Cowboy Enchantment

by Pamela Browning

  “Kaylie and I have both eaten. I could use a beer if you’ve got one.”

  “Top shelf of the fridge. Help yourself while we girls visit.”

  “Can I get anyone else something to drink?”

  Both Erica and Justine shook their heads, and Hank started for the kitchen. He found a beer, popped the top and rejoined them in the living room. Erica was sitting on the couch, still holding Kaylie and looking uncertain as to what she was about. He almost laughed at the way she was holding the baby—gingerly, as if she’d break. Well, he himself hadn’t known what to do when he first held his daughter, but he’d learned fast.

  Justine was sitting on the couch, too, dangling her charm bracelet in front of a fascinated Kaylie. Hank flung himself into the big leather armchair he favored when visiting and took a long pull on the beer. It slid down easily, cool and refreshing. It had been a long day, and it suddenly occurred to him that the best part of it had been the hour he’d given Erica a riding lesson.

  He didn’t know what made him say it, but the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I was thinking,” he said to Erica. “Tomorrow I don’t have any lessons in the afternoon besides yours. If you’re available earlier, we could take an easy trail ride, instead of your regular lesson.”

  Erica shot him a startled look over Kaylie’s head. “I’d like that,” she said.

  Justine, though she appeared surprised at the offer, spoke up quickly. “If Paloma could drop Kaylie off with me before she goes home tomorrow, you and Erica could take your time while you’re out on the trail.”

  “Well, sure,” Hank said. Kaylie hadn’t spent much time here lately, mostly because Justine was busy with ranch matters twenty-four hours a day.

  Justine looked pleased. “I’ll have Pavel prepare a trail meal for you so you won’t miss supper.”

  Kaylie erupted in a stream of syllables and held her arms out toward Justine. Erica, looking relieved, let Justine take her. Justine began bouncing Kaylie on her knee.

  Hank felt a stab of annoyance seeing Erica’s relief at relinquishing Kaylie, though he couldn’t have said why. He’d let the woman hold his precious baby, and much to his surprise she hadn’t seemed at all grateful or captivated as most women were. He had no idea why he cared about this, but he did. As silly as it sounded even in his own mind, everyone should be grateful for the opportunity to be part of Kaylie’s life. He didn’t like even a hint that she might be a nuisance to anyone.

  He wished now that he hadn’t asked Erica to go on the trail ride tomorrow. “Of course, if you’d rather have a regular lesson, that would be fine,” he said, despite the fact that they’d already left the subject. Justine shot him a narrow-eyed glance, but Erica furrowed her forehead in distress. “Well—”

  Justine wasted no time in expressing her opinion. “Nonsense, you’ve already decided on the trail ride, and I’m looking forward to a long visit with my niece,” she said, driving home the point that he’d better live up to his promise.

  Erica, sensing the tension between brother and sister, stood up. “I think I’ll have a beer myself,” she said. She started toward the kitchen.

  “Good idea,” Justine said. “Drink a couple of those a day and you’ll gain weight.”

  As Erica disappeared down the hall, Justine shot daggers at Hank, the look in her eyes warning him not to make problems. Inwardly he cursed himself for his own stupidity. If he hadn’t brought up the idea of the trail ride, it would never have been mentioned and Erica’s riding lesson would have gone on as planned. He should have had more sense.

  Suddenly he couldn’t sit still, mostly because he hated the way Justine was always trying to impose her will on him. He got up and, not knowing what he was going to do when he got there, followed Erica into the kitchen.

  He surprised Erica in the process of pulling a beer out of the far reaches of the refrigerator.

  “I could use another,” he said, holding up his empty bottle though he’d previously had no intention of drinking a second.

  Erica moved out of the way so he could reach into the refrigerator.

  “Your Kaylie is darling,” she said, surprising him. She sounded as though she meant it.

  “Thanks.” Instead of going back to the living room, Erica leaned back against the kitchen counter and twisted the top off her beer bottle. “I…well, babies are so little,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I was holding her right.”

  “Neither was I when I first held her. She was a lot smaller then, too.”

  Erica brought the bottle up to her mouth and drank, and he couldn’t help noticing her long neck and how it swept up into her jawline, which ended at her ear, barely visible under the curtain of hair falling back from her face. He looked away, wondering how it was that he could come undone by merely looking at a portion of her anatomy, and not a portion that usually had sexual connotations, either.

  “At first I thought you didn’t like Kaylie,” he blurted, thinking how stupid he was to set himself up for her denial.

  She surprised him. She regarded him levelly, not denying anything. “Actually, when I started to hold her, I didn’t know if I did or not, although I thought she was beautiful. She has her own little personality, doesn’t she?”

  Erica couldn’t have replied in a way that would have satisfied him more. Before he knew it, he was replying with enthusiasm. “Kaylie is unique, and it seems like they all start out that way. Before I had a baby of my own, I thought, ‘Oh, a baby,’ when I saw one and left it at that. I figured they all behaved pretty much the same.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “Hardly. For instance, the ranch foreman’s baby is as different from Kaylie as night is from day.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugged and relaxed. “The foreman and his wife invited Kaylie and me to their house for dinner, and their baby is exactly the same age. Kaylie has never met a stranger, and she flirted with Dusty, the foreman, and cooed to his wife, Tanya, and smiled at their baby, Emma. By contrast, Emma didn’t seem to enjoy having strangers around. She cried when I tried to pick her up, and they told me that she rarely sleeps through the night. Kaylie was sleeping through the night by the time she was a couple of months old.”

  Justine called from the living room, sounding every bit the solicitous aunt. “Erica, Hank, bring a towel when you come back, will you? Kaylie’s drooling a lot.”

  “She’s starting to cut her first tooth, I think,” Hank called back. He strode across the kitchen and rummaged in a drawer. “It’s amazing,” he said over his shoulder to Erica. “When a baby enters your life, everything starts to revolve around it. Around her.”

  “So it seems,” Erica murmured.

  “I’d better deliver this wiper to Justine.” He walked past her, the towel in one hand, a beer in the other.

  Erica followed him, and this time, instead of sitting beside Justine and Kaylie, who had taken over most of the couch, she sat down on the piano bench. From this position she could admire the chestnut highlights in Hank’s wavy hair, the rippling abs under his tight-fitting T-shirt. He caught her looking at him, and she quickly cut her eyes to the music. To her embarrassment, a flush began to creep upward from her neck, and she chastised herself for acting like a teenager with a crush.

  “Go ahead, play something,” urged Justine.

  “I’ll try,” she murmured. “Let me look the music over for a moment.”

  Hank and Justine went on talking about buying shoes for Kaylie while she studied the piece of music, and when she attempted to play a few notes, they didn’t comment.

  She began to move haltingly through the music, a light waltz. By the time she reached the end, the others had stopped talking and Justine was tentatively humming along.

  Erica paused for a sip of beer.

  “Please play something else,” Hank said.

  “There’s more music in the piano bench,” Justine added.

  Erica rummaged in the bench until she found a book of old standar
ds, and she treated them to a rousing rendition of “Turkey in the Straw.”

  “This house could use some livening up,” Justine said. “I hope you’ll play again sometime.”

  “Perhaps,” Erica said.

  “If you like, you can take the sheet music back to your room and study it before you tackle it.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Hank spoke up. “Kaylie’s yawning. I’d better get her home and to bed.”

  “You can walk Erica back,” Justine said.

  This surprised Hank. He hadn’t expected such an assignment. Erica, to give her credit, had the good grace to appear startled. Without being a total dork, he could hardly refuse, so he made himself smile and say, “Sure.”

  A flurry of goodbyes followed, and then they were outside in the cool, sweet-scented desert air, Kaylie pressed against his shoulder and Erica walking alongside him, a folder of sheet music tucked under her arm.

  Across the way, a group of guests hurried across the open space toward their quarters. As they dispersed to their rooms, they called out cheerful good-nights to one another.

  “I hope you don’t mind about the longer trail ride tomorrow,” he said.

  Erica concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Mind? Why would she mind? It was like the answer to a prayer—more time with her cowboy, more time to make an impression on him. Although if the way he was looking at her now was any indication, she was impressing him right this minute.

  Erica wondered how much longer she’d be able to act as if she had little riding experience. In fact, she’d learned to ride at age ten, competed in regional gymkhanas throughout her high-school years and still rode whenever she could.

  “Whatever you think,” she murmured, aghast at herself for sounding so wimpy. Erica Strong never let someone else make her decisions for her; Erica Strong always had opinions; Erica Strong was a leader, not a follower.

  Of course, Erica Strong had never met a handsome, virile cowboy in the flesh, the kind of guy who’d been the stuff of dreams since she was a little girl.

  And now that she had, she looked at things a lot differently. She smiled to herself, thinking that Charmaine wouldn’t believe her sister’s good fortune. After all, Erica didn’t quite believe it herself.

  Chapter Five

  “Breathe in. Breathe out. And feel pe-e-e-eace.”

  Erica, seated cross-legged on a mat underneath a spreading oak, breathed in. She breathed out. And she opened one eye so she could better observe the group that was at that moment riding out from the stable in the distance. It consisted of twelve riders and a leader, Hank. She almost wished she’d signed up for group riding lessons, instead of private ones. If she had, she would be with Hank right now, instead of merely breathing.

  The instructor, a tiny dark-haired woman named Ananda, rang a small chime. The resulting notes fairly shimmered in the air. “That’s the end of our meditation session for today.”

  Along with the other participants in the session, Erica returned her mat to the nearby wooden outbuilding and started walking back toward the cluster of buildings that made up the main part of the ranch. It was time for her appointment with her personal shopper.

  The shopper’s name was Sue, and she was a red-haired bundle of energy. “You need to tell me what kind of clothes you like to wear,” she said, sitting down on a couch and patting the cushion beside her.

  Erica described her collection of power suits in navy and charcoal, her numerous little black dresses that could go from cocktail parties to dinners with little or no modification, and her collection of expensive but sensible shoes that were as suitable for chasing taxis as they were for board meetings.

  “Well,” said Sue, studying her carefully, “what would you like to change about your wardrobe?”

  “Everything,” Erica declared. “I hate the way I look. I hate navy and charcoal and low-heeled shoes. I want to—” and here she swallowed audibly “—I want to look like someone a cowboy could fall in love with. I want to be cute and charming and curvy. I want—”

  “We can take care of the cute and curvy. It’s up to you to be charming.”

  “I will be, so help me,” Erica said.

  “Stand up.”

  Erica stood.

  “Turn around.”

  Erica turned.

  “You have small bones, and that’s to the good. I see on your chart that you want to gain weight, not lose it. That’s excellent. Hips, fine. Bust, needs a bit of oomph, no problem there.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They have bras for that. To spiff up your usual wardrobe, I’ll order you some blouses in bright colors. I’ll find a jumpsuit to show off your petite figure, scarves to spark a bit of color in your face. And you’d look great in short dresses that emphasize your legs.”

  Erica always wore her skirts long, but she had come here for a makeover, and made over she was determined to be. “All right,” she said.

  Sue made notations on a color chart. “I can make a few phone calls and have some clothes delivered here today. In the meantime, let’s pay a visit to the ranch’s gift shop. You’ll want to look your best for the dance tonight.”

  “No one told me anything about a dance!”

  “Your invitation was in the packet of materials you received at registration.”

  “Oops! Maybe I should have read all that stuff.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in as we walk over there.”

  She and Erica started across the grounds toward the gift shop. “Justine hired a country-and-western band to come from Carson City every Friday night,” Sue told her. “All guests are invited, and all the employees are required to go.”

  So Hank would be there!

  When she and Sue arrived at the gift shop, Sue immediately led Erica to a rack of square-dance clothes. And after several trips to and from the fitting room, Erica had to admit that the new clothes did something for her. The puffy sleeves of the peasant blouse made her arms look plump and round, the bodice showed her breasts to be especially curvaceous, and as for her hips…well, the bandanna fabric of the skirt moved alluringly when she experimentally swung her hips from side to side. She pulled the elastic neckline low enough to reveal cleavage, and due to a bra that Sue had provided, there was cleavage.

  Sue grinned. “Well? If you want to look cute and curvy, these are the clothes.”

  “I’ll take all of them,” Erica decided in a fit of recklessness.

  “Good,” Sue said with a nod of approval, and she went off to charge the outfits to Erica’s tab.

  After promising to have Erica’s new clothes pressed and hung in her closet within hours after they arrived, Sue left her in front of the rec hall, and Erica walked back to Desert Rose pondering this makeover business. By now she knew she looked different. She thought she looked better. But she felt like the same Erica inside.

  Two women from one of the other suites in Desert Rose hailed her as she opened her own door. “We’re going for a mud wrap. Want to come with us?”

  She recognized both of them from yoga class. Natalie was tiny and pert, Shannon was tall and busty. Both wore big smiles and seemed eager for company.

  As unappealing as a mud wrap sounded, Erica figured she might as well sample as many Rancho Encantado activities as possible and agreed to meet them in the courtyard in a few minutes.

  After she changed into her robe, she hurried back outside. As she waited beneath the Joshua tree, she spotted the group of student riders as they headed back toward the stable. Hank rode at the front of the group, his red shirt making him easily distinguishable.

  “I see you noticed Hunk,” Shannon said when she and Natalie joined her.

  In response to Erica’s blank expression, Natalie laughed. “His name’s Hank, but we think Hunk suits him better.”

  It was all Erica could do to suppress a smile. Finally she gave up and grinned. “The name fits,” she admitted “Do you know him?”

  “Not very well,” Na
talie said. “He’s very businesslike and hardly ever cracks a smile.”

  “We tried to cheer him up. Lordy, how we tried.” The two exchanged a look and laughed.

  Erica supposed she could have brought up the tragedy that had changed Hank’s life, but it didn’t seem appropriate to discuss it. Certainly she wasn’t surprised that Hank was attractive to other women; hadn’t Justine said that she fielded questions about him all the time?

  The three of them learned when they arrived at the spa that the mud-wrap procedure would take two hours. A week ago Erica would have bemoaned a full two hours wasted on something she considered trivial, but now it didn’t matter. She didn’t have to be anywhere, do anything or be useful to anyone. Willingly she turned herself over to the receptionist, who conducted her into the depths of the Rancho Encantado spa where people went to be massaged, immersed, floated, rolfed and wrapped.

  Erica found her skin being exfoliated with loofah mitts and sea salt to the accompaniment of soothing music. When her skin was burnished to a tingle, mud was applied to her entire body, although the stolid attendant was merciful enough to spare her face. Then Erica was wrapped in permeable plastic to “cocoon” for twenty minutes during which she was told to relax. Minutes later, beginning to succumb to the warm sensation of the mud and the wrap, Erica closed her eyes.

  She was on the porch outside the recreation hall wearing her new low-necked white peasant blouse and the red bandanna skirt. Her breasts were full and partially exposed; they shone pale in the moonlight that spilled like molten silver over the scene.

  Hank, standing on the step below her, glanced at her, his heavy-lidded eyes smoldering with desire. “Erica, let’s slip away together. Let’s find a place where we can be alone.”

  From inside the hall came the lively music of a fiddle. Suddenly the music tempo changed, becoming a slow and dreamy waltz.

  Erica slid a look back through the open door, where couples were gliding beneath crepe-paper streamers hung overhead. “We’ll be missed.”