by Cara Adams
“That’s clever. I agree.” Roland nodded.
Chris stood thoughtfully for a while, and then he nodded as well. “You speak with wisdom, Summer.”
As they turned to begin the walk back to the settlement. Roland said, “We need to talk about swearing allegiance to Wolfric. Since we plan to stay here, we should join his pack.”
“We’ll have to tell our own Alpha at the same time. I hope his feelings won’t be hurt, but we know we aren’t going back to Idaho.”
Roland patted Chris’s shoulder. “That’s the clincher. We’ll tell him we’ve decided to settle here, and that should take any pain out of our announcement that we’re moving to this pack.”
“Why did you leave Idaho? If that’s a rude question, you don’t have to tell me,” said Summer.
“There were eleven men in our pack with no hope of finding a mate. The Alpha isn’t prepared to do anything to help us find one. He doesn’t approve of inter-species matings or ménages. I don’t think he truly understands the agony of knowing none of us will ever marry,” said Chris.
“He’s old and in the early stages of dementia. That might be why he can’t reason well and see the problem clearly,” added Roland.
“One of the problems of dementia is the inability to accept change or deal with it. So eight of the eleven men left? What about the other three?” asked Summer.
“As far as we know, they’ve chosen to stay and remain single,” said Roland.
“Besides, there’s no guarantee the eight of us will find mates, but we’re going to give it our best attempt. Right after we have a proper home set up to bring the women to and an income stream to feed and care for them established,” added Chris.
“It’s a huge task, but you’re doing pretty well so far,” said Summer.
Roland smiled. They were doing ten times better since she’d appeared. He sure as hell hoped she liked him and Chris as much as Roland liked her. Because he was fast coming to hope and believe that she was their woman. The one who would make Chris and him into a real family. Then the next step would be to find three more mates for the rest of the men. But if they’d found one, at least they were on the right track.
* * * *
Chris really wanted to touch Summer, to hold her hand maybe, but they’d only met today, so he told himself to wait. He had so much to do when they returned to the settlement that it wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought it would be. They arranged to meet twenty minutes before dawn at her truck, and then he and Roland hurried around loading water onto the truck, even though likely she was carrying some.
“I’ll talk to Bryan about collecting food for us tomorrow while you organize the spreadsheet and any other paperwork we might need,” said Roland.
Hmm. His laptop battery wouldn’t last all day, even if he switched it off from time to time, so it’d be better to make the records as hardcopy and enter the data later. By the time Chris had found a large sheet of paper, ruled up all the columns, and added in all the headings, it was past time he should have been in bed. Tired but pleased, he rolled up the sheet, stuck it in his backpack with a notepad and a packet of colored Sharpies, and crashed.
His alarm woke him out of a deep sleep. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten up in the morning to the sound of an alarm, but he guessed he’d be doing it for a week at least. Or maybe others would take a shift as Summer had suggested. He’d see how it went. Maybe no traffic would pass at all, in which case any hope of setting up a store would be dead. But they had seen dust clouds from time to time, so someone must travel the track at least occasionally.
He threw on his clothing and grabbed a sweater in case it turned cold. It was almost August, and the days were very hot, but sometimes the evenings were cool. He should talk to Summer about the weather. Learning all about it was an important part of understanding the desert.
Roland was in the kitchen collecting several bags of food that presumably Bryan had prepared for them. He held the door open for his best friend, and they walked outside. Summer was approaching her truck from her accommodation. They’d put their guests in the most recently finished house. The first two men to make a ménage would live in that house. Right now he hoped like hell it’d be him and Roland. They each had a room in the communal house, but it’d be much more sensible for Bryan and James to live there instead since Bryan spent so much time there cooking and working in the vegetable and herb gardens.
Fortunately none of the men were territorial or demanding about their new homes. Everyone had worked together on all the projects really well. But he did need to reallocate them more logically as each couple found a woman. That was a task for the future. Today would be a day of discovery about the viability of them building a gas station and store.
Not to mention a day of discovery about Summer. Hell, he hoped he’d get to touch her, kiss her maybe, at some stage in the day.
When they arrived at the lookout hill, Summer parked her truck parallel to the track, with the tailgate facing the hill. Chris and Roland jumped out to help her unpack the tent and her equipment out of the truck bed, but she shook her head. “I’ll set up my tent. It’s not hard. You need to be high enough up to the dune to watch for traffic. That’s what we’re here for, remember?”
Chris shook his head. That didn’t seem right. He held out his backpack to her. “Why don’t you stand watch then, and we’ll set the tent up for you.”
“It’s my tent. I’ve put it up dozens of times.”
“But we want to help,” Chris explained.
Summer laughed. “All right. I get that. One of you can stay, but the other needs to be up that hill. It’ll be light in five minutes or less.”
Chris was impressed that she could tell how close dawn was. He waved a hand at Roland, and his friend grabbed the backpack and started up the hill. But he called back over his shoulder, “This seems really strange to me.”
“Yeah, it seems strange to me, too.”
But she was correct. It was her tent, and he had to concede she knew how to put it up. She picked the place where she wanted it, not far from her truck, and had it up faster than he would have expected. She did let him carry some food and water up the hill though since her arms was full of a large rolled-up piece of fabric. He had no idea what it could be but guessed he’d find out soon enough.
He stood back as she measured the top of the hill with her gaze and then spread the fabric out. She pulled a folded-up shovel out of her backpack and filled some fabric bags with the sandy dirt, which she used to weigh down three sides of the shelter. Because that’s what it was. A shelter from the sun. It was low to the ground. A person could only lie down inside it, but the fabric appeared quite sturdy and it’d be better than sitting out in the sunshine all day.
“It’s UV rated and impregnated with insect repellant, so it serves a double purpose,” said Summer.
“Here comes a vehicle,” called Roland.
Instantly Summer crawled into the shelter, dragging her backpack behind her. Chris crawled in after her, leaving Roland sitting alone on the dune. Chris lay on his stomach beside her and watched as a blue truck raced past. They were much too far away to see if people in the car looked their way. But that meant that he doubted anyone would notice him and Summer inside the shelter. Its beige-tan cloth blended into the hill.
“If we all stay in here, I don’t think anyone will notice us at all. But lying down all day might be tiring.”
“Only one person needs to be on watch. The others can rest down in the tent or walk around or work. I bought some work to do, and I expect you both have chores you could do as well,” she said.
He did want to have a long conversation with Wolfric, but first he needed some data.
Once the dust cloud cleared, they set up camp properly, diving into the shelter whenever they saw an approaching vehicle, which was more often than he expected. Traffic wasn’t precisely brisk, but he estimated one vehicle passed along one or another of the tracks every ten to fifteen minute
s. Even allowing for the fact that there were three different tracks crossing here, that was still looking positive for their store. Already he was considering the store and gas station as definite.
They spent time lying in the shelter talking, and then they took turns at one of them remaining on watch while the other two moved down to the tent to walk around, stretch their legs, and do some work.
Late in the afternoon, Chris bent over his own phone, making notes of chores he needed to do while he surreptitiously watched Summer hunched over some sketches and muttering to herself. He guessed she preferred working directly on her computer, but of course with no electricity out here, the battery would have died long ago. He added Internet to the list of things the store needed. Free Wi-Fi might even be an inducement for people to stop, along with bathrooms, hot coffee, and ice-cold soda and beer.
When she seemed to have finished what she was doing, he smiled at her and said, “I’m starving. Let’s take the food up to Roland and have supper.”
She jumped to her feet. “Good plan. It’s time we swapped over again. He’s been left there quite long enough, and I’m hungry as well.”
Chris picked up the remaining bag of food and a large container of water and walked up the dune. Actually he was getting damn tired of going up and down the fucking hill. This must be about the ten millionth time he’d made the climb today. Not that it was particularly high, just that he wasn’t looking forward to doing this for an entire week. Although maybe now that the day was almost over, he and Roland could think of a reason to touch Summer or kiss her. The problem was, they’d been together all day so far and he hadn’t thought of a genuine reason to do it yet. Of course, a lot of the time they hadn’t been together as a threesome, and he could never touch her for the first time if Roland wasn’t there as well, but still. It was time for him to show leadership and ask her for a kiss. At the very least.
When he reached the top, he discovered Roland had been busy. Summer’s fold-up shovel was lying on the sand, and Roland had dug out a flat section of dirt maybe two and a half feet down from the top of the hill. Roland had made a sort of ledge area where he could sit and watch the crossroads with only his head exposed above the height of the hill. It wasn’t ideal, of course, because he was side-on to the roads, but it was another option to lying in the shelter or having to hide in it as soon as they saw a dust cloud.
“Hey, good work, Roland. That’s a smart idea.”
“I need to dig out a bit more so the watcher can sit straighter, but I didn’t want to cause a landslide. That’d definitely be a nuisance.”
Summer laughed. “All the comforts of home, huh?”
“Not quite but I’m working on it.”
Just then they saw another vehicle in the distance, and he and Summer dropped down below the tip of the hill while Roland hunched lower on his ledge and marked the truck on the spreadsheet.
“Aha. That’s the third one of them.”
“The third one of what?” Chris had no idea what Roland was talking about.
“Trucks that went one way this morning and are now returning. In other words, it’s someone local on his daily commute, and now he’s on his way home from work.”
“Oh good. Those are the people who’ll become your friends. Stone said the locals always stop at his family’s gas station to share the news and pick up coffee for their journey and so on,” said Summer.
Chris smiled at her. “Bryan’s thick soups are really good. Perhaps we can make them as well known as the Junctionville coffee and people will buy extra for their supper or to take to work for their lunch. That all sounds really positive.
He took the rug the watcher had been sitting on, spread it out on the sand on top of the dune, and opened the food sack. They cleaned their hands with a small amount of their water and then ate. Bryan had given them plenty of food, although personally Chris preferred not knowing what the meat was. Eating snakes and rabbits was fine. Some of the other critters he wasn’t so sure about and had decided it was easier not to know. Bryan’s cooking always tasted great, and that was all that really mattered.
“I wonder if Stone would take us out hunting one morning. We’ve seen deer a few times, and they’re not protected here, are they?” he asked Summer.
“No, they’re not, and neither are the bighorn sheep, but most desert dwellers only catch the bighorns if they really need to. Stone and Reuben have probably already told you to watch for vultures. Every now and then a large animal will break a leg or be injured in some way, and most families check on the animal either to euthanize it so it doesn’t suffer or to use it for meat.”
“I wouldn’t have thought animals born and bred here got hurt very often,” said Roland.
“It doesn’t happen every day, or even every week, but a deer or a sheep will feed a family for several months, so it doesn’t need to happen often. And we all think it’s much better for us to eat them than to leave them to die of thirst and then be vulture food. There are plenty of tiny desert dwellers for vultures to eat.”
They talked and relaxed together for an hour as the sun gradually set. Several cars came through the crossroads traveling fast just before dark. Families keen to get home, Chris assumed. No one made a move to leave, and it was very pleasant now that the sun had lost the burning heat of the middle of the day and the light was fading.
Chris flicked a glance to Roland, who was sitting on the other side of Summer, and Roland gave him a tiny nod.
“Summer, were there any men at the pack gathering who asked you to date them?” he asked. Chris was very aware that it was an intrusive question, but he really couldn’t touch her until he knew she was free to accept his touch.
She giggled. “I danced with a hell of a lot of different men at the ball, but no, there wasn’t anyone special. Are you planning to start interviewing women for your men with me?”
“Actually, I was hoping to interview you for us,” said Chris. He had to swallow hard. At least she was smiling, not frowning at them.
She gave a broad grin and said, “Summer Grussell, age thirty, self-employed, born at Wetherby and lives there with her family. One brother, Kevin, who you know. Now why don’t you tell me all about yourselves?”
Chapter Three
Summer hid her grin at the surprised looks on Chris’s and Roland’s faces. But fair was fair. They’d spent an entire day together and made it quite clear they liked her company. She liked them as well, but talking on and off for a day didn’t give her enough information to jump into bed with them. She liked them both. They were very good looking and friendly, and she admired their determination to make a new life for themselves.
However, she needed to remember that their first plan to earn a living hadn’t exactly been smart. Well, that wasn’t quite fair. It’d been overly ambitious perhaps. Still, now they’d enlisted Wolfric’s help and seemed on track to be more successful.
So, two delicious men were interested in her, but was she interested in them? She was more attracted to them than she’d been to anyone at the gathering. There’d been several delicious specimens there as well. Every one of the Wishram men was tall, dark, and droolworthy. A couple of the other men there had been really sweet and caring. She’d truly enjoyed talking to them and dancing with them, but none of them had lit her fire. Whereas, it was more than likely Roland and Chris would do that. She’d been aware of tingling breasts the entire time they’d been together eating on the rug, and the thought of kissing them was up front in her mind now and seemed to be eminently reasonable.
Maybe they weren’t for her, but she was very open to checking them out some more. Besides, if she didn’t let them kiss her, she’d never know if they were right for her.
She turned her gaze to Chris, the group’s leader, even though no one had called him that. But he had all the signs of a Dom in the way he led and cared for his small group.
He smiled at her in a manner that made her heart beat faster and copied her style of self-introduction. “Christo
pher Blake, age thirty-five. No parents or siblings. I worked in insurance, but I much prefer being outdoors and working with my hands. I’m confident I can make a new life here in Nevada.”
She nodded and turned to look at Roland. “My biography is much the same as Chris’s. We’re the same age and attended the same schools. I’m Roland Ellis and have two much older brothers. I was an unplanned afterthought to the family. It was easier for me to leave the pack than many others because my brothers left to find mates when I was still a child. As soon as they retired, my parents went to live near them and spend time with their grandsons. I have four nephews, no nieces. As to work, I’ve had a dozen different jobs and haven’t really been happy in any of them. That’s one of the things I appreciate about being here. I can do different work every day of the week. I really like the idea of construction today, hunting tomorrow, gardening the next day, and so on.”
“It’s a genuine advantage of the weather here. No one is snowed in for days, weeks, even months on end, forced to shovel just to open the door,” she said happily. Summer couldn’t imagine such extreme cold. She’d never experienced such a thing and didn’t plan to do so.
“Does it ever snow here? We came in winter, but the weather was mild. Some nights were very cold, but the days weren’t.” Chris was gazing at her with his huge hazel eyes. Her belly clenched with desire. Damn, he was attractive. She could drown in those eyes.
“Not here it doesn’t, but that’s because the mountains protect us from rain and snow. But farther north it does very occasionally. There are some places in the Mojave Desert where it gets both very hot and very cold. I don’t think I’d like those kinds of extremes.”