Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,43
him feel hopeful.
He heard her say something from behind the door, but he didn’t care what it was. Right now he was thinking about Erica, and the scotch gave him the courage to stop off at Desert Rose. He went directly to Erica’s door and knocked.
No answer. He knocked again.
Erica came to the door wearing nothing but a robe.
No, he could come up with a better fantasy than that.
Erica came to the door wearing nothing but a skimpy bath towel. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, her voice low and sweet as honey.
“You knew I’d be here.”
“Yes.” She lowered her eyelids and opened the door wider. “Come in. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
In real life, however, Erica didn’t answer his knock, and he had no idea what the surprise might have been if the scene was real. Which, standing out here like a lovelorn fool, he wished it was. “Erica?” he said urgently, keeping his voice low. He heard the sound of distant laughter, of a group chatting among themselves as they headed back to their quarters. He listened for the sound of Erica’s voice but didn’t hear it.
She still didn’t respond to his knock. Perhaps she had already gone to bed. He glanced at his watch, realizing that the dance had been over for only fifteen minutes or so. She couldn’t possibly be asleep unless she had left early, and perhaps she had. It wouldn’t be easy to forget the disappointment on her face when he’d stammered something inadequate and walked away with Lizette.
He shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong and stupid and at the time all he’d wanted was to get Lizette away from her. He’d been embarrassed by the condescending way in which Lizette had smiled when he introduced her to Erica, the proprietary air with which she had grabbed his arm. His interchange with Erica had seemed soiled and profaned by Lizette’s intrusion, and the realization that he thought more of Erica than he did Lizette had hit him hard in the gut. Which was why he was standing so forlornly outside Erica’s closed door, wishing she’d open it. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to make things right. He wanted…
He wanted Erica, pure and simple. But there was nothing simple about this wanting, nothing at all.
As he walked away from her door, Hank thought briefly of climbing into the ranch pickup and barreling off toward town, where he could get royally drunk. He’d like to forget about the problem posed by Lizette’s sudden appearance at Rancho Encantado, not to mention the absence of Erica from her room. Getting drunk was probably what a real cowboy would do.
Yet his encounter with Lizette had reminded him all too painfully that he was still masquerading as someone he wasn’t. He was Henry Parrish Milling III of the Wall Street investment-banking firm of Rowbotham-Quigley, and it looked as if Lizette was not about to let him forget it.
ERICA GREETED Melba and Whip and quickly made the acquaintance of Tango, a bay mare, and Stilts, a chestnut gelding whose long legs lived up to his name. Sebastian was not in his stall, but she found him in the enclosure adjacent to the corral where someone had left him, perhaps to stretch his legs a bit. He regarded her warily as she approached.
“I wish Hank had let me ride you today,” she told him. “I would have loved the excitement, and you probably could use the exercise.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the stable cat slink past as if surreptitiously observing the scene. It was Mrs. Gray, the same cat that had seemed to talk to her.
“Cats don’t talk,” she said to Sebastian, almost as if trying to convince herself. The cat didn’t reappear, much to her relief.
Sebastian let her move closer and stroke him gently on the nose. “You know,” Erica said conversationally, “I could take you out for a ride tonight while everyone else is busy, and perhaps no one would ever know. We could have fun together, the two of us.”
Sebastian tossed his head and rolled his eyes to show he was game. She wondered if it might really be possible to ride Sebastian without anyone’s finding out. A glance toward the end of the barn told her that the two apartments where Hank and Cord McCall lived were closed and dark, so probably no one was home. This gave her a stab of pain in the region of her heart,