One Lucky Cowboy Read Online Free PDF

but John had insisted she stand on his side, since she was the only family he had left. She'd jokingly said she'd wear a pink tux but they'd all finally agreed that she would wear a dress identical to those chosen for the bridesmaids.

    *********

    Jane's reminiscing stopped cold and she opened her eyes when someone came through the back door. Ellen waved, her gypsy skirt swishing around her ankles as she headed toward the bathroom.
       "Too much punch. It packs a wallop, all right, but in the bladder instead of the brain," she teased.
       Jane smiled and shut her eyes again, trying to get away from the most horrible day of her entire life by thinking about grocery lists or the recipe for potato chowder or even doing laundry. It didn't work. Her mind was determined to play out every painful memory.
       "So be it. Let's get it over with. And then I'm not thinking about it again," she mumbled.
       "What?" A thin little voice came from her elbow.
       She sat up so fast, her head swam for a minute.
       "Who are you talkin' to?" The little girl asked.
       "Myself. Why aren't you outside playing with the other children?" Jane asked.
       The child was hauntingly beautiful, with the clearest blue eyes Jane had ever seen. A pure white forelock at the front of her otherwise jet-black hair looked like a dollop of whipped cream on a choco late cake.
       "My name is Lizzy and I don't want to play with those two girls. They called me a skunk."
       "Who did?"
       "One of them is Kayla and the other one is Keely but they aren't twins. I asked them. Their mommy is Kristy."
       "Did you tell your mommy that they were being rude?"
       "I don't have a mommy but I told my daddy and he said to renore them."
       Jane smiled. "Well, that's what I'd do. I'd just renore them the whole rest of the day and find someone else to play with me."
       Lizzy smiled brightly. "Okay. I'll go find Tim and Richie. Sometimes I get tired of playing with boys, but at least they don't call me names."
       She took off in a dead run out the back door yelling for Richie the whole way. Jane leaned back again and for a split second wished she was Lizzy's mother. Then she would have a good reason to go snatch Kristy bald-headed for raising her daughters to be as rude as she was.
       The minute she shut her eyes, the incident with Lizzy faded and she was right back in the middle of the memories.

    The toasts had been made, with John giving the longest one declaring that he'd been a self-proclaimed bachelor and never intended to marry until he met Ellacyn Jane Hayes. He must have liked the sound of his own voice because he talked a long time about how they'd met when he walked into the Ranger Oil Company to convince them to purchase a piece of art from a recent collection he'd acquired, only to find true love instead of a sale.
       She remembered every word verbatim of his toast to her but it was only as she relived it on a ranch in Ringgold, Texas that she also realized that he hadn't looked at her while he talked. Rather he'd made eye contact with the guests and his sister.
    "Sorry bastard," she whispered.
       "That's a dirty word," Lizzy whispered back from the other side of the chair where she was rolled up into a ball, her blue eyes the only thing visible from the shadows.
       "It just slipped out," Jane said.
       "Sometimes a dirty word just slips out of my mouth, too," she whispered.
       Jane cocked her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.
       "That's the way Daddy looks at me when he's going to give me a talking to."
       Jane giggled. She didn't mean to, but she couldn't keep it in. It was the first time she'd laughed in a week and it felt so good she didn't want to stop. "You are funny, Lizzy. Want to be my friend?"
       "I don't want to be Kayla and Keely's friend. Or Tim and Richie's neither. They all ran away and told me I can't play with them. Kayla said Tim is her new boyfriend. Yuk!