Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,6

herself was ridiculous. She was suffering from jet lag, no doubt, and could attribute the strange sensations and thoughts she was experiencing to that.

“Here we are,” Tony said cheerfully as he held open the door to her suite.

Erica was pleased to see that her quarters were small but luxurious. A sitting area opened into a bedroom with a large bed, handcrafted in classic Southwestern style. The bathroom was elegant and had a huge tub. Tony pointed out that the minibar was stocked with several varieties of what Charmaine called designer juice—mango-kiwi, strawberry-passion fruit, guava-coconut.

“You’ll plug in your computer at the desk. The phone blinks with a blue light instead of ringing, so as not to disturb your peace. If you change your mind about those slot machines, my phone number’s next to the phone. I’ll be driving a vanload of guests to the Lucky Buck Saloon this evening.” Tony winked at her as he went out and closed the door behind him.

Erica’s one suitcase had already been delivered to her room, and the clothes hung in the closet. Thus she wasted no time before shucking her wool suit and digging out one of the only two pairs of jeans she owned. They were relics from her years in graduate school, but Charmaine had encouraged her to bring them.

“You can’t go to a ranch without jeans,” her sister had argued. Erica had bowed to Charmaine’s fashion sense, which was usually infallible. What difference did it make what she wore? She was going to get a makeover, wasn’t she? But if she wanted to be a cowboy’s sweetheart, she’d have to start somewhere. Blue denim seemed as good a place as any.

HANK MILLING swung down from the saddle and whipped out his trusty Bowie knife. The woman was tied to the railroad tracks, a huge locomotive barreling toward her. In two strides he’d reached her. She held out her arms and—

No. Definitely not. Hank settled back in his chair and tried again.

Hank galloped across an arroyo and reined in his horse near an enormous mesquite thicket. He pushed his Stetson hat off his forehead and studied the gal who was backed against a boulder, terror lighting her big blue eyes.

He saw immediately why she was frightened. A huge rattlesnake was coiled in the thicket, its rattle sounding a warning.

“Don’t worry,” he said, yanking his six-shooter out of the holster at his hip. He fired at the rattlesnake and neatly decapitated it in one shot. He twirled the pistol, showing off.

“I guess you need a ride back to town,” he said to the gal, who was buxom and wore scanty shorts. Her hair was long and blond, her hands and feet tiny. He was close enough to detect that she smelled like honeysuckle, his favorite scent ever since the summers he’d spent in Virginia visiting his grandparents’ horse farm. She looked like someone he’d like to cuddle up to in his lonesome desert camp out under the stars while coyotes howled in the hills all around.

“Well, I—”

The gal had barely begun to speak, no doubt planning to tell him how grateful she was for his help, when his reverie was interrupted by a baby’s fussing. Damn. He’d just reached the best part of his daydream, the part where he scooped the gal up onto the back of his saddle and rode off toward camp.

The baby’s fussing turned to crying. Hank sighed and went into the little kitchen off his quarters adjoining the Rancho Encantado stable. Mrs. Gray, the stable cat, had followed him in earlier, which had surprised him, because she had three kittens to tend, but maybe she was looking for a handout.

“I’ll take care of you later,” he told her, but she only stared at him, unblinking.

He twisted the top off a can of chicken-and-rice baby food and emptied it into a dish. How his daughter could eat such pap was beyond him, but then, babies had been a complete mystery to him before he’d taken over her care, and he freely admitted that he didn’t always understand this one. Now Kaylie was seven months old, full of spunk, brimming with energy, and it was all he could do to keep up with her. Working full-time didn’t help, but he was lucky that Justine had allowed him to stay on here, which meant he was provided with a home, a job and a baby-sitter. In turn, he tried to do as much as he could around the ranch to help her