Chapter Four #2
“We didn’t get off to a good start.”
And that was the mother of understatements, considering how he’d woken up sick, surly, and behind bars, after he’d been roofied, with her standing guard.
“He’ll improve,” Mavis said, as if Beau were the problem. “All he needs is a shower and a shave and proper night’s sleep. Maybe a slight attitude adjustment. Give him a few days to acclimatize. The thinner mountain air takes getting used to.”
“Don’t forget his mental health issues,” Benny added.
He didn’t have mental health issues. None that Belle had seen. Not yet anyway. Give it a few more days.
“We want you to be friendly, that’s all. We aren’t asking you to sleep with him,” Benny continued.
“Although you can if you like. That’s up to you,” Mavis tossed in.
Benny and Adam looked at Mavis.
Then Benny glared at Belle. “No sexual relations with the country star. I run a church, not a brothel.”
Mavis winked at Belle from behind Benny and flipped her a hand signal, thumb and forefinger pinched into a circle.
“Go for it,” she mouthed.
Adam crossed one worn-out work boot over his knee and laced his fingers behind his head. “Belle is Jayce’s girl. He wouldn’t be too fond of your plan.”
She should have appreciated someone taking her side, but in this case, she didn’t.
Jayce had no say. She wasn’t his girl. A few dates were not a commitment on her part, even if she was the only one who seemed to understand that.
She wasn’t sleeping with a stranger simply to prove a point, though.
Besides, he’d have to want to sleep with her, too, and he hadn’t seemed all that impressed.
“I’m Beau Jones’s doctor. It’s probably best if we keep our relationship on a professional level.” How she managed to say that with a straight face, she’d never know.
The conversation, which had been surreal up to this point, took a distinct turn. One not for the better. Mavis set her knitting aside. Blue eyes, normally warm, frosted over in a way that did not bode well.
“When we paid for your education, it was explained to you that the town’s best interests always come first. A lot of charities and organizations in the county rely on us and our donations.
The Beaverhead County Wilderness Walk theme park is going ahead because of our guarantee of funding.
The hospital’s new MRI room is under construction, and the equipment has already been ordered.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect you—a doctor—to do your part in making those things happen. ”
Belle got a chill. It hadn’t taken more than a few months in Burning Scrub to figure out who the real force in charge was. Mavis, who came across as a kind, grandmotherly soul on the surface, had a talent for making things happen. Crossing her took a special nerve that Belle didn’t possess.
Not when she owed the town over four hundred thousand dollars at an interest rate that would shock a Mafia loan shark should she default before her five years were up. And she didn’t doubt for a second that Mavis would find a way to collect.
“You’re right, it’s not at all unrealistic,” she said, wanting to keep the peace, even though deep inside, rebellion had started to simmer. “Let me see what I can do.”
“Excellent. We’ll move him into your spare room this afternoon,” Mavis said. “Keep him in bed for a few days until he’s had a chance to settle in.”
Belle’s right eye throbbed. “You want me to do what?”
“Your house is the town hospital. He needs a doctor’s care twenty-four seven,” Benny said, conveniently forgetting that only a minute ago he’d worried she might try to have sex with Beau Jones. “What with his mental health issues.”
“I didn’t know my house was a hospital.”
There were only two beds. She slept in one.
The other belonged to the spare room across the narrow hallway from hers.
A tiny third bedroom multitasked as a closet.
They’d have to share a bathroom, which was too small to turn around in, and the door didn’t latch.
Benny’s sudden nod to her willpower in keeping her hands off the hot country star was also bewildering.
“Who did you think the extra bedrooms were for?” Benny asked.
The question was fair. She hadn’t given it much thought because she’d had no one to invite for a visit, but so far, the town’s only overnight guests that she’d seen were its clients, and they hadn’t seemed the type of people to voluntarily share their private space.
The six-thousand-square-foot log cabin built for their personal use could house a small army, and yet any staff they brought with them stayed behind, at a hotel in Butte.
Burning Scrub provided a chef and maid services.
“Why does he need full-time medical observation?” she asked, because this ought to be good.
Mavis picked up her knitting and stuffed it into her bag before standing, letting it be known that the meeting was over. She patted Belle’s arm on her way to the door, the kindly grandmother image once again firmly in place.
“You’re the doctor, dear. You’ll think of something. Just remember, Burning Scrub is counting on you.”
Belle’s Hippocratic oath—particularly the part that stated, I shall not let any lesser public or professional consideration interfere with my primary commitment—slapped her conscience.
Because that wasn’t good. Not good at all.
*
Belle
The sun’s position signaled the approach of midmorning as she dragged her feet to the jail. The comingled aromas of pine trees, warm dirt, and summer carried into town on a stiff breeze only slightly chilled by stubborn pockets of snow high in the mountains that refused to retreat.
She contemplated her plight. All she had to do was keep a country singer—who according to Mavis knew nothing about country—in bed for a few days. In her house. And make sure he was happy about it. If she’d shown any talent for that type of work, she wouldn’t be up to her eyebrows in debt.
Maybe she should just level with him and tell him the truth. Burning Scrub was required to teach him how to be a cowboy and help improve his brand. In return, he had to give them one live performance. It sounded so simple.
Why the need to roofie you, you ask? Good question. Because conspiracy theorists who lived off the grid tended to be a paranoid bunch.
One hundred percent honesty might not be the best way to go.
The jail was a loose reincarnation of the original.
Designed as a prop, not for actual use, a dedicated escape artist could break free in a matter of seconds.
Dave McAllister, who was a blacksmith by trade when he wasn’t plundering quaint mountain villages in his Thundering Buffalo role, had made the lock for the cell.
No key was required. It had a switch on the side—a simple up or down lever—that an inmate could reach.
The bars were real enough, but Benny, aided and abetted by Jayce’s father, Huck Hanson, had mounted them eons ago into a pine floor that was rotted in places.
If Beau put muscle into it, he could pry a few loose.
The bed was no doubt the most accurate detail of the entire setup, which wasn’t a plus.
Comfort hadn’t been factored into its design.
The head and one side of the frame had been attached to the log walls.
Two rickety legs kept it from toppling over.
The mattress was new. But only because mice had chewed holes in the old one, and given birth to several new generations inside it, so it had been replaced after the winter.
Unluckily for Beau, the new mattress was stuffed with straw, too.
No one needed to tell Belle that the early pioneers who’d settled these mountains were hardy.
Not even a hardy pioneer would be happy about being stuck in these conditions, however, so it seemed unreasonable to expect cooperation from a spoiled celebrity whose only knowledge of country came from the music he sang.
Especially since the music he sang involved pickup trucks, tailgate parties, and hot girls who swilled beer from a bottle, and not frolicking little dogies or homes on the range.
Pearl Lovett, her enormous baby belly covered by an equally large apron, blocked the door to the jail.
The door had been propped open with a chair.
She carried a red-checkered, cloth-covered basket that looked heavy.
Her husband, Grady, ran the bakery next door.
Six-year-old Linda, with the Band-Aid for the excised splinter still firmly affixed, although grimy and much, much worse for wear, peered inside the jail from behind her mother’s calico skirt.
“Hi, Belle,” Pearl said. She hefted the basket. A bright, open smile dimpled her cheeks. “Grady thought our guest might like some breakfast.”
“I’m starved,” he said from the shadowy bowels of the jail.
Belle had forgotten about his breakfast in her rush to find Mavis.
He sounded cheerful though, and she immediately perked up.
Who could resist Pearl and Linda? They were equally cute.
And it wasn’t as if he were dying—he was just dinged up a little.
Surely her Hippocratic oath didn’t apply in this instance.
“He sent enough for you both,” Pearl said to Belle, whose rumbling stomach chose that moment to speak up and be heard, because she hadn’t had breakfast, either.
“There’s fresh bread, and Johnny cakes and molasses, and a jar of my chokecherry jelly.
Loretta sent some cheese from the dairy to go with the bread.
I hope you can join us for the church potluck this evening,” she added, speaking to Beau.
“Grady has a big pot of lamb stew on the stove.”
“I would love to join you.”
He sounded warm and genuine and friendly, as if he meant every word. Belle wanted to believe him, but she didn’t dare. She had four hundred thousand dollars plus interest riding on him.
“Sorry,” she said to Pearl. “The patient’s on bedrest. He’s been exposed to a new strain of avian flu virus that’s showing up in bottled juices.
I just got word that the whole passenger list of the plane he arrived on has been quarantined.
” This was where she began to feel mean.
“Johnny cakes and cheese are off the menu for now. Nothing that’s hard to digest. He was sick to his stomach this morning.
That’s the first symptom. He can have the bread, though. Let’s hope it stays down.”
“Oh, my.” Pearl thrust the basket at Belle. One hand flew to her pregnant belly. She reached for the six-year-old with the other, drawing her protectively against her. “I hope you feel better soon,” she said to Beau. “I love your music. The whole town voted for you.”
She scurried away, dragging Linda behind her, leaving Belle with the basket of food, a surly country singer, and an ugly black smear on her conscience.
“That story’s bogus,” Beau said. “I hope you’re proud of yourself. You just traumatized a pregnant woman and a little girl over nothing. Give me the basket.”
She hugged it. Winning him over was looking less and less likely. Four hundred thousand dollars…
She had to stay strong.
“Bread only,” she said, doubling down.
She plopped the basket on the antique writing desk next to the door. She withdrew a plate heaped with Johnny cakes—which smelled so amazing she felt a little light-headed herself—and the dish-towel-wrapped bread. She passed him the loaf.
“This better have a file in it.” He tore a chunk off with his good hand and held it up to the light. “Damn it. Nothing.”
He bit in. Belle watched, mesmerized, as he closed dusty-lashed eyes while he savored the morsel.
He swallowed, then opened his eyes. A smile did the backstroke in twin heated blue pools, and she received a full blast of what half the women in America were raving about.
Even scruffy, banged up, and in need of a shower, he was charismatic.
“This is definitely better than nothing,” he said, eyeballing the bread, and she began to have hopes that she might pull this off. “But if you think I’m staying locked up in here,” he continued, dashing her hopes, “your mental health issues are bigger than mine.”
He cradled the bread in the crook of his left arm, slipped his right hand—the uninjured one—through the bars, flipped the lever on the lock, then swung the door open and limped from the cell.