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bit of my business if Amanda turns the whole ranch into some kind of social club, and you mark my words, that’s exactly what she’ll do. Anyway, that’s Beau’s business. It sure ain’t mine.”
    “Who’s Amanda?” Milli asked, then was instantly angry for caring. Whatever Beau did or didn’t do wasn’t any of her concern. She’d only met him one time before and that was a strange situation that he wouldn’t ever remember, and every day, she wished she didn’t either.
    “Why, that’s his girlfriend. Talk has it that he’s about to propose to her,” Mary said. “She’s a schoolteacher up in Wilson. She’s a tall blonde and pretty as a picture, but so snooty and snobby, no one around here thinks much of her. Beau brought her to the last barn dance over at the Spencers’ place and she acted like she was afraid she’d step in something nasty all evening. Barely would even two-step with Beau.”
    Milli fought a batch of tears damming up behind her eyes. She didn’t shed a tear the day the doctor told her she was pregnant. She didn’t cry when she told her parents and her mother ranted and raved for an hour about how she’d disgraced both the Jiminez and Torres names. She didn’t even cry when she was in labor for sixteen hours and delivered an eight-pound daughter. So where in the hell did a bucket of tears come from now?
    Hilda talked as she cooked. “Rosa says that Beau is as lucky as they come. Says he can make a cow have a healthy calf and the alfalfa grow tall as a barn, but he’s just plain stupid when it comes to women. She says he’s lucky in everything - but he ain’t lucky in love. So I guess if he really asks this Amanda to marry him, he’ll have a pretty showpiece for his ranch, but she won’t be worth much more than tits on a boar hog. She might be a good teacher, but she’s worthless when it comes to ranchin’.”
    Mary saw her granddaughter’s big brown eyes swimming in tears. Maybe it was just the stress-filled morning. It couldn’t have been easy to find that big, black bruiser of a bull in her grandfather’s pasture. It would have been hard to face Beau out in the yard after she’d yanked out her gun and shot at him - to realize he was indeed a good friend of the family. But Mary really believed that her granddaughter, Camillia Kathryn Torres, was facing something bigger than her pride today.
    “I think Katy needs her diaper changed,” Milli choked out a few words and disappeared up the stairs of the farmhouse with her daughter.
    She set Katy on the bedroom floor to play and Plopped down on her bed to stare at the swirls in the textured ceiling. If she’d known Beau Luckadeau Was anywhere near southern Oklahoma, she certainly Would not have accepted the offer to work for her grandparents all summer. Now that she was here, how in the world would she ever be able to go back home without an excuse? The only thing she could do was endure the summer, hopefully with her emotions and senses intact.
    Katy picked up a pyramid of brightly colored rings stacked on a rocking base. Milli continued to stare at the ceiling, remembering the summer two years before.
    She’d fallen in love with Matthew the first day she laid eyes on him at the Lazy T cattle sale. His grandfather and father had come from the Rio Grande Valley to look at a Torres bull for his grandfather’s ranch. She could envision that day even yet. She had walked into the barn and his eyebrows had raised a full inch.
    “Well, is someone here going to introduce me to this lovely lady?” Matthew had asked softly. “Or did an angel just fall out of heaven and no one knows her?”
    “My daughter, Camillia,” her father had thrown over his shoulder and went back to talking with the elderly gentlemen about the bull.
    He’d bowed deeply and kissed her fingertips. “And I am Matthew. I’m sure they can decide whether this bull is of the quality they need for our ranch. Come, walk with me and show me your ranch. This