surrounding area. The cage-tower, full of its cables and pulleys that operated the cage-like elevator that took the miners down into the mines, stood out grotesquely from the rest. Below the mine, the miner's dwellings lay scattered about haphazardly around the mine buildings. Even from the road, all Amanda could see was the few pitiful attempts they had made on some of the homes to make them look more like normal houses, instead of the homes the company had built for its employees, but the attempt had been futile. The mine itself was too hideous to let anything too close look beautiful.
Amanda shuddered as they got closer to the village of Beaulea, and realized that this was to be her home for the next couple of months. Damn good thing Mr. Thorpe was paying her extra, or she would have turned back and gone to the city.
'Would you get a load of that place?' Scott said suddenly, incredulously, at her side, 'Holy shit, dad sure threw one at me this time. The bastard, he really knows how to make me pay for my sins.'
'Scott, would you take a look at the map Rogers drew for us back in town and find out which one of these shacks we'll be staying in?' Amanda pointed to the dashboard, and a small piece of paper.
Scott picked it up for a moment and studied it, then looked back up to the village itself.
'It's the blue house, the big one on the edge of town, just as you come into the place.'
The sun had gone behind the mountain by the time they finally drove into Beaulea and followed the pitted road to the blue boarding house where they would be staying. The house was run by a miner's daughter named Jassy Newquay.
Jassy came from a long line of miners Her great-great-grandfather had worked the copper mines in Cornwall, England until the copper had run out and after that, he had worked in the tin mines until in the mid 1800's when he had immigrated to the United States with his family. All of his sons had been miners too, and their sons, and theirs Jassy's father had mined the Beaulea mine for twenty years before it finally killed him in the disastrous cave-in of '74. Twelve miners had been killed in that disaster, buried forever in the bowels of the earth crushed beneath tons and tons of rock. Jassy had been only one of the many who mourned that day.
She had, had to get a job herself after her father had died and since she had never lived in any other place but Beaulea, she had stayed. The miners had laughed at the idea that she get a job as a miner, but they gave her a job, though it was not in the mine itself. Jassy was a counter, it was she who kept track of the amount of coal removed from the mine each day, and she did her job well. Aside from her work at the mine, she had also opened her home to boarders. She did own the largest and most elegant, considering the rest of the houses in the village, and she treated her boarders well, when she had them. Her only real permanent resident was the crew eight foreman, Dirk Mulligan.
The Mulligan men had been miners from way back and they looked the part, big, brawny and with eyes as black as the very coal they mined. Dirk Mulligan was a hard man, but he had one weakness, Jassy Newquay. He found her frustrating and unpredictable, but one of the most fascinating women he had ever met. He was sometimes sorry that he couldn't quite think of her in any other terms than that of a sister, but he couldn't. Maybe he had known her too long and known her father as one of his best friends. Whatever the reason, he knew that she considered him as her family for she had no other, and he was happy to leave it at that.
Aside from Dirk, and a few short contract miners or visitors, the boarding house remained nearly empty. But it paid for itself, because it was the only house in town where a newcomer could stay, and now it would be getting two new guests, Amanda Woods and Scott Thorpe.
But Amanda and Scott didn't know all of this when they drove up in front of the house and sat in silence as they surveyed the somewhat, run down home where they would be living for the next few months.
'Not bad,' Scott finally said. 'No offense, or anything, but I sure hope they have some good-looking pussies around here to keep me happy.'
'Thanks for the insult,' Amanda laughed but then turned serious. 'Just remember what we talked about, about staying out of trouble.'
'Yeah, yeah. I won't forget it and I know you won't let me, will you?'
'No, I probably won't,' she said truthfully.
'I didn't think so,' he looked at her with mock anger and turned to get out of the car and began to survey the grounds.
Amanda remained in the ear momentarily to check out her appearance in the rear-view mirror. Not bad, she thought, arranging a few curls of her coppery tresses, not bad at all. Although she was rapidly approaching thirty, the ravishing beauty knew she was a beautiful woman and made most men know it. She readied herself now to turn on the charm with the miners of Beaulea. Easing out of the car, she saw Scott standing in front of the house, looking crisp as ever in his tailored shirt and slacks. He had his hands on his hips, and was scrutinizing the large house before him, and for a moment Amanda felt her heart skip a beat in spite of her occasional dislike of Scott's egocentric personality. There's no question about it, he's a good-looking man. Too damn good-looking.
'Doesn't look like anybody's home,' Scott said.
'There's got to be. It's a boarding house and Jassy Newquay's expecting us. Come on.'
As they headed up the wide, wooden front stairs of the house, however, the front door was opened by a tall, handsome man in his late twenties, with thick, sandy-colored hair and penetrating coal-black eyes. His muscular body was clad in a red-plaid logging shirt and jeans, but the red-haired woman was quick to notice that the man who came forward with the appealing smile to greet them, though hardly an intellectual type, was exceptionally attractive and exuded a calm maturity that was a refreshing change from the dark surliness of Scott Thorpe.
'Hi,' the man said, greeting them warmly. 'I'm Dirk Mulligan. Jassy couldn't come out yet, so she asked me to greet you for her.'
A few moments later, they sat in the spacious living room, drinking coffee.
'What a beautiful house this is. Do you live here too, Mr. Mulligan? May I call you Dirk?' the vivacious redhead asked sweetly. 'Do call me Amanda, it's so much friendlier, don't you think? You have no idea how pleased we are to be staying here. Scott so wanted to learn more about mining and the Beaulea mine in particular. Are you a miner?'
'Yes… yes, as a matter of fact. I am,' he replied somewhat awkwardly. He didn't know why it was that every time his eyes made contact with the flame-haired beauty, he felt himself blushing like a schoolboy. 'Been working in the mines since I finished high school.'
'You must like your work. But your wife must hate it. It's a dangerous job, isn't it?' she replied.
'Yes, it is dangerous, but I don't have to worry about worrying a family. I'm not married.'
'What a shame,' Amanda smiled, delighted to discover that this handsome miner was single, for the experienced woman found herself growing more and more drawn to the handsome man.
Scott, meanwhile, was lounging in a big easy chair, trying to keep from showing his intense boredom. As far as he was concerned, Dirk Mulligan was a bore, and he would have preferred to be exploring a few discos and picking up a few hot dates back home in the city.
'Awfully big house for this place, I mean town, isn't it?' he inquired finally.
'Oh, it wasn't built by the company,' Dirk replied, turning his attention away from the green-eyed female. 'It was built by Jassy Newquay's grandfather, he did it himself.'
'Jassy?' Scott asked, forgetting what Amanda had told him in the car. 'She lives here too, does she?'
'Yes, all her life. In fact I don't know what's keeping her now,' the handsome miner replied with a smile. 'She usually isn't this late in greeting her new guests.'
'Well, it'd be nice to meet her,' Scott replied, trying to restrain his intense curiosity about what this Jassy Newquay would look like.
Dirk turned irresistibly back to Amanda, who sat next to him on the large over-stuffed sofa, a vision of sophisticated perfection. Her skin was amazingly clear, almost translucent, and the color of peaches and cream. Dirk found himself unconsciously staring down at the exposed upper part of her softly ballooning tits, and was somewhat startled to realize that she wasn't wearing a stitch of lingerie under the thin silk blouse.
Aware of the handsome man's attention, Amanda languidly crossed her legs, giving him a glimpse of the sleek taper of her limbs. Inwardly she wondered if he would be shocked to discover that she wore no panties beneath her skirt, yet she held back from revealing that much leg to him.
'I suppose we can wait until tomorrow morning before you meet the manager,' Dirk, said, struggling to keep the conversation going. 'He intended to be here to meet you when you came, but something came up and he won't be able to. He told me to make his apologies. He doesn't like not being able to welcome you himself.'
