Cowboy Enchantment Read online

  At that, Kaylie blew bubbles. The drollness of her action lifted his spirits considerably.

  He finished feeding Kaylie and handed her over to Paloma, her baby-sitter, who’d just returned from using the washer and dryer at the Big House. Then he headed back to the riding ring to give his next lesson. He might be down, but he certainly wasn’t out. Not by a long shot, and not as long as he could create fantasies in his mind to help ride him over the rough spots.

  KEEPING IN MIND that she was going to meet Justine for dinner, Erica added a beige linen blouse to her jeans, which were dismayingly too big. She grasped a clump of the extra fabric around her waist, trying to figure out how many pounds she’d lost since she’d worn them last. Ten? Fifteen? Chalk it up to her hectic lifestyle. Sighing, she released the fabric so that the jeans hung loosely on her hips.

  She marveled at the improvement of her hair, which felt not at all like her own now that it sprang upward and outward from her scalp. Still, her reflection in the mirror didn’t offer a whole lot of reassurance. She wore no makeup.

  Even though she already felt more relaxed, she looked tense and weary, even exhausted. She ditched her clip earrings, which hurt her ears, but decided not to remove the gold disc bearing her initials that she wore on a chain around her neck. It had been a present from Charmaine, who loved jewelry and had brought it back from a job in Italy. She decided that she would take a piece of turquoise-and-silver jewelry back to Charmaine when she returned to New York. Charmaine loved native-made Indian pieces.

  Tomorrow she would begin her makeover. Was she expecting a miracle? To look like Charmaine, for instance? No. Definitely not. Anyway, she was aiming for a more voluptuous look than Charmaine’s, however that might be accomplished.

  Defiantly she shoved her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose and headed for the stable to check out the horses, which would give her something to do before she showed up for dinner. Perhaps she would even run into the cowboy. Her cowboy.

  Consulting the map of the property that was printed in the back of her schedule, Erica walked along the lane between the two rows of eucalyptus trees until she reached the stable. She’d barely entered the shadowy interior, redolent with the distinctive familiar odors of hay, saddle leather, feed and horse when she heard a curse from one of the stalls at the other end.

  “Damn,” said a husky male voice. “Don’t I have enough to do with Kaylie and a full load of students and refurbishing the buildings, not to mention working with that rapscallion horse of yours?”

  “Erica is Char’s sister,” replied a voice that Erica immediately identified as Justine’s. “You can fit her in. And Sebastian is not a rapscallion horse, as you so delicately put it. He’s misunderstood, that’s all.”

  Erica shrank into the shadows beside the door to the tack room, unwilling to move for fear her presence would be detected. A gray cat, the same one she’d noticed beneath the Joshua tree outside her suite, materialized from behind a half-filled feed sack and sat staring up at her without blinking. She willed it to go away, but it didn’t.

  “Sebastian is a handful and the bane of my existence. Even Cord McCall, who knows a lot about horses, has given up on him.”

  “You have no intention of giving up on Sebastian, Hank. Those years of college vacations spent working on a Texas ranch have served you well. Anyway, let’s keep this conversation on point. We were talking about Erica Strong.”

  “I can fit her into a group lesson, but I told you I couldn’t take any more private students,” the man said. Erica peeked around a post and saw that the speaker was none other than Hank.

  “I consider Erica a personal friend, and she signed up for private lessons. Listen, Hank, you’d better behave yourself. I won’t have you being rude to my guests.”

  “I’m not rude.”

  “That Ferguson woman from Michigan insisted on leaving because of something you said.”

  “She came on to me. I told her to back off.”

  “That’s not her story.”

  “Look, Justine, there are two types of women who come to Rancho Encantado looking to improve their lives. One type hauls in a complete wardrobe in matched Louis Vuitton suitcases. The other kind arrives with a cell phone clamped to her ear and a cigarette in her mouth. Deenie Ferguson was the former, and this Erica person sounds like the latter. It’s the type I like the least.”

  “I happen to know that Erica doesn’t smoke, and there wasn’t a cell phone in sight. Not that she’d be allowed to use it, anyway. Not that she’d be able to use it in the valley, either. You’re being pigheaded and unreasonable.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Justine sounded extremely exasperated. “You know, Hank, I sympathize with what you’ve been through. It wasn’t easy, that whole business about Anne-Marie and now having Kaylie to look after. But I need your cooperation, and besides, it wouldn’t hurt you to socialize more. It would be good for you, good for business.”

  He let out an explosive sigh. “All right, Justine. You win. You call the shots around here.” His words held a bitter edge.

  “That’s right,” Justine said levelly.

  “I can fit this Strong woman in at five every day. That’s the best I can do. Even then the lessons will be cut short because I have to get back to Kaylie before Paloma leaves at suppertime.”

  “Fine. That works for me.”

  Erica heard the slam of a stall door. When she peered around the post that screened her from view, she saw Justine’s tall figure striding toward the Big House, her braid swinging behind her.

  Erica meant to tiptoe out of the stable unnoticed, but her shoulder caught a bridle strap where it was suspended from a hook on the post, and the bridle fell to the floor. Immediately the cowboy swiveled around and peered through the gloom toward the noise. He spotted Erica right away, frozen as she was in embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping.

  “What was that noise? And who the hell are you?” he growled, staring at her across the length of the stable floor.

  In one of the stalls a horse nickered, and a couple of others nosed their faces over the tops of their doors. The gray cat said, Now you’ve done it. Before Erica could register her utter incredulity at the phenomenon of a talking cat, it turned and slinked into the tack room.

  Never mind the cat’s talking; Erica was even more unnerved by the man’s anger. “A…a bridle fell off the hook.” She jerked her head toward the post where it had hung.

  “So why don’t you pick it up?”

  “I’m going to.” She bent and scooped the bridle up from the floor, dropping it again in her haste. The man started toward her, looming tall in the slanting light that fell across his features. As he drew closer, Erica saw that she had been right: he was an incredibly handsome man. His hair was a rich brown, the color of mahogany, and his eyes were a deep cerulean blue, the blue of the deep part of the ocean, the blue of the sky in the hours before dawn. Abs like a washboard, even as seen through his T-shirt. Thighs muscular and outlined perfectly by snug, faded jeans. He radiated a rugged masculinity that put her in mind of Clint Eastwood in his younger days. She drew in her breath sharply as a slow heat radiated through her in recognition of the man’s appeal. It was overwhelmingly sexual, that appeal, sexual and vibrating with a kind of slow-simmering energy beneath the surface.

  His eyes held hers as he bent with a ripple of toned muscles to pick up the bridle. “You didn’t answer the second part of my question. Who are you?”

  She must have inhaled some of the dust stirred up by the falling bridle, because when she tried to speak, the words caught in her throat. “Er—Erica. Erica Strong,” she stammered, feeling foolish and out of place. She, who could chair a meeting of financial wizards with aplomb, who could field three phone calls at once and take notes simultaneously on all of them, was totally unhinged by the stern gaze of this handsome cowboy. She wiped damp palms on her jeans, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

  But he did. His gaze moved upward, taking in th
e loose jeans, the wrinkled blouse, his expression intense and slightly mocking. “Oh. My new student,” he said with barely concealed distaste.

  “I…well, I did sign up for lessons.” She knew how stupid she must sound, how gauche and unsophisticated.

  He continued to look her over, not bothering to hide his disdain. She knew she appeared mousy and unappealing, and worst of all, he was the cowboy she had marked for her own, and his first and perhaps lasting impression of her was of an unremarkable woman who shrank into the shadows and appeared less than confident in herself.

  She almost turned and ran, but something made her hold her ground. Maybe it was because she had never run from a confrontation in her career, and maybe it was because she refused to show this man, her ideal man, that he intimidated her.

  “You’re on line for a private lesson tomorrow at five in the afternoon,” he said none too cheerfully.

  Her head tilted upward a notch even as her heart began pounding. “Yes. I’ll see you then,” she said coolly before pivoting and walking smartly out of the stable.

  She thought she felt his gaze on her inconsiderable backside as she retreated toward the Big House, but then she decided it must be her imagination.

  This cowboy, this Hank who was Justine’s brother, clearly found nothing to catch his interest in either her looks or comportment. He didn’t welcome the addition of her lesson to what he considered a too-busy schedule. She was an annoyance, a responsibility, a bother. And he had made it clear that he found her downright unattractive.

  Disappointment prickled behind her eyes like unshed tears; the man was not what she’d expected in a cowboy, her cowboy. The realization was almost, but not enough, to send her skedaddling back to New York without a makeover. Without her dignity. And without a man.

  But that would not do. She was going to live out her fantasy at Rancho Encantado. She was going to have a fling with her cowboy if it was the last thing she did. And there was no doubt in her mind that it would be this cowboy and no other, if only because she was not in the habit of giving in to defeat.

  AFTER HER RETREAT, Hank ran a hand across the back of his neck as he was prone to do in exasperating times. “Doesn’t look to me like this Erica Strong is going to be a whole lot of fun,” he said to his favorite mount, Whip, who nuzzled his chest in hopes of finding a sugar cube.

  Hank produced the sugar from the pocket of his jeans and stood stroking Whip’s neck for a moment. It amused him that his new riding student had been so nervous in his presence. She’d looked as if she were about to jump out of her skin when he first spoke to her, and although she’d recovered in the end, she’d put distance between them as soon as she could. He didn’t need another riding student, and he didn’t think they were going to get along, but he quickly reminded himself that if it wasn’t for people like her, he wouldn’t have a job here.

  Well, he had another job. That is, if he wanted to return to it. But he and Justine had decided that losing her mother had been upheaval enough in Kaylie’s life and that having to part so soon from her familiar surroundings would only cause problems. It would be better, they’d reasoned, for Paloma, her caregiver, to remain a constant in his small daughter’s routine until Hank had time to bond with Kaylie, the daughter he’d met only after the tragedy that took his ex-wife’s life.

  Never mind that Hank’s girlfriend kept asking when he planned to return to her and to his real job. Never mind that he and Justine often argued in the perverse way of siblings about things that probably weren’t, in the long run, all that important.

  Besides, he was enjoying his new life as a cowboy. He liked living in the tradition of his childhood heroes—John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers—all of whom he’d seen over and over again in reruns on TV. It made him laugh to think about how stuffy and insufferable he must have been when he wore a suit to work every day. And to tell the truth, he could hardly recall what Lizette, his girlfriend, looked like. You’d think he would. You’d think that after seven or eight months with her, everything about Lizette would be engraved on his mind. Hair color, eye color—the works.

  Were her eyes blue? He couldn’t remember. If he worked up the nerve, maybe he’d ask her the next time he phoned her. Which should be soon, but lately he found that his heart wasn’t in those awkward phone calls during which he had to make himself listen to Lizette’s prattling on about rebirthing sessions and her job as a life coach and lunches with her friends. He longed to tell her how cute Kaylie was when she laughed and about the way the sunset turned the distant hills to molten gold, and once he had tried to describe how difficult it was to find the right kind of disposable diapers at the local grocery store. Lizette had evinced only scant interest of his frustration over the situation and then had continued talking about whatever it was that she’d been talking about before he’d changed the subject.

  “I guess I’m losing my touch with women, huh, old man?” he said to Whip, who eyed him hopefully as if another sugar cube might be forthcoming.

  “Well, there’s one female who’s always glad to have me around,” he said, and then he closed the stall door and went to relieve Paloma of her duties. Kaylie, it seemed, was his only love right now, and now that he thought about it, that was okay, too.

  AS SHE WALKED slowly toward the Big House, Erica reflected that Charmaine hadn’t thought much of her longing to look like a cowboy’s sweetheart.

  “Forget the cowboy,” Charmaine had said, chucking shorts and halter tops into her suitcase as she packed for her trip to Aruba. “You need someone as intelligent as you are.”

  Erica, who had been chugging cold medicine and was feeling woozy as a result, had been sprawled across her sister’s bed reading the Rancho Encantado brochure. “How am I going to find an intelligent man when there aren’t any?” she asked, looking up from pictures of tanned blondes reclining around a swimming pool. “All the ones my age are chasing nineteen-year-old table dancers, and how intelligent is that?”

  “I told you that you should stop being so opinionated. It’s okay to run the show at McNee, Levy and Ashe, but in your personal relationships, you need to let the men call the shots once in a while.”

  “Aargh! Like I’d want to. Give me a break, Charmaine.”

  “You haven’t met the right guy yet, obviously. When you do, you’ll want to nurture. You’ll want to defer.”

  Erica ignored this unlikely pronouncement. “You know, I think I’ll take my new digital camera. I used to be a pretty good photographer, and maybe there’ll be some good photo ops in the desert. Animals and such. And maybe they don’t have table dancers in country-and-western roadhouses. What do you think?”

  What Charmaine thought was indicated by the meaningful arch of her eyebrows, which had ended the discussion.

  Regarding the question of finding a man, any man, intelligent or otherwise, Erica had long ago given up. When she was younger, of course, she’d always expected that something and someone wonderful and exciting was about to happen any minute. All she’d have to do was go along doing everything right and suddenly the perfect man would appear. Or maybe it was the perfect job, or the perfect pair of panty hose…

  These days Erica was older and wiser. She realized that nothing special ever happened in her life, that day after day offered only more irritating sameness, and that was why she’d come to Rancho Encantado.

  So what if she’d gotten off on the wrong foot with the right cowboy? There was time to fix it, starting tomorrow after her consultation with a hairstylist and makeup artist. She and Justine could talk about her makeover over dinner, and maybe she’d forget the fact that her cowboy seemed less than enamored of her after their first meeting.

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t come around eventually. After all, wasn’t this Rancho Encantado, where dreams came true? Uh-huh.

  Justine answered her knock at the door of the Big House right away, smiling and holding the door open wide. She wore a simple gray dress that hugged her slim figure, showing off her wide sho
ulders and narrow hips, and she was accompanied by a scruffy tail-wagging yellow dog.

  “I hope I’m not too early,” Erica said. She indicated the dog. “Who’s your friend?”

  “That’s Murphy. And you’re not early,” Justine said, giving one last nudge to the vase of hosta daisies standing on the foyer console.

  Erica bent to scratch Murphy behind the ears. “The flowers are beautiful.”

  “I have them shipped in from Mexico every week,” Justine said.

  “What a sweet dog,” Erica murmured as Murphy repositioned himself, the better to be scratched. She liked dogs, and this one had big brown eyes and a wide comical smile.

  “Murphy’s way too old to chase cattle anymore, so I took him in,” Justine replied. “He’s a bothersome old cur, but we suit each other.”

  “He’s a charmer. Would you mind if I took pictures of him sometime?”

  “Of Murphy? Of course not. He’d be flattered. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  Justine hooked an arm through Erica’s and led her into the living room, which was faced by a gallery holding shelves of books on two walls. The walls were painted in cooling colors—sage-green, melon, taupe. Above the living room, a skylight framed the clear desert sky. Large Mexican tile gleamed underfoot, and a rock fireplace dominated one wall. A long hall led to three bedrooms, one of which contained a child’s crib.

  “That’s for my niece when she visits,” Justine explained, but she didn’t elaborate.

  After they were seated with Murphy curled at their feet, Justine wanted to know about Charmaine—what she was doing, where she was working, the buzz in the industry. Justine had left the modeling agency after she’d bought Rancho Encantado with money she’d saved from her own modeling career, and she still kept up with the business.

  Erica filled Justine in about Charmaine’s career, and then she asked what she could expect as a guest during the next week.

  Justine ticked the activities off on her fingers. “Mud baths, facials, aromatherapy, yoga, swimming, riding. Also sunbathing and socializing, if you want. And feel free to sleep as late as you like.”