Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,7
out.
He approached the alcove off the bedroom. Kaylie stopped crying when she saw him and began to pedal her legs energetically. When he grinned at her, she grinned back, and Hank’s heart went soft and warm with love for her.
He picked Kaylie up, straightening her playsuit as she settled into his arms next to his heart. She gazed up at his face with expectant round eyes.
“How’s my girl, huh? Ready for your dinner? And then I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve got to go out and teach another city slicker how to ride.”
Kaylie snuggled her face into his neck, and he inhaled the sweet talcum-powder smell of her. He hadn’t known that it was possible to love a child so much, that was the truth of it. And maybe, if his ex-wife hadn’t died so tragically, he never would have. He had certainly never wished for anything bad to happen to Anne-Marie, but his relationship with Kaylie would never have come about while Anne-Marie was alive. She had not only moved here from Chicago, where they had lived when they were married, but had been adamant that she didn’t want Hank in their lives. It had been an awkward situation, considering that his sister Justine was Anne-Marie’s best friend.
He inserted Kaylie into her high chair and pulled a kitchen chair up in front of her.
“Okay, cutie, open up. Over the teeth, past the gums, look out, tummy, here it comes,” he said, spooning up a bit of food. Kaylie opened her mouth wide to accept the spoon, looking like a hungry little bird.
His feelings for Kaylie made all the rest of it worthwhile—his displacement from home, the heavy workload, the lack of someone special in his life.
Oops, correction.
“You’re someone special in my life,” he told Kaylie, speaking past the lump that knotted in his throat whenever he thought about how lonely he was. “You sure are.”
At that, Kaylie blew bubbles. The drollness of her action lifted his spirits considerably.
He finished feeding Kaylie and handed her over to Paloma, her baby-sitter, who’d just returned from using the washer and dryer at the Big House. Then he headed back to the riding ring to give his next lesson. He might be down, but he certainly wasn’t out. Not by a long shot, and not as long as he could create fantasies in his mind to help ride him over the rough spots.
KEEPING IN MIND that she was going to meet Justine for dinner, Erica added a beige linen blouse to her jeans, which were dismayingly too big. She grasped a clump of the extra fabric around her waist, trying to figure out how many pounds she’d lost since she’d worn them last. Ten? Fifteen? Chalk it up to her hectic lifestyle. Sighing, she released the fabric so that the jeans hung loosely on her hips.
She marveled at the improvement of her hair, which felt not at all like her own now that it sprang upward and outward from her scalp. Still, her reflection in the mirror didn’t offer a whole lot of reassurance. She wore no makeup.
Even though she already felt more relaxed, she looked tense and weary, even exhausted. She ditched her clip earrings, which hurt her ears, but decided not to remove the gold disc bearing her initials that she wore on a chain around her neck. It had been a present from Charmaine, who loved jewelry and had brought it back from a job in Italy. She decided that she would take a piece of turquoise-and-silver jewelry back to Charmaine when she returned to New York. Charmaine loved native-made Indian pieces.
Tomorrow she would begin her makeover. Was she expecting a miracle? To look like Charmaine, for instance? No. Definitely not. Anyway, she was aiming for a more voluptuous look than Charmaine’s, however that might be accomplished.
Defiantly she shoved her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose and headed for the stable to check out the horses, which would give her something to do before she showed up for dinner. Perhaps she would even run into the cowboy. Her cowboy.
Consulting the map of the property that was printed in the back of her schedule, Erica walked along the lane between the two rows of eucalyptus trees until she reached the stable. She’d barely entered the shadowy interior, redolent with the distinctive familiar odors of hay, saddle leather, feed and horse when she heard a curse from one of the stalls at the other end.
“Damn,” said a husky