Cowboy Enchantment Read online

  When she reached her room, she turned on her laptop. Charmaine’s e-mail reply was waiting for her.

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL!

  Erica

  HE HAS A BABY? How did that happen?

  Charmaine

  Erica smiled and tapped out her reply.

  Charmaine

  I believe it happened the way all babies happen.

  Love, E.

  For the moment it was nice to contemplate what it would be like to engage, with her cowboy, in the activity that made babies. Nice to contemplate, nice to fantasize.

  Which she would do for the next few minutes. And then she’d go to dinner and hope that Hank would stop by to see Justine and maybe bring his baby.

  Padre Luis Speaks…

  OH, THAT CAT! Kiss her, she says to the cowboy. Would I ever say a thing like that? Por supresto que no! Of course not.

  This Erica, she is still not real. She wants the cowboy. She thinks he is perfect. But her cowboy is not really a cowboy. And the cowboy wants her, but not the real her. It is a confounding thing, this. Why do they not see that until they become real to each other, they will not find love?

  I think that they do not know they seek love. They believe they are looking for something else. Sex, perhaps, or…Hmmph. When will these two people learn that love is the only thing that matters? By Jesus, Joseph and the Blessed Mother, I pray that they may triumph over their confusion.

  I am spending more and more time on my knees lately. I am glad that I cannot feel the cactus spines when I kneel to pray. Often in my previous existence I wondered why our Lord’s garden of earthly delights had to include such a hurtful plant as the cactus. Now I see that it does not matter. Truly the Lord is beneficent.

  Still, He seems to ignore my pleadings concerning the cat. If that cat comes around, why, it is apparently up to me to tell her what I think about her stealing my voice.

  Not that she will hear me. No one hears me now except God, who sometimes does not answer.

  For I am only a humble priest, after all. But I try, I try.

  Chapter Four

  “You look, well, different,” Justine marveled when Erica arrived at the Big House for dinner. “I like you with sassy hair.”

  “Your Tico is a wonder,” Erica told her. “He has released my hair from its brown boringness, and I’m never going to change the color.” She all but pirouetted, basking in the attention.

  Justine only smiled. “Not to diminish what Tico has done, but the low humidity here is great. You’ll need to use more moisturizer on your skin, though.”

  Erica followed Justine into the kitchen, where a pot was bubbling on the stove. “What’s that?”

  “The chef sent over chicken and tarragon dumplings, which should help us put on the pounds. Would you mind handing me that dish?”

  Erica busied herself spooning fattening hollandaise sauce over asparagus spears and carrying it to the table, which was set with earthenware pottery and chunky candlesticks. Justine brought the main dish to the table and said with a slight laugh, “The table looks so lonely with only the two of us. Sometimes I ask Hank to join me, but these days he doesn’t like to take time away from Kaylie.”

  “That’s his daughter?” Erica tried not to appear too curious, but her ears perked up at the mention of Hank’s name.

  “Yes, and he’s new to the job of being a daddy. Poor Hank—he’s had a hard time of it.”

  Erica spooned chicken and dumplings onto her plate, keeping her eyes lowered so that Justine wouldn’t suspect her interest. “A hard time—how do you mean?”

  “Oh, I forgot. You wouldn’t know. Hank took over Kaylie’s care when his ex-wife died in an accident a few months ago. Anne-Marie was adamant about not letting him be part of their lives, so he’d only seen Kaylie a couple of times and didn’t have a clue about how to take care of her. Divorce is a sad business.”

  “And so is losing your mother when you’re only a baby. Poor Kaylie. How is she doing?”

  “Quite well. All of us at the ranch were upset by Anne-Marie’s death. She was a fitness instructor here and one of my dearest friends.” Justine looked pensive for a moment. “She was a fine person and a do-gooder to boot. Nothing I could say would stop her from riding over the state line to Nevada to that old ranch…but I’m running on, aren’t I? Please excuse me, Erica. Would you care for more beans?”

  Erica accepted the plate of beans, but her interest had been piqued. “I’d like to hear what happened to Anne-Marie, Justine.”

  Justine breathed a deep sigh. “Well, we had an elderly seamstress working here when Anne-Marie first arrived. Mattie was half Shoshone Indian, and she’d worked at one of the big hotels in Las Vegas before she came here. She was an excellent wardrobe person, but her arthritis finally made it necessary for her to retire to a ranch just over the Nevada state line. Anne-Marie took Mattie under her wing, was always running soup or cookies or something out to her at the ranch.”

  “But Anne-Marie had a baby, right? Wasn’t it difficult for her to get away, even to do good works?”

  “No. We have this wonderful baby-sitter, Paloma, who is happy to be here whenever she can, and I’ve been crazy about my niece since the day she was born. I was a willing sitter whenever I was available. I wish…but there’s no point in wishing. I could have kept Anne-Marie from going that night. If only I’d said I couldn’t baby-sit, she would have stayed home. I was taking care of Kaylie that night. A big storm came out of nowhere when Anne-Marie was on her way back to Rancho Encantado. She lost control of her car and hit a boulder. She died instantly.”

  Erica’s heart went out to Justine, who, judging from her expression, still held herself responsible for her friend’s death. She reached across the table and touched Justine’s hand.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  Justine bit her lip. “I keep telling myself that. I don’t believe it, though.” She seemed to pull herself together with great effort. “Well, enough of that. I need to stop dwelling on it. Tell me about your day, Erica.”

  Erica would rather have heard more about Hank, but she didn’t feel comfortable fishing for information. At least now she knew how he happened to be a single father. Knowing that his life had been touched by tragedy, she felt extremely sympathetic toward him. And not any less attracted.

  However, her wish that he would drop by tonight while she was at the Big House for dinner was probably a futile one. Nevertheless, she found herself wishing, anyway.

  Justine brought out huge slabs of chocolate cake topped with Rocky Road ice cream, and Erica thought she should wish for something she could actually have. Like a second scoop of ice cream, which Justine was happy to provide.

  HANK, WORN-OUT from work, wanted nothing so much as a steaming hot shower and an ice-cold beer.

  After feeding Kaylie and eating his own solitary dinner, neither option was in the offing. Instead, at the moment he was picking up after Kaylie as she tossed her toys around the small living room, her favorite after-dinner activity.

  Both the beer and the shower would have to wait until Kaylie was in bed, and that could be a while, considering her present energy and insistence that he play with her. He tossed the blue plush duckie into the playpen and jotted himself a mental note to tell Paloma to cut out Kaylie’s morning nap.

  “Babababa?” Kaylie said.

  Hank snatched his daughter up from the blanket on the floor where she played, smooching her at the curve of her neck and making her laugh. “When are you going to learn to say ‘Dada,’ huh? Isn’t it about time you did something more than babble cute nothings?”

  “Babababa!”

  “Okay, so I’ll have to wait for you to talk. That’s fine, Kay-Kay. I’m a patient man.”

  He sat down on the couch with his daughter in his lap, thinking how great it was going to be when he got that beer. Beer and then bed, and the next day he would start the whole routine over again. This was not the life he had lived until three months ago, that w
as for sure. Before Anne-Marie’s death he had been footloose and fancy-free in New York.

  He saw Mrs. Gray standing on her hind legs and peering in through the screen door leading into the stable. Kaylie noticed her, too.

  “Babababa?”

  “No, Kaylie, that’s a cat. Kitty cat.” His words were punctuated by a meow from the cat.

  “All right, all right. I know better than to deny two females what they want.” Carrying Kaylie, he got up and went to the kitchen door. Mrs. Gray zoomed inside when he opened the door a crack. There was no sign of her kittens, who, he supposed, were old enough to get around on their own these days.

  Using the one hand that was free, he dumped a sizable portion of dry cat food into the dish beside the stove. Mrs. Gray didn’t even twitch her whiskers in that direction. Instead, she sat down and stared at him.

  “Come on, Kaylie, let’s get those toys put back in the playpen,” he said just as the phone rang.

  When he answered it, Lizette said brightly, “Hi, Henry. How’s my lovey bunny?”

  Hank didn’t consider himself anyone’s lovey bunny, much less hers, but he managed to suppress his annoyance. “I’m fine, Lizette. I’m really busy right now. May I call you back?”

  He crunched the phone between his shoulder and his neck and went into the living room, where he deposited Kaylie in the playpen.

  “Why don’t you ever answer your e-mails?” Lizette wanted to know. “I’ve sent you a whole bunch.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been busy.”

  “I miss my lovey bunny. E-mail could make me feel so much more connected to you. When will you be back?”

  “Not for a while.”

  “You could bring the baby back to New York. Don’t you think it’s time?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “She’s crazy about her baby-sitter. I can’t take her away from Paloma.”

  “I know of a good day-care center right around the corner from my place.”

  “Day care? Not yet. The situation here is ideal. Paloma is wonderful, and Justine likes to fill in when she can. Kaylie’s doing fine with the present circumstances, Lizette.”

  “The trouble is, Henry, I’m not. I miss you. I want us to be together.”

  He thought that he would like to know what color her eyes were, but this didn’t seem like the right time to inquire. He did remember her nose, for whatever it was worth. Or at least he remembered the nose she’d had when he’d left. Lizette was on her fourth nose and, in the spirit of treating others with total honesty, delighted in proclaiming this fact to everyone. She’d had her first nose job at age fourteen and two more since then.

  Kaylie was trying to push a star through the round opening in her plastic ball, and distractedly he reached down and turned the ball so that the star-shaped opening was on top. She poked the star through it and gurgled with delight.

  “Henry? Henry! Did you hear what I said?” Lizette was beginning to sound shrill.

  “I heard.” He made himself consider ever so momentarily day care for Kaylie. He imagined rushing her there in the morning, rushing back to pick her up on the way home to his apartment. Or maybe to Lizette’s apartment. She was sounding perilously close to making the “Let’s live together” suggestion, and he couldn’t imagine living with Lizette while at the same time trying to be a father to Kaylie.

  “I have a good mind to come down there and drag you back to New York,” Lizette said playfully.

  He’d better do what he could to salvage this conversation, which had now gone from bad to worse. It occurred to him that there was probably no salvaging the relationship itself, and the thought didn’t make him unhappy.

  “Well, Lizette, I know how you must feel, but I don’t think that your coming to Rancho Encantado is such a good idea, and I can’t leave now. I’ve got my work cut out for me here.”

  “How can you say you know how I feel? You aren’t the one who was left behind.” Lizette sounded perilously near tears.

  He raked a hand through his hair. For some reason Erica Strong’s face popped into his mind, looking the way it had this afternoon when he’d held her in his arms—flushed, eyes wide, lower lip tremulous. He swallowed and pushed the image to the far reaches of his consciousness.

  “I suppose I can’t know exactly how you felt when I came to Rancho Encantado to look after Kaylie,” he allowed. “I know you must have been disappointed. You’ve been understanding, Lizette, but I’m not ready to take our relationship to a new level right now.”

  Silence on the other end of the phone and what might have been a sniff.

  “You’re a wonderful woman,” he added hastily. “We’ve had a great time. I hope that when I’m ready for something serious, you’ll still be available.” But did he? He’d met Lizette right after moving from Chicago to New York and was in the throes of his divorce. She’d been kind and understanding. But that was then. This was now.

  An audible sniff this time. “I see,” she said.

  “I’d better go now, Lizette. It’s almost time to put Kaylie to bed.”

  “Kaylie, Kaylie, everything is Kaylie. You act like you’re married to that child.”

  This angered him, but it would serve no purpose to show it. “I’m sorry, Lizette” was all he said, and he clicked off the phone.

  “Babababa?”

  “Yeah yeah yeah yeah.” He heaved a giant sigh and began to scoop toys up off the floor.

  “Here’s your dolly and here’s your jingle ball and here’s…” He stopped talking in midsentence. Mrs. Gray was sitting beside the playpen, staring at him again in that uncanny—uncatty—way of hers.

  “What do you want?” he said not unkindly. The cat only stared with eyes both knowing and luminous.

  While he was paying attention to the cat, Kaylie started lobbing the toys out of the playpen again, one by one. Which made him impatient. He couldn’t be angry with her, though, because she did it so winsomely.

  I don’t know why you don’t pop over to the Big House for a while and let Kaylie burn off some of her energy playing with Justine.

  He whirled around, thinking that someone must be standing at the screen door and speaking to him, but there was no one. He could have sworn…

  Cats did not talk. He knew this for a fact. People who thought that cats could talk were not right in the head.

  Still, it wasn’t a bad idea to pay a visit to the Big House. Justine would play with Kaylie while he sat and drank his beer. Then he would bring Kaylie back here and they could both go to bed.

  He swung Kaylie up out of the playpen and was rewarded by her happy chortle.

  “What do you say we go over and see your aunt Justine for a while?” A visit might get the bad taste of the conversation with Lizette out of his mouth, too.

  “Babababa!”

  The cat did not say anything, Hank was relieved to note.

  ERICA AND JUSTINE finished clearing the table, and while Justine was finishing up in the kitchen, Erica wandered into the living room and ran her fingers across the keys of the piano there.

  “I didn’t know you played,” Justine called from the kitchen.

  “I haven’t for a long time.” She sat down and experimented with a few chords.

  A sheet of music was propped on the music stand, and after pushing her glasses higher on her nose, Erica played the first bar. She had taken lessons when she was a child and had actually enjoyed them, but she didn’t own a piano now and thought she’d forgotten almost everything she’d learned about playing. She hummed along with the music; she used to sing, too, in her high-school choir and in a college glee club.

  The thud of boots on the porch interrupted her reverie, and the front door opened suddenly. She stopped humming abruptly and whirled around.

  “Keep playing,” said Hank. “It sounded great.” He stood there in the same T-shirt and jeans he’d worn earlier, and he was carrying a baby that must be Kaylie.

  Wishing she’d changed clothes after her riding lesson, she stood and cla
sped her hands behind her back in embarrassment. “I’m out of practice.”

  “Hank?” Justine called from the kitchen. “I’ll be out in a minute. Right now I’m up to my elbows in dishwater.”

  Erica’s mouth went dry at seeing Hank again after this afternoon when they’d almost…But maybe it had been her imagination that they’d almost kissed. Right now it seemed as if she’d never seen him before, and how could that be when she’d held an image of her ideal cowboy in her heart for as long as she could remember?

  Aware of her pounding heart, she wiped damp palms on her thighs. “Um, won’t you sit down?” The baby was staring at her with frank interest, breaking into a drooly grin when Erica smiled at her. Kaylie had Hank’s blue eyes, deep-fringed and round, pale blond curls and soft pink skin.

  “Babababa?”

  Hank smiled. “No, Kaylie. That’s Erica.” And to Erica, “I used to think that ‘babababa’ was her name for me. I know better now, though. Everything is ‘babababa.”’

  It was all Erica could do not to extend her hand for a handshake, the way she was accustomed to doing in business situations. What did you do when you met a baby? Erica had no idea, so she stood mutely, feeling awkward.

  “Would you like to hold her?” Hank said. He couldn’t imagine why he offered this, other than knowing that most women seemed to enjoy holding babies.

  Erica eyed the baby askance. Kaylie was a beautiful child, but everyone knew she didn’t do babies. Anyway, when had she last held a baby? At the moment she couldn’t recall, but she had an idea that it would be bad form to refuse, and how could she with this baby looking so cute?

  “I’d love to,” she said, hoping that she didn’t sound as uncertain as she felt, and when she held her arms out, Kaylie went right to her, perching on her hip as though accustomed to being there.

  Justine came bustling out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. “Hi, Hank. You should have come over earlier and eaten chicken and dumplings with us. Are you hungry? I could throw a plate together.”