Lucky In Love (15 page)

She zeroed in on him as he stood up at the shallow edge of the water, rising up like a blond Greek god from the creek. “I ain’t watching a thief or a bull, but that sure undoes the effects of the swim! That is one fine hunk of man out there. And I didn’t just imagine that mole on the left side of his bottom, either. It’s still there, and all that soft hair on his chest. I’d better put these glasses away and cool myself down. Betcha my blood pressure is higher than Poppy’s at a cattle sale.” She put her hand over her mouth, hoping the sound of her giggles didn’t carry with the Oklahoma breeze to where he was zipping up his jeans.

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SHE PULLED THE RUBBER BAND OUT OF HER HAIR AND ran her fingers through the wet tangles. It would be dry by the time she reached the ranch and no one would ever know she got caught with her underwear down around her ankles. Quite literally.

Well, almost. Actually I got caught with my bra on the saddle horn and my underwear hugging up next to a willow tree.

Beau wouldn’t dare mention it because he’d look like a fool, and she’d be hanged from the nearest pecan tree by a brand new rope before she’d tell a soul that she’d been caught floating down the creek in her birthday suit.

Just as she reached to open the back door, Hilda opened it from the inside. “You look a little flushed, sweetie. Them boots is muddy. You get them off right there. I just mopped this kitchen floor and your granny would have your hide if you traipsed mud on her pretty blue carpet. Katy is in the den with Jim. They’ve been playing with that stacking toy thing all morning. I don’t know if she likes her toys best or if her Poppa Jim does. What on earth have you been doin’, girl? Your shirt is as wet as if you’d gone swimming in it.”

“I did. It was hot, so I rode Wild Fire through the creek and splashed water all over us both.”

“Girl, you’re a grown woman now. You know better than to race a horse on a hot day and then get it all wet. Hummph.”

She stuffed her socks into a clothes hamper and padded across the floor in her bare feet. “Oh, Hilda, quit your worryin’. I let him cool off. Matter of fact, I shucked my clothes, hung my bra on my saddle horn, and went skinny dipping. Felt real good.”

“You did what? Girl, you ain’t a kid. What would have happened if the hay haulers had come along and caught you out there without no clothes on your body? Grown woman with a baby of her own acting like that.”

“Come on, Hilda. Didn’t you and Slim ever go down to the creek at night, shuck out of your clothes, and let the minnows nibble on your little toes or whatever else they could find?”

A smile played at the corners of Hilda’s mouth. “Get on out of here and play with Katy. And you be careful down around that creek, girl. Last time Slim and me - oh, never you mind. That ain’t a story to be tellin’ no young girl like you.”

Milli giggled and disappeared into the den where she grabbed Katy and swung her around until both of them were breathless.

“Well, aren’t you in a fine mood,” Jim said. “I’ll send you out to the hay fields again if it makes you that happy.”

“Poppy, it’s been a wonderful year. We won’t be buying hay all winter. The Lazy Z is going to support the herd. There’s the pole barn full of round bales and two barns full of square ones and the cows are going to be happy all winter. Wait until the first frost and we -” She stopped in the middle of her sentence. She wouldn’t be here this winter to feed the fruits of her labors to the cows. She’d be in Hereford, Texas. No more battling with Beau. No more fussing with Hilda. Just back to Hereford and her routine.

“We what?”

“Oh, nothing, I was just thinking. I better get upstairs and get the creek water out of my hair.”

“And how did creek water get in your hair?” Jim asked.

Hilda answered for her as she brought a tray laden with cookies and coffee into the room. “Oh, she’s been out there skinny dippin’ in the creek. Mary just drove up out front from the grocery store and she’ll need something to keep her going until supper, so don’t you two eat all the cookies up from her. I don’t care if you do have an appetite from swimming in the creek water. Lord, the bailers would have gone stark ravin’ mad if they’d come up on you out there without no clothes on. Or what if Mr. Beau had been riding by on one of his three-wheeler things and seen you? You better think about those things. And yes, girl, you better get that creek scum out of your hair. It’ll make it dull and limp.”

Jim cocked his head to one side. “Skinny dipping?”

“I told her she was too old for that kind of shenanigans. But does she ever listen to me? Nooo. Still sittin’ there when I told her to get up there and get that junk out of her hair.”

Milli giggled in spite of the sadness that nagged at her. Hilda would always be fussing about something, thank goodness.

At six o’clock sharp, Beau parked his pickup in the driveway. She watched him open the door and shake the legs of his crispy-creased blue jeans down to stack around his shiny boot tops. His hair was finally growing out around where the stitches had been. She could see the scar from her bedroom window as she looked at him. She couldn’t keep the grin off her face when she thought about that scar, since it was the last thing she saw before she conned him into the creek.

“Milli, Beau is here,” Jim called from the bottom of the stairs.

She opened the door and yelled back. “Be right down. Tell him I’m putting on Katy’s sandals.”

Beau’s grin was extra big when she entered the room. “Well, now, don’t the ladies look pretty tonight. I do believe your momma looks good in anything she wants to wear, Katy. I believe she’d even look good in a cloak of creek water.”

“Daddy!” Katy Scarlett reached for him.

“What?” Mary asked. “What did you say?”

Jim Torres bit his tongue to keep from laughing out loud. Either Beau had found her and she knew it, or he’d been sly enough to hide and watch the show and she didn’t know it. But she hadn’t gone skinny dipping and gotten away with it Scot free after all.

“I said I love Milli in that shade of yellow.”

“I thought you said something about creek water,” Jim grinned.

Just wait until he told Mary about it later. They’d have a good laugh. Milli seemed bound, damned, and determined that she would be going back to Texas at the end of the summer. Nothing anyone said could make her change her mind and he was sure Beau had tried harder than any of them. He was sure going to miss the fun when she and Katy went back to Hereford.

Milli took Beau’s arm and steered him toward the door.

He resisted. “Why are you in such an all-fired hurry? I’d like to hold my daughter before we go rushing off to put her in a car seat.”

“I thought maybe you’d already been here this afternoon. Something about riding Brassy over to show her your horse.” Milli kept a straight face but it wasn’t easy.

“I thought about it but got distracted.” He turned his attention to Katy. “Daddy missed you so much. Two days is way too long to be away from you.”

He buried his face in soft blonde curls and a sweet baby lotion smell. “It’s just not normal for a daddy not to love his baby girl in two whole days.”

“Now can we go?”

“What’s the big hurry?” Jim asked. “Ice cream place don’t close ‘til ten o’clock. Come on in the den and sit a spell with us. You can play with Katy better in the den than in the ice cream parlor, anyhow.”

“Would you mind, Milli?” Beau whispered.

She couldn’t refuse him. If he’d asked to go skinny dipping with her in that voice this morning instead of being so insolent, she would have waded through the water and helped him peel those skintight faded jeans down over his fine rear end with a freckle on the left cheek.

“That’s fine. We can go for ice cream later, or not at all. You know we don’t have to go somewhere every Wednesday night,” she said.

“Thank you.”

She felt as if she’d just handed him the winning ticket to a million dollar lottery.

He sat down in the middle of the floor and put Katy in front of him. “What shall we play with first? The stacking thing or the telephone?”

“Stack ‘em up,” Katy said, picking up the stacking toy she and her grandfather had played with all day. She pulled all the bright-colored plastic donuts from the stem and threw them all over the den floor. Then she put her hands on the floor, her bottom straight up in the air, and stood up as only an agile toddler can do, and tried to retrieve all the donuts at one time. She dropped one, then another as she tried to hold all five at one time, then she stomped her foot and drew her eyes down, just like Beau did when he was angry. She carefully picked up the yellow one in her right hand and the red one in her left hand and earned them to Beau. She went back to the green one and blue one and finally to the purple one. When they were all in front of Beau, she plopped down with a thud and began fitting them onto the rocking stem.

“Boy, she is one smart cookie, isn’t she? Okay, put this orange one on first.” He handed her the biggest ring and she slipped it on the yellow earner and looked up.

Jim whispered, “Clap for her. Yeah, Katy! That’s good.”

Four adults clapped as if Katy had just scored the winning three-pointer in the last two seconds of a basketball game.

She smiled, showing off baby teeth and a deep dimple.

Beau’s heart swelled so big he thought his chest was going to explode in tiny pieces all over the den.

He kissed her on the forehead. “You’re daddy’s girl.”

“Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. My daddy. My daddy.” Katy chattered as she put the red ring on the holder.

“Did you hear that?” Beau said. “She said ‘My daddy.’ Did you hear her, Milli?”

Milli heard it loud and clear and her heavy heart fell past the floor and down into the dirt at least six feet. She saw the future in all its brilliant colors outlined in Beau’s smile and eyes, but she didn’t want to see it. She’d known today was coming way back when he told her to look in the back seat of the pickup and tell her what she saw, when he pitched a blue-blooded fit because she hadn’t combed the woods of Louisiana to tell him she was having his child. But knowing it was coming wasn’t facing it, and Katy had just brought reality to her on a silver platter. Katy had a father and she was recognizing him. She suddenly wanted to grab her child and run until she was out of breath.

“I heard her,” she finally said.

“Bedtime,” Milli said at eight thirty. “You want to help give her a bath?”

“You bet I do,” he said.

Well, bath time isn’t a whole lot different than splashing in the creek, and he might change his mind about his “pretty baby girl” by the time we got the job done.

He didn’t. His freshly ironed jeans were splotched with as much water as the faded ones were at the creek that morning. His shirt was wet from picking Katy out of the tub for Milli to wrap the towel around her as she wiggled and giggled.

“Guess all you women like to play in the water,” he said.

“That’s Torres blood,” Milli said smartly.

“Bet if I set her down she could jump on a horse before I could blink.”

“Yes, she could. And take another horse with her while she was at it. She’s going to be independent. Haven’t you heard her say, ‘ride, peas’? Those were her first words. My father put her on the horse with him before she cut her first teeth.”

“Just like her mother, and as beautiful, with nothing but a soft shimmer of water floating over her beautiful body.”

“And if you don’t hush, Granny will hear you.”

“You didn’t tell her? I told everyone at the Bar M. Buster thought it was a hoot that you got the best of me again. Told me I’d better stay away from creeks and your rifle.”

She felt the heat of a blush crawling up her neck. “You told Buster?”

He pointed his forefinger at her like the barrel of a pistol and fanned back his thumb like the hammer. “Bang. Gotcha.”

“Oh, hush. You wouldn’t tell or else you’d look silly.”

“Yep, but you’d look worse. Now let’s put our daughter to bed with her bottle. How old are they supposed to be when you take this thing away from them, anyway?”

“I don’t give a damn if I have to pack it in her lunch box when she goes to kindergarten. I don’t care if I have to go up to the school and wipe her fanny when she goes to the bathroom. I think everyone makes little kids grow up too fast anyway.”

“Amen,” he agreed. “Can I rock her to sleep? Or do you just put her in the bed when she doesn’t fall asleep in the truck?”

“Oh, no, I rock her every night and I’m sure she’d love that.” First Katy had called him daddy and now he was stepping into another place. It didn’t settle well with Milli, but Katy loved him. It was evident from that first time he’d picked her up that she knew him. How was that possible? Genes must be one helluva a lot stronger than anyone realized.

He hummed a lullaby while Milli straightened the bathroom, picking up toys, drying the floor where Katy had splattered water, and wishing with all her might that she could trust Beau. In time she could overcome her issue with trusting him with Katy - it was trusting him with her heart that was so difficult.

Beau tiptoed to the edge of the crib and lifted the baby over the edge.

“I told you, she’s a heavy sleeper like you,” Milli reminded him. “You don’t have to tiptoe or be quiet for that girl.”

“But I like to. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right for once. Like maybe I’m not so unlucky after all. Now let’s go see if the night air has got any cooler. Want some ice cream? We could still drive into Ardmore.”

Milli reached down and flipped the switch on a white plastic box.

“What’s that?” Beau asked.

“A monitor. I take this part with me downstairs, and I can hear her if she cries. Too late for ice cream. Wait for me on the porch swing and I’ll get us a glass of iced tea. Sugar and lemon?”

“Both. Promise you won’t ride away with my pickup while I’m sitting there waiting?”

“Promise.”

When she crossed the porch, he stood up, stopped the swing and held it for her, then sat down beside her. She handed him his tea and sipped her own as he started a gentle swinging motion. They sat in silence for a while, each deep in thought. She liked the way he abandoned all inhibitions and played with Katy as though he’d really been there every day from the time she was conceived. He liked the look in her eyes when she looked at the baby. That’s the way he wanted his wife to look at their children, and yet, even though he was helplessly in love with Milli, he wasn’t sure they’d ever make it as a couple. It would be like putting two bulls in a china shop and expecting the china to be unbroken at the end of a week.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he said.