Chapter Sixteen
Malika
Malika was very good at keeping secrets. She was also good at figuring them out.
Even she had not suspected that this unassuming log cabin was the town’s center of communications, or that Tilly—who looked more like a blond-haired, blue-eyed, porcelain doll than a computer nerd—masterminded it all.
The main room looked much like the home theater in her sister Aisha’s home, complete with stadium seating and a flat-screen TV that took up an entire wall.
A lectern had been pushed in front of the black screen and Benny was briefing the main characters regarding the town’s upcoming adventure with their next guest. Malika’s character had been added to it.
She beamed at Jayce, who sat a few seats away.
She no longer despaired of his ability to flirt, because the smile he reserved for her was different than the one he shared with other women. It warmed his eyes more than his lips, and it did delicious things to her heart.
His reluctance to announce their engagement to the town before he spoke with her brother didn’t dim her joy in the slightest. He had asked her to marry him. He would make things right with Adeel. She had no reason to worry.
But they’d had no time alone together, because he insisted on them staying in character until after her brother arrived. And he had not said he loved her. Wasn’t that what Americans did when they proposed? Wasn’t that what made his parents’ marriage a success?
Benny shuffled his papers, found what he searched for, then held the sheaf an inch or so from his nose.
“Butch Cassidy escaped the shootout in Bolivia and is on his way back from South America,” he announced, managing to read the words with his watery eyes crossed, because glasses were for old people.
“He passed through Mexico, where a band of Mexicans joined his new gang. He’s arranged to meet up with Sundance—that’s you, Jayce—in Burning Scrub.
He’s heard rumors of how rich the town is, thanks to our silver mine, and intends to rob our bank.
Adam’s going to be the explosives expert who blows the safe open. ”
“Where are we going to find outlaw Mexicans?” Mavis asked.
Benny waved off her concern. “Dave and his buddies can be Mexicans.”
“But will they be happy about it?” Tilly muttered to Malika.
Benny’s hearing wasn’t as good as his eyesight. He moved on.
“Mavis, you’ll run the saloon. It’s a respectable establishment, mind you.
No more harlots. Malika will be the barmaid who sells homemade pies to the miners.
Grady, you’re the bank manager. Pearl, you’ll run the boarding house, as usual.
Andy’s the town sheriff this season. And Tilly—” More shuffling of papers.
“I know.” Tilly sighed loudly. “Schoolteacher.”
Benny squinted at her. “Not this season. The town is rich from the silver mines, so you’ll be raising funds for town improvement.”
Tilly straightened in her chair. “Fundraising for town improvement. What sort of improvements are we talking about?”
“Does it matter? Paint something. Plant some flowers. You can discuss it with Grady. He’s the historian.”
“To think I gave up a career in finance for this,” Tilly muttered under her breath.
Malika ignored her friend’s negativity. Mexicans. Explosions. Bank robberies and bandits.
Burning Scrub couldn’t be more delightful.
And she would get to be part of it for the rest of her life.
One of many advantages to marrying Jayce.
She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She would marry him even if Adeel disapproved.
Her only sadness was the loss of her high-heeled boots, which didn’t fit well with the town’s theme or the ranch, but Pearl was a genius. Malika had faith.
The town hall wrapped up.
Jayce drew Malika aside. “I’m sorry, I can’t walk you home,” he said. “I’m meeting with Mavis, Grady, and Adam to discuss how we’re going to convince Dave and his friends to play Mexicans. Mexicans and Native Americans have a complex historical relationship.”
“Then why introduce Mexicans into the script in the first place?” The solution seemed simple to her.
“Grady’s a stickler for detail. He likes to make the script as historically accurate as possible, because people pay a lot of money for Burning Scrub’s adventures.”
“What’s a lot of money for an adventure?”
“This particular client is paying a million dollars for a week-long immersion.”
Malika remained a bit hazy about how much things cost. She knew what meals in certain restaurants were worth, because she often left the tip on the table out of the cash she got from Aisha.
She had a vague idea about clothes. Normally, she simply placed orders after a fitting, and the bill went on an account, but if she saw something she wanted to buy while window shopping, she either paid cash or one of her roommates put it on a credit card for her. She had no card of her own.
“And a million dollars is a lot of money?” she ventured, just to be sure.
Jayce’s eyes smiled at her in the way she especially liked. He got that same look when he wanted to kiss her. Her doubts abated.
“It’s relative. That’s a lot of money to Burning Scrub. We don’t want to lose it.”
She could appreciate that. She’d felt the loss of the twenty thousand dollars she’d stashed in her boots because it was all the money she had.
“But a million dollars won’t pay for real Mexicans,” she said, putting the pieces together. “And now you’ve got to figure out how much pretending to play Mexicans is worth to Dave and his friends.”
“That’s about right.” His lips were smiling now, too, along with his eyes, and she liked the combination of the two even better.
It made her want to do much more than kiss him. Sadly, they were never alone.
“Why don’t you walk home with Tilly, instead?” he suggested. “She’s in the communications room.”
Tilly was the one who’d invited her to the town hall.
“Mavis won’t mind and Benny won’t notice,” Tilly had said. “You might not care about sticking to the script for your adventure, but if you want to be part of the new client’s adventure, you need to pay better attention to details. This is how we earn our living.”
And now, Malika better understood the importance. The town was poor.
If one week’s adventure cost one million dollars, and she was here for eight weeks—give or take—then Adeel would have paid Burning Scrub at least eight million dollars on her behalf, which meant the two hundred thousand dollars in cash she’d received from Aisha would never have funded her escape.
It was a stroke of good fortune that Adeel had brought her to Burning Scrub with him.
She wanted very much to fit in. She liked the town halls. She liked planning adventures for guests. She liked having a role to play in them.
And she liked making Jayce happy.
So why wasn’t he happy?
The communications room was small and dungeon-like, with four large monitors attached to the walls, their screens glowing softly. Tilly sat at a mammoth keyboard, working online. Three laptops occupied the remaining desk space.
“Just sending travel details to the client,” she said, her eyes on one of the screens.
“This guy takes privacy to the next level. We like to know as much as we can about guests, but I can’t track him back to his location.
I don’t know who he’s got working for him, but whoever they are, they’re using a Russian VPN and a blocker.
They’re good.” She said it with grudging respect.
She clicked a few keys, hit Send, then spun her chair to Malika. “Done. Want to look up stuff while we’re here?”
“What should we look up?”
Tilly drummed her puckered chin with her forefingers. “How about your fiancé? What do you know about him?”
Tilly didn’t know that Eli Chamas was no longer her fiancé. Malika never had any interest in knowing anything about him before, but now that she was free of him, she was more curious. Would he be enraged when he discovered he’d lost her?
How exciting.
“I only know his name, really,” she said. “He isn’t likely to have an online presence in the US. Can you access Djitania’s domain?”
“Piece of cake. Pull up a chair.”
A few clicks later, Tilly was in. Malika helped her with the unfamiliar script on the screen, matching them to the keys on the keyboard, then converting them to English. A few minutes of searching, and a man’s face appeared on one of the monitors, larger than life.
“Huh,” Tilly said. “Guess this is what women mean when they talk about silver-haired foxes. Eli Chamas is a babe.”
He was exceedingly handsome, and if she were to be his first wife, then Malika might have married him willingly, and even thanked Adeel for it.
But that was before she met Jayce.
“Jayce is more handsome,” she said.
Tilly shot a sharp look her way. “What’s Jayce got to do with Eli Chamas?”
Malika was tempted to tell her. She was bursting to share. But Adeel had paid for her adventure in a town that relied on adventures, and word of mouth, for their income, and she’d been betrayed already by a roommate in Adeel’s employ. While she adored Tilly, she trusted no one anymore.
No one except Jayce.
And she had her occasional doubts about him.
“Every man I meet from now on will forever be compared to Jayce and his beauty,” she said.
“True that. You speak for us all.” Tilly continued to eye her with suspicion.
“It’s completely normal for women to fall a little in love with him, you know.
But beauty’s skin deep, and it doesn’t take long to figure out there’s not much else to him but beauty and ranching.
Look how fast he’s recovered from Belle, and he was convinced he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. ”
The remark about his feelings for Belle was uncalled for.
“Jayce knows when to move on from his mistakes. He’s honest, and caring, and he adores his mother. He’s perfect.”
“I knew it,” Tilly said. “You’re in love with him. Curse him and his pretty face.”