Page 67 of Born to be Wilder

“They’re with us,” Roger said, hurrying past them.

I gave each guard a tip of my Viking hat before rushing in after our three new friends. But my hurried feet slammed to a stop when we rounded the next corner.

They’d built a town.

And not just a town, but a full Western street, period perfect, with a wooden saloon, a general store, a livery, and a jail with bars on the window, the facades propped up by two-by-fours in the back. In front, men and women who looked like they’d just stepped through a portal from the 1800s moseyed around the street. The only giveaway that they weren’t authentic was the cell phones and paper to-go cups of coffee in their hands.

“Horses!” Doris squealed, pointing at the half-dozen horses tied to the hitching posts out front.

“It’s a Western!” I cheered, my heart hammering. “A real live Western! I’m going to be a gunslinger! Or a madam! Or a rugged pioneer woman! You guys… a western!” I covered my mouth to contain the whoop. “I love Westerns!”

“Welcome to Dunberry,” Anders said, turning back to smile at us.

“Okay, this is amazing!” Sylvie grinned.

Crew members moved everywhere with the organized insanity of an anthill. Lights on enormous stands. Camera equipment on a dolly track. A man with a headset in a director’s chair who was talking very fast to someone beside him.

“I’ll admit, this was worth the cancer card,” Alice whispered to me, and I looked up to catch her smiling.

Roger gestured for us to follow. “Okay, let’s go get you signed in with some NDAs and release forms. Then head into wardrobe. They’ll get you into period-accurate gear.”

The four of us all shared a look of excitement, and then we hurried after them to start this wonderful wish Bertha had pulled us to.

Chapter Fourteen

I stepped out of the wardrobe trailer, and the plastic screen door might as well have been the swinging doors of a saloon.

Three widows already in period dresses stared at me, mouths slowly gaping open.

“Ma’am.” I tipped my black Stetson hat at Alice. “Ma’am. Ma’am.” I greeted Sylvie and Doris next, and all three widows broke out into huge grins.

My cowboy boots clicked as I came down the stairs, my hip movement exaggerated with each slow stride, the spurs clinking in rhythm with my steps.

I spread my arms wide, letting them take in the full picture. “Well? Whaddya think?”

“Oh, look at you!” Sylvie burst into laughter, a nod of approval joining it. She was cinched into a high-collared navy dress with a brooch at her throat and looked like an old Western school teacher about to fail a child for poor penmanship. “Marge, you look like you’re about to rob an old Western train. I love it.”

I hooked a thumb in my gun holster, cocking a hip as I struck a pose.

“You’re not in a dress!” Doris pointed out the obvious as she waved a hand over her own pink dress. The one that suited her so perfectly, along with the little bonnet tied beneath her chin, it looked like she’d time traveled straight out of the Old West.

I shrugged. “The stylist tried to put me in a floral-print dress that made me look like a sofa, but I wasn’t having it. After ten minutes of negotiation that I’d sooner die than wear that damned dress, I bartered my way into this beaut.” I waved a hand over my duster coat and pair of worn leather chaps.

“You really look like a gunslinger!” Doris clapped. “And that walk was perfect. You’re gonna be a star!”

Alice pursed her lips. “That walk was seventy percent John Wayne and thirty percent ‘I crapped my pants and I’m looking for a restroom.’”

I tapped the replica Colts hanging from my waist. “Watch it with the mouth there, ma’am. I’ve got grit. I’ve got guns. And I don’t take kindly to back talk. I’m basically the female Clint Eastwood.”

“You’re basically the knockoff Temu Clint Eastwood is what you meant. I, on the other hand, look like I missed a career in the movie business.”

She slid a hand down the waist of her deep-burgundy dress.

She wasn’t wrong.

She looked incredible. The fitted bodice hugged her curves perfectly, and with her hair swept up elegantly, she looked less like a background extra and more like whoever the hero of this movie was supposed to be falling in love with.

“You look like the woman the whole town is whispering about,” I told her.