Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,15

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.

When they reached