“Hold on.”Mavis stopped her.“First, I want to remind you that you’re only here for a few months.I know Jayce is attractive, and a whole lot more interesting than I am to a young woman your age, but his values are somewhat different than what your sisters have led you to expect from a man.He’s not interested in learning how to please a woman from anyone other than the woman he intends to please for a lifetime.So go ahead and give him a pie.Spend time with him.Be friendly.Burning Scrub is a small place and we should all get along.But if I find out you’re playing the type of games with him that might raise his expectations—and I will find out—then your adventure will end, and your brother will be called to take you home straightaway.”
Malika had never been spoken to in such a bold, direct way.She was Adeel Jiorji’s sister.No one had dared.
But this was Burning Scrub, a small Western town, and she knew enough about the West to know that here, the steely-eyed Mavis’s word was the law, and she meant what she said.She would call Adeel, he would come for Malika, and Malika did not yet have a viable plan for escape.
Escaping should be her priority.
Not offering lessons to cowboys who didn’t appreciate them.
“My brother is running from assassins, and Jayce is the honorable cowboy whose duty it is to protect me until his return,” Malika said haughtily.“I will give him this pie as an expression of my gratitude to him.Then I’ll return here immediately.”
“Excellent idea,” Mavis said.
The distance from the older woman’s house on Jenson Street to the bunkhouse at the far end of Main Street was a fifteen-minute walk at the most.Malika dawdled enroute, partly because she was mindful of the fragile pastry she carried, but mostly because she enjoyed being outdoors.She spoke to a few townspeople who were going about their everyday business, because Burning Scrub didn’t do its adventures halfway.Everything felt very real.
A stranger sat on the hitching post in front of the town bathhouse.He had not attended the wedding.Malika would have remembered.
He had sand-colored hair, and his skin was quite tanned.Dark blond eyebrows arched in a way that gave him a perpetual smile.Lean, toned in the manner of a man who worked with his hands, he appeared very pleasant and to have not a care in the world.His smile broadened as she drew near, and his unabashed, appreciative stare gave her heart pitter-pats of excitement.He rolled a peppermint stick along the rim of his lower lip, then removed it from his mouth.
He hopped from the rail, tossed the remains of his peppermint stick in the trash, and cut her off before she could pass.
“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 Malikadoing with Andy Danvers?
That guy was shady.
