Chapter Eight
Beau
The main street possessed a long boardwalk that snaked the length of the buildings that constituted the business district, from what Beau could figure out.
He limped past a bank, a bathhouse, a saloon, a mercantile—whatever the hell that was—a restaurant that appeared closed, and a boarding house.
The smells of fresh bread and roasting beef mingled in with the bite of pine in the air.
Metal striking metal rang from the blacksmith’s workshop next to the stable behind him.
The men he met on the boardwalk tipped their hats to him in greeting.
Ladies nodded their heads. A woman in a rose-patterned dress and rose-colored bonnet swept the wooden stoop outside of the mercantile.
The scratch of her straw-bristled broom paused, then resumed with added enthusiasm once he’d passed by.
Just a regular community, going about its regular workday.
In the 1800s.
Belle waited for him on the steps of her front porch, an oasis of calm in a hotbed of crazy. The bundle of brown curls pinned at her crown made her look like a sexy, distracted nineteenth-century schoolteacher. He flashed back to his teens when hormones had ruled, and he’d lost his head over Jen.
Except Jen had never been an oasis of calm. Nor a hotbed of crazy. Drama was more her kind of thing.
He lowered himself gently next to Belle, keeping a few discreet inches of space between his thigh and hers on the narrow stoop, because he didn’t think he could handle another round with Adam and Jayce before lunch. The sun’s heat burned through the lingering chill in the pure mountain air.
“How’s the ankle?” she asked.
“Doing a whole lot better than my butt and my pride.”
Her nose crinkled. “You managed to stay on, and that’s pretty impressive, considering Jayce said Buttercup got cayenne pepper up his nose.”
“Cayenne pepper?” Beau scrubbed his face with both hands. “Aren’t you supposed to season meat after it’s dead?”
“Adam uses it to deter bears.”
Bears. Didn’t that add to the fun.
“Is this really a theme park?” He could have sworn those bullets flying past him were real.
Belle seemed surprised by the question. “What else would it be?”
“I thought it was a cult. Jayce set me straight.” Silence dangled between them. “I’m not cut out to be a cowboy,” he blurted out.
As if it had to be said. His wild ride on a geriatric horse named Buttercup should be enough of a clue.
And since he was getting a load off his chest, he added, “I hate country music. I mean, I really hate it. Like, hate it a lot.”
She leaned toward him, and her knees drifted his way. Sunlight brought out tiny flecks of mocha in her eyes that helped deepen the blue. A jolt of lust prickled his skin. If she moved any closer, she’d get him killed.
“Do you really hate country music?” she asked.
“About as much as I hate horses right now.”
“But you’re so good at it,” she insisted.
“I’m good at bussing tables, too. That doesn’t mean I want to spend my life devoted to it.”
“I doubt if too many people care one way or another about any tables you’ve cleared. Lots of people bus tables. On the other hand, how much joy do you bring to the fans who love the music that only you can produce?”
While he was happy that he made his fans happy, he’d been pleasing other people for months now, and he was dog-tired.
Tired of funding his agent’s continental tour, his mother’s and sisters’ new lifestyles, and his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
Tired of being told where to go and what to do.
What to perform. Tired of having no say.
When was it his turn to enjoy fame and fortune? Because so far, it sucked.
Plus, he hadn’t been able to produce even one new word of the kind of music he loved in the few days he’d been here, and he was starting to worry that singing country had ruined him. “Lots of people perform country music. Parker McCollum, Luke Bryan, Chris Stapleton…”
She was shaking her head. A hairpin wriggled loose, and a curl took a plunge.
It bobbed, springlike, close to her throat.
He imagined touching that curl, then kissing her throat—tasting her skin—and another hot jolt of lust reignited the first. He’d been without a woman since Jen left him. Apparently, that was too long.
“Not the way you do. Your sound is unique,” she said.
He brought his thoughts back to whatever they were talking about.
“So is theirs. That’s what makes them famous.” He didn’t want to talk about country music anymore. Country music could hang. “What about you? How did number three in her twenty-first-century class end up practicing nineteenth-century medicine in a Western freak show?”
Belle’s smile didn’t quite disappear, but it shifted to rueful. “Four hundred thousand dollars.”
He almost fell off the step. “You’re getting paid four hundred thousand dollars to be here?”
“Good lord, no. Well, yes,” she amended. “In a way. The town paid off my student loans, and I owe five years in exchange.”
Five years of her life. And he’d thought Leon Schmidt was a crook.
His two months began to look like a bargain.
A bee hummed in the fat rosebush next to the steps, skipping from one wide-petalled pink bloom to the next while he processed what she’d told him.
What were the odds they’d find someone willing to commit to five years on a mountain, with no internet connection, for a measly four hundred thousand dollars?
His brain got busy. He frowned. What were the odds?
“Why you?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why pay off your loans? You couldn’t be the only med student in debt.
Why not finance the first in your class?
Why not number two? Although I would have thought they’d need to start closer to the bottom of the class instead of the top.
” He looked at her clothes, then down at his.
“Especially when you consider their stellar incentives package.”
Her eyebrows dipped, drawing closer together, as if this were the first time she’d ever given it serious thought. “This town is an exclusive resort for the wealthy. They’re careful about word getting out. Having no one who’d miss me was probably a point in my favor.”
“Oh, come on. Mailman, grocery clerk, dog groomer, maybe?”
She smoothed her skirt over her knees—a nervous habit, he’d noticed. “I don’t own a dog.”
A second bee joined the first. Their broad little backsides wriggled industriously as they burrowed into the pink blooms while he tried to wrap his head around a life with no one else in it. His family, friends, and even ex-wife might be huge pains in his ass, but they were all his.
“Everyone’s got someone,” he said.
And now, he was prying.
“Not me. My dad and I traveled a lot when I was little. He got into some trouble when I was fourteen, and I’ve been on my own ever since.
I took a lot of advanced classes and went to summer camps set up for accelerated learning programs. I stayed in a few different foster homes, but they changed every year or so, depending on what program I was in. I pretty much kept to myself.”
There had to be a lot more to her story.
She was smart. Kind of intimidatingly so.
He wanted to ask what kind of trouble her dad had gotten into, and about her mother, but she didn’t offer more information, and while he didn’t mind making her mad, poking around in her life and making her sad wasn’t fun.
Those programs Belle spoke of cost money, though, and he was drawing conclusions. “Let me guess—you won lots of scholarships?”
“Plus a few part-time jobs.”
Beautiful, brainy, hard-working … but not especially world-wise. He said nothing, because all he had were his gut instincts to go on, but it sure looked to him as if Doctor Belle had been groomed—and by a theme park, no less. The big question was why.
Let it go.
She wasn’t his problem. If she wanted to leave, Marlboro Man would don his white hat, toss her onto his horse, and ride off into the sunset with her. Maybe he’d have better luck solving Belle’s problems than Beau had with Jen’s.
“That explains you. But what about me? How did my agent find out about…” Where the hell was he? Other than some mountaintop in Montana, he had no idea. “What’s the name of this place, anyway?”
“Burning Scrub. Adam reached out to your agent because we needed a Diss Cord country singer finalist for a client who arrives in a few weeks. He’s a huge fan of the show.”
Things were making more sense. Leon passing it off as a chance for him to improve his brand was a way to get around the contract Beau had with the network.
A contract that would negate anything he’d signed with Burning Scrub. He tucked that knowledge into his pocket.
“Let me see if I’ve got everything straight. Burning Scrub is a theme park. It’s remote, and I’m guessing immersive, based on what I’ve seen. The Asian couple by the river … they’re clients, too?”
“Creek. It’s a creek, not a river,” she said, as if he didn’t know the difference.
Which he didn’t.
“And yes, they’re clients. They’re only here for a few days, although people can buy packages of up to a month.
Each experience is tailored based on the role they want to play.
The townspeople live here as if Burning Scrub were a real 1800s Western mining town, but their international clients come from different cultures and are very wealthy, and they don’t always understand what Western life was like in the 1800s.
Burning Scrub has to adapt. The Middle Eastern client wants to be a sheriff, so for the two weeks he’ll be here, that’s his role.
But he also gets to choose his finale—which is where you come in. ”
A private concert for a wealthy foreign client…
“Leon left that part out.” Of course he had. Because not only would the network object if they found out Beau was moonlighting, but this was supposed to be a break from performing and Leon had known he’d refuse.