Lucky In Love (7 page)

“Yes, I am. Did my internship at Baptist just last year and started as an ER doctor here last month. Ardmore is a nice little town, but quite a social change from the big cities.”

“I’m sure. Well, I’m glad you’re taking care of my friend, Anthony.”

“I didn’t catch your name,” the doctor said.

“Amanda… Amanda Whitman… like the writer.”

“And you’re from Ardmore?”

“Oh, yes. I teach school in Wilson. But I could never live in a town that small permanently,” she told him.

Beau was tired of the games the two people played. It was evident they were flirting, but who cared. He didn’t even know the tall blonde in the room with him. Maybe she was one of those women from the office who took down his, medical history. The man seemed to be a doctor and said he could go home tomorrow. Home. That’s where Amelia said she went. He distinctly remembered her saying she was going home. And tomorrow he was going home… and she would be there.

“Where is Amelia?” he asked.

“Your lady friend left a while ago. She stayed with you until your friend arrived,” the doctor said.

“Okay,” he nodded and shut his eyes. Home where he was going tomorrow.

Amanda walked to the door with the doctor.

“So Amanda Whitman, are you listed in the phone book?”

“Yes, I am,” she flirted. A doctor! That meant social standing and as much or more money than the Bar M, without black cows and stupid barn dances.

“And would Amanda Whitman care if Dr. Jason Orbach called her sometime this week?”

“She would love for you to call,” Amanda blushed again. She couldn’t believe Anthony was snoring. Evidently, he really was out in a foggy land somewhere and didn’t know who she was. If he’d been awake, he would have been standing in the middle of the bed with his fists up like a boxer, ready to duel with the doctor for her.

“Well, then, I’ll hope to talk to you later tonight.” The doctor went on to the next room.

She picked up her purse and started to kiss Anthony on the forehead. But why waste the energy and lipstick? And who was Amelia, anyway? Some past love he’d never mentioned? The woman who brought him in was Milli, evidently Milli Torres, if she was Jim’s granddaughter. He just thought she was someone named Amelia. Maybe Amelia was his mother. She’d heard that often a concussion sends a person back in time, so perhaps he was calling out for his mother.

She shut her eyes dramatically and whispered, “It really doesn’t matter. Because I think I’ve found someone who can appreciate all I can bring into a relationship so much more than you. Of course, you need me more, but this is not about what you need. So get well and we’ll talk later, after I get to know this doctor a little better this week. I hate to break your heart, darling, I really do. I didn’t set out to cause you grief and sorrow. But now I really must go and wait for his call. I cannot compete with your mother. Because it is her you beg for, not your only true love, Amanda.” She sighed deeply and rushed out of the room, hoping to catch one more glimpse of the handsome doctor as she left the hospital.

Beau opened an eye to see if she’d gone yet.

Holy smoke, who is that woman? And what was all that about anyway? She sounded like she was deranged. I’m glad she left. What was she talking about my mother for anyway? I didn’t ask for Momma.

At midnight he sat straight up in bed and looked around the room. Everything was as clear as a summer sky without a cloud in it. He’d topped the hill and hit a rock with the front wheel of his vehicle. He remembered it flipping over and something about a buzzard, then a dark-haired woman was bending over him. He knew this was a hospital room. He found the right button on the side of his bed and pushed it.

A nurse poked her head in the door in just moments. “Yes, sir. Oh, Mr. Luckadeau, I believe you’re awake.”

“Yes, ma’am, I am. What did I break?” He looked at both his legs and checked his arms.

“Nothing, lucky for you. You’ve got sutures in the top of your head. Had a lot of blood on you when the lady brought you in, but head wounds bleed quite profusely.”

He felt the top of his head and winced when his hand found the staples. “How many?”

“Seven,! think. The doctor will remove them in a few days, and your pretty blond hair will grow back soon.”

“I’ve had a few stitches before. Milli brought me in?”

“No, I think her name was Amelia. That’s what you kept calling her, anyway. Amelia Jiminez. I had just come on the shift, so I might be wrong. I wasn’t in the emergency room. The other nurse just told me about it.”

“It was Milli Torres. Amelia isn’t a real person. She’s just a dream I have sometimes.”

“Can I get you anything?” the nurse asked.

“Just Amelia,” he said. He could have sworn she was a real person, but then two years ago he had thought she was real, too.

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BEAU WALKED THROUGH THE LIVING ROOM OF THE long, rambling ranch house and back down the hail toward his bedroom. The house was built the same year Alice Luckadeau married Tony Martin, in 1955. Both of them were thirty years old and expected to fill the four extra bedrooms with lots of children. But the bedrooms waited in vain because children never came to the marriage. Tony was killed when a horse threw him and several years later Alice was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Beau had been named Anthony Beau Luckadeau - the Anthony for her late husband - and was her favorite nephew. When the doctor told her she had Alzheimer’s, she called Louisiana and told Beau that she was deeding everything to him, then she checked herself into a nursing home.

Beau emptied his pockets on the oversized oak dresser, bent down, and rolled his eyes upward to check the staples on top of his head. The doctor said he would take them out in a few days, and they weren’t really sore, but Amanda was going to cringe when she saw the shaved spot on the top of his head.

“That’s why Milli looked so familiar. She reminds me of Amelia. Same long, dark hair. Same big brown eyes. But that’s where the resemblance ends. Amelia was soft spoken, a woman built to love and be loved. Milli is as mean as a constipated cougar with a toothache.”

Beau sighed. He loved a phantom; was engaged to a shrew. He had talked to Amanda on the phone the past two days, but something was missing even in conversation. Tonight was his engagement celebration and he didn’t give a damn if Amanda was beside him or not. Surely it was the by-product of the accident. He loved the woman. He’d asked her to marry him. What in the devil was wrong with him?

He was tired of pampering her twenty-four hours a day, and the comments about ruining her figure with a baby weighed heavy on his mind. But more than anything else, he was tired of that recurring dream about a darkhaired lady. He wouldn’t break the engagement because a man was judged by his word, and he’d keep it, but he’d always wonder if Amelia was more than just a dream.

He opened the closet door and took out a pair of starched Wranglers with a perfect crease. Then he picked out a white western shirt and a bolo tie with a silver slide in the shape of a steer’s head. Maybe he’d feel better when everyone arrived and the band started playing. Maybe held dance with Milli again and everyone would make a circle around them and applaud… but he shouldn’t be thinking about Milli Torres, no matter how well she fit into his arms. This was a party to celebrate his engagement to Amanda, and in spite of all she’d done to aggravate him recently, he had proposed to her and she’d accepted. All he could do was hope that she would change once they were married.

Milli shucked out of her work jeans and boots and slung open the closet doors. God, but she hated the idea of watching Beau dance with Amanda. No, Beau wouldn’t dance with that bitch. Anthony would. That was the difference. Amanda was going to marry Anthony. A husband with a name like Beau would never do for her.

Milli all but snorted as she flipped through hangers. If that snooty blonde-haired witch looked down her skinny nose at her one more time, she was going to have to pick herself up off the ground, and Milli hoped she fell in a nice fresh cow pile… face first.

The next hanger held the off-white lace dress she had worn to the wedding where she met Beau. She wouldn’t have brought the dress, but it was hanging in a garment bag with several shirts and she had picked up the whole thing without realizing it was there. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot. See if it could jar his memory into remembering that’s where he met her. Be good enough for him on the night of his engagement party, and after the way Amanda had ordered her out of the hospital.

He’d finally remember and know she was just an easy one-night stand, and then he could get right on with his life with his precious snotty Amanda. She hoped Amanda was as warm in bed as a well-digger’s brass buckle in Anchorage in the middle of a winter blizzard. There was no way a woman with that much ice dripping off her could ever enjoy a rousting night of pure old unadulterated sex. Not like she and Beau had shared on a steamy Louisiana August night.

She hugged the dress close to her heart. “Stop it, Camillia Torres! Maybe she’s a different woman when she shucks out of those clothes and takes him to bed. She probably knows a whole hell of a lot more than I did - or do. I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts, she’s been around the block more than one time. The only experience I’ve got is a single time in the back of a trailer, and Beau was drunk.”

She took the dress from the bag, slipped it off the hanger, and put it on, with a pair of light tan kid sandals that laced up to mid-calf.

Granny already knows, but she won’t say anything. I can tell by the way she keeps bringing up his name and insisting I go places where he’ll be… just like tonight. I don’t want to be at that party. But then, what the hell. Maybe that good-looking, dark-haired man will be there again. The one who looks like Matthew and probably is about as trustworthy as a tornado. At least I can dance with him, flirt a little, if I still remember how.

Katy held up her hands to be picked up. “Mommy.”

She kissed the baby all over her face, relishing in the innocent giggles. “I’m going to do it. And before the night is over I’m telling him I was the girl… Camillia… not Amelia. He’s already engaged to Amanda, anyway, and it won’t matter. At least he won’t keep asking me where it was he met me. But he won’t ever know you belong to him, my precious baby.”

Amanda threw her suit and panty hose on the floor of her room in her father’s house. Pauline, the maid, would send them to the cleaners tomorrow. She chose a black column dress with gold buttons down the front and a pair of black high-heeled shoes for the party. Tonight she would break Anthony’s heart into a million pieces and leave him an emotional wreck when she told him she didn’t want to marry him, so black seemed appropriate.

She and the handsome doctor had driven to Dallas for supper on the top floor of the Loews hotel. He’d asked if he could see her again and she’d agreed. Now the next job was to get rid of excess baggage - called Anthony Luckadeau. By Christmas she intended to be Mrs. Dr. Jason Orbach.

She prowled through a jewelry case of earrings. “Just gold studs. And maybe a herringbone bracelet. That’s enough for a funeral.”

Her heels made a rat-a-tat-tat down the hardwood staircase and her father looked up from his paper when she reached the huge living room at the end of the stairs. “My, oh, my, don’t you look classy this evening. You look more like your mother every day.”

She kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you, father. I’m driving the Lincoln tonight. I won’t be late, though. This is the last time I’m seeing Anthony Luckadeau.”

“Didn’t he ask you to marry him?”

“Yes, he did, but he’s not the first one, is he? Daddy, he is a good man. He is absolutely boring. No imagination: dinner at a steak house and a movie a couple of times a week. I think I deserve a little more than that, don’t you? I’ve got someone I really think you’ll enjoy meeting next week. I’m not going to tell you about him. I want it to be a surprise. Ta-ta.” She waved goodbye from the door.

Beau waited on the porch, hoping it was the effects of the concussion causing the heavy feeling in his chest. The lawyer waited in the study and as soon as Amanda arrived, they’d review the conditions of a prenuptial arrangement set down in writing before Alice went to the nursing home.

He watched the big Lincoln pull up in the circular driveway. The weight in his soul didn’t disappear when Amanda waved. He crossed the porch and opened the door for her.

“Hello, Anthony. I think we better have a talk before everyone arrives for the party.”

“Yes, we are going to. Aunt Alice’s lawyer is waiting in the study, and we’ve got to talk about the way she set up this ranch. Just keep an open mind, Amanda, and remember that it’s just an agreement. We won’t ever need to think about it, anyway, because we aren’t going into this marriage with a divorce looming at the end. We’re going into it with thoughts of celebrating our fiftieth wedding anniversary right here on the Bar M. Maybe we’ll even have the band play our song again and you’ll knock everyone dead with your good looks even when you are near eighty. You look beautiful tonight, darlin’.” He tried to convince himself with words.

Her lips made a firm red line as she jerked her head around to face him. “What are you talking about?”

He kissed her cheek and she saw the staples on top of his head. “Haven’t seen you in a week.”

She shivered. “Don’t bend down and show me those horrid things on your head.”

Nothing had changed. He was making the biggest mistake in his whole life and there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it. Like a little boy with his feelings hurt, he wanted to go out behind the barn and cry. But even that wouldn’t fix the problem. He’d given his word; he’d stand by it.

“Sorry. Let’s go talk to the lawyer. Folks will be arriving soon.”

Beau sat down in a burgundy leather chair on one side of the desk where the lawyer had strung papers in several piles. Amanda perched on the edge of a matching chair and wondered how in the world she was going to get out of this gracefully. If she could get it taken care of before long, maybe she could drive by the hospital and say hello to her doctor before she went home.

The lawyer turned the papers around so she could see them. “This is really very simple. Alice Martin deeded everything she had to Anthony Beau Luckadeau, but with the stipulation that if he ever married, the bride must sign an agreement that the ranch would not be part of the marital properties. In other words, if the marriage ends in a divorce, the ranch remains solely the property of Anthony Beau Luckadeau and his descendants, and can never be sold. It must pass from generation to generation. I have the papers right here…”

Rage boiled up out of Amanda like smoke and fire from the center of an active volcano. She’d already spent her half of the ranch sale proceeds in a thousand imaginary ways, and now this pompous, bald-headed lawyer was telling her she would have to sign a prenuptial agreement. “Do you mean that if we divorced I could not have my part of this ranch?”

Beau patted her hand. “Now Amelia, it’s just paper. We won’t ever get a divorce.”

“Don’t you dare call me by your mother’s name, you idiot! You knew about this all along, didn’t you?”

He looked at her incredulously. “My mother? I’m sorry I called you Amelia. But that’s not my mother’s name. Momma is Joann. Why did you think Amelia was her name?”

She pointed her finger at his nose. “Do you mean to tell me there’s another woman in your life whose name is Amelia? You’ve got a woman you whine for when you’re sick and you expect me to sign an asinine agreement like this? You are crazy, Anthony Luckadeau. Just plain crazy.”

“Amanda, darlin’…” he stopped mid-sentence, his eyes fixed on the apparition getting out of a red and white pickup truck. She wore the same lace dress and her hair was piled high on her head, just like that night. He remembered taking the pins out one by one until her hair cascaded down her back.

Amanda wrenched off her engagement ring in a dramatic movement, and threw it on the floor at the toes of his boots. “I wouldn’t marry you if you promised me this whole ranch on a silver platter. You can take this ring, and go straight to hell with it. I’m the best thing that ever happened to you, and you’re too damned stupid to know it. So don’t be calling me and begging me to come back to you when you finally wake up and realize what you’ve lost. Good-bye.”

He didn’t hear a word she said as he continued to look past her. Buster was talking to the ghost-lady as if it was a real person, but Beau knew she would fade in a vapor in a few minutes. Sometimes when he was in the barn she would appear for a few seconds, but then, poof, the vision was gone. Once when he was driving to town she had appeared on the highway right in front of his truck and he’d slammed on the brakes so fast he left a trail of black skid marks a quarter of a mile long, but she disappeared then, too.

“My God, Anthony, I didn’t mean to affect you so badly. You look like you just saw a ghost,” Amanda said.

His voice was scarcely more than a faint whisper. Too much noise and the lady would disappear in a wisp of fog, smoke, or dust. “Go on, Amanda. I don’t really give a damn right now what you do. I’m sick of your whining ways and listening to you. Just get out of here.”

“Whining ways! You’re a pitiful excuse for a man. God, what I saw in you, I’ll never know; Good-bye. I hope you rot in hell.” She flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and stuck her nose in the air with a sniff of disgust. She stomped her right foot so hard it broke the heel off her shoe.

Beau never took his eyes from the window. Any minute he was going to start slobbering if he didn’t shut his mouth. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was drunk, but he didn’t touch liquor of any kind. He wouldn’t even have a glass of wine with her when they went out to dinner. It must be the accident. It really had affected something in his brain. Suddenly she could see a lifetime taking care of a man in a wheelchair with a bib around his neck and a blank look in his eyes. The mental vision caused her to run from the room and leave nothing but a streak of dust in her wake as she and the Lincoln left the Bar M.

The lawyer turned to see what was capturing Beau’s attention. “Pretty woman.”

“You can see her?” Beau bent down to pick up the ring at his feet but didn’t dare blink.

The man laughed. “Sure, I can see her. I’m not blind, son. The one who just stormed out of here wasn’t bad looking, either. But that one out there would make a man do a double take. I guess the engagement is off. Don’t worry, though. I don’t think I could stand bein’ married to someone that hot tempered, so maybe this prenuptial thing of Alice’s is a blessing. Evidently, she wasn’t the right one for you after all. I’ll gather up my things and get on back home.”

“Stay around,” Beau said absently. “We’re having a party here tonight. With or without Amanda. There’s enough food to feed an army of hungry men, and you’re more than welcome. Call your wife and tell her to come on out, too.”