Page 2 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)

“Who told you to come see me first?” She raised her brows without looking up. As I stepped closer to the chairs by her desk, I could see that the papers weren’t just papers at all; they were full-page photographs of women’s faces, their pearly-white smiles beaming off each one.

“My brother, Sinan, and the guy at the entrance to the staff parking lot. Peter. His name was Peter. I think.”

“Right. You’re Sinan’s little sister.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply before finally blinking up at me. Her eyes roamed up and down, and I regretted not bringing a more suitable shirt. “Green.”

“What?”

“You’re getting a green costume. Come with me.

” She breezed past me, and I had to jog to keep up with her long strides.

We went up to the next floor, where half the hallway was taken up by overflowing clothing rails, some labeled with names, others with sizes.

She pushed through a door into what looked like an actual costume warehouse.

The walls were lined with clothing up to the ceilings .

“You can either be in the park in regular clothes and act like any other visitor, or you’re in costume and stay in character. That means you pretend it’s the Old West. You don’t know what phones are, or words like ‘yeet’ or ‘rizz’ or whatever else is trending online at the moment.”

“Sure, okay,” I muttered and let my eyes travel over a row of corsets. I so didn’t want to spend my summer stuck in one of those.

“Stand there.”

I climbed on to a little round pedestal. Renee walked over a second later with a tape measure and started circling me to get my sizes.

“So I put on a costume, pretend it’s ye olden days and I scoop ice cream all day. That’s it?”

“You’ll get three costumes,” Renee explained while scribbling my measurements on to a tiny notepad one after another.

“You get at least one full day off every week, so that’s when your costumes get taken care of.

That means if your day off is on Wednesday, you bring your clothes to the costume department on Tuesday after your shift, make sure to tell Gina if there’s anything that needs mending, and you’ll get them back fixed and washed Thursday morning. ”

“I gather that you’re not the costume department.”

“No, I’m the park director, have been for ten years. So all of this is my vision. I know who wears what, goes where, plays which role, and it’s all cohesive.” She narrowed her eyes at the notepad in her hands. “How tall are you?”

“Five-six.”

“Wait here.”

Not that I had much of a choice… Renee dashed out the door, and I was left alone on the pedestal, staring at my reflection, surrounded by historical garments.

Not exactly how I’d pictured my summer playing out.

I’d envisioned more beaches and cocktails while I figured out my crap.

Alas, my parents had decided to freeze my credit cards, and hanging out at a theme park still beat my father’s idea of a summer well-spent interning at his office.

I didn’t even know exactly what his firm did.

Numbers on computers. I’d take breeches and cowboys over that any day.

“Try this.” Renee came back with a heap of fabrics on her shoulder and held out a harness for me, black straps and sturdy buckles.

“I need a few more drinks before I get that freaky.”

Her lips twitched up, but she schooled her features quickly to reply in a neutral tone: “It goes under the costume.”

Well, I preferred a harness to a corset, so I stepped into the leg loops and secured the clips around my waist. “What kind of ice cream parlor are we talking? Will I be dangling from the ceiling?” If so, that would be a problem. I wasn’t dangling material.

Renee opened a blue dress for me. Hadn’t she just said I was going to wear green? “Would you consider yourself pretty?”

“If we’re being technical, I think I’m more hot than pretty,” I said while lacing up the dress.

The top half was thickly lined with some sort of sturdy padding.

“You know, more trophy wife than girl next door. It’s the big eyes and big…

other things that are probably not appropriate to mention in front of my new employer.

But pretty works if you just think not-ugly. ”

“You talk,” Renee fumbled around my waist and pulled the metal harness links through two little gaps on either side of the dress, “a lot.”

“Funnily enough, you’re not the first person to tell me that, but hey, that just means I’ll make great small talk with all the customers.”

“Change of plans. You’re not selling ice cream. You’re my new Annie.”

“Hard-knock life?”

“The Pretty Annie Lou. She’s the mayor’s daughter, gets kidnapped by Ace Ryder, the lawless cowboy, during the big showdown, before she gets rescued by Kit Holliday, the sheriff.”

Those sure were a lot of words that had just left her lips. They just didn’t make sense to me. Renee must have tracked my blank stare, because she heaved a big sigh.

“We have a bunch of well-known characters that inhabit Bravetown. They have lives and stories. We sell a ton of kids’ books about them, but you can get the gist from the website.

Bravetown only works because it feels real.

It’s not just the movie set of a Western.

It’s an actual Old West town with backstory and townspeople who are beloved by our regular visitors.

During our summer season, these characters put on a show every day.

Twice on weekends. No show on Wednesdays. ”

“Like, you want me to be in a play?” Maybe I should have paid a little more attention to Sinan’s stories about the park.

He worked as a Deaf Interpreter on the accessibility team here, but he usually just gushed about how adorable the kids were that he got to work with.

I was pretty sure his fiancée was the only reason I wasn’t an aunt to at least three babies yet .

“Trust me, you don’t need any acting chops.

Annie Lou has all of two lines. I just need you to fit in the costume, because finding someone else and having a reinforced costume sewn for them takes time that I frankly don’t have.

” Her words got choppier and choppier until she pressed the last ones through gritted teeth.

I was getting the blowback from the blonde girl that had fled Renee’s office earlier. She’d said something about Annie. And Renee had been looking through headshots when I’d walked in.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Starring in some Western live action show did not sound like the relaxed summer I had planned.

“I don’t mind switching things up, but…”

“Stand up straight.”

Her tone left little room for protest, so I did as I was told.

“The hem is two inches too long, but that’s a quick fix,” she muttered and scribbled on to her notepad. “Shoe size?”

“Eight?” I wasn’t sure why it came out as a question.

“Easy enough.” She beelined for a shelf in the corner and came back with three shoe boxes. “Try these ones first.”

It was a pair of plain brown boots. Not the kind of cowboy boots you’d wear at a Taylor Swift concert, but definitely fit for the gravelly roads outside.

I slipped my feet in, and they welcomed my ankles home like a comforting leather hug.

Snug enough to offer some stability, loose enough not to leave any blisters or bruises.

“These are great. But I don’t think I’m real damsel-in-distress material.”

“You run away from the bad guy, and he whisks you on to his horse. Which is where the harness comes in. It’s not that hard.”

“Oh, yeah, I don’t do horses.” I definitely shouldn’t do horses. I’d been excused from PE my whole life. I didn’t have a gym membership; I had a physical therapist. Heck, my parents hadn’t even let me ride a bike. “Bad idea.”

“Frankly, Esra, I need a Pretty Annie Lou. I don’t even need a new ice cream girl. Sinan asked me to give you a job. This is a job. Take it or leave it.”

“Oh.” A smart person would have said something like “With all due respect, I’m physically incapable of performing a stunt like that, even if it seems easy to you” , or “Thank you but I’ll have to decline” , or even “Bestie, putting me on a horse is an insurance liability you don’t wanna deal with.

” But despite spending the last four years acing my way through college, I wasn’t smart.

I didn’t want to keep driving on these painfully bumpy roads to maybe, possibly, find someplace else to spend the summer.

And I didn’t want to intern at my father’s firm. So I only said, “I’ll take it.”