CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA UNDERBOSS

by Candace Ayers

  “I’d be a returning student, so I can pick them out in a couple weeks.”

  To this, Elie’s mother didn’t respond. It wasn’t accidental. A deaf man could have heard the falter in Elie’s suddenly-thin voice. But, her mother didn’t push.

  “When’s Dad coming home?” Elie changed the subject without grace and without excuse, as she walked the duffel bag up the stairs in the back of the kitchen, but her mother let it happen.

  “He’s taking Friday off so we can go out together, so he thought he’d stay a little later today. He’s loving the foreman work. It was getting tough, the last few years, working the trucks. This is much easier on his knee.”

  Elie glanced up at the wall over the kitchen table. There hung a pictured history of the Barner family, including a military portrait of her father. It was taken when he retired from the Air Force. His knee had been smashed—a stupid industrial accident in the carrier—and he’d been honorably discharged. The Force would send him a monthly check until the day he died, but Brent Barner wasn’t fond of early retirement and had leapt into the logging mill, which welcomed him as a fellow Hemford-ite and mountain son.

  Logging. That’s what everyone in Hemford did. Even Elie had considered it, before she ran away to France with her high school girlfriends.

  Her mother came back down the stairs. “I made up the bed in your old room. Well… it’s a guest room, now, but I hope it’ll still feel like home.”

  Elie smiled. It already felt like home.

  Jasper wagged his tail loudly against the doorframe and sat practically on her feet, gazing up at her admiringly.

  The silence spun outward like a wild spool of thread, and Elie twisted her lips.

  “How long were you thinking of staying?” Alison asked finally.

  The air became oppressive. Such an innocent, justified question, but it shot a jolt of adrenaline through Elie.

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged. Why did she sound so defensive?

  “You can stay as long as you like,” Alison replied putting her hands on her hips. “We aren’t going to make you sign a lease.”

  “I know that,” Elie snapped irritably. Why did she still sound so defensive?!

  Alison didn’t reply. She walked across the kitchen to the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of lemonade.

  “Out comes the lemonade,” Elie muttered.

  “Elinor Barner,” Alison’s voice was a warning and command in one, “It was a simple question.”

  It was a simple question, one that Elie had no idea how to answer. Twenty-eight years old, and she couldn’t admit out loud that she still didn’t know what the hell to do with her life. She’d run to France because she didn’t know. She’d tried New York because she didn’t know. She’d tried University of Denver because she didn’t know. And with thirty looming near, the feeling that she still didn’t know was suffocating.

  “I’m going to go out for a walk.” Elie turned on her heel and let herself out. Jasper didn’t follow. He just hung his head and looked at Alison as if to ask, ‘How long this time?’

  Chapter Two

  Ringer’s Bar was about the only kind of bar that you had any hope of finding in the middle of America in a town whose population couldn’t even fill Disney World. It was the town bar—as in, the only bar in the town. Elie walked into it knowing what she would find, and happy to find it, dark anonymity, muffled under the sound of a stereo bellowing Hank Jr. and Willy Nelson.

  The multitude of single men was a little off-putting. She’d just as soon be alone, but with one bar in town, options were slim.

  The narrow panel-top bar itself was probably the safest place to in the joint to plant herself. She took an isolated corner stool and slipped her dusty jacket over the back. Dusty? It was dusty, wasn’t it? She batted some of it off, but it hardly bothered her. Dusty felt… safe. Like home.

  “Just a Coors, thanks,” she nodded at the bartender, an ashen old biker-babe who’d apparently lost track of the years that had flown by—the years since she could wear a tank top without a bra. But, she smiled and waved back and reached for the cooler.

  As she waited, Elie turned her mother’s question over in her mind. From a distance, it didn’t seem so threatening. She wasn’t any closer to an answer, but at least it wasn’t choking her.

  Truthfully, Elie was thinking about staying in Hemford for longer than a few weeks. Maybe longer than a few months. Maybe she wasn’t going back to Denver.

  She accepted her Coors with a sigh.

  “Haven’t seen you around here.”

  “Wish that had continued,” she answered, taking a swig.

  She turned to study the intruder to her private brooding. Now, he wasn’t too bad, tall and handsome, with a molded jaw and striking eyes. She’d seen that look in the eyes of men time and time again, and she propped her chin on her elbow.

  Elie had chosen a seat that was awkwardly placed for someone to try and shimmy closer, but try he did. In the dim light, his hair might have been sandy brown—but then, it might also have been blonde. Nothing like a dimly-lit, smoky bar to alter perception. There was no mistaking his slim legs in those tight jeans, or the soft leather of his jacket.

  “Are you new in town?” he asked. He made himself comfortable in the seat next to hers. Elie laughed.

  “Are you? I’ve never seen you before.”

  He shrugged. “A little. So, you’ve been to Hemford before?” He waved at the bartender; she nodded and reached for a glass.

  “I was born here.” Elie sipped off her beer and admired his profile. He had nice shoulders, and certainly a face worth taking a second look at. Plus, he didn’t look like a mill-worker, so it was unlikely he’d inadvertently blab to her father at work tomorrow.

  He stuck out a hand. “I’m Bryan.”

  “Elie.” She took his hand and tried to shake it, but he pulled it to his lips and kissed it in a gallant gesture that seemed completely out of place and time. She laughed again. He was entertaining, at least. He probably lived in a mobile home, but that wasn’t a terrible thing in Hemford.

  They passed a half hour, then another hour. Elie wasn’t about to get sloshed hanging out with a total stranger. At least, she hadn’t planned to, but having this total stranger take off his jacket so he could show her the tattoo on his shoulder hadn’t been part of the plan, either. Elie made it through two and a half bottles of Coors before she realized the turn of her stomach wasn’t the butterflies of infatuation. Bleh—she’d never been able to drink more than a couple.

  “Hey, I don’t live far from here.”

  Here it was. Elie grinned at him knowingly.

  “Did you need a ride?” she teased.

  “You could call it that.” He smiled half a smile and his hand found her thigh. “Not the kind that needs a car, though. Actually, I thought you might want a ride—my bike’s out front.”

  The hand on her thigh pressed upward an inch, then another. He was leaning quite close now, and he smelled like Axe and dust. Elie could already envision her lips on his ear, his jaw, his neck…

  She leaned over and whispered into his ear seductively, “You know, I think I could use one.”

  It was twilight outside; that was early mountain sunset. It wouldn’t get truly dark for another couple hours. Elie and Bryan, arm-in-arm, crossed the dirt parking lot to where his motorcycle sat waiting. Elie could count the things she knew about motorcycles on one hand, but she knew a Harley when she saw one. It sat low to the ground with a classy black and orange tank, and Bryan climbed on first.

  It had been years since Elie had ridden a motorcycle, but riding passenger was not difficult to figure out. She swung a leg over the seat and snugged comfortably against Bryan’s back. He was just as slim and hard as his jeans suggested, and she hoped he didn’t live too far away.

  “Hey! Mosley!”

  Bryan froze and turned, reluctantly, towards the shout.

  Elie looked, too. Approaching the bike were two men, and in the half-li
ght it was a minute before she recognized the flat-brimmed hats and the shine of badges at their waists. Sheriff’s department.

  “Uh… how can I help you boys tonight?”

  “Don’t give us that ‘boys’ song and dance, Mosley.” One was quite old, and one was catching up in years. The elder threw a droll and unimpressed glare at Bryan over his motorcycle windshield. “We have some questions for you. We’d like you to come along with us, now.”

  It wasn’t a question. Elie sat there awkwardly, thinking about a good way to excuse herself. A second ago, she’d been gleefully planning an evening with a hot biker. Now, things were starting to look like the opening minutes on an episode of Cops.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Uh-oh. Elie knew a dodging question when she heard it—it takes a thief to know one, and all that.

  “There ain’t no reason to get into details here in front of your, uh, lady, we just need you to come with us to the station, Mosley,” the younger deputy added in amiably. His thumbs were hooked casually in his belt. Elie tried to find their squad car, but then she remembered this wasn’t Denver. Their squad car was a pickup with a light rack rigged up on top and the Sheriff’s department seal decal on each door.

  Even getting shaken down by the cops was a quaint experience here.

  Quaint, but not the least bit attractive. Elie slid off the bike. “I’ll catch you later,” she waved as she walked away. Bryan looked like he wanted to argue, but the deputies didn’t, so Elie was left in peace to stride off into the pre-darkness.

  She was shaking a little. Maybe it was colder than she’d realized. She hugged her jacket closer and walked on, away from the main street, away from the lights. There were a good many residential neighborhoods here, and her parents was perhaps a mile off. It wasn’t far at all to walk, even in the dark.

  Chapter Three

  A friendly ghost moon was turning overhead, growing fuller. Elie loved this time of year. It smelled fresh and new and clean, and if she knew Colorado weather, there would be rain in the next few days, even though the purple sky was, at present, clear. She’d taken a turn through a dim section of road that wound through a break in the houses. Silhouetted forest surrounded her.

  Bryan Mosley, eh. She huffed, not sure if she was annoyed or relieved. She recognized that name, now. He was Amanda Mosley’s little brother, a few years younger than Elie herself. New in town? No, he wasn’t, not even a little. Unless he’d left, as she had, and recently returned.

  That was more likely. Elie didn’t remember him owning a motorcycle back then, but he had only been a freshman when she skipped town for an extended post-grad year. People made all sorts of crazy changes in a decade.

  “His lady,” Elie muttered.

  Something rustled to her left.

  Elie looked, but kept walking. It was probably a deer or a rabbit or something. Or a dog. Or a—

  Something big and shaggy stood up between the trees.

  “Oh, holy Jesus,” Elie breathed.

  A bear?! This close to town? Goddamned kids throwing their trash out windows. Bears raiding trash cans right in people’s yards had never been a problem when Elie was in high school. She backed further down the road, but it didn’t move. It was just sitting there, watching her.

  “Don’t mind me,” she murmured as she went. “Just a human out for a stroll. Don’t let me interrupt your evening. Thaaaat’s right, just sit right there, I’ll be out of your fur in a minute or two. Just gonna keeeeep walking this way…”

  She could see its rounded ears flopping about. If she wasn’t mistaken, its head actually tilted a little, as if curious.

  It was big, with big, hunched shoulders. Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it was a grizzly, for sure. What did they say? Try to outrun a grizzly by running downhill? Hadn’t she read somewhere that they could run 50 miles an hour? Wouldn’t they just run faster downhill?

  “Nice bear,” Elie babbled. It hadn’t moved yet, and she was putting some respectable distance between them. “Nice bear… happy bear… calm bear… bear that doesn’t like to eat humans… yucky…”

  There was a sharp whuff sound and the bear’s silhouetted head twitched. It was so like one of Jasper’s snorts that Elie giggled a little, or perhaps that was merely hysteria.

  Following the whuff was a much less familiar sound, as the bear opened its maw and bellowed a short warning.

  “N-Nice bear.” Elie’s voice had diminished to a flickering squeak. They said don’t run from a bear. You can’t outrun a bear. But there was a house just down the road, the first of the cheery-lit homes that lined the street between here and the Barner’s. The bear hadn’t even gotten off its haunches, yet.

  She could make it.

  Elie broke into a sprint. She’d never been much of a runner, a girl her size and shape had too much bounce and jiggle to run. Still, something primal and all-encompassing came rushing to the surface when the need to not die arose, and it pushed strength, surely more than she possessed naturally, into her legs, into her heart, into her lungs that were hissing air in and out. The house ran up the meet her in what seemed like no time.

  “Help!” she threw herself at the door frantically. “Bear! There’s a bear! Please!”

  The house’s occupants opened their doors, baffled but helpful, an older couple whose evening TV time had been interrupted. The man cradled a shotgun as he peered out beyond the safe halo of his front porch. He was dressed like a country grandpa, his flannel shirt tucked into jeans that nearly reached his breastbone. His blustering wife in her frilly nightdress (she’d obviously expected an early evening) pulled Elie inside.

  The bear hadn’t tried to give chase, but when her geriatric saviors offered to drive Elie the rest of the way home. She accepted happily.

  Chapter Four

  Sunlight poured into Elie’s room and stung her eyes. She pulled the quilt up, grumbling.

  This wasn’t her bed back in her Denver apartment. Where was she? She groped around for whoever she’d followed home.

  Wait.

  Elie sat up. She was in her old room in her parent’s house, although it didn’t look the way it had when she’d lived here. She’d sort of wondered, over the years, what her parents’ life might have looked like if she hadn’t existed, if her younger brother Jim had been their only child. Jim had followed his father into the Air Force. He was somewhere in South Asia, now.

  This room, that had been hers growing up, was sunny and open. The thick curtains she’d preferred, were replaced with lacy white ones, which were pretty and feminine but did little to block out the sun from the eyes of late-sleepers. The wood bed frame was the same, and the desk and bookshelves. But everything was bright white and light blue now.

  Elie got out of bed and stretched for the ceiling. Her ripped Avenged Sevenfold concert t-shirt looked out of place.

  Scratching her scalp, the air was so dry up here, and ruffling her already-dismal brown hair, Elie shuffled towards the window. There was the back yard, a series of flower beds, just like always, and the birch trees—

  Elie opened the window. Frowning, she reached out and plucked an envelope from the branches that reached towards her sill. It had her name on it.

  Her frown turned into a smile as she read the note.

  Heard you were back in town, didn’t know your phone number. Hang out in the usual place?

  Still smiling, Elie set the note on the desk and headed for the shower.

  Hidden Lake is possibly the most liberally and generally applied moniker of lakes the world over, but to Elie, Hemford’s Hidden Lake was the only one worth mentioning. It was a tiny lake, really, nestled in a bowl up here in the Rockies, fed by watershed, and emptying into a river at the east end. But, it glittered like magic in the afternoon sun as she approached through the trees. It had always been magical, secretive, intimate.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t private today. Someone was already loitering around at the shore. She huffed, not much to do about it. It was a public lake
, after all.

  The stranger saw her through the trees and waved.

  Elie frowned. “Jake?!”

  “Hey! I was starting to worry you hadn’t found my note.” He walked up the shore to meet her as Elie stared open-mouthed.

  Jake Framer was probably the oldest friend she had. In the world of Elie Barner’s love ‘em and leave ‘em, this didn’t amount to what it should, but he’d never seemed to hold her wanderlust against her. That was probably why she had always wandered on back down to this lakeshore to meet him, skip some rocks, drink their parents’ alcohol, and dream about the future. Though small and skinny, Jake hadn’t once bent to whims of others, where Elie had a tendency to try anything and everything and decide whether it was a good idea later. He was the rock to her ocean waves.

  Of course, back then, Elie wouldn’t have used a rock as a metaphor. He’d been thin as a waif at their graduation. The man who stood across from her now, smiling through a day’s growth of dark stubble and blinking in the sun, hardly resembled the kid he’d once been. Jake’s shoulders and chest had swelled tenfold, although his slim waist hadn’t budged. Veins stood out along the bulging muscles of his arms, and if the way his jeans fit was any indication, he hadn’t skipped leg day in five or six years.

  Elie was trying to wrap her head around the transformation when he opened his arms and wrapped her in a great, crushing hug, effortlessly picking her up off the ground as though she weighed nothing. She wanted to laugh, but it came out as a gasp. Wow, he was as strong as he looked.

  “It’s good to see you, Elie” His smile was… exactly as it had always been. Elie smiled back and threw her arms around his neck.

  “What have they been feeding you, growth hormones? I leave for a few years, and you turn into the Incredible Hulk!”

  His muscles, and there were oh-so-many, tensed under her, and Elie slipped away from him cautiously. Jake’s smile had withered a little, but it came back in a flash and he shrugged.