High Noon: A Sweet Romance (Red Canyon Series Book 3)

by Laura Westbrook

  Of course, much of the way they walked, particularly with the women, had to do with what they wore. Wearing such long skirts and dresses sure changed things. She recognized a few of them, and they nodded or curtsied. She realized she’d never tried curtsying before. It wasn’t exactly part of her training, so she wasn’t about to volunteer it. She simply had to do her job, not relish in it.

  Halfway to the office, she realized she hadn’t seen Luke yet. This wasn’t necessarily a guarantee that she would, as the park extended quite a bit beyond her path that day, but she was hoping to. She knew he’d be dressed in his normal outfit, sporting that delicious stubble gracing his cheeks. She normally liked clean-shaven men, but a girl was willing to make exceptions for the right man.

  She couldn’t shake her image of him on the back of a horse, riding along with one hand on the pommel and the other confidently holding the reins, almost like he’d been born in the saddle. She had no idea if he’d ever ridden a day in his life, but she was willing to guess he had, even if it was just a summer camp thing when he’d been younger. The park really needed to get him one of those. It’d be worth the investment.

  But no Luke. He was probably at the other part of town, so to speak, where the sheriff’s office was, maybe in the middle of a performance, wrangling up some bad guys. Or maybe he was accepting candy bar bribes. She wondered if there was a particular kind he liked better than others. It might be worth asking around, if the story was true.

  As she opened the door to the office, cool air washed over her. She’d almost forgotten how warm it was outside until she felt the contrast of air conditioning. She could certainly get used to working in the office versus outside in the sun. After a quick glance around, Vanessa was nowhere to be found. Most likely, she was deep in the costume room, but Lynn didn’t feel like fishing.

  Lynn pulled out her cell phone and tapped away on the keyboard. I’m here. Are you in the back?

  Within seconds, she received a reply text. I’m inside the warehouse, just inside the door. Can you meet me back here?

  Vanessa didn’t want to meet her up front. Now, Lynn was leaning more toward the dead body scenario. Something she didn’t want to bring anywhere close to the light of day. Suppressing her curiosity, she figured there was nothing for it than to make her way deeper into the building.

  There were less people in the office at this time of day, probably meeting with other employees in the park, doing inventory, or running errands. She didn’t even hear Samuel in his office, and at his normal volume, if he were there, she’d hear him straight away. With the noise halfway between a click and a slam, the costume warehouse door closed behind her, sealing her inside, with no Vanessa in sight.

  What was inside, though, were boxes. Boxes stacked on top of boxes, filling the entire area, save for one thin walkway. Although, with the boxes stacked three high in places, it sometimes resembled more of a hallway than a walkway. It might be even harder to find Vanessa now. Where did all the boxes come from?

  “Vanessa? Are you back here?”

  “I’m over here.” Vanessa stood up to where a pile of boxes wasn’t blocking her and stepped into the walkway. Her hair was pulled up in a bun, but with so many strands pulled out, it resembled more of a bird’s nest than anything else. The wide neck of her top hung askew over her shoulders, and she had a pen stuck over each ear.

  “What happened here?”

  Vanessa sighed. “You don’t want to know. Or you probably do, since you’re here.” She found one of the pens and realized where the other was. She pulled them both out and placed them across her clipboard nearby. “Apparently, someone accidentally shipped out five boxes of perfectly good costumes.”

  “Shipped out? What does that mean?”

  “We had one box the costume department wanted to ship back to the manufacturer. A few items were the wrong size and one or two of them were defective from a recent order. The whole box only held a few sets of costumes. It didn’t even fill up one box all the way.”

  Vanessa eased her weight onto a nearby stool. She looked so happy just to be sitting down for a moment. “So when one of the guys went to grab the box and take it to the shipping depot, he thought the one box was close enough to four other ones, and so he returned all of them.”

  “What was in them?”

  “A lot. Anything from chaps and spurs to bonnets and petticoats. It’s pretty much a disaster. Those boxes are likely somewhere over the Rocky Mountains right now.”

  “That’s awful. I wonder what happened to that guy.”

  Vanessa laughed, but it came out as a single sound and more like a rush of air. “If he still has a job, he’ll probably be picking up trash in the parking lot for a while. Or counting tickets for weeks. And he probably deserves worse.”

  Lynn glanced around. “Okay, so if you’re down costumes, what are all these?” And why am I here?

  “Someone was on the ball and drove to a sister location to borrow costumes from them. Actually, I think she drove to two or three of them, because now we have even more than before. I think some of them are borrowed, and some of them are simply pieces the other parks didn’t want anymore. I don’t know whether what we received was exactly what we lost, but we sure have a lot now.”

  “So today is sorting through everything and seeing what we’ve got?” Lynn asked.

  “Exactly. I’ve been working on this ever since I came in, which wasn’t all that long ago.”

  Lynn ran a finger along the pages on the clipboard. There had to be at least a dozen of them. “Now I can see why you sounded the way you did over the phone. Where’s the rest of the costume crew?”

  “Scheduled off today. I know. Stupid, right? One of them had today scheduled off to go to a wedding, and the other wasn’t scheduled today at all.”

  “That must have been the first person you called, then.”

  “Right. Thank you so much for coming in and helping. I’m about to lose it.”

  I can see that. “Well, I’m here to help. At least you’re not alone doing all this.”

  “And I’m grateful for that,” Vanessa said. “Do you have any preference on where to start?”

  “Um, I don’t really know anything about this, so you just lead me to water. Is your strategy to pull out everything into the open, or to do one box at a time?”

  Vanessa tucked a few strands of hair back into her bun, but more took its place. “Two or three boxes at a time. If I pulled everything out first, the place would be a mess. More than it already is, I guess. We wouldn’t have room to walk. If you could open up these boxes here and pull out all the belts you find, that would be great. Try to keep everything else in its respective box if you can.”

  “Will do.” Lynn reached for a nearby screwdriver, looking rather out of place among everything else, and jabbed it into the tape along each side. The sides sprung open from the pressure of how overstuffed the box was. That one was filled with layer after layer of dresses any Victorian woman would swoon over. The colors looked brighter than Lynn would’ve imagined, though, especially a deep turquoise color.

  She stuck her fingers along the side and dug deeper to see what else she could find. There didn’t seem to be much logic to that box at first, other than the dresses, which had more variety than a fan of paint color swatches. Finally, at the bottom, she found what she was looking for: two classic Western belts.

  “I found some.” She held them up for good measure.

  “Just two?”

  “Just two. Is that bad?”

  Vanessa sighed. “It’s fine. Just disappointing. I expected more. Hopefully there are in some of the others.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then a few cowboys might be holding up their pants with one hand and their pistol in the other.” Vanessa cracked a smile for the first time since Lynn had arrived. At least she still showed signs of sanity.

  The next box proved more productive with three belts and four in the next. It took a good twenty minutes to check
all the boxes for belts on her side of the room, and then after that, she needed to check all the boxes for the next item. The first hour melted away in a pool of repetition, and Lynn found herself stifling a yawn as she went back to the very first box to look for the next type of item.

  Lynn found her first one, a pair of black stockings, hidden about as deep as the belts had been. She held them up. “I noticed you haven’t tried to dress me in a pair of these yet.”

  “Your skirt covered your legs. There was no need for it. You didn’t accidentally show any leg during that last performance, did you?”

  Lynn clutched them to her chest in mock surprise. “What kind of woman do you take me for?”

  “I’m sure nobody noticed. I mean, if you want, I could easily include a pair for your next outfit. All in the name of historical accuracy.”

  “I’ll pass if it’s all the same to you.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Vanessa folded the next item and wrote something down on her clipboard.

  Lynn coughed. The dust in the room coated her throat. “So have you talked to that guy yet? What’s his name?”

  “Craig.” When Vanessa said his name, her voice got a little higher. “No, I haven’t. There really hasn’t been an opportunity.”

  Lynn shot her a look.

  “Okay, fine. There have been opportunities, but I chickened out each time. Happy?”

  “No, I’m not happy. I want you to go talk to the guy.”

  Vanessa shrugged. “I don’t know if it’ll even matter. He probably likes one of the whores. And by that, I mean literally, as in her face character’s back story.”

  Lynn threw a button at her. “You’re only saying that because that was my back story, or at least that’s what Jasper thought my back story was.”

  “Seriously? That’s pretty funny.”

  Lynn jabbed the screwdriver through more tape. “About as funny as me throwing another button at you.”

  “You can’t tell me you haven’t looked at a few cowboys since rubbing shoulders with them.”

  Lynn turned slowly. “Actually, I have.”

  “Oh?”

  “One of them, anyway.”

  Vanessa’s eyebrows raised. “You’re keeping me in suspense. Who?”

  Lynn didn’t know why it was so hard to admit. She felt like she was giving away launch codes or the combination to a safe. “Luke.”

  Vanessa whistled. “Wow. How long have you been keeping this from me?”

  “Not long. I haven’t been hiding it from you, exactly. It’s kind of confusing.”

  “Recent then?”

  “You could say that. Basically when I started seeing him more often.”

  “That makes sense. You probably didn’t interact with him all that much while on the set crew.”

  Lynn rubbed her nose. The dust was still getting to her. “I saw him here and there, maybe a hi or two, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t remember it. He’s worked here for years, so he’s probably talked to everyone at least once.”

  “Okay, so has it gone further than my thing with Craig? Which is basically nothing.” The last bit came out like a grumble.

  “Some. We’ve talked a few times now. He volunteered to be my walkout partner for the performance a few days ago.”

  Vanessa placed a stack of shawls on the floor next to her feet. “What’s a walkout partner?”

  “We paired up to walk out of the building and down the street, arm-in-arm. He offered to be my partner when I was supposed to be paired with someone else.”

  “Well, well. That says something, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess,” Lynn muttered. “I’m not an expert on flirting, so it’s sometimes hard to know when a guy is interested in me.”

  “Why would he cut in line just to walk and talk with you if he wasn’t?”

  “True. I don’t know. We’ll just have to see.”

  Vanessa patted Lynn’s shoulder as she walked by to grab another blank sheet of paper. “You’ve been encouraging me to talk to Craig for a while, so now it’s time for you to follow your own advice. This is your homework. Don’t get a failing grade.”

  Lynn groaned. “Don’t make it sound like school. I was so glad when it was over. I don’t want to go back.”

  “Then just do it, silly. Get it over with.”

  “I’ll give it a try next time I see him.” Deep down, she knew she had more courage than that. She never backed down from a challenge, even when they involved things like building cabinets, riding quads, and rock climbing. But they usually didn’t involve men. That was a different situation altogether.

  “You do that. I’m rooting for you. He’ll fall heads over heels in love with you at the exact same time Craig does for me. That’s how it’ll happen.”

  Lynn rolled her eyes. “Sure, Vanessa. That’s how it’ll happen all right.”

  Carrying a newly-created pile by a full-length mirror, Lynn stopped in front of it. Slowly, she placed the pile on the ground. After a quick glance to see if Vanessa was looking, she turned to her side and placed her hand on her hip. She imagined how she might look wearing a full dress with a corset, like how Rayleigh had been dressed at the performance.

  In her thoughts, Luke noticed the change right away and gave her extra attention. He couldn’t resist the way she looked in it. She’d always had nice curves, she’d been told, but she rarely dressed in anything that showed them off. Maybe for him, she might. She knew for a fact she’d look better in that same dress than Rayleigh did. If she wanted to.

  “How many did you find?”

  Vanessa’s voice startled her so badly that Lynn would’ve dropped the stack if they were still in her hands. “Seven,” Lynn said.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Lynn shook her head and walked away from the mirror, scolding herself. Of course she didn’t want to wear one of those fancy dresses. She shouldn’t let her imagination run wild like that.

  Chapter Seven

  Street duty. The last thing Lynn wanted to do and the last thing she saw herself doing when she’d first taken this job. That kind of stuff should’ve been left to the experts, yet there she was, in her floor-length skirt and floral print, long-sleeved top, and that time, they’d even given her a bonnet to wear.

  The bonnet was the icing on the cake, the last straw, and the pièce de résistance. All at once, she felt ridiculous. And while nobody stared at her any more than anyone else, she felt like the entire spotlight was on her head.

  She felt relieved she hadn’t told anyone about her recent role change, otherwise countless friends and family would show up armed with their phones to take pictures. She’d never live it down. Everyone would be asking her to feed the chickens or milk the cows or something.

  She glanced at her wrist before remembering her watch wasn’t there. Old habits were hard to break. In a few more steps, she’d turn the corner that would reveal the clock tower at the reproduction City Hall building. Other than stopping and asking a customer, which was strictly forbidden, that would be the only way she could tell the time. Men received pocket watches as part of their costumes, but apparently, women hadn’t needed to know the time back then.

  Four more hours. Only four more hours of wandering around, trying to avoid people. So far, she’d been successful. Not a single customer had approached her, which meant she didn’t have to weasel her way through her spotty knowledge of life in the nineteenth century. When she’d found out that she’d be on street duty that day, she’d picked up the brochure Carol had given her—only the second time she’d opened it.

  It was a decent enough read, mostly information about the current state of technology, medicine, and social dynamics, but she didn’t feel that it would be helpful when actually in the moment, talking to a customer. She was terrified of accidentally making a modern reference. Really, it would just be better if they didn’t allow her to talk.

  A family of five appeared, and a little girl broke off and walked up to her. Lynn had no ide
a what her age was, but she came up to about hip level.

  “I like your dress,” the girl said.

  “Thanks.” Lynn clasped her hands together in front of her. “Thank you.” That sounded better. Did they even shorten it to thanks back then? “I usually only wear it for special occasions.”

  “What’s the special occasion?”

  Crap. That was a good question. She sifted through her memories of the backstory Carol had told her. There had to be something in there. Finally, she had it.

  “I’ve come to town to pick up supplies from the general store. Then I’ll head back to my home on the ranch.” Not too bad. Good so far.

  “I have a dress that color. My mom got it for me. I wore it when we went to the city where someone got married.”

  “That’s very nice.” Lynn wasn’t sure if she should bend down or squat to be more on her level. She liked kids fine, but she never quite knew how to talk to them.

  “What are you going to buy at the store?”

  “Uh, probably some seeds and some barrels of creamed potatoes. Also horseshoes and cans of beef jerky.” She had no idea if all those things existed back then, but the parents weren’t listening closely, and the girl nodded as if she understood perfectly.

  “I like beef jerky. Teriyaki is my favorite flavor.”

  “I’ve never heard of that flavor before, but we make beef jerky on the ranch. We normally have a…” Lynn thought so hard she almost gave herself a headache. “…a smoker. We have a smoker out back, but it broke about a month ago.”

  “Okay, bye,” the girl said abruptly and walked back to her parents. In case anyone was watching, Lynn attempted a curtsy. She got as far as pinching either end of her dress and bending her knees, but halfway, she almost lost her balance and fell over. She’d have to settle for half.

  Lynn still considered herself rather lucky. Talking to the little girl was endearing, not to mention a nice way to work up to conversing with adults, but it wasn’t like she would call Lynn out on any of her mistakes. Lynn only made it another fifteen minutes or so before having another interaction. She was considering stepping into one of the alleys behind the buildings for a short break before a couple walked up to her.