Chapter Two #2
Adam Caldwell, the supply chain manager, weighed in.
“Easy cash money or not, Beau Jones didn’t come cheap.
” He named a sum that widened everyone’s eyes.
“Sorry, folks, but the price was nonnegotiable. I approached the agents for seven different finalists, and all but Beau’s hung up on me when they heard our terms.”
Belle’s interest spiked. Beau Jones? Of the shaggy blond hair, dreamy blue eyes, and little growl in his voice that gave her goose bumps? That Beau Jones?
“Since when has a singer needed more than a guitar, anyway?” Benny complained, going off on a tangent.
The wattles on his skinny neck quivered, making him look even more like an anorexic wild turkey.
“What’s with all the lights and the sound systems?
What’s with these demands for mineral water and sliced lemons?
And in my day, a posse was used to round up lawbreakers and horse thieves. ”
Benny was old, but not quite that old.
Belle plucked at the skirt of her calico dress.
The townspeople always wore period costumes during tourist season, although corsets had been excluded on medical grounds because they did unbelievable physical damage to a woman’s body.
Since Benny had no idea what a corset was anyway, when she suggested to Grady’s wife, Pearl—Burning Scrub’s costume designer—that she should lose that particular pattern, Pearl was all for it.
“To be fair,” Ruby said, “not many people willingly embrace being blindfolded by strangers and transported in container trucks to unknown destinations. It only makes sense that celebrities would be reluctant to leave their bodyguards and personal assistants behind, since that’s their worst nightmare.
Besides, a nondisclosure agreement isn’t enforceable when the people requesting it live off the grid. ”
Benny didn’t concern himself with minor details.
That was what he had staff for. “Be that as it may, unless one of us is a ringer for a Diss Cord finalist with the singing abilities to match, we’re going to have to pay Beau Jones’s price.
” He rustled his papers and pushed wire-framed glasses higher on his bony nose.
“Moving on to the next point of business … Belle, you’re up. ”
Beau Jones was forgotten.
Belle hated town meetings for this very reason.
She was already uncomfortable with speaking in front of a group, and having the medical supplies she needed put to a vote always led to contention with Benny.
His beliefs regarding the medical profession aligned with his opinions on government.
She’d put vaccines on her list three times now, and each time, he’d crossed them off.
Meanwhile, she had three children who were behind in their immunization schedules.
That was why she’d spoken to Mavis, Benny’s sixty-eight-year-old daughter, ahead of the meeting to get her on board.
Mavis could often persuade her father to see reason.
Belle waited silently while Benny went over her list. He squinted at it and held it up to the light.
The town had converted to solar panels and wind turbines a few years ago, with backup generators for emergencies, because another thing they’d discovered was that, while guests wanted the full Western experience, they didn’t necessarily care for the inconveniences that went with it.
Plus, Tilly required electricity for her state-of-the-art communications system, used for running their international operation, and the residents had indoor plumbing because cholera was real.
Jayce gave Belle a thumbs-up behind Benny’s back, which she pretended not to see. She hadn’t yet worked out her feelings for him. Yes, he was handsome. The whole GQ-model theme certainly worked to his advantage. And she had the type of itch that could definitely use a good scratching.
But she also wanted conversation that involved things other than gunfighting, ranching, and cattle.
She missed the old days sometimes, just her and her dad in the car, off on an adventure, talking history, politics, theology, and everything under the sun.
She had a brain. She wanted a man to have one of those, too.
Not that Jayce was stupid. Far from it. He was just…
Very settled. Old-fashioned. He might have bought into the 1800s lifestyle a little too far for her liking. She had dreams of owning a real medical practice someday.
One where she could order medical supplies without nonmedical approval.
“No vaccines, Belle,” Benny said firmly. “We don’t need government trackers slipped into those poor, unsuspecting, innocent little bodies. That’s how the IRS catches tax evaders nowadays. Every adult in Burning Scrub would end up in jail and the babies would wind up in poor farms.”
He’d become increasingly paranoid about government crackdowns over the past decade thanks to sites such as Gab, the free speech social network, and forty-odd years of conveniently forgetting to file any personal tax returns. Burning Scrub was an incorporated church thanks to Mavis, not her father.
“No one puts trackers in vaccines, and while we certainly wouldn’t want our children to end up in foster care, there’s no such thing as poor farms anymore,” Mavis said calmly.
Mavis favored buckskin tunics and trousers over dresses and styled herself after Calamity Jane.
She’d sat patiently beside Belle throughout most of the meeting, the only noise she made coming from the click of her knitting needles as she worked on a pair of baby booties for Pearl Lovett, who was expecting again.
Belle didn’t think Calamity Jane had been a knitter, but Mavis’s cosplay adaptations were none of her business.
“Do you know for certain they don’t? Where are your facts?” Benny challenged his daughter, ignoring that his own facts came from dubious sources.
Mavis’s needles continued to churn out row after row of precise, tiny stitches. She didn’t engage in debates. She didn’t point out that the cell phone he used was already all the tracking the government needed if they wanted to find him. She was far more subtle than that.
“No one needs to know where my facts come from because there’s no need to take risks. We can simply order a Geiger counter and a metal detector so Belle can screen the vaccines before she uses them.”
Belle gazed at Mavis with open admiration. The woman was brilliant.
“Excellent suggestion,” Jayce chimed in, winking at Belle, who pretended not to see.
“Approved, then,” Benny said grudgingly, his reluctance not completely overcome but merely suppressed for the time being. If Jayce was onside, then the solution was worth a trial run. “Jayce, would you mind giving Belle a hand with screening the vaccines?”
“Not at all.”
The meeting broke up not long after that. Belle, seeing that Jayce had been waylaid by the supply chain manager, made a dash for the door. She didn’t need much of a head start. It was a mere five-minute walk down Burning Scrub’s starlit main street to her house.
Jayce caught up with her before she’d gone twenty steps. He carried a battery-operated hurricane lantern that swayed from its wire handle, throwing yellow light in crazy arcs every which way.
“Hey, Belle,” he said. “How about I walk you home?”
He’d already fallen into step with her, so his question had been more rhetorical than a request for permission.
Her heart skipped a few panicked beats, leaving a faint, fluttery sensation that toyed with her balance.
She wished she could blame it on lust, but no such luck.
Eventually, she’d have to tell him the truth.
We’d be so boring together.
The toe of her Balmoral boot snagged in the hem of her dress.
He caught her arm to keep her from falling, while managing to keep the lantern safe, too, then tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.
Some women might be charmed by the old-fashioned gesture.
It made Belle feel trapped. She began a slow count to thirty in her head, judging by then it should be safe to retrieve it.
They passed the saloon, a two-storied log structure with six rooms for rent and a balcony overhanging the street. According to rumor, it had once been a brothel, but likely only because Burning Scrub required a tawdry history for greater tourist appeal, because church community didn’t quite cut it.
Next to the hotel was the bakery, followed by a jail that had seen most of its action in the years prior to 1900. A false-fronted mercantile sporting wooden barrels on either side of its entrance rounded off Burning Scrub’s flourishing downtown district.
Residential housing began at the end of the street.
Belle’s house cornered the creatively named Main and Jenkins Streets and doubled as the town’s medical clinic.
Longer than it was wide, with the short end facing the street, its window frames and front door had been painted a blinding shade of green.
Flowers—bright reds, pinks, and yellows—bloomed in window boxes. She loved it.
And everywhere, on all sides, the tiny, isolated town of Burning Scrub was swallowed by West Pioneer Mountains, where bighorn sheep roamed sheer rocky cliffs, and deep forests of aspen and pine harbored grizzlies and elk.
They arrived at her porch. Raccoons squabbled over the compost bin tied to a tree at the side of the house. She’d counted to three hundred and fourteen, and yet, Jayce still had her hand trapped.
“There’s a horse auction in Grand this coming weekend. I thought you’d like to come with me. You know. Just to get out of Burning Scrub for a few days,” he said, his fingers closing over hers, clamping them more securely against him. “Separate motel rooms, of course.”
Of course.
She wrestled her brain for a plausible excuse. “It sounds lovely, but maybe some other time. I don’t have anyone to fill in for me here, especially on such short notice.”