Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,8
male voice. “Don’t I have enough to do with Kaylie and a full load of students and refurbishing the buildings, not to mention working with that rapscallion horse of yours?”
“Erica is Char’s sister,” replied a voice that Erica immediately identified as Justine’s. “You can fit her in. And Sebastian is not a rapscallion horse, as you so delicately put it. He’s misunderstood, that’s all.”
Erica shrank into the shadows beside the door to the tack room, unwilling to move for fear her presence would be detected. A gray cat, the same one she’d noticed beneath the Joshua tree outside her suite, materialized from behind a half-filled feed sack and sat staring up at her without blinking. She willed it to go away, but it didn’t.
“Sebastian is a handful and the bane of my existence. Even Cord McCall, who knows a lot about horses, has given up on him.”
“You have no intention of giving up on Sebastian, Hank. Those years of college vacations spent working on a Texas ranch have served you well. Anyway, let’s keep this conversation on point. We were talking about Erica Strong.”
“I can fit her into a group lesson, but I told you I couldn’t take any more private students,” the man said. Erica peeked around a post and saw that the speaker was none other than Hank.
“I consider Erica a personal friend, and she signed up for private lessons. Listen, Hank, you’d better behave yourself. I won’t have you being rude to my guests.”
“I’m not rude.”
“That Ferguson woman from Michigan insisted on leaving because of something you said.”
“She came on to me. I told her to back off.”
“That’s not her story.”
“Look, Justine, there are two types of women who come to Rancho Encantado looking to improve their lives. One type hauls in a complete wardrobe in matched Louis Vuitton suitcases. The other kind arrives with a cell phone clamped to her ear and a cigarette in her mouth. Deenie Ferguson was the former, and this Erica person sounds like the latter. It’s the type I like the least.”
“I happen to know that Erica doesn’t smoke, and there wasn’t a cell phone in sight. Not that she’d be allowed to use it, anyway. Not that she’d be able to use it in the valley, either. You’re being pigheaded and unreasonable.”
“And you’re not?”
Justine sounded extremely exasperated. “You know, Hank, I sympathize with what you’ve been through. It wasn’t easy, that whole business about Anne-Marie and now having Kaylie to look after. But I need your cooperation, and besides, it wouldn’t hurt you to socialize more. It would be good for you, good for business.”
He let out an explosive sigh. “All right, Justine. You win. You call the shots around here.” His words held a bitter edge.
“That’s right,” Justine said levelly.
“I can fit this Strong woman in at five every day. That’s the best I can do. Even then the lessons will be cut short because I have to get back to Kaylie before Paloma leaves at suppertime.”
“Fine. That works for me.”
Erica heard the slam of a stall door. When she peered around the post that screened her from view, she saw Justine’s tall figure striding toward the Big House, her braid swinging behind her.
Erica meant to tiptoe out of the stable unnoticed, but her shoulder caught a bridle strap where it was suspended from a hook on the post, and the bridle fell to the floor. Immediately the cowboy swiveled around and peered through the gloom toward the noise. He spotted Erica right away, frozen as she was in embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping.
“What was that noise? And who the hell are you?” he growled, staring at her across the length of the stable floor.
In one of the stalls a horse nickered, and a couple of others nosed their faces over the tops of their doors. The gray cat said, Now you’ve done it. Before Erica could register her utter incredulity at the phenomenon of a talking cat, it turned and slinked into the tack room.
Never mind the cat’s talking; Erica was even more unnerved by the man’s anger. “A…a bridle fell off the hook.” She jerked her head toward the post where it had hung.
“So why don’t you pick it up?”
“I’m going to.” She bent and scooped the bridle up from the floor, dropping it again in her haste. The man started toward her, looming tall in the slanting light that fell across his features. As he drew closer, Erica saw that she had been right: he was