Cassie's Cowboy. Diane Pershing

That surely was one powerful reaction; too powerful.

      Abruptly he dropped her hand, then tipped his hat. “Nice meeting you, too,” he said, then walked out into the sunshine.

      Cassie closed the door, then leaned back against it. “Whew,” she said aloud, then stared at her hand in wonder. It had tingled at Charlie’s touch. Tingled! My, my, she thought, gazing at the pale skin, shades and shades lighter than Charlie’s, and wondering if it continued to give off the heat she’d felt in that brief few moments of contact.

      “My, oh, my,” she said now, climbing the stairs to her bedroom for a quick shower before getting dressed. She had about twelve minutes to get ready, but she used only a little makeup, and her hair did what it wanted to do, whatever else she might intend for it to do, so it was never much trouble.

      She paused halfway up the stairs when she realized her heart was pounding loudly and she needed to catch her breath. It wasn’t the stair climbing that had made her heart race and her breathing quicken. No, it was that brief touch from Cowboy Charlie.

      Or whatever his name was. For a moment she regretted sending him away. But at least he’d gone. Which was good, she assured herself, continuing her journey upstairs. Yes, much better…for all concerned.

      She made it back down thirteen minutes later, which wasn’t bad. After retrieving her purse from the hall table, she grabbed a ring of keys from a hook and pulled open the door.

      No Charlie.

      She admitted to a brief sense of disappointment. Not that she’d expected him to be waiting there, she told herself. Not that she’d wanted him to be waiting there.

      No, that wasn’t it. She’d done the right thing, been firm, set her boundaries, let him know that the water and coffee and cookies were all he could expect from her, and that she had a busy life to lead that didn’t include his presence.

      She sure had let him know. Good for her.

      She closed the door, then used her key to double lock it. When she turned around again, she gasped.

      There he was, standing there, big as life. It was as though he’d appeared out of thin air!

      Charlie tipped his hat. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, feeling awful as he took in Cassie’s startled reaction. You should never sneak up on a body like that, and he sure hadn’t meant to do that this time.

      “Where…where did you come from?” she asked him, her hand on her throat.

      “You said not to wait on the porch, so I was over there—” he angled his head to indicate the direction “—at the side of the house.”

      “Oh. Well, then,” she said, and let out a deep sigh. He watched as the color returned to her face. “You took me literally then. You didn’t just…materialize from…nowhere?”

      “No, ma’am.”

      “Good,” she said. “I really don’t think my heart could take that.” She seemed to gather herself together and walked purposefully down the two porch steps and onto the path leading to the street, saying, “Well, I’ll be on my way then.”

      He followed. She stopped, turned to him again and offered her hand, just as she had done in the house. In the full morning sunlight, he could see tired lines around her eyes, and he had to resist the urge to run a thumb over them to smooth them away. She was too young to look so worn-out.

      “You really can go now, Charlie,” she said with a smile. “Thanks for brightening up my day. It was nice meeting you.”

      Again her hand was soft, and this time, when she tried to pull it away, he didn’t let it go. “The feeling’s mutual. It’s just, you haven’t told me yet what I’m supposed to do for you.”

      “Are we back to that?”

      “Never left it.”

      She blew out a breath, and one of her bouncy brown curls lifted momentarily off her forehead then settled back into place. He sure did want to see how that healthy looking hair would feel between his fingers, sure did want to touch some more of her skin. But first he needed to get his assignment.

      “Right. Fine,” she said, looking from their still-joined hands and back into his gaze. His gut told him she was dismissing both his request and him.

      “You can go to the bank,” she said. “That’s First Yatesboro Savings on Main Street. And get them to give me thirty more days on the mortgage. Okay? If you can do that, maybe I’ll believe in Santa Claus. At least, maybe I’ll believe in you.” Gently she pried her hand out of his and walked away.

      He watched her sashay off down the walkway and get into her small blue machine. Car. Unbidden, the word came to his head. He might have come from the Old West, but, for some reason, he now knew that was the name for the machine, same as he knew it ran on fuel made from oil pumped out of the ground.

      He was getting this thing now, this transformation; clearly, he would have been granted all the knowledge he would need to function in Cassie’s twenty-first-century world.

      Now all he had to do was furnish a miracle.