Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,31

plaque. “It’s sad to think that there’s nothing left of this man’s life work when he was apparently important to a lot of people.”

She heard a rustle of wind among the tree branches, and a shiver rippled up her spine. It was disconcerting, that shiver, because the sun was warm today. Perhaps Hank felt it, too, because he looked around as if he expected to see someone behind him. But no one was there.

If Hank thought anything was amiss, he gave no sign. “I know of a large flat rock where we can spread the food,” he said before continuing down the path.

Erica followed him as she massaged the gooseflesh on her arms, still wondering about that shiver. When she joined Hank at the edge of the creek, he was sitting on a boulder and pulling containers of food out of a saddlebag.

She sat down beside him on rocks warm with sunshine. As the gooseflesh faded, it seemed to her that the rocks throbbed with the beat of the earth—its heart perhaps? A silly notion, but she reminded herself that this place was supposed to be a vortex, a site where the earth’s energy was said to activate and energize.

“Hungry?” Hank asked.

“Sure.”

He set out a pile of sandwiches, fresh fruit and a plastic container labeled “dessert.” “This looks better than my usual fare. I usually make do with something from the freezer so I can spend more time with Kaylie.”

This was a safe topic, one Erica felt she could pursue without betraying her tendency to have an out-of-body experience when she was around him. “Kaylie—what does she eat?”

“Horrible-looking stuff out of a jar.” He laughed ruefully. “She laps it up, though.”

“Does she feed herself?”

He stared at her for a moment. His eyes were bracingly blue in the sunlight of late afternoon. “Well, no. She’s only seven months old. She can eat finger foods, like cookies, but she has to be fed.”

“As in spoonful by spoonful?” Erica asked with a wry smile.

“Exactly.”

“That must take a lot of time.”

“It does.” He handed her a sandwich. He could recall the days when he hadn’t realized how much work a baby was, but now that his days and nights were filled with baby this, baby that, he sometimes forgot that not everyone had this specialized knowledge. Even he, with his multiple college degrees in business and finance, had found the baby-care learning curve difficult.

“I guess you know that I don’t know much about babies,” she said, unwrapping her sandwich. As she did so, her hair fell slightly forward over her face, softening her features, and he saw for the first time that her nose turned up pertly at the end. He hadn’t noticed that when she wore glasses.

He leaned back against a rock. “There sure is a lot to learn,” he allowed before biting into a hearty ham-and-jalapeño cheese sandwich on sourdough bread.

“I heard about what happened to Kaylie’s mother,” Erica ventured. “I’m sorry.”

“How much do you know about the accident?” he asked abruptly.

Erica looked him straight in the eye. He liked that, too.

“That your ex-wife was coming home late and had an automobile accident. That she was on the way home from helping someone.”

“That’s true. She was.” He paused for a moment, not knowing whether to pursue the topic, not sure Erica would be interested. She was gazing at him with interest, so he plunged ahead.

“We’d been divorced for the better part of a year at the time. She worked here with Justine, who’d offered her a job when we split. Anne-Marie was a good person, but we couldn’t live together. I guess that was my fault.”

“Usually it’s the fault of both people if a relationship doesn’t work out,” Erica said carefully.

He grunted, knowing she was right. But it would be ungentlemanly, he thought, not to shoulder the blame for the failure of his marriage. The truth was, he and Anne-Marie never should have gotten married. It had taken only a matter of months for them to discover that they had little in common, and they’d both felt relief when they’d separated. And then, out of a misbegotten sense of obligation, they had decided to give the marriage one more try. It had been a fateful decision, but he didn’t regret it. For the first time he felt the need to explain his feelings to someone. To Erica, who was looking at him with a serious expression, one that encouraged him to open up.

He drew a deep breath. “Kaylie is the result of