Free Lucky In Love by Carolyn Brown Page A

what do you know about a high-dollar whore?”
    Hilda shook a spoon at Milli. “Never you mind what I know or don’t know. You just go get cleaned up. You ain’t comin’ to my dinner table lookin’ like a..
    “High-dollar whore?”
    She shooed her away with the flap of her apron. “Get on out of here and quit your smart mouthin’. I can still bend you over my apron. Any kid what begs for a whippin’ can find one. Get on up them stairs.”
    Milli bypassed the den, where she could hear her grandfather talking to Katy. If she went in, she’d have to hold the baby and love her, and she wasn’t clean enough to do that. She peeled out of her work jeans, socks, T-shirt, and underwear and stepped into a hot shower, letting the water run down her back and through her hair.
    The shower in the motel the morning after she’d spent the night in Beau’s arms had felt like this. Hot and clean. But it hadn’t washed away the guilty feelings she’d had that morning, any more than it washed them away this morning. When she had looked up and seen Beau riding toward her, she’d wanted to take her arm out of the cow and hug him. And after the calf was born, and she did hug him impulsively, her body had wanted to drag him down behind the trees and make love with him again. Just once more to see if it was as good the second time as she remembered it being the first time; if the look in his eyes would be as soft as when he pulled her to him, her naked breasts touching his furry chest, the sensation making her beg for another bout of lovemaking.
    For that she felt guilty. He had asked Amanda to marry him, and it didn’t matter what she or the rest of the ranching world around him thought of her, she was still the one he’d chosen. The one he truly wanted to wake up beside for the rest of his life, and Milli had no light to the feelings that surged through her.
    She should be honest and tell him that she was the woman he’d slept with after Darrin’s and Lisa’s wedding - at least he’d stop asking where he’d met her. It was just a matter of time, anyway, because someday things would click and he would remember. Even in his drunken state that night, he would have remembered the next morning that he didn’t spend the night alone in the back bedroom of that trailer. And something, somewhere would trigger a little memory, which would set off a chain reaction, and Beau would remember she was only a one-night stand. A woman who’d been willing to fall into bed with him without very much seduction, and who couldn’t even blame her actions on liquor, since she had only had one glass of champagne and was stone-cold sober when she peeled that lace dress over her head. She’d have to tell him that she hadn’t given a damn about him for anything except erasing Matthew from her mind and she’d used him as much as he’d used her that night. He would look at her with a different look on his face - one of disgust and shame.
    She wrapped herself in a fluffy pink towel. She pulled a pair of jean shorts and a bright red knit shirt from the closet. This afternoon she and Mary were going to Ardmore to shop. When she used to come to the ranch as a teenager, Granny had always taken her there at least one day and they’d eat ice cream after they’d shopped until their feet hurt. They’d take Katy and the stroller and push her through the stores. Then maybe they’d have a banana split at the ice cream store before they came home. It could be a tradition thing… every time she and Katy came to Oklahoma…
    She shook her head violently to erase the image. “Oh, no! Tradition ends right here. If I ever get back to west Texas without having to bare my soul, I’m not coming back here. I’ll fly in by myself, pick up Poppy and Granny, and they can visit us in Hereford, Texas. And that’s a fact.”
    But maybe if she and Granny got away and shopped a while, she would at least forget all about Beau and this precarious situation she was in. Even