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“LUCKY hooked me from the start. The husband and wife writing team that makes up Barri Bryan did an outstanding job building passion, sexual tension and honest altercations between two very headstrong characters. I couldn’t put it down.” Tracy Farnsworth, reviewer
“Four Stars! The characters are well developed and several sub-plots keep the action intense. Here is a story that will hold your attention throughout its entirety! Yes!” Huntress Book Reviews
"The characters are as lively a bunch as you'd ever want to meet, and meet them you do as they come alive on the page! The romance, fresh as morning dew and full of youthful humor and newly discovered passion, is invigorating." Romantic Promotions
“Lucky hooked me from the start, with great characters, laugh out loud humor and a story that I could not put down. The secondary characters in this story just make it come alive. This great husband and wife writing team of Barri Bryan has done a great job in creating a story that any romance reader would love.” Dina Smith, Romance Junkies
A Decades Romantic Comedy
LUCKY
by
Barri Bryan
(c) copyright Herb and Billie Houston, March 2003
Cover art by Eliza Black, (c) copyright March 2003
New Concepts Publishing
4729 Humphreys Rd.
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
Prologue
June, 1922
Lucky Livingston woke from a sound sleep with the sure knowledge that he was in trouble--again. He wasn't being pursued by an angry husband, or threatened by a jilted girl friend. No sore loser from last night's poker game was chasing him with vengeance on his mind and fire in his eyes. He wasn't even in trouble with the law. This was a worse predicament than any of those. Lucky had incurred the wrath of his two older brothers. He'd been on the bad side of each of them before, but never both at the same time. He shook his head trying to clear his sleep-fogged brain. "Ain't you boys coming to call a little early?"
Charlie Livingston was a giant of a man with a handsome face and a mop of curly black hair that contrasted strangely with his fiery red handlebar mustache. He stood now, towering over the bed of his younger half-brother, his hands clenched into massive fists, his usually placid gray eyes glowing like hot pewter. "Ten o'clock in the morning ain't exactly early. Git out of bed. You've got a heap of explaining to do."
"Take it easy, Charlie." Lucky leafed through his memory trying to think what he might have done to make Charlie so angry. Nothing came to mind. He turned to his other half-brother who leaned against the foot of the iron bedstead. "Hey, Zeke, do you know what's eatin' old Charlie?"
Zeke Livingston couldn't touch Charlie in the looks department. He was inches shorter and pounds lighter than his brother. Zeke's beady, close-set eyes were a dull shade of slate gray. His nose was big and bulbous. His lips were too thin and his jaw was too long. His dun-colored hair, spiked as barbed wire and almost as bristly, grew like clumped weeds from a head that seemed too big for his rangy, loose-knit frame. Ugly as a mud fence was what folks said about him behind his back. Nobody dared say it to his face. When riled, Zeke could be meaner than a grizzly bear with a sore head. What he lacked in looks, he made up for by being shrewd, savvy, and downright ornery. And compared to Charlie, Zeke was a heavy weight in the brains department. With an insolence that bordered on anger, he stared into the azure blue of his handsome half-brother's dark fringed eyes. "We got a letter from Aunt Trudy this morning."
Lucky concluded that Aunt Trudy was on Charlie's case again. She was always after the Livingston brothers to 'Settle down, get married and raise a family.' He pushed a pillow behind his back and smiled. He was genuinely fond of his dead father's younger sister even if she was a fussy, meddlesome, overbearing old tyrant. "How is the old girl?"
Zeke shifted his chew of tobacco from one cheek to the other. "Her palpations are gone but her rheumatism is acting up again." He spat a long stream of tobacco juice out the open window behind Lucky's bed. "Lucky, boy do you know what happens if Aunt Trudy dies before she gets around to signing over The Lazy L to her nephews?"
Lucky knew all too well. That particular clause in his departed daddy's will had always been the cause of great agitation to his brother Zeke. "The place is sold at auction and the money goes to charity."
Zeke said with emphasis, "She says in her letter that she's feeling poorly."
Lucky sighed in relief. In Aunt Trudy's case, poorly was good. When he'd visited his aunt in Dallas last winter she'd been feeling 'worse than awful' and complaining about spells with her heart. "That's nice to know." He slid under the covers. "Good night, boys."
Charlie grabbed the covers with his slab of a hand and tossed them to the floor. "You done screwed me and Zeke over for the last time. You little...." His tirade died on the end of a gasp as he stared at the magnificent specimen of manhood that lay naked on the bed. Stooping, he retrieved the sheet and threw it over the lower half of Lucky's body. "If you was as big all over as you are in some places, you'd be a giant."
Lucky had heard comments to that affect for most of his twenty-four years. He waved the remark aside. "You boys didn't come in here to talk about the size of my dick." A touch of steel threaded through his silky voice. "Say what's on your mind."
Zeke knew when to back off even if Charlie didn't. "Now don't go getting testy. Charlie's got good reason to be riled."
Charlie roared, "You must have said something to Aunt Trudy when you visited her last winter that made her decide to come early for her summer visit." He shouted even louder. "What was it?"
Lucky decided to humor his slow witted half-brother. "I told her we missed her, and the old home place wasn't the same without her here. I said Daddy, rest his soul, would be happy if he could see how much she cared about his three little orphan boys."
"What else," Zeke eased down on the side of the bed, "did you tell her?"
Lucky rolled over. "I stayed two weeks. I can't remember everything I said."
Zeke drawled, "Aunt Trudy's coming for her summer visit a month early this year."
Now Lucky knew why Charlie was upset. A visit from Aunt Trudy was a trial for Charlie. That trial began even before Aunt Trudy arrived. Charlie would have to fetch young Widow Carson to clean the rambling old ranch house the Livingston brothers called home. It would have to be Charlie who went calling. Amanda Carson wouldn't do housework for anyone else, but for Charlie, she made an exception. The widow had designs on Charlie. If he came through that ordeal unscathed, he'd have to take a bath and dress before supper every night of Aunt Trudy's stay. Aunt Trudy was a stickler for proper etiquette. He'd have to postpone his weekly poker game. Gambling in the kitchen was out of the question when Aunt Trudy was in residence.
Charlie wasn't the only one who suffered during Aunt Trudy's stay at the ranch. Zeke had to chew his tobacco and do his spitting outside and Lucky had to tone down his social life considerably. "She never stays more than a couple of weeks." Lucky sat on the side of the bed and stretched. The muscles in his arms and back rippled like coiled springs. Lucky Livingston was one handsome son-of-a-gun. "Think of it this way, boys." He reached for his underwear. "The sooner she comes the sooner she'll be gone."
"Not this time." Zeke's beady eyes narrowed. "Lucky, boy do you have any idea why Aunt Trudy's coming early this year?" Again, he spat toward the window. This time he missed the opening and hit the sill. "And why she plans to stay two months instead of two weeks?"
Lucky's assurance was being replaced with cautious anxiety. "No." Standing, he reached for his pants. "But I got a pretty good notion you're gonna tell me."
"She's coming to meet your new bride and spend some time getting acquainted with her. She says if the lady meets with her approval, she'll honor her part of the deal she made with you."
Lucky frowned. "I ain't got no bride and she can forget the deal."
Charlie was shouting again. "What deal, Lucky?"
Zeke's voice was quiet, a way yonder too quiet. "That what I'm wonderin' too."
Charlie huffed, "What makes Aunt Trudy think you've taken a wife?"
"How would I know?" Lucky pulled his pants up over his lean hips and sucked in his gut to fasten them around his muscular middle. "Back off Charlie." He sat on the bed and slipped his foot into a sock only to discover it had a hole in the toe.
Charlie was not at all placated. "If you don't know, who does?"
Zeke intervened with the suggestion that Lucky, 'Think on it' and see if he could come up with an answer.
It didn't take much thinking on Lucky's part. "Last winter, when I was visiting, I might have said something to the effect that I was courtin' a pretty young female with matrimony in mind, but I didn't mean it." He'd done it again, let his smooth-talking mouth overload his slow-thinking ass. "I didn't say nothin' Aunt Trudy didn't want to hear." He put on his other sock, then his boots, and ambled across the room to retrieve his shirt.
Zeke observed, as he watched Lucky's every move, "That seems to be a chronic failing of yours, boy; telling females what you don't mean and they do want to hear just to get what you want." Lifting his hat with one callused hand, he ran his fingers through his patchy hair with the other. "What did you get from Aunt Trudy in return for all that sweet talk she wanted to hear?" He sat his hat back on his head and waited.
Lucky thought for a long minute before saying on a caught breath. "Oh, shit." He devoted an inordinate amount of attention to the task of buttoning his shirt. "Aunt Trudy and me kind of made a deal."
"Kind of ?" Zeke questioned as his shifty eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
Lucky stuffed his shirt inside his pants. "I didn't think she'd take me up on it." He pushed back a lock of raven black hair that had fallen across his forehead. "Not that I give a rat's ass, but you ain't gonna like this." His devastating smile took the sting from his words. Lucky could be damn charming when he set his mind to it.
Charlie lumbered to his feet and raised one clenched fist. "Let me at him, Zeke."
Zeke held up his hand. "Calm down, Charlie." He nodded toward Lucky. "Don't lay no sugar-mouthed speech on me boy. Tell me in plain words about this 'deal'."
Lucky drew a long breath as once again he eased down on the side of the bed. "You know how Aunt Trudy is always after us boys to marry and settle down?"
Zeke's thin lips pulled into a tight line. "Lord, don't I ever. What's that got to do with the deal you made with Aunt Trudy?"
Lucky cleared his throat." I must have said something to the effect that I didn't have much in the way of worldly goods to attract this fine upstanding female I was courtin'. Then I sort of suggested that if Aunt Trudy would give me my part of the Lazy L now, I'd settle down, marry this fine sweet lady and start raisin' a family."
Charlie's face was almost as red as his mustache. "You don't know no sweet young lady; hell you don't even know no lady period." He shook his fist in Lucky's direction. "I'm gonna kill you."
Zeke's voice cracked like a whip. "Back off Charlie." His eyes were slits in his weather beaten face . "What did Aunt Trudy say to that?"
Lucky shrugged one broad shoulder. "She said if I was married by the time she came to visit next summer, she's give me my part of what Papa left us."
Charlie was shouting and waving his arms. "Don't you see what this sniveling little skunk is up to? He thinks he's found a way to get his inheritance now."
"Maybe he has." Zeke rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger.
Charlie looked mad enough to bust a gut. "God damn connivin' little...."
Zeke silenced his brother with a stabbing stare. "And maybe it ain't such a bad deal after all."
"You think she'd really do it?" A chastened Charlie dropped into a chair. "God damn."
"Shut up," Zeke ordered, "and let me think."
"But Zeke," Charlie complained. "That ain't fair. Lucky would be off the hook and we'd still be under the old girl's thumb."
"No. We wouldn't." Zeke faced his brother. "If Aunt Trudy gives Lucky his share of the ranch, she has to give us our share too."
Charlie's mouth fell open. "Are you sure?"
"That's what Daddy's will says."
As Zeke's words found lodging in Charlie's brain, a slow smile spread across his face.
"Then Aunt Trudy would be out of our hair for good and all?"
Zeke nodded. "That's right."
Charlie wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "No more annual visits?"
Zeke echoed, "No more annual visits."
Lucky stood, stretched, and laughed out loud. "It won't work boys. I done told Aunt Trudy that the woman I'm courtin' is a pretty, innocent, proper raised young lady. Where are you two side winders gonna find a woman fittin' that description who'd be willing to marry me?" Still chuckling, he moved with the grace of a young panther toward the kitchen. "I'll think of something to tell Aunt Trudy when she gets here." Lucky calculated he'd talked himself out of worse situations than this one lots of times.
As Charlie stood, Zeke laid a restraining hand on his arm. "Let him go, Charlie."
"But Zeke."
Zeke spat toward the window and missed again. "I just had a brain storm. I think I know where we can find a proper raised young woman who will marry Lucky."
Charlie's brows climbed up his face. "The hell you say? Where?" He scratched the stubble along the side of his mustache. "Even if we find her I don't think Lucky's gonna be willing to marry her."
Zeke 's knowing smile spoke volumes. "I think he will be if we play our cards right."
Charlie was skeptical. "You can't win at cards against Lucky. If he don't out-play you, he'll out-bluff you."
"That ain't what I meant." Zeke shook his head. "There's more ways than one to skin a cat." The puzzled look on Charlie's face made him add, "I'll explain later." He put his arm around his brother’s broad shoulders. "Come on Charlie. You and me got places to go and people to see."
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