Time's Up, Cowboy
Chapter One
Malika George hadn’t expected two hundred thousand dollars in small bills to weigh quite so much.
The heavy bag bumped her hip, and she shifted the wide leather strap, trying to lessen the load. The elevator to the penthouse apartment she shared with three roommates was taking its time. She jiggled her leg with impatience. The stairs would have been faster, but the bag she carried was awkward.
The money stowed inside it came from her sister Aisha. She’d transferred it to Malika through a local developer in Los Angeles who was a business friend of her husband’s. Malika was well acquainted with the hawala system of exchange, although this was the first time she’d received such a large lump sum of money. She’d had to sit on the developer’s knee and rub his bald head as part of the deal, but he knew better than to mess too much with Adeel Jiorji’s baby sister and she’d been feeling indulgent.
She’d taken an additional twenty thousand dollars in thousand-dollar bills from her bank. The bank was familiar with her petty cash withdrawals—she spent more than that on restaurants in a month because none of her roommates could cook—so no questions were asked. She had those bills stashed in her boots, where the crisp bills scratched her ankles.
Freedom was so close she could taste it.
She’d gotten the idea of disappearing from a television series one of her roommates enjoyed, although the roommate watched it more for the handsome male lead than the storyline. Malika liked the thought of hitchhiking across the United States and exploring America. She couldn’t hide from Adeel forever, but she’d make him work to find her.
The gleaming doors parted, and she stepped inside. The black glass of the elevator walls reflected curve-hugging jeans, high-heeled boots, and a sleeveless red blouse that showed a hint of white lace at her cleavage. The blouse, tame by American standards, would have shocked her sisters, but she had great breasts—why not show them off while she could?
She’d twisted her dark brown hair into a loose knot that spilled curls. Light green eyes sparked with excitement. An American adventure was just what she needed. To become an old man’s second wife, however…
She didn’t need that.
Anger burned behind her perky breasts, nudging aside the thrill of adventure. A second wife. She was the sister of Adeel Jiorji, the wealthiest and most powerful man in Djitania. She would be second to no other woman. How dare he expect it of her?
The elevator doors purred as they parted. She stepped into the lobby of her apartment building—the building Adeel owned. It was late evening for the building’s mostly senior inhabitants, and the lobby was empty except for a few potted plants and some sofas and chairs.
A security guard lounged in his office, half asleep, to her right. Marco. He waved. She blew him a kiss that he pretended to catch. The black lobby doors to freedom beckoned. She’d take a cab to the bus station—the driver would know where it was—and grab a Greyhound to the first destination it offered, then find a motel. She’d never stayed in a motel before. It sounded deliciously common. She’d never flagged down a cab herself, either. One of her roommates usually took care of that. But there was always one waiting outside her building.
She crossed the carpeted floor and had almost reached the lobby doors when she sensed movement behind her. Don’t look back.
She couldn’t help herself. She turned to look. Gut instinct forewarned what—who—she would find.
Adeel lounged in a chair, one elegantly clad leg thrown carelessly over the other. He’d had his back to the elevator, which was why she hadn’t seen him, but he’d been watching the lobby doors. His bodyguards would be waiting outside.
“Going somewhere, Malika?”
Dark eyes regarded her with less indulgence than usual. His tone was as calm as his expression, but she wasn’t fooled. The excitement flagellating her chest turned to alarm. She knew her brother, and his eyes didn’t lie. He was angry.
* * *
The wine bar was as stodgy as her brother, and he obviously visited it often, because they were whisked away to a private room the moment they walked in.
The private room possessed four deep leather chairs, a cheerful fireplace that provided low light but contributed no heat, and a short, stout, round wooden table for drinks that better suited a Southern memaw’s front parlor than a high-end Los Angeles neighborhood. How deadly boring.
Her bag had been handed to one of Adeel’s bodyguards and it waited with him in the limo. She’d never see it again. Adeel hadn’t asked where she’d gotten the money. He likely already knew. Fortunately, Aisha’s husband adored her, and he had no fear of Adeel. His family, while not as powerful as the Jiorjis, was powerful enough.
Malika hadn’t seen her eldest brother in over a year. He hadn’t changed much in those months. Still handsome, despite the widening bands of gray marking his temples. Technically, Adeel was her half-brother. His mother was their father’s first wife. Her mother was his third. She wasn’t sure of Adeel’s exact age, but knew he was in his mid-forties, and close to twenty years older than she. He prided himself on remaining physically fit. An expert horseman, he occasionally jockeyed his own horses in cross-desert races. He liked adventure. A trait they had in common.
“When was the last time you attended a class?” he asked.
It wasn’t the question she had expected he’d lead with, and she fumbled her answer. “Yest—last Thursday.”
Adeel studied the clipped tip of his unlit cigar. “Interesting. School has been out for a month, not that it matters. You dropped out last fall.”
She’d known her roommates were in Adeel’s employ. Their polite agreement was that it wasn’t acknowledged. To have one of them tattle on her as if she were a wayward child… This was an outrage.
“Who told you such lies?” she demanded.
“It doesn’t matter who told me.” Adeel’s gaze raked her appearance. The slight curl to his lip voiced his disapproval louder than words. “This is no way for a Jiorji to dress.”
She lifted her chin. “Malika George dresses the same as every other woman in America.” She stressed the anglicized version of her name that she preferred.
His elegant shoulders shifted under the raw silk of his shirt. “You can play dress-up if you like. But you are not an American, Malika Jiorji. Eli will expect you to behave with more dignity once you’re married to him. He believes in tradition.”
Eli Chamas. A man at least thirty years her senior.
His age wasn’t the issue. Her sisters claimed older men made the best lovers. That they were more inclined to be generous, both with their affection and their money.
But men did not rule their households. Malika would not become any man’s second wife. She’d seen how her mother, a third wife, was treated.
“Please, Adeel. Leave me here. Forget about me.” It shouldn’t be hard. As the daughter of a third wife, and the youngest of a very large, very rich family, she’d been forgotten for most of her life.
“I forget none of my sisters. I’m responsible for you all, and part of my responsibility is to see each of you safely married. You’re twenty-six years old, and marriage is long overdue. Eli has offered a generous mahr for you, and I’ve accepted it on your behalf. Besides, if I were to forget your existence, how would you care for yourself?” His eyes darkened. “Aisha won’t be sending more money. I promise you that.”
A mahr was supposed to be hers, in case she was widowed or divorced and forced to return to her brother’s household. It would pay for her keep. And there was the problem. The mahr was hers in name only. Adeel held the purse strings.
“That’s what’s wonderful about the US. I can earn my own money,” she said.
“How? You’re here on a student visa—which expired the day you dropped out of school. You could be deported tomorrow.”
“There are lots of ways for women to make money in America without a work visa.”
Adeel recoiled. “You will not work as a maid,” he said, shocked.
“Of course not.” Be a servant? She’d rather become an old man’s second wife.
Besides, she already had a better idea. One of her roommates ran a dominatrix business online that Adeel knew nothing about. Men—sometimes women—contacted her, begging her to order them to do intimate things to themselves. She had more calls than she could manage.
Malika would do something similar. Her sisters had often been indiscreet about their marriages in her presence. Thanks to their talk she had a good idea of what men liked to do with their wives. One brother-in-law dressed as a pirate and insisted his wife pleasure him with a vibrator while he bent over an old wooden sea chest he’d acquired for the purpose. Another liked to be ridden as if he were a horse and whipped with a crop. Not all chose to be dominated—Aisha’s husband preferred her to dress as a concubine and dance suggestively for him, then do naughty things to him with her mouth. A few lacked any imagination and relied on their wives to inspire them. They all, however, desired to be seduced.
The secret was in helping them unlock and indulge those secret desires, then send them home to their wives. Her services could be considered therapeutic. That was where money came in. How hard could it be?
She couldn’t discuss such a business proposition with her brother, of course.
“I’ll re-enroll in school,” she said, trying to sound resigned about it, even as her insides burst with excitement. But her excitement didn’t last long.
“I don’t think so,” Adeel said, grinding her dreams into the dirt. “I’m here to take you home. But first, I have a wedding to attend. You’ll accompany me.”
An American wedding. There would be parties and people. Crowds to be lost in. Hope picked itself up and dusted off the seat of its jeans. She might escape from Adeel yet. The money in her boots would buy a laptop and rent her a motel room where she could get her online business started.
“A wedding sounds lovely,” she said.
* * *
Town halls in Burning Scrub, Montana, were rarely dull. Tonight was no exception.
All Jayce Hanson had eyes or ears for, however, was the beautiful woman seated beside him. She’d broken his heart.
Belle Forsythe, the town doctor, was the kindest, the sweetest, the smartest, and the gentlest woman he knew, aside from his mother. In short, she was perfect. She was also about to be married to Beau Jones, a blight on the country music world and the country in general. A more mismatched pair he couldn’t imagine. He’d waited almost a year for her to come to her senses, but the wedding was only a few days away, and time was running out.
Fading light slithered through windows cut high in the walls. His father, Huck Hanson, droned on, oblivious to the passing of time or the agony his son was in.
“Why would a weasel be considered an endangered species? And why is my durum wheat field considered critical habitat for a rodent? Benny, I expect you to back me up at the next county meeting so we can get this sorted out.”
Benny Jenkins was the ninety-four-year-old founder of Burning Scrub. The two men served as Beaverhead County commissioners together, and between them, they carried considerable weight. Benny, an evangelist, built a commune in the Pioneer Mountains on the ghostly remains of an old mining town. He’d become friends with Jayce’s father upon discovering that the Ride No More Ranch, owned by the Hansons, controlled the only access road into the mountain town. Communes were expensive to run, and since Benny didn’t like to pay taxes, he and his daughter had turned Burning Scrub into a church. Churches were also expensive to run, so they’d added a theme park. They avoided tax issues on the park by investing heavily in local businesses and running the proceeds through charitable organizations.
Mavis Jenkins, Benny’s daughter and Belle’s grandmother, looked up from her knitting. “It’s a black-footed ferret. There are less than a thousand left in the world, and the two in your wheat field are the only mated pair that have been spotted in the wild for decades.”
Jayce’s father would have a stroke of epic proportions if he ever discovered that his adored wife was behind the release of the breeding pair on Ride No More land. Vanessa Hanson also signed the ranch up for the Audubon conservation ranching program to protect native grasslands for endangered bird species. While Jayce shared his mother’s interest in Montana habitat conservation, and was a willing aid and abettor, he didn’t plan to be in the room when those secrets came out.
“You’ll have my support,” Benny assured Huck. “A bigger problem right now is the new bear tagging program. Research scientists are going to be crawling all over these mountains any day now. Cliff can’t keep them out.”
Cliff Peterson was the local fish and game warden. Burning Scrub doubled his salary to look the other way regarding the town’s recreational activities.
Adam Caldwell, the town’s supply chain manager and procurement officer, spoke up. “We’re going to have to put up bear fences.”
“We’re not putting up bear fences. Did they have bear fences in nineteenth-century Montana? No, they did not,” Benny said.
Benny was a big believer in the historical accuracy of Burning Scrub, which offered the ultimate Wild West experience to wealthy international clients. Their clients, however—much like Benny himself—were heavily influenced by what they believed the Wild West was like and blithely unburdened by the actual facts.
“If we don’t put up fences, we run the risk of tagged bears wandering into town. If tagged bears wander in, researchers won’t be far behind. Researchers are going to ask questions. Our best bet to stop that from happening is to keep bears away,” Adam said. “Besides, fences will be cheaper in the long run than the bags of cayenne pepper we’re buying. Pepper has to be reapplied whenever it rains.”
Jayce didn’t care about bears, researchers, cayenne pepper, or fences. As soon as the meeting ended, he’d walk Belle home.
“We’ll table the fence talk for now,” Benny said, which was his way of admitting defeat. Burning Scrub would get its fences because they were on Adam’s wish list, and Adam always got what he wanted. Benny shuffled some papers. “Our August client is a gunfighter. He’ll be here for a week. He wants us to build his backstory for him, so Grady, you’re up.”
Grady Lovett was the town historian, props director, and head chef. Most clients came for a weekend and were interested in observing the town while glamping and eating gourmet versions of Wild Western meals. They hunted and fished and hiked and gazed at the stars.
Then there were the clients who wanted the complete, immersive Wild West experience. Those were the ones willing to pay big money for Burning Scrub to make their experience unique.
Pearl Lovett, the town’s costume designer and Grady’s wife, chimed in. “Add Kevlar to my budget.”
Benny, notoriously cheap, didn’t argue with her, because people had gone off script in the past. Benny blamed overenthusiasm. Jayce blamed Beau Jones.
“What do we know about the client?” Mavis asked.
“That’s Leon’s department now,” Benny said.
Leon Schmidt was Beau Jones’s New York agent. He’d arranged for Beau to spend a few months in Burning Scrub to learn how to be a cowboy last year, because Beau, a country singer who couldn’t tell a cow from a bull, needed to “improve his brand.” Leon liked what he’d seen of the town, and long story short, he was now Burning Scrub’s agent, too.
Beau’s arrival was when Jayce’s problems began. Still the worst cowboy on record, and a lousy country singer to boot, Beau had stolen Belle from under his nose. He didn’t know how it had happened, but there were less than two weeks until the wedding, and he had to fix things with her before then.
Speaking of weddings…
“Sheik Ali has RSVP’d,” Benny said. By RSVP’d he meant paid. “He’s bringing his baby sister with him, and he wants her entertained. Jayce, you’re good with children. How about you take her on?”
“Sure.”
Whatever. Jayce didn’t care, so long as he wasn’t expected to help with the wedding. Besides, he did like children. His heart curled into a tight, miserable ball. Belle would have made a fantastic mother for the next generation of Hansons who were relying on him.
Discussion of the wedding ensued. Jayce tuned it out. Beau was playing some concert in Memphis, so he’d left all the planning to Belle, Mavis, and Leon.
The meeting finally ground to an end. Jayce leaped to his feet, prepared to lay on the charm.
“May I walk you home?” he said to Belle.
“Of course.”
She dazzled him with her beautiful smile, and his heart poked its feet out of the fetal position.
Outside, the sun’s glow bathed the mountains in red as it began to prepare for the night. The sky shifted from deep blue directly above them to mixed shades of purple where it touched the horizon. Snow capped the mountain peaks even though it was June. Runoff from melting snow fed mountain streams throughout summer. Birch, ash, fir, and pine, interspersed with open grasslands for cattle grazing, and sheer rocky cliff faces where nimble-footed bighorn sheep liked to climb, dappled the mountainsides.
Jayce tucked his hands in his pockets. Belle looked so pretty in her blue calico dress and neat flowered apron. The nineteenth-century lifestyle suited her, as did her role of town doctor. She planned to stay on as Burning Scrub’s doctor, although she’d travel with Beau when he toured. She was wasting herself on that clown.
Their walk took them past the saloon, a two-storied log structure with six rooms for rent, and a second-story balcony overhanging the street. Next to the hotel was the bakery, followed by the jail, then a false-fronted mercantile. Belle’s house, where residential housing began, cornered Main and Jenkins Streets, the latter named after the town’s current founder and Belle’s great-grandfather, Benny.
Belle’s house also served as the town’s medical clinic. Longer than it was wide, with the short end facing the street, its window frames and front door were painted a blinding shade of green. Early flowers spilled out of wooden window boxes.
Jayce had walked this same route with Belle many times in the past. She’d joined Burning Scrub a few years ago, right after she finished her residency in family medicine. She hadn’t known until last year that she was related to Benny and Mavis, and to say the revelation came as a shock would be a gross understatement. She was the reason Pearl needed the Kevlar. She’d adjusted, however.
She would have adjusted with far less drama if Beau Jones hadn’t stuck his nose in town business.
They were almost at her house. This was Jayce’s last chance to convince her of the huge mistake she’d be making by marrying someone so far beneath her. If she had any doubts, no matter how slight, he’d jump in and save her.
“So. The big day. Excited?” he asked, trying to sound as if his heart wasn’t riding on this.
Belle touched his arm. “You and I,” she began in her soft, pretty voice, and he had a brief flash of hope. You and I… That showed real promise. “We would have been so boring together,” she ended. Her shoulders rose and fell, as if she couldn’t find the right words to explain. “Someday you’ll find what Beau and I have. Then, you’ll understand.”
Hope died, engulfed in a brushfire of regret. He didn’t want to find what she had with Beau. He wanted what she should have had with him. If only he’d made his move faster…
But he believed in taking things slow, and properly romancing a woman, especially a woman like Belle, who was perfect. Besides, how did he put into words that the sun and moon revolved around her? That one of her smiles was worth a million of these mountain sunsets? That he’d give up ten years of his life to spend one with her? Poetry wasn’t his strong suit.
They’d reached the foot of her steps.
He dug deep for something positive to say. “If you’re happy, then I’m happy for you. You’re sure about Beau?” Because he couldn’t help asking.
Her smile lit up the mountain and burned a hole in his chest. “I’ve never been so sure of anything.”
She kissed his cheek—he caught a faint whiff of vanilla—then she skipped up her steps and disappeared into her house. His dreams died with the firm latching of her front door.
He’d blown it. Again. The next generation of Hansons was doomed.
He’d never find another woman this perfect for him.