Lucky In Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

voice was breathless.
    She called loud and clear, “Room service.”
    “Just a minute,” he said.
    She heard shuffling and imagined him finding his expensive pants among a pile of tumbled clothing on the floor.
    His eyes were big when he opened the door and zipped his pants all at the same time. His chest was bare and dark circles showed on his neck where the blonde had marked him during sex.
    “What in the hell are you doing here?” he demanded roughly.
    She handed him the ring. “I came to bring you back your property.”
    “Damn it, Milli,” he said. “This don’t mean nothing. We can’t do anything until we’re married. You can’t expect me to do without for six months.”
    She looked him right in the eye and didn’t blink. “It means something to me, Matthew. It means a lot to me. Don’t call me. I never want to see you again.”
    “It’s a deal!” He slammed the door.
    It was the last time she had seen the man. His father called her father with an apology, but Matthew never called. The dress went back to the bridal shop and most of the gossip mongers quit talking a few weeks later.
    Two weeks after the engagement was broken, she received an invitation to attend a high school friend’s wedding in Texarkana, five hundred miles away on the other side of the state. She and Lisa had been friends from junior high until graduation two years before. Lisa had gotten a scholarship to East Texas State University and Milli was enrolled at West Texas State University. Milli RSVP’ed the very day she got the invitation. It was exactly what she needed to get over the Matthew doldrums. She would fly into Texarkana for the wedding and stay in a motel for a couple of nights.
    Lisa Thomas married Darrin Luckadeau, an air force captain, on Saturday night, and Milli envied her the wedding, the love, and the marriage. After the reception another party was held at the Luckadeau ranch and Milli went with a whole group of Luckadeau cousins, their relatives and friends. Sometime during the course of the evening a tall, good-looking cousin glued himself to her side. He was drinking too much champagne and talking much too loudly, but he was the exact opposite of Matthew Sanchez.
    “Mommy?” Katy said, breaking into her thoughts.
    Milli opened up her arms and Katy toddled toward her. “Come here, baby.”
    Katy laid her face on Milli’s chest and stuck her thumb in her mouth. In a few seconds she was sleeping soundly. Milli sat down in the big, comfortable rocking chair in the corner of the room and let her thoughts go back again to the night of Lisa and Darrin’s wedding.
    ******
    “Who is that man?” She’d asked a girl when the goodlooking stranger left her side for a few minutes.
    “That’s Beau Luckadeau. Cousin of the groom. Handsome old thing, isn’t he? All them Luckadeau men are good-lookin’. They come from down around Shreveport. Big family of them. His daddy is one of about six or eight boys and only one girl. And there’s a whole scad of Luckadeau brothers in Beau’s family. Lord, it’d be impossible to remember all their names. But they’re all damn good-lookin’, blond and blue-eyed. All except for Griffin, the one with the white streak in his black hair. He’s the oddball. Beau usually doesn’t drink much. Somebody said his latest girlfriend dumped him for another man. Guess he ain’t so lucky when it comes to love,” the girl said and headed toward the champagne fountain.
    “Understand your name is Jiminez,” he’d said when he sat back down in the chair beside her. “Lady over there told me your last name. But I don’t know your first one.”
    “Camillia,” she said softly. “And they call you Beau and your family is from Shreveport.”
    “My dad’s family is. I’m from wherever the wind takes me. I might just be from Timbuktu next week.” He slurred his words. “Why don’t me and you get away from this place and go over to my cousin’s trailer where I’m stayin’, and talk