Straddling the Line. Sarah M. Anderson

swore she could feel the vibrations through the metal stairs.

      The sounds of the workshop—the clanging of hammers hitting metal, the whine of air compressors, a stream of words she could only vaguely discern as cursing—instantly died down to a low hum as Bolton bristled. For a moment, Josey thought she saw the railing bend in his grasp.

      Josey’s insides went a little gooey. This wasn’t a show of power, this was actual power, so potent that she could nearly taste it. Ben Bolton commanded absolute respect, and he got it. She was an outsider here—she couldn’t think of a time when she’d been more out of her league—but he still defended her without a second thought.

      Bolton’s glare swung down to where she stood precariously perched on a step, as if he thought she’d challenge the authority that had silently reined in twelve men armed with power tools. And then he was moving away from her, taking each step slowly and methodically this time.

      Josey’s pulse began to flutter at her wrists. She was used to men trying to impress her with their money, their things—all symbols of their power. This was a man who didn’t appear to give a darn about impressing her. Heck, given the way he now stood at the top of the stairs, arms crossed and boot tapping with obvious impatience at her careful pace—Josey was pretty sure he detested her. Somehow, that made him that much more impressive.

      When she neared the top, Bolton flung open a steel door and waited for her to get her butt in the office with poorly disguised contempt on his face. The doom ricocheting around her belly grew harder to ignore. She’d missed her chance to bolt, though. She had no choice but to tough this out.

      The moment the door shut, the sounds of the shop died away. Blissful silence filled her ears, but her eyes were now taking the brunt of things. Bolton’s office had so much metal in it that Josey was immediately thankful the sun wasn’t shining in through the floor-to-wall windows. A stainless-steel desk was underneath sprawling piles of papers. Filing cabinets that matched the desk perfectly made up a whole wall.

      Everything in this gray office—down to the leather executive chair and the walls—said money. The leather-and-chrome seats downstairs had said money, too. But this was different. Downstairs screamed of someone dressing the place to impress. Up here? Mr. Bolton didn’t give a flying rat’s behind about impressing anyone. This was all about control. Or Ben Bolton was color-blind. Either way, the whole place looked depressingly industrial. In a wire mesh trash can, she saw the remains of what had to be the recently departed intercom. Had he ripped it out of the wall? Because of her?

      No wonder Bolton was in a bad mood. If Josey had to work in this office, she’d probably curl up into a lump of iron ore and die.

      Bolton motioned for her to sit in a shop chair—also metal. He sat down and fixed her with another one of those dangerous/desirous glares. He picked up a pen and began bouncing the tip on the metal desk, which filled the air with a perfectly timed pinging. “What do you want?”

      Oh, yeah, he was mad. Being as she had no plan B, Josey decided to stick with plan A. It was still a plan, after all. “Mr. Bolton—”

      “Ben.”

      That was more like it. Familiarity bred success. “Ben,” she started over. “Where did you go to school?”

      Robert had graduated from a suburban high school in a wealthy area of Rapid City about twenty miles from where they sat. Odds were decent Ben had gone there, too.

      “What?” Confusion. Also not bad. An opponent off-balance was easier to push in the right direction.

      “I’d be willing to bet that you graduated near the top of your class, maybe played on the football team? You look like a former quarterback.” Josey followed this up with one of her award-winning smiles—warm, full, with just a hint of flirting while she checked out those shoulders again. Wow. If Ben Bolton wasn’t so intimidating, he’d be all kinds of hot. What did he look like without all the gray? Boy, she’d love to see what he looked like on a bike. He had to ride. He ran a motorcycle company.

      Flattery usually got her everywhere—but not with this man. Ben’s glare moved further away from desire and a heck of a lot closer to dangerous. “Valedictorian. And running back, All-State. So what?”

      Josey managed to swallow without breaking her smile. The “All-State” was a good sign—bragging, if only just. But the pinging of the pen on metal got louder—and faster. Besides, she shouldn’t be entertaining any sexual thoughts about another white man, not after the last debacle. She needed to stick to her goals here. Getting the school ready would earn her a place within the tribe—permanently.

      “Your school had computers in every classroom, didn’t it?” Before he could demand “So what?” again, she kept going. “New textbooks every few years, top-of-the-line football helmets and teachers who actually understood what they taught, right?”

      With a final, resounding clang, the pen stopped bouncing. Ben didn’t stop glaring, though. Josey sat through the silence. She would not let this man know he intimidated her. So, chin up and shoulders back, she met his gaze and waited.

      His hair was a deep brown, she realized. She could see the warm tones underneath—much browner than her own chestnut hair. A few streaks of salty white were trying to get a foothold at his temple, but his hair was cropped close in a no-nonsense buzz cut. The scowl he wore looked permanent.

       Does he have any fun?

      The question popped into her mind out of the blue, but it had nothing to do with game-planning her strategy. She found herself hoping he had some kind of fun, but she doubted it occurred within the walls of this steel box.

      Finally, he broke the silence. “What do you want.”

      It wasn’t a question—oh, no. A question would be getting off easy. This was an order, plain and simple.

      That meant the answer to all of her previous questions was yes. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time on setting up the pitch. If she didn’t get on with it, he might take it upon himself to throw her out personally.

      “Are you aware that the state of South Dakota has recently been forced to cut all funding to schools across the board?”

      A look of disbelief stole over his face. “What?”

      Right. He hadn’t known she was coming; obviously, his brother hadn’t told him about her. She pressed on. “As I told your brother Robert—”

      “You mean Bobby.”

      She forced a smile at the interruption. Hot and intimidating sounded like a good combo, but the hotness just made the intimidating more intense. She prayed she wasn’t about to start blushing. “Of course. As I told him, I’m seeking donations for the Pine Ridge Charter School.” The look of disbelief got closer to incredulous, but Josey didn’t give him a chance to interrupt her again. “Fewer than twenty percent of Lakota Sioux students graduate from high school—less than thirty percent go past the eighth grade.” No, he didn’t believe that, either, but then, few people did. The numbers were too unbelievable.

      “Currently,” she went on like a warrior out to count coup, “there is no school located within a two-hour drive from some parts of the reservation. Many students must be bussed two hours each way. If they’re lucky, they get one of the good schools. If they’re not, though, they get textbooks that are twenty years old, no computers, teachers who don’t give a darn if their students live or die.” The near-curse word got her something that might have been a quarter of a grin.

      Maybe Ben liked things a little gritty. Well, Josey could do gritty. “Between the butt-numbing trip on buses that break down all the time, the crappy education and the unrelenting bullying for being American Indians, most choose to drop out. People expect them to fail. Unemployment on the reservation is also near eighty percent. Any idiot can see that figure mirrors the dropout rate almost precisely.” She batted her eyes again. “You don’t look like an idiot to me.”

      The pinging started back up. The