Chapter Seven
Jayce
Malika, when startled, didn’t waste breath on screaming. She went straight into battle.
Jayce, however, was ready this time.
He clamped her arms to her sides. Her flailing feet struck nothing but air. She spat a few choice words at him, and while he didn’t understand the language she used, he understood their meaning just fine.
He didn’t like manhandling her, but if she connected with his gonads again, then rode off while he was curled up in a fetal position, she’d kill herself and Saber on the mountain at night.
She thought she knew the path down, but he’d led her and Ali up a few false trails on their ride to Burning Scrub.
Finding her way to the ranch, even in daylight, wasn’t as simple as she seemed to think.
Except her thought processes were impossible for him to follow, so he had no idea what she was thinking. What had possessed her last night? She must have known someone was watching, because he’d gotten the distinct impression she’d purposely put on a show.
She couldn’t do things like that, especially not in Burning Scrub, of all places. Benny would have a stroke if he found out she liked to parade around naked, displaying herself to the world.
The moon was full and bright. Jayce was tempted to load her on her horse, grab Side-eye from the stable, and guide her down the mountain himself. Maybe drive her to Butte and put her on a bus. What she did after that became her problem, not his. At least she’d be gone.
But as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t do it.
Ali had offered Mavis, Benny, and Adam twenty-five million dollars to keep her in Burning Scrub for the rest of the summer and he was leaving tonight.
And Ali was on his way out. Beau and Belle were going to give him a lift as far as Butte.
“Just … keep an eye on Malika until the preparations for her wedding are complete,” Ali said to Jayce, sounding tired. “She’s my last unmarried sister, and while I love her, I can’t do this again. It took me too long to arrange. I have daughters to think of.”
Part of Jayce wanted to feel sorry for her.
The rest of him believed that Ali was right and arranging a marriage for her was the best thing to do—especially since she seemed to have no real objection to it, other than that the man in question was already married.
The cultural practices of the town’s guests were none of his business.
But why did he have to be the cowboy who rode to her rescue?
“She came up with her adventure,” Mavis said, unmoved when he asked.
“Bounty hunters are after her brother, and he’s about to abandon her in Burning Scrub so he can outrun them.
You’re the handsome cowboy who rescued her and her brother, and since you brought them to Burning Scrub in the first place, the role of protector stays yours. ”
Ali picked up his bag. “I know my sister. Make it realistic and she won’t be able to resist an adventure. She’s going to try to follow me, because she’s very loyal, but you must stop her. She has no money, and no friends in this country.”
Jayce wasn’t sure if he meant she had no money or friends in real life or as part of the adventure. Either way, here he was, rescuing her again, because Burning Scrub had twenty-five million dollars riding on her buying into her adventure and in keeping her entertained.
She wasn’t making it easy.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” Jayce said, sliding into his role.
He blew a strand of her hair out of his mouth.
“But I can’t let you run off and risk your life on the mountain in the dark.
It’s too dangerous. And so’s you’re aware, horse theft is a hanging offense in these parts.
The town won’t care that you’re a woman. ”
She stopped struggling.
“What about kidnapping?” she asked, sounding hopeful. “Is that a hanging offense too? If I filed charges against A … li, would he hang?”
She had to quit talking like that. “You weren’t kidnapped. You followed your brother to Montana Territory after he killed a man while defending your honor.”
She shrugged out of his arms and spun around. Her hair had come loose from its knot, and she shoved the heavy mass of curls away from her face with both hands.
“Where did you hear that ridiculous story?” she demanded.
Burning Scrub had twenty-five million dollars at stake, he reminded himself grimly. The cut the ranch received would make up for the black-footed ferrets currently testing his parents’ marriage in his dad’s durum wheat field, and then some.
Make it realistic.
“Your brother is trying to stay ahead of the bounty hunters hired by the father of the man he killed, he needs to travel light, and he doesn’t want you in harm’s way.”
“You mean he doesn’t want me in his way.” Her sharp gaze cut straight through him. She might have been pampered for most of her life, but she wasn’t stupid. “The helicopter that just left. My brother was on it, wasn’t he?”
Her brother, Beau Jones, and Belle. Belle, who was now married.
Funny, the thought didn’t sting.
Probably because she’d been so danged happy, he had to be happy for her too.
He wedged into the slight gap between Malika and Saber and took hold of the horse’s bridle.
The movement put him in close physical contact with Malika.
His knee brushed her thigh. The toe of her boot nicked the thick sole of his shoe, and one of her breasts—as firm as it looked—heated his upper arm.
His shirt collar tightened. Mountain nights were normally cool, even in summer. This night was stiflingly warm. The moon face-palmed itself, expressing its private opinion over what was transpiring, and hid behind a gathering of clouds. Saber, normally docile, became edgy, picking up on the mood.
But Jayce clung to his role. He was an honorable cowboy, come to her rescue.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what a helicopter is, ma’am,” he said.
“Of course you don’t. How could you possibly know?” Sarcasm lay thick in the air he was breathing. “Did my brother say how long before he returns?”
He saw no harm to the plot by providing an answer. “Likely toward the end of the summer. Ma’am.” Which was roughly two months away.
He’d never make it.
She tapped her upper lip, the silence broken only by the distant whoo-coo-cuh-roo of a barred owl, and a door closing somewhere in town. The night filled with shadows. He thought he smelled ozone and waited for the explosion.
“This is perfect,” she exclaimed, to his great confusion.
He almost asked why but caught himself. He knew better than that.
“Why don’t we take Saber back to the stable and bed him down for the night, then I’ll walk you home?”
“I can walk myself home. It’s not very far.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I can’t allow that. What with the bounty hunters, and wild bears, and all.”
He didn’t want to walk her home any more than she wanted him to.
The memory of how she looked naked was taped to the backs of his eyelids, like a pinup on the inside of a teenaged boy’s bedroom closet door, and he had mixed feelings about it.
She’d been so brazen—as if she’d enjoyed having someone to watch her—that he’d enjoyed it too much, as well.
That was before he’d known she’d be here for the entire summer, or that he’d be the one assigned to oversee her adventure. He’d only ever played bit parts in scripts before. A gambler. A gunfighter. He’d never had time for anything more. Summers on ranches meant all hands were on deck.
Hold on.
His relief was so profound, he nearly sank to his knees. He couldn’t play the role Mavis gave him. He had a family ranch to help run. He’d remind her of that first thing in the morning, which wasn’t all that far off.
He settled Saber with a few soothing strokes of the neck, then started the short walk to the stable.
Malika fell into step. “Bounty hunters, bears, and out-of-staters. These mountains are very busy.”
He let the out-of-stater comment pass uncorrected, even though it didn’t match with the timeline. Montana was a territory, not a state.
“People come here to get rich.” Before Burning Scrub became a ghost town, the place was hopping. His family was living proof. “There’s silver in the mountains, also a little gold, and beaver in the waterways for trapping. The natives come here to hunt and fish.”
By natives he meant David McAllister and his Salish Kootenai friends from the Flathead Reservation.
They liked to camp and hunt in the mountains and get back to nature.
Dave, in his Thundering Buffalo role, also led Indian raids on Burning Scrub in exchange for donations to the reservation that they ran through the casinos.
Malika skipped a few steps ahead, turned, and bounced on her toes as she faced him. “People come here to start new lives where no one knows them too.”
“Your brother’s coming back for you,” he said, immediately wary.
“He’s not coming back. If the bounty hunters don’t find him first, he’ll be eaten by bears.” She pressed the heel of her wrist to her forehead. “Whatever is a ruined woman to do to survive on her own in this town?”
Why did she always have to take things too far? “Nobody here knows you’re ruined.”
“Of course they know. Everyone knows. That’s why my brother is being hunted by bounty hunters. The father of the man he killed for ruining me wants him dead for killing his only son. An eye for an eye.”
His left eye twitched. Her storyline was Burning Scrub’s problem. He had a ranch to run. “You could sell pies to miners. Miners love fresh-baked pies.”
“I have a much better idea.” She clapped her hands with excitement. “Miners will love this more than pies.”
He smelled ozone again. “Hard to imagine. Miners really love pies. Ask Mavis.”
She ignored his attempt to divert her. “I will teach miners to flirt.”
He stumbled and bumped shoulders with Saber. “You’ll teach them to what?”