Amanda's Wolves

by Becca Jameson

  “Yeah. I figured we would need the space when three grown adults who barely know each other moved in while still trying to find themselves.” His voice was calm and steady as he stated the facts, including the revelation that he had indeed taken Logan and their unknown third into consideration when he’d drawn up the blueprints.

  Logan dropped the top page back into place and turned to lean his ass against the table. He wanted to apologize for his rash behavior. But no matter how he looked at it, it still wasn’t particularly polite of Sawyer to get so far ahead of the game, leaving out Logan’s opinion on anything when the man knew good and well there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d be sharing the home with Logan for the rest of their lives.

  They were grown men. Logan knew they were born the same year and were both twenty-eight years old. Too old for this shit.

  Logan’s head was spinning. He couldn’t think what else to say, so instead he righted himself and walked away. Without looking back, he climbed into his truck through the open door, shut it with far less force than he wanted to, and drove away.

  His hands shook as he gripped the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  It was done now. There was no denying the obvious and no going back.

  The only remaining question was who was the woman? And where the hell was she?

  »»•««

  Roger Barkley tapped his pencil on his desk, listening impatiently to the man who stood before him, his hat in his hands.

  Mike droned on. “I think you need to consider wrapping this up. I have a bad feeling about it.”

  “A bad feeling.” Roger leaned back in his chair and glared at his consultant. “That’s ridiculous. No one ever comes up here. It’s a mile from the main road and a pain in the ass. They won’t bother. Let’s give it another few weeks.”

  Mike pursed his lips and nodded before continuing. “I’m telling you the natives are growing restless.”

  Roger chuckled at his man’s play on words. “How so?”

  “I was having a beer in Sojourn last night, and I overheard two men talking about this operation.”

  “What’d they say?” Roger sat up, but remained outwardly calm.

  “They’re pissed. Said they’ve heard your machinery up here and grumbled about how much longer you would be. Apparently you’re chasing the wildlife down onto their properties with your noise. They said they’d been told you would be out of here by now.”

  “So?”

  “So, what if they complain to the wrong person? It’s only a matter of time before the local safety manager shows up. I can only do so much to protect you.”

  “Not gonna happen. Trust me. We’re fine. I want to clear the land down to the creek bed, and then we’ll back out.”

  “That’s a lot of land, Roger.”

  Roger rolled his eyes. “I’m well aware how much it is. The sooner we clear, the quicker we move on. None of the hired men are complaining.”

  “Of course not. Why would they? Every day extra they work is one more day they get paid. They’ll never utter a word about whether or not you’re clearing more land than you’ve been allotted. And their asses won’t be on the line if you get caught. You’re getting greedy, Roger.”

  Roger leaned forward and pointed a finger at Mike. “And I’m paying you a hefty sum to ensure we continue to reap the reward.”

  Mike set his palms on the desk and leaned in to get closer to Roger’s face. “And my job is to tell you when enough is enough. It’s one thing to cut corners and skim more trees than the government has permitted, but if you push too far for too long, you’ll find yourself enjoying that hard-earned money from behind bars.”

  Roger chuckled sardonically. “If I do, I’ll be sharing that cell with you.”

  Mike scowled and shoved off the desk. “Have you seen anything suspicious?”

  “No. And your paranoia is getting annoying.” He glanced back down at the papers on his desk. “See you tomorrow, Mike.”

  Mike hesitated a moment, but Roger intentionally didn’t lift his gaze again. Instead he feigned interest in a particular piece of paper until Mike left the trailer, the door shutting a bit too loudly.

  Roger blew out a long breath and leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t concerned in the least about the damn safety manager. He could always claim innocence if he needed and state he thought the space he was allotted had been larger.

  What he was worried about was something else entirely. His gut told him shit was about to hit the fan, and he had every intention of stopping it before it began.

  Chapter Four

  “Amanda Williams?” The kind woman with fiery red curls that framed her face smiled as she leaned out of the office directly across from the stiff institutional beige couch Amanda perched on. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Dr. Burnhart. Come on in.”

  Amanda stood, smoothed her professional-looking navy skirt, and followed the woman into her office. She had high hopes about this interview at Cambridge Junior College.

  “Please, take a seat.” She indicated a chair opposite her desk with an open palm.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Burnhart.”

  “Oh, gosh. Thank you. And please, call me Lucy. I’ve never felt comfortable with the formality.” She smiled. “I’ve looked over your resume, and I have to say I’m impressed. What are the chances you would move to the area with exactly the credentials we’re looking for to fill this position?”

  Amanda flushed. Thank God. She’d sent her resume out to several local area businesses, but no one seemed to need a recently graduated anthropologist. This particular woman was the first person to be remotely interested. And it appeared she was more than interested.

  Amanda was living in her sister’s apartment, and had been for four weeks. Living with Mary was perfectly fine, but she was more than ready to find a job, get her feet under her, and move out.

  “I’m afraid I’m not certain what sort of position you need filled,” Amanda said. “The posting was rather vague.”

  Lucy chuckled. “Yeah. I did that on purpose. I was afraid if I gave too many details, I wouldn’t get anyone to apply.”

  “Oh.” Amanda’s eyes widened. What sort of job was this that no one wanted to do?

  Lucy waved a hand through the air in dismissal. “No worries. It’s not a big deal. It’s a perception the locals would have, or former students.” She glanced down at Amanda’s resume. “You just moved here from Oklahoma, right?”

  “Yes. I finished my degree at the end of the summer.”

  “And you did several internships in the last few years, including research for the university you attended?”

  “Yes.”

  Lucy let go of the paper and leaned forward, resting her forearms on the desk. “I just got notification that I’ll be receiving a government grant to explore an issue that’s concerning in this area of the state, specifically the effect of the unequal distribution of Caucasians and Native Americans in our local communities. After decades of separation and unrest, there has been little change.

  “The city of Cambridge is over ninety-five percent Caucasian. The city of Sojourn to the south of here is on the reservation and nearly ninety-five percent Native American. That’s not unusual, but the inequity of the level of education received in the two towns is alarming.

  “The high school dropout rate among students in Sojourn is significantly higher than their counterpart in Cambridge. And more alarming is the number of students who attend any sort of post-secondary education. This junior college is the only one in the area where students could continue their education as commuters, and I hate to say it, but less than five percent of our student body is Native.”

  Amanda flinched. “That’s low.”

  “Yes.” Lucy nodded. “My job is to fix that. And my grant is to hire someone to do the research and help bridge the gap between the communities. The goal is to eliminate some of the old mores so students starting at a young age don’t grow up with the curren
t racial stereotypes that are keeping a sort of self-imposed segregation alive well past their secondary education and holding back Native American’s from attending college.”

  “That sounds challenging.” And very interesting. She smiled at Lucy. “I’d be delighted to join your team.”

  Lucy smiled. “Perfect. It’s going to take me a few more days to go through the formalities and get the grant in place. But I’ll be in touch at the first of next week.”

  Amanda stood and held out her hand. “Thank you so much. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.”

  As she left the office and shut the door behind her, she found someone else sitting in the waiting room. For a second she was surprised, thinking the young man was also there for an interview, but then she realized that wasn’t likely. He wasn’t dressed for an interview—unless jeans and a T-shirt could be considered proper interview attire—and his brow was furrowed. He followed Amanda across the room with his gaze. She swore she could still feel his eyes boring into her from behind as she stepped into the stairwell, and it gave her a chill.

  She needed to get ahold of herself. Freaking out over some kid who was probably barely twenty in a waiting room was irrational.

  »»•««

  Two hours later, Amanda raced across the room and lunged over her bed to grab her ringing cell phone. She’d only been in Cambridge a month. She knew almost nobody and had given her number out to only a handful of people. “Hello?” she answered without bothering to look at the caller ID. She rolled onto her back and relaxed into the mattress.

  “Amanda?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Laurie Hamilton. I’m a friend of your sister, Mary.”

  “Oh, right. She told me you might be calling. She said you needed a baby sitter.”

  “Yeah. Sorry for the late notice. I’m kind of desperate. I’m sure this isn’t what you had in mind for a Friday night, but are you free?”

  Amanda chuckled. “I’m free for the next two hundred years it seems.”

  Laurie giggled too. “That’s… I’m sorry about that…”

  “Yeah, it’s sad. But when you’re new in town and your sister is a hermit, what can you do?”

  It seemed Mary hardly did anything except work and come home. She had only a few close friends; Laurie, who lived on the edge of the Native American reservation halfway between Cambridge and Sojourn and Jazmine, who lived forty minutes away in Sojourn.

  “Well, hopefully you’ll meet some new people when you get a job. Mary said you had a few interviews.”

  “I did. I’m hopeful about one with the junior college. There isn’t an enormous need for anthropologists in the area, especially ones who just finished their bachelor’s and have very little experience.”

  “So, I guess you don’t mind two babies and a toddler for the evening?”

  “Not at all. What time do you want me?”

  “Seven. My house. Mary can give you directions. Hopefully we won’t be too late. Miriam should sleep. She’s only a month old. In fact I’ve never left her this long yet. But I so badly need a night with adults.”

  “I understand. It’s someone’s birthday, right?”

  “Yeah, Miles and Melinda. They’re twins. The other two kids are Miles’s in fact. They’re quite small also. McKenna is fifteen months, and Adam is five months. Altogether, that’s a handful. Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at seven.”

  “Thanks. You’re a life saver.”

  Amanda ended the call as she heard the front door open. Mary was home.

  “Amanda?” she called from the entry.

  Amanda stared at the ceiling for a few more seconds. She was tired. She could easily have taken a nap before babysitting if Mary hadn’t arrived. She hadn’t slept well since she arrived in Cambridge. She didn’t know if it was caused by laziness and boredom or something else, but she was exhausted. And every time she did fall asleep, she had the most peculiar dreams.

  The dreams weren’t disturbing or anything. They certainly didn’t cause her to jerk awake in fear. They were always the same—two men, huge sexy men who made her panties wet and her nipples hard every time they smiled at her in her sleep. Nope. Fear hadn’t woken her up even once. What yanked her awake in the middle of the night was the throbbing in her clit and the fact that her hand had wandered into her panties as she watched the men work outside, building something. Hot. Sweaty. Irrationally large. She’d managed to orgasm several times to their image.

  Sleeping was something she’d begun to relish. But it never left her rested.

  “Amanda, are you home?” Mary called again.

  Amanda shook the recurring image from her head, hauled herself off the bed, and headed down the short hall to the living room. “Hey. Laurie called about babysitting tonight. I’m supposed to be there at seven.”

  “Oh, right. Thanks for doing that for her. I know you’re not a teenager. I just thought it would give you something to do, and Laurie was desperate. Her sitter canceled with the flu this morning.”

  “No problem.” Amanda flopped onto the couch and watched as her sister set her computer bag on the dining table in the adjoining kitchen space. “That family is huge. Aren’t there like ten siblings or something? She listed so many people, I couldn’t even follow.”

  “Far more than ten. Well, I mean they aren’t all siblings. But they’re all related by blood or marriage…or whatever. It’s complicated.”

  “What’s complicated?”

  Mary wandered back into the living room and dropped into a chair. “I’m not entirely sure whose kids are whose. They lead an unconventional lifestyle. But I can tell you every one of them I’ve met was very nice, including one set of their parents, Carlie and Adam Masters. They own the ski resort.”

  “Oh, right. The Masters. I’ve heard that name tossed around a bit in town. Is Laurie one of their kids, then?”

  “No.” Mary shook her head. “But Zachary is. He’s the baby’s father…I think.”

  Amanda stared at her sister for several seconds before she started laughing. “You think?” She leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees. “Let me get this straight. You don’t know for sure who the kid’s dad is? Are you telling me Laurie doesn’t know either? Is it some sort of commune?”

  Mary scrunched up her face. “Not exactly.”

  “Oh. This is rich. My sister has officially lost her mind.”

  Mary groaned and rolled her head against the back of the chair.

  “First you leave your church without telling Mom and Dad, or me for that matter, and then one of your only friends lives in a commune. And I haven’t even mentioned your other friend, Jazmine, whom I’m convinced is a lesbian. Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?” Amanda giggled so hard her eyes watered.

  The last month had been the weirdest experience of Amanda’s twenty-five years. She had moved to Cambridge, Montana, expecting to find herself just as stifled as she had been at home in Oklahoma. Quite the opposite had proven true.

  “You’re exaggerating,” Mary hedged.

  “How? Explain to me what I’ve misunderstood. You haven’t told me what happened with your church, by the way. Or did you ever even belong to it? Was it all a giant fib to keep Mom and Dad happy?” She hadn’t thought of that. The idea was so juicy, she wiggled her eyebrows, hoping for confirmation.

  Mary rolled her eyes. “No. Of course not. I went there for six months. And then I realized I had very different views from most of them.”

  “You just now realized that? You’re almost twenty-nine years old. You’re just figuring out the entire thing is a hoax?” Amanda really was shocked. She never would have expected her sister to break away from tradition.

  “It’s not entirely a hoax. It’s just that particular denomination is a little whacked.”

  “Whacked? They spew damnation and fire and shit, Mary. That’s insane. Not whacked.”

  “You don’t have to s
tart cussing just because you moved out of Mom and Dad’s house.”

  Amanda groaned. “God. Not this. Which is it going to be? Are you going to lighten up and join the more progressive members of society to reflect all your new hip friends, or are you going to frown at me all the time with pursed lips until you have early lines across your forehead like Mom does?”

  “Neither. Can’t I be down the middle somewhere?”

  “Sure…” Amanda didn’t want to be a bitch about it. She could tell by the look on Mary’s face that her sister was trying to evolve and figure things out. Teasing her and harassing her wasn’t going to help. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be a nag. Now tell me what happened with the church.”

  “They got a little carried away.” Mary shrugged nonchalantly as though it were no big deal. “When Laurie moved to town, many of them got all up in arms about her being mixed—”

  “Mixed what? You sound like you’re a hundred.”

  “Half Native American and half Caucasian.”

  “So?” What the hell was Mary insinuating?

  “So the members of the Church on the Hill are a bit backward. They didn’t want Laurie working in this area, and they didn’t approve of her lifestyle.”

  “The commune thing?”

  Mary audibly sighed. “It’s not a commune.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I try not to pry in their business, but it seems like they live in groups of three.”

  “Three.” Amanda waited for Mary to continue, confused. Three?

  “You mean like two women for every man? Polygamy?”

  “No. More like two men for every woman.”

  Amanda’s jaw dropped open, and she widened her eyes. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, it’s their business, and I don’t let it affect my friendship with Laurie. We met under tough circumstances when both the white community and the Native American community to the south were ostracizing her. It made me question things. They’re good people. I try not to be judgmental.”