Cowboy Enchantment - By Pamela Browning Page 0,3
her hair in an attempt to fluff it.
“I think I hate my job. I don’t like my hair. And I’m coming down with a cold.” She sneezed to prove her point.
“Bless you.” Charmaine reached for the box on the credenza and handed her a tissue. She frowned. “Erica, how much vacation have you banked?”
Erica, blowing her nose, tried to think. “Oh, a couple of weeks at least. I stopped thinking about taking time off when it became clear that I’d never be able to get away.”
“Give yourself a week to get over this cold, inform the powers that be that you’re going on vacation, and hie thee to Rancho Encantado. You said you don’t like your hair. They do makeovers, Erica. They’ll pamper you and feed you properly and fix up your wardrobe. Besides, you love to ride. They have horses.”
“Char,” Erica began, but the images brought on by her sister’s description of Rancho Encantado were too alluring to banish; a new hairdo sounded wonderful, and a wardrobe fix sounded even better. And it was a ranch, after all. It had been ages since she’d been on a horse. She wondered if there were cowboys.
Charmaine slapped a plane ticket down in front of her. It seemed to glow with light from within, and Erica’s eyes widened.
“I’ve already bought your ticket. Now I dare you to tell me you’re not going,” said Charmaine.
“I don’t know, Charmaine. I haven’t had time to think about it.”
“Don’t you ever do anything on impulse? Wouldn’t it be fun to have fun? You’ve given McNee, Levy and Ashe what could have been the best years of your life. If anyone gives you a hard time, tell them to stuff it.”
It was the “could have been” that stopped Erica from protesting again. She was thirty-two years old. She’d given up expecting to be married or to have children, and she’d seldom traveled except on business. She had so far fulfilled none of the fantasies that had sustained her through her youth, and maybe she never would. Her life was slipping by, and she was wasting it on meetings and phone calls and reports. She had become a professional success, but her personal life was edging toward failure. The thought was enough to bring tears to her eyes.
She hid them by getting up, walking to the rain-streaked window and blowing her nose again. She had composed herself by the time she turned to face Charmaine, and in the moment her eyes met her sister’s, it occurred to her in a lightninglike flash that sometimes ordinary times called for extraordinary action.
“What…what time does that flight leave?” she asked unsteadily, eyeing the ticket on her desk.
Her sister let out a giant whoop and ran to wrap Erica in an impetuous hug.
“I never thought you’d go!” Charmaine said. “I didn’t think I’d be able to persuade you.”
Erica smiled thinly and returned the embrace. But already she was planning ahead to the one thing she wanted out of this vacation: to meet the perfect cowboy and indulge herself in a madcap fling.
Of her life fantasies, that one was the most precious of all, and Rancho Encantado might be her last chance to make it happen.
Chapter Two
The cowboy, this perfect cowboy, was dark-haired and powerfully built. His hair hung slightly too long at the nape, and his jeans were streaked with dust. He wore a white T-shirt that showed off his tanned, sinewy arms, and his torso tapered into muscular legs that looked as if they’d be equally at home straddling a horse or a woman. The jeans were tucked into boots, tooled leather ones. Dusty boots, which he planted firmly in the dirt as he led the horse toward the stable.
This cowboy was no daydream. He was real. As this realization dawned on her, the air seemed to wrinkle, and Erica felt herself tilt toward him as if pulled by gravity. She gripped the edge of the Rancho Encantado check-in desk, feeling weak in the knees. Well, she had flown into Las Vegas more than two hours ago and had eaten no food on the plane, so no wonder she was shaky on her feet.
Her eyes were still on the cowboy. “Who is that?” Erica said, her voice a mere murmur.
Justine, standing beneath a sign that read NO CELL PHONES PLEASE, glanced up from Erica’s registration card. “Oh, that’s Hank. My brother. He’ll be your riding instructor if you choose to take lessons.” She tossed her one thick silver-blond braid behind a