Chapter One
Mary Sanders willed the light to turn green. She was already fifteen minutes late to work, and the cars in front of her weren’t moving at all. She was tempted to pull her car to the side of the road, hop out, and walk to work at this point. She could see the building from where she was, but the line of cars stopped her from being able to reach it.
This was ridiculous! Why wouldn’t these cars just move?
Her boss was going to kill her. That was the long and short of it. She needed the job, but she didn’t see how she was going to keep it this time. She’d been late five times in the last four months. It was an abysmal record for her and completely unacceptable from her boss’s point of view. She honestly had no idea why she hadn’t been fired already. She was the best worker on her shift by far, but that didn’t matter. She was unreliable.
It wasn’t even her own fault. She had responsibilities that would make unexpected demands on her time. If it had been up to her, she’d be ten minutes early to work every day.
Mary tapped her fingers on the car door and put her head out the window. She could see there was a broken-down car up the street. Even if she got through the green light, she was going to be stuck on the other side.
She groaned and threw her head back against the seat. It looked like her streak of bad luck wasn’t going to be ending today.
She thought about asking one of the cops helping the broken-down car to write her a note, but even if she could prove that it had been impossible to be on time, she had a feeling that her boss, Randy, wouldn’t care. She could bring him outside and show him the traffic jam, and he wouldn’t care. She should have left home an hour earlier, he would say. She should have anticipated that something like this would happen and gotten to work the night before and camped out in the parking lot, he would tell her.
He was the worst. She knew her attendance wasn’t the best, but there was a good reason, one that Randy would never understand.
He had no family of his own and nothing he cared about, it seemed. She sometimes thought he cared about his job and promotions, but that wasn’t the truth. The job was just something to do. He did seem to enjoy making his workers miserable, so maybe she was wrong. Maybe he did get something out of his job that he cared about.
If she had worked on the day shift, she wouldn’t have this problem. The day shift boss was a nice older woman who didn’t mind if the hard workers were a few minutes late a few times a year, and Mary had never been more than ten minutes late. This was the first time she’d be twenty minutes late to work. Anyone with a heart would see she was doing her best and cut her some slack.
All the times she’d been late, it had been because of her sisters. What was she supposed to do, let them starve? Leave them to the wolves?
Randy would obviously have preferred that. She wished he had never found out that her sisters were shifters. That seemed to make him even angrier when she was late.
Mary was a human, like her late father. After his divorce from Mary’s mother, he had married the twins’ shifter mother. Even though they were only half-siblings, Mary loved the twins with all her heart. She would do anything for the girls.
Her stepmother, Gina, had been a great mother until the death of Mary’s father. After that, Gina had been basically useless. It was like she’d become an entirely different person overnight. First, it was six years of grief. Then, after she’d recovered and managed to open her own business, she seemed to fail. The business was an overnight success, but she still wasn’t happy and was always struggling to make ends meet. She was building the business and had no time for the girls. So, it fell to Mary take care of the twins.
Mary didn’t mind; she loved those girls like they were her own, and she had to raise them like they were, too. Mary was glad she was old enough to be there for her sisters. What she did mind was how little money her stepmother gave her for her troubles.
Gina took advantage of her, and there was nothing Mary could do about it. Much like the situation at her job, she couldn’t just leave the girls to their own devices because her stepmother was a neglectful parent. She knew she could call Child Protective Services, but she’d heard horror stories about what happened to shifters in the system. It was much better for her to suffer in silence and take care of the girls on her own.
It hadn’t even been that hard until recently. Now that she was older and wanted to think about finding a home of her own, she needed money. That was why she’d taken the job at the factory. She’d been able to move to her own little apartment just three blocks from her stepmother’s home. Life had been wonderful until the girls started needing help again. She was going to have to give up the apartment and move back into the basement at Gina’s house. It had been her childhood home, and the basement room afforded her privacy, but it still stung. Mary loved being independent.
The girls were teenagers now, but they still needed help from time to time, and Mary was still picking up the slack from her stepmother. Today, for instance, she’d had to drop the twins off at school because they’d gotten up late and had missed the bus. She didn’t know where Gina was. She wasn’t answering her phone. Typical. Gina spent most of her time at the office she rented for the cleaning business. She even slept there some nights. Mary assumed that was where Gina was this morning instead of at her own home.
Mary’s having to take the girls to school would have been fine if it hadn’t been for this stupid broken-down car holding up traffic.
As if on cue, Mary’s phone lit up with a familiar number. Her stepmother—as if she needed something else to worry about right now. She ignored the call.
The phone rang again a minute later, and Mary bit her lip. She could ignore it again, but what if it was about the twins?
She sighed and picked up the phone. “What is it?”
“Do you hate me?” her stepmother asked.
“What are you talking about, Gina?”
“I know you had to take the girls to school this morning. Do you hate me?”
Mary sighed. “Of course I don’t. I know stuff happens. No big deal.”
“Well, you will.” Gina sniffled. “I’m going to lose the business. And then we’re going to lose the house. My family’s homelessness will be all my fault.”
“What are you talking about? The business is going great. You won’t lose it.” Mary inched her car forward.
“We don’t have a business. I’m not making enough money, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I’m going to lose the business, and that’s that.”
Mary was stopped again. She was now thirty minutes late to work. The minutes were inching by, and the situation was looking more and more hopeless. “You’re not going to lose the business. I’m going to come look at everything. I’ll help you.”
“Are you sure?” Gina sniffled again. “I know I’m taking up so much of your time already. I ask so much of you, and you don’t ask me for anything. If I weren’t so bad at this, I wouldn’t be wasting all your time. I’m sorry. I really don’t know what we’d do without you.”
It was those little things that kept Mary at the house. Even when she should be making friends her own age or finding a boyfriend, she was still helping out at home. It was nice to be appreciated, but sometimes she did wish she could be on her own and only have to worry about herself. She just wasn’t built for it. She couldn’t ever say no. There would be time for making friends and finding love later, she figured.
“I’ll be over after work tonight, and we’ll go over it together,” she told her stepmother.
“Okay, but it’s useless. Thanks for trying, anyway.”
The line went dead, and Mary snapped her phone shut. She could get around the cars in front of her and take the shoulder to the entrance to the factory. There was a cop up ahead, but she was going to roll the dice.
Mary inched her car to the side ever so carefully until she was free. She crept forward carefully on the shoulder, although one of her tires still rode up onto the grass. She managed to make it to the factory entrance without any major problems. The cop and some of the other drivers gave her the stink-eye, but it was fine. She was at work now, so she didn’t care if they hated her. She breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed her ID card.
She hustled to the door as soon as her car was parked. She swept in and was preparing her apology in her head when her boss met her in the hall.
Randy crossed his arms. “Look who’s late again. Why did you even bother?”
“I’m sorry, Randy. It really wasn’t my fault.” Mary was going to explain, but she stopped when she saw his face. She wasn’t going to waste time explaining. “You know I have a family and responsibilities. I know I’m really late this time, but there was a car crash outside. You can see it from here.”
“You’re not the only one who comes from that way,” he told her. “None of your coworkers were this late, except for the ones who called.”
Mary stifled a groan. Why hadn’t she thought to call? She knew it wouldn’t have made a difference, because Randy had it out for her, but she could’ve tried.
“I tried to be on time today. I left home early. If it hadn’t been for the accident, I wouldn’t have been late at all.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you really care about this job. If you did, you’d put it above trivial things.”
“My sisters aren’t trivial,” Mary snapped. “Maybe if you had a heart, you’d see that. I’m doing the best I can. I’m one of your best workers, even if I am a little late sometimes. Are you really going to throw away a good worker just because I’m a few minutes late?”
“The way I figure it, you’ve cost me a whole day of work,” Randy said smugly. “How are you going to pay that time back to me and the company?”
“I’ve been only ten minutes late four times. Once, I was late by half an hour. This time forty minutes. In no way does that add up to eight hours,” she said. “I have nothing to make up. I’m one of your best workers. You don’t have anyone here who goes above and beyond like I do, and you know it.”
That was the truth. If it hadn’t been, she would have been fired a long time ago. That was what saved her butt, even though Randy hated her. She really was the only one cross-trained on every machine in the factory. If he could fire her, he would have. But he couldn’t, and they both knew that. She was really getting sick of him yelling at her and making a big show of it each time she was a little late.
He leaned closer. “You know what you could do, as start? Come out with me to a bar after work on Friday.”
She was stunned. He’d never shown any interest in being her friend. She guessed everyone got lonely. Maybe he did have a heart after all. “That sounds fine. I haven’t been out in a long time.”
Randy nodded. “And maybe afterwards, you can come back with me to my apartment. I have some CDs I think you’d really love to hear.”
He looked at her with such a smug smirk, she wanted to slap it off his face.
“This is sexual harassment.” Her stomach turned, and she was sure she was going to throw up. He was a pig. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“I think I can. Your word against mine. So, what can you do about it?”
Mary took off her badge. “I’m going to quit.” She spun on her heels and looked back before she reached the door. “Have fun trying to run the shop without me.”
Randy didn’t try to stop her, but he did seem stunned. This was more than he’d bargained for. He’d thought she needed this job more than she did.
Truth be told, this was more than she’d expected to do. She didn’t want to quit her job, but at least now she wouldn’t have to worry about being late anymore. She could take a job at her stepmother’s business. That wasn’t going to solve all their problems, but it was better than working at the stupid factory. That job was causing her too much stress in addition to taking care of the girls. She could find another job later. She had more important things to worry about now. She was moving back home, anyway.
This was all going to work out fine. At least she’d be working during the day now. She might even have time in the evening to get some kind of social life going. There was at least a small silver lining.