phone from the saddlebag.

“Granny, I need help fast,” she said when her grandmother answered the phone. “Out in the east pasture. Right by the fence those silly kids cut last week. Where Beau keeps his bull. He’s had an accident. Send in an ambulance. I’m afraid to move him.”

“No, not the bull. It’s Beau. He’s turned over on one of those three-wheelers and hit a rock. His arm and leg are pinned. Call the closest hospital and send me an ambulance. He opened one eye but he’s unconscious right now.” She flipped the phone back together and tossed it back into the saddlebag.

It was the longest thirty minutes she’d ever spent in her life. Buster arrived first on a four-wheeler, leading the ambulance down the cow path to the scene of the accident.

“Ammmmm,” Beau muttered when they lifted the machine off his arm and leg, and loaded him into the ambulance.

“I’ll ride with him,” she said. “Buster, will you see to it Wild Fire is taken back home?”

Buster nodded. “Yes, ma’am, Miss Milli. I’ll be over to the hospital soon as we can. When he wakes up, tell him I’m on the way.”

“Ammmm,” he tried to say her name but his tongue was too thick. He felt a sharp prick in his arm and everything went dark again.

He was evidently trying to call for Amanda and Milli’s heart was a heavy piece of lead. But why shouldn’t he call out for Amanda? He had just asked the woman to marry him, and even if she was a purebred witch, evidently Beau loved her with all his heart.

They wheeled him into the emergency room and she answered questions while they took him straight back through a set of double doors. Then she sat down in the waiting room and wished she were anywhere in the whole world right then but where she was. Amanda would be coming through the doors any minute in one of her fancy little short-tailed suits and high-heeled shoes. Her blonde hair would be picture perfect and her big, blue eyes would be filled with tears. And Milli sat there looking like the last rose of summer. She’d lost the clip holding her hair back and it looked as if it hadn’t been combed in weeks. Beau’s blood stained the front of her shirt, and there were wet grass stains on the knees of her faded jeans.

She heard the whoosh of the doors as they opened and looked up, expecting to see Amanda with that smug, better-than-you look in her eyes she had in the restroom at the Spencers’ barn dance. But it was Mary who rushed to her side. She took her granddaughter’s hand in her wrinkled one.

“What happened?”

“Looked to me like he hit a rock with the front wheel of the three-wheeler and it threw him. Pinned his arm and leg when it rolled on him, and he hit his head on another rock when he tumbled. There’s a gash on the back of his head, and the EMT said he could have a concussion. He kept trying to say Amanda’s name. I guess somebody should call her.”

“Well, I’m not calling her,” Mary declared. “Buster or some of the ranch hands can take care of that. I’m not wasting my quarter.”

“Granny!”

“Well, that’s a fact, honey, and I ain’t apologizing, either,” Mary said bluntly.

Buster was the next one to arrive. He plopped down in a chair beside Mary. “How’s he doing? Got him sewed up yet?”

“Don’t know,” Mary said.

“He tried to say Amanda’s name. He said Ammmm, at least. I figure he was trying to say her name.”

Buster rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I ain’t using my quarter to call that woman. I sure don’t want to have to sit in this little room with her for very long.”

Mary patted his shoulder. “My sentiments, exactly.”

A doctor stuck his head through the doors. “Anyone out here by the name of Amelia Jiminez?”

“Amelia Jiminez?” Mary asked.

“Yes, Beau Luckadeau keeps demanding someone by that name come hold his hand. He’s got a concussion and we can’t quieten him…”

Someone said you are Amelia Jiminez.

“Maybe I can help.” Milli stood up slowly. He must have only remembered Amelia… not Camillia… when he awoke the next day, and somewhere back in the dusty attic of his brain he remembered Amelia Jiminez and that night.

Both eyes were open and the blood had been washed from his face when she peeped through the curtain. “Amelia. I knew you was more than a dream.” He held out his hand and she took it.

“We’re going to put a few staples in the back of your head where you hit the rock. You are a lucky man that your arm and leg are just bruised and not broken,” the doctor said.

He winced when the staples went through his skin, “Where did you go, Amelia?”

“Home,” she said.

“Now we’re going to get you settled into a room for tonight. You can probably go home tomorrow if everything looks good. You’ve got a concussion and you’ll have a big headache. Head wounds bleed a lot, but I don’t think you need blood.” The doctor filled a hypodermic with clear liquid. “This is going to make you sleep for a while.”

He searched the room frantically until he brought her back into focus. “Amelia. Don’t go home again. Stay with me this time. They said you were a dream, but I kept the earring. It’s on my key chain in my pocket.”

She patted his arm and touched his unshaven cheek “Just shut your eyes and go to sleep. It’ll be all right. When you wake up everything will be fine.”

“You’ll be right here?”

“Just shut your eyes,” she said again.

He awoke late that afternoon, to the tune of a bass drum doing double time behind his eyes and a whole orchestra playing some kind of horrid rock music - off key, an out of tune. Amelia was gone and some brassy woman with blonde hair sat in a chair next to his bed. She was using an emery board to file her long nails, which looked like hawk talons. The grating sound raked across every nerve in his ears.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Amanda. Your future wife.”

“Where is Amelia?”

Her eyes narrowed down to slits as she eyed him, lying there with bruises and scrapes all over his arm and face. “Who is Amelia?”

“My dark-eyed lady. Where is she?”

She opened her purse and put her emery board away before she stood up. “That two-bit, wet-back hussy from the dance? Is that who you’re talking about? The hired hand from over at the Lazy Z who found you and brought you in this place?”

“That’s not Amelia… that’s Milli, Jim’s granddaughter,” he argued.

“Well, that’s who found you and called the ambulance. She was still sitting here when I arrived, but I informed her that she could leave and never come back.”

He turned his head toward the windows. “Go away.”

Amanda suddenly saw a secure financial future slipping from her hands. “Oh, darling, I was so worried, and so angry with all those people for not calling me sooner.” She willed a trained tear to escape from under her heavily made up eyelashes.

A tall, dark-haired doctor breezed into the room. “And how is our patient? Looks like he’s awake and talking, at least. Getting hungry? Supper trays should arrive soon, and since you’ve not had nausea, you can go ahead and eat real food.”

Amanda quickly faced the windows and dabbed the tear off her cheek, and by the time she turned back to face the good-looking doctor she had a sweet smile plastered on her face. “Doctor, he doesn’t know me.”

“That’s not a surprise. He’s had a concussion. But if I had a girlfriend as pretty as you are, I think I’d remember you in a hurry.”

She opened her blue eyes even bigger and tucked her chin in a bashful pose. “Well, thank you. But I’m not his girlfriend. I’m just a caring friend.”

“Well, now, that’s interesting.”

Amanda checked his finger for a wedding band and seeing not even a line where one once was, she carefully removed her engagement ring and dropped it in her pocket. “Are you new in Ardmore?”