Cowboy Enchantment

by Pamela Browning

  “I’ve always been an early riser.”

  Justine smiled. “At Rancho Encantado, people who ordinarily wake up early, sleep later. Those who eat a lot go on a diet, and those who don’t, stuff themselves with food.”

  “What about food?”

  “You’re on the same diet as I am,” Justine told Erica with a twinkle. “I’m always trying to gain weight. Don’t worry, you won’t gain too much,” she added hastily.

  “I wasn’t worried about that. It’s been all I can do to keep some meat on my bones, considering my schedule,” Erica admitted.

  “Lucky us,” Justine said, laughing. “You and I will pig out on the best food our chef has to offer. We’ll be the envy of everyone who is trying to lose a few pounds. And we’ll have a great time doing it.

  “Now,” Justine went on sympathetically, “tell me all about yourself. Charmaine has filled me in a lot, but I have a feeling she left out most of the details.”

  Erica found herself talking to Justine as if they were old friends. She asked about the riding lessons, the horses and even the stable cat. Justine said blankly, “You’ve met the cat?”

  Keeping in mind her perception that the gray cat had spoken to her, Erica said, “Mmm-hmm. I strolled through the stable on the way over for dinner.”

  “Oh, well, Mrs. Gray—that’s the cat’s name—has three kittens that I need to find homes for. I don’t suppose you could take one back to New York with you?”

  “I’d like that,” Erica said, surprising herself. “It would be fun to come home to a pet after being away on business. But I’ll have to decline, Justine. I’m too busy to take on the responsibility. And,” she said, pausing to study Justine’s reaction, “Mrs. Gray doesn’t seem exactly, well, normal.”

  “Oh, I know. Those eyes and the way she stares. It’s a little uncanny, almost as if she can tell what humans are thinking.” Justine didn’t expand on this, but Erica now suspected what really bothered her about the stable cat. It was her eyes, as Justine said, wide and yellow and unblinking.

  Their conversation went on to more conventional topics, such as Erica’s makeover, with Justine making a few suggestions about hair and makeup. They soon moved to the dining room, Murphy following, and dinner progressed smoothly with both of them talking and laughing and eating heartily of roast pork, sweet-potato casserole, salad containing hearts of palm, and creamed spinach. And even though she knew her fellow guests were probably partaking of a few shrimp cunningly arranged on a lettuce leaf, Erica did not feel one bit guilty about eating so much rich food. At least not yet.

  Because she was going to have the voluptuous figure she’d always wanted. It was a means to an end. A rear end that would be softly rounded, maybe even jiggling slightly as she strolled into a roadhouse wearing tight-fitting jeans. And then…then Hank, who had looked as if he could barely stand to look at her, would change his tune.

  Holding that very pleasant thought, Erica helped herself to another large spoonful of sweet potatoes.

  Padre Luis Speaks…

  I AM ONLY a humble priest. But por Dios! I do my best.

  Forgive me if my English is not so good. It is not my native tongue. When I built my school and hospital in this valley, the miners and their families rejoiced. Now they are gone. In the place where my hospital stood, there is a building. It has the inconsequential name of Desert Rose.

  I live in my hospital office, or where it once was. Unfortunately this space is in the courtyard of this Desert Rose place. My office is in the midst of a cactus patch. A gardener comes to groom the cactus every week. Whoever heard of grooming a cactus patch? But I cannot feel the spines of the cacti, though I pace among them, to and fro, to and fro.

  A woman arrived here today. Her name is Erica. She cannot see me, as I am not as I was. I can only barely see her. She is like a faded picture, indicating an incompleteness of the spirit. Perhaps there is hope for her, if she learns to be real. I will pray for her.

  I wanted to speak to her, but no one can hear me. I do not know why. It is my belief that, as I have heard the Anglo settlers say, the cat has got my tongue.

  But if the cat has my tongue, why does she not say what I would say? Por Dios, there are many things I do not understand.

  I am only a humble priest, not worldly and only wishing to be wise. I must pray.

  Chapter Three

  Hank ignored the blinking light on his answering machine as he stared morosely at the tiny white button in his left hand and the pink-checked pinafore in his right. Actually two buttons had popped off this garment, which was one of his favorites for Kaylie to wear because it was frilly and cute and didn’t need ironing. Hank hated ironing. And he had no idea how to go about sewing on a button.

  He stuck his head around the corner to check on Kaylie in her alcove. She slept soundly in her crib, her bottom up in the air, her binky in her mouth.

  It occurred to him that he could ask Cord McCall, the ranch manager, to be alert for sounds from his small apartment. Cord was a loner, kept mostly to himself, but he lived next door in similar quarters, a door opened between them, and the baby monitor would alert Cord if Kaylie woke.

  Although his main purpose in going to the Big House was to ask Justine to show him how to sew on a button, Hank thought it might be a good idea to stop by to see her, maybe apologize for his anger this afternoon. Not only that, but Erica Strong might have heard every word of his argument with Justine, and the last thing he needed if he wanted to repair his relationship with his sister was for Erica to complain.

  After Cord agreed to listen for the baby, Hank erased the answering-machine message tape without listening to it. The message was probably from his boss calling one more time for advice on how to snatch the Gillooley communications deal out from under the nose of MacNee, Levy and Ashe, a problem that would have consumed him at one time. But since he couldn’t care less about things at Rowbotham-Quigley these days, Hank set off at a fast lope with the two buttons clenched in his fist and the pinafore hanging from his back pocket for lack of any place more suitable to carry it. As usual, Hank walked in the heavy-timbered front door at the Big House without knocking.

  But it wasn’t his sister who was there to greet him or even the dog. It was Erica Strong, who was leafing through a book from the gallery bookcase.

  She blinked at him under the overhead light, her eyes wide and owlish behind her glasses. She seemed alarmed at his precipitous arrival, his bursting through the door without knocking, and he supposed he didn’t blame her.

  “I’m looking for Justine,” he blurted, taken by surprise as he was.

  Erica narrowed her eyes. “She’s out.”

  “Out?”

  “Justine was on her way out to walk the dog when she was called over to the kitchen. Something to do with someone named Pavel.” In that moment, for some reason he pictured her the way she’d been in the stable earlier, when he had confronted her and spoken so gruffly. She had triumphed over her initial uncertainty about his boorishness by drawing an attitude around her like a protective cloak, and despite his annoyance, he’d admired that. Well, since then he’d had time to begin to feel ashamed of the way he acted.

  “Oh, Pavel is the chef. He’s probably threatening to quit again. And Murphy?”

  “Went with Justine. I’ll be glad to give her a message if you like,” she said. She was a small woman, fine-boned, her eyebrows neatly arched as if she hung constantly on the brink of surprise. Her skin was clear, her eyes bright, and the top of her head came only to his jawline. He had the totally irrelevant thought that if he bent forward, he could kiss her forehead without any trouble at all.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll wait for her,” he said. “I need a book to read. And by the way, my name’s Hank Milling. We haven’t met properly.”

  Her eyes behind the glasses were solemn. “No, I suppose we haven’t. But Mr. Milling—”

  “Hank,” he said.

  “Hank, if you really don’t want to teach me how t
o ride, you don’t have to.”

  “I’ve already factored you into my schedule,” Hank said, trying to sound friendly. He was determined to make amends for the way he’d acted earlier.

  “I see,” she said. She tipped her head slightly to one side, and he found something very arresting about the way she was looking at him. It reminded him of Kaylie, which was ridiculous because Erica was a grown woman and Kaylie was seven months old. Maybe it was that this woman was displaying an interest in him, or that, in her own way, she seemed to be hanging on every word he said. Whatever it was, it made him want to know her better.

  He nodded toward the book in her hand. “I hope you found a good book.”

  She seemed surprised that he had commented about it. “It’s a Zane Grey book, Woman of the Frontier.”

  “I’ve read it. When I was a kid I owned a complete set of his work.”

  “You did?” She started to smile, seemed to think better of it, and then, as if she was unable to stop it, the smile spread across her face, transforming her completely. He liked the way her eyes sparkled, the curve of her bottom lip, the way she lit up all over.

  “My favorite Zane Grey book was Riders of the Purple Sage.”

  “Mine is this one,” she said, tapping the book she held with a forefinger. “It’s not written to the Western formula like most of Zane Grey’s books. It’s more a woman’s story, and this is the latest edition, which restores pages cut from the original. It was Zane Grey’s books, all of them, that got me fascinated by the West.”

  He grinned down at her, unexpectedly feeling a kinship with her. “You know, maybe I’ll reread Purple Sage.”

  “It’s over there. Next to the big green one.”

  When he went to pull the book off the shelf, he dropped one of the pinafore buttons. It rolled under a chair, and he thought he saw where it landed—on the side of the chair near the window.

  She asked him what he’d dropped and he told her, then set the book on the table and bent to look for the button. “I know it’s under here,” he said, groping beneath the chair skirt.

  “I think it went slightly to the left,” she told him.

  “I don’t feel it.” He felt silly, groveling on the floor.

  “Maybe it rolled out at the back of the chair.” She went around the chair and said, “Here it is.” She handed the button to him.

  “It’s from my daughter’s pinafore.” Sheepishly he yanked the garment from his back pocket, realizing that the whole time he’d been talking to Erica Strong, the pink-checked fabric had been waving from his pocket like a flag.

  “Oh, you have a daughter,” she said, but he couldn’t figure out from her tone whether she thought a child was a plus or a minus.

  Not that it mattered. But something expanding in his chest, some kind of air forcing out the other negative feelings, made him want to please her. It was a strange urge, and he didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Yes, her name is Kaylie. She’s seven months old. And I don’t know anything about sewing on buttons.” So help him, he felt his face flushing. Why this should happen, he didn’t know. He wasn’t embarrassed. Yet something about this woman was causing him to act like a bumbling idiot.

  “Well,” Erica said briskly, “I can sew on the button for you.”

  “I couldn’t ask you—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I’ll teach you how to do it yourself. You know that old saying—‘Give a man a fish, and you feed one man. Teach a man to fish—’”

  “‘—and you feed a hundred,”’ he finished. “Though I sure do hope I don’t have to sew buttons on a hundred pinafores.”

  She looked up at him and smiled. That lit her eyes from within, but in a different way than laughter did.

  “The only thing is, you’ll need to show me where Justine keeps a needle and thread.”

  “That’s easy. Come with me.” He led her through the house to a utility room where there were a washer and dryer and a small closet where his sister stored her sewing machine and supplies.

  He dug in a plastic box and produced white thread, a packet of needles and scissors. Then he pulled a small rocking chair closer to a floor lamp so that Erica could sit.

  “Watch closely,” she said. She threaded the needle and showed him how to knot the thread.

  “Then you bring the needle up from the bottom of the fabric,” she said, demonstrating. He leaned against the washing machine and watched with his arms folded across his chest as she began sewing on a button, her fingers moving deftly as she plied the needle. She made it look easy.

  “Is sewing a hobby of yours?” he asked after a while.

  The question seemed to surprise and amuse her. “No, I wouldn’t say that. My mother made sure that my sisters and I knew how to sew on buttons and turn up hems before we went away to college.”

  “How many sisters?”

  “Two,” she said. “Now watch how I make a knot when the button is secure.” She looped the thread and guided the needle through it before snipping off the thread.

  “Justine said that Charmaine Strong is your sister,” he said.

  She shot him a quick look. “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve seen pictures of her. She’s beautiful.”

  Erica tried not to let the admiration in his voice upset her. People had always said how beautiful Charmaine was, and it was true. But sometimes, implied in their comments was the secondary thought And you’re not.

  Most of the time it didn’t bother her. She’d grown immune to people’s surprise that she could have such a beautiful sister. Long ago she had decided that those people didn’t count and didn’t deserve a place in her life. She knew she would never be as beautiful as Char or their older sister, Abby, a former Miss Rhode Island, and that was okay. She was intelligent, was known as the smart sister. She’d decided early on that if she couldn’t be gorgeous, she would collect academic degrees and hold a fantastic job that provided lots of perks. So there.

  But now, for this cowboy, for her cowboy, she wanted nothing so much as to be beautiful. To make him want her. To have him slavering after her with lust in his heart.

  “Why don’t you try sewing on the next one?” she suggested, holding out the spool and the needle.

  She cut the thread and handed him the pinafore, then stood up so that he could sit in the chair.

  Hank had heard the expression “all thumbs” for most of his life but had never had it applied to him before. The needle was slippery and the eye so small that he couldn’t find it with the end of the thread.

  “Need some help?” She had the softest voice, and there was something alluring in the tone of it.

  He looked up at her, ashamed to feel so helpless. Who would have thought that sewing on a button could be so hard? Who would have thought, for that matter, that being the sole parent of a baby girl could make a grown man feel so inadequate?

  “Here,” she said, bending over him, and he caught a whiff of the fragrance of…honeysuckle? Did she really smell like honeysuckle? Every cell of his body went on alert at this whiff of his favorite scent, and he leaned a little closer to her. By that time, however, she had edged nearer to the lamp and was threading the needle with brisk efficiency.

  “There you are,” she said, handing him the threaded needle. “Now try.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he found himself saying meekly. He punched the needle into the fabric as he would have through leather, as in repairing a harness or a bridle, sticking his finger in the process. “Ouch!”

  “Um, maybe you should do that more gently,” Erica said.

  He inhaled a breath, blew it out. “All right,” he said dutifully. He tried again, feeling a rare sense of accomplishment when he pulled the thread through the fabric. He stuck the button on top and watched as it wobbled down the thread.

  “You see?” Erica said. “You can do it.”

  “‘I think I can, I think I can,”’ he said, taking his first stitch through the buttonholes.

/>   “‘The Little Engine that Could,”’ was one of my favorite childhood stories, too,” Erica said.

  He stared at her. “No kidding. I’m already deciding what storybooks I want to buy for Kaylie. ‘The Little Engine that Could’ was one of my first choices.”

  “Oh, there are lots of others. My nephew Todd especially likes a book about a moth. ‘Stellaluna,’ it’s called.”

  “I didn’t know Charmaine had children.” He was getting the hang of this button-sewing and found he could talk and sew at the same time.

  “Oh, Charmaine doesn’t have any kids. Todd belongs to our sister, Abby. She’s married to a stockbroker, which seems awfully dull sometimes. I imagine it’s much more interesting to be a cowboy.”

  If she only knew, Hank thought. If she only knew the truth about me. But what he said was, “It must seem that way.” He tied the knot neatly and reached for the scissors.

  He stood up. “Thank you,” he said, wadding the pinafore into a ball before he thought better of stuffing it back in his pocket. “I really appreciate this.”

  “It was nothing,” she said, and all at once he realized that they were standing so close that he could have reached over and brushed a thumb against her cheek. And he smelled honeysuckle again, he was sure of it.

  He took a deliberate step backward. “Justine must be having supply problems,” he said. “That’s why she’s not back. It’s happened before, the cook’s having to adjust the next day’s menu because the food hasn’t arrived.”

  “I suppose I might as well take my book and head back to my suite,” Erica said. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned and led the way through the dim house, her heels clicking on the polished tile floor.

  When they reached the bookshelves, she picked up her book from the table, and he tucked Riders of the Purple Sage beneath his arm.

  “I’ll walk you as far as the fork in the path,” he said.

  Outside, the air had a cool nip to it, and overhead a night bird called. The desert sky was clear, the stars burning hot and bright. As improbable as it might have seemed, a thin mist rose out of that dry desert air, encapsulating them in their own world out there under the stars. Erica walked beside him, and it pleased Hank that she knew enough not to sully the night with words.