Chapter Nine #2
“Afternoon, ma’am,” he said, his voice lazy and intimate and low. “You must be the young lady lodging with Mavis.” He extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Andy. Andy Danvers. I’m the town sheriff.” His smile made her flush. “For this summer, anyways.”
Goodness.
If she’d been the type of woman to swoon, that was what she’d be doing.
This man needed no lessons in flirting from her.
Malika had no doubt he could tell the color of the undergarments she wore simply by studying the line of her dress, and he made it quite plain that not only was he studying it he liked what he saw.
He wasn’t as handsome as Jayce, but that was no mark against him. Few men were so beautiful. But she could appreciate a handsome man who appreciated her, too, even if Andy Danvers’s appreciation of her was based on surface appeal only. The feeling was mutual.
“Malika George,” she said, giving him the anglicized version of her name that she preferred using.
She balanced the pie on her arm so she could shake the hand he’d offered.
He held her fingers long enough to make certain he had her attention, but not long enough to be considered excessively bold. The thumb that brushed across her palm like a lover’s caress took care of the boldness.
“Where are you off to in such a rush on this fine afternoon?” he asked.
Malika remembered her role. And her mission. “My brother is on the run from ruthless killers, and I’m delivering this pie as a thank-you to the honorable cowboy whose protection I’m under. He’s saving me from ruin.”
“That’s got to be Jayce. He likes to ruin all the fun.” Andy’s grin could have blinded the sun. “Mind if I walk with you?”
Mavis had said it was a small town and she should be friendly. There was no harm in being friendly with Andy. A blind woman could see that if she wanted nothing more than to be ruined, then this was her man.
Malika would prefer to be ruined by Jayce.
And she began to see Mavis’s point. Jayce’s expectations had been raised by the beautiful Belle, whereas Malika knew better than to allow hers to be raised. It was the difference between his American ideal of marrying for love and her Djitanian belief that true, lasting love came after marriage.
“I’d love the company,” she said to Andy.
A man such as Andy had no expectations to raise.
*
Jayce
What was Malika doing with Andy Danvers?
That guy was shady.
A short, narrow path cut from the alley between the stable and the smithy. The log bunkhouse, once used by penniless single men who worried about losing their bedded-down horses to thieves, buttressed the end of the path. The three buildings shared an outhouse, which could use a good dose of lime.
Jayce sat on the front steps of the bunkhouse, cleaning his gun.
He’d been plinking all afternoon to work on his skills, because if he was going to get killed in a shootout, he at least wanted to make sure he didn’t die of embarrassment.
He set the cleaned gun beside him on the gray, weathered step.
His good humor curdled the closer Andy and Malika came down the path.
Andy had broken his arm moving cattle last year, and he’d disappeared from Burning Scrub while it mended. He’d said he was going to travel. The tan said he’d gone somewhere warm.
He had his head bent over Malika’s and she was laughing at something he said.
She saw Jayce watching, and waiting, and the joy in her smile shifted to something much more reserved as their gazes collided. It annoyed him because she didn’t smile at him the same way—as if she liked being with him.
“Hey, Jayce,” Andy said. “Long time no see. The little lady here has brought you a pie to thank you for being such an upstanding, honorable guy.”
“Someone’s got to be,” Jayce said darkly, which amused the other man to no end, because while Andy might be shady, he wasn’t about to put twenty-five million dollars at risk, and they both knew it. “Don’t you have sheriff duties to attend to somewhere else?”
Andy sighed. “A lawman’s work is never done. He’s beholden to the people who pay his salary. Their lives are in his hands.” He raised Malika’s hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her knuckles, each one in turn. “Adios mi bella dama, hasta que nos volvamos a encontrar.”
The terrible Spanish, combined with the tan, suggested his travels had taken him to Mexico, and possibly as far as South America, undoubtedly while on the run from the law he’d sworn to uphold. Malika, apparently unaware of how bad his Spanish was, fluttered her lashes, her smile coyly demure.
Jayce couldn’t contain his disgust. The pair took flirting with each other to a ridiculous level. Was he supposed to be jealous, just because Andy was smooth and Malika soaked it up?
“Do women really fall for that crap?” he asked, as Andy walked away.
The finger Andy flipped him before he stepped into the shadows between the stable and the smithy suggested his hearing was every bit as good as Jayce hoped.
“Don’t be silly,” Malika said. Green eyes flashed her irritation. “Flirting isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It’s a game.”
It was a game Jayce didn’t get. If he paid a woman a compliment, she’d know he meant every word.
The problem, at least for him, was that the kind of compliments Malika seemed to enjoy rarely sounded sincere.
He couldn’t picture himself saying goodbye, my beautiful lady to her in any language. Not with a straight face.
“You need to be more careful, Malika,” he said. Lecturing her came more naturally than flirting. He blamed it on his dad, because Huck was his role model. “Guys like Andy … they’re a lot better at playing games than you’ll ever be.”
His lecturing earned him the same response that his dad got from his mom.
“Thank you for your concern. It’s very honorable of you to worry about me, especially since I’m already ruined. This is for you. A small token of my appreciation.”
She dropped the pie on his lap and he winced. Her appreciation packed a wallop. At least she’d dropped it right-side up. He peeked under the cloth.
“You made this,” he said, surprised.
“How did you know?”
The crust was too thick, and it wasn’t even, and the edges had pulled away from the pan.
The notches sliced in the top to let the steam out gave it an unhappy expression.
But while he might not be good at flirting, he did have a mother, and insulting a woman’s cooking meant a man might go hungry.
Malika’s pie was still warm, and it smelled good, and all he cared about was how it would taste. Already, his mouth watered.
“Mavis makes a decent pie, but she’s a little stingy with the crust. The crust on this one is nice and thick. Just the way I like it,” he threw in for good measure.
Malika’s smile loosened and warmed, proving he could do as well with the truth as Andy did with fake charm.
“Want to come inside and share a slice with me?” he asked, because that was the polite thing to say, and he had no other motive.
He read yes in her eyes, and his ’nads started to tingle, because even though he knew they weren’t about to get lucky, they had a mind of their own.
But she didn’t say yes.
“I’m sorry. I should work on repairing my ruined reputation. It wouldn’t be proper for me to come inside. Enjoy your pie,” she said brightly.
And she walked away.
He didn’t understand what was happening.
Thick, sullen clouds skittered over the sun.
She showed up here with Andy, who was most likely two steps ahead of the law in real life, and she flirted with him and encouraged his really bad Spanish.
Then, she claimed it wouldn’t be proper for her to share pie with Jayce, the honorable cowboy charged with protecting her until her brother returned. His reputation was stellar.
Had someone rewritten the script and not told him about it?