Free Lucky In Love by Carolyn Brown

on the barbed wire, Milli? Let me see. You need stitches?”
    “I’m fine. One of the Bar M cows was down and I helped Beau pull a calf while I was out there.”
    “Well, go get a shower.” He ordered her around just like he’d done since she was a little girl. “I’ll take care of this horse. She likes me better than she does you, anyway.” He grinned, showing off two oversized front teeth with a big split between them.
    Milli laughed with him. “When cows fly. She’s just like me. She tolerates men but she doesn’t like them.”
    “Hmmph. Calf make it?”
    “Of course. I was there.”
    “Good thing Beau’s woman wasn’t there. She’d of scared it to death. One look at a newborn calf and she woulda set up a caterwaulin’ to scorch the hair off Lucifer’s horns. I still say that boy is out of his monkey-assed mind if he thinks he’ll ever turn her into a ranch wife. Lord, even a deaf and dumb, blind fool knows you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Did you see her face at the barn dance? She hated bein’ there worse than anything in the whole world.”
    “Thanks for taking care of my horse.”
    Halfway to the house Milli could still hear him, muttering about Amanda. Everyone in the county could see the mismatch mistake but Beau. Evidently he wasn’t very lucky in love. At that point, it didn’t matter what kind of luck the man had or lacked. He’d made his choice and he was cowboy and man enough to stand beside it. He’d many that woman no matter how worthless she was because he’d given his word, and that was a fact as solid as the ones Moses brought down from the mountain.
    “Lands, child, did you hurt yourself?” Hilda exclaimed when Milli pulled her dirty boots off at the back door. Hilda and Slim were as different as night and day. Where he was so slim a good north wind could blow him all the way to the Gulf, she was short and stocky with a big, round face. They’d been married forever and never had any children - other than claiming Milli and her two brothers, and they only had come for a while in the summer when they were younger.
    “Nope, just had to pull a calf while I was out.”
    Hilda stirred a pot of chili on the back burner. “Did it live?”
    “Sure it did. I was there. You think I’d let it die?”
    “Well, go tell your Poppy he’s got a fine, healthy calf, and don’t track up my clean floor. Shake the dust off your jeans right where you stand. You want jalapeño corn bread with this chili for dinner?”
    “You bet I do, and double the peppers. I like it hot enough to make my nose run. But it’s not Poppy’s calf. It was one of the Bar M cows.”
    “Then call Beau and tell that idiot he’s at least lucky when it comes to ranchin’. Tell him Hilda said he’s not lucky in love, though. Tell him if he got any unluckier than he is right now, he could just call the undertaker and arrange his own funeral, because he’s just as good as dead if he really marries up with that blonde-haired witch. Tell him…”
    “You tell him. But he already knows about the calf. He arrived on that play pretty he rides on and I made him help me. He said I was bossy. But I’m not. I just know what to do and…”
    “Well, you’re the kind of woman he needs. You’re the kind of woman the Bar M needs. And here you are right next door and he’s blind as a bat and crazy as a drunk skunk. That Amanda is a city girl and she’s got dollar signs all over her body. Why, she ain’t no better than one of them high-dollar whores in the big cities. Them kind that stand on the street corner. They sell what’s in their underpants for a dollar and she sells what’s in hers for what she thinks she’s goin’ to get him to buy her. And by the time he gets through buyin’ and buyin’ there won’t be a Bar M. It will be dead and gone. Just a few bunkhouses and a lot of weeds. She might not be able to touch the ranch, but she can sure bleed him dry. Just a high-dollar whore.”
    “Hilda,