Chapter 8

A little later, Jeff and Diana were teasing with Ann near the grill when Dave and Evie walked in. The manufacturer hadn't wasted a lot of cloth on Evie's bikini, either. She winked at Diana. Diana grinned back, suspecting that Evie had relieved some pressure for Dave for the same reason Diana had for Jeff.

Jeff offered Dave a beer. When he started to decline, Jeff said. "You two are staying in the suite tonight. You can drop your work clothes in the washer after we eat, if Evie didn't bring you clothes for tomorrow. So enjoy yourself. I don't let anyone leave here after drinking. So have fun."

"In that case," Evie said, "I'll have one."

"We don't drink much," Dave said. "A six pack will last a month around the house. But you're right, I wasn't going to drink even one and face that driveway after dark," he finished, chuckling.

"And, I did bring us clothes for tomorrow, just in case you did invite us to stay the night," Evie said. "We appreciate it. That way, we won't have to get up so early."

Laura and Diana started putting meat on the grill, "How do you two want your steaks?" Laura said, turning to Evie.

"Medium-well," Evie answered while putting her arm around her husband. "And he wants his just-past-dead," she laughed as she smiled up at him.

Laura laughed with her as she put two more steaks on the grill. "One medium-well and one 'just- past-dead' coming up."

The girls and Boswell came out of the pool without being called, and the production line started.

"Jeff, can you and Dave move those two tables over by the glass wall, and slide them together?" Diana asked, pointing.

"Sure Babe."

By the time they had the tables pushed together, the girls came in with the rest of the food. A little later, they were all seated at the table when Doctor Boswell volunteered to say grace. Jeff winked at her when she finished, and she smiled back, feeling, somehow, that she was now more a part of the family than she had been five minutes ago.

Dave and Evie saw the exchange and knew something had happened, but they weren't sure what.

The meal progressed without a lot of unnecessary conversation. Everyone was hungry, but there was a little more tension than Jeff had hoped for.

Evie glanced at Diana, then out the glass wall at the trees that were starting to change to their fall colors. "I've been in the conference center many times while we were building it, but I guess this is the first time that I've really had time to appreciate how beautiful the view is from the swimming pool."

Evie raised up a little for a moment, looking out the wall, and continued, "You can see part of the driveway past the first switchback. I was scared for Dave and the others until that road was paved. I wouldn't drive up it unless I just had to. When they widened it, put the blacktop on, and the rails up, it made it a lot better, but it still gives me the willies."

"The 'willies?'" Diana said, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, that's a technical term," Evie said, elbowing her husband, "that contractors use when they're scared sh... , uh,... half to death," she finished, blushing.

"Like when you're standing on a piece of decking on a half-framed roof, three stories up, and the board you're standing on cracks really loud," Dave said, laughing.

"Nah, that's not the 'willies, '" Jeff said. "I think she got it right. That would be a sound that would make you start looking for some toilet paper at the next opportunity... If there was another opportunity."

Everybody laughed, then sobering, Jeff said, "I'll bet you have some real war stories about that job of yours."

Dave stopped for a minute, then grinned. "The trouble with my 'war stories, ' is that someone not in the business would never believe half of them. People can sometimes do the dumbest things — unfortunately, myself included. By the way, Mrs. Matthews, this has got to be the best piece of meat I have ever put in my mouth."

Diana mock glared at Dave. "We've discussed this before. There is no 'Mrs. Matthews' here. There is, however, a Diana. And thanks for the comment about the meat." Looking around the table as everyone nodded or smiled at her, she continued, "I'll have to agree with you. The butcher said that he would give me my money back if they weren't the best. I guess he's not going to lose anything. He says he has a rancher that he buys his special meat from. Looks like he was telling the truth about his steaks."

After several more comments about the quality of the meat, Jeff said, "About the 'war stories, ' I used to hang around with a number of cops. Some of their war stories would leave me in stitches. But they said that they didn't tell their really far out stories to outsiders — that nobody but cops would believe them. You have to be on the inside, so to speak, and see things happen before you can believe some of the outlandish things that some people will do — like you said. I suppose it's true for any profession where there is danger involved."

Dave finished his last bite and pushed his plate back a little wistfully. Before he realized what was happening, Laura dropped another steak onto his plate.

"My gosh, I can't..."

"Sure you can," she said, a grin on her face. "We have plenty. We knew you guys would want more than that one piece of meat," she said, squeezing his shoulder.

"Eat up," Jeff said. "They spoil me to no end. Get used to it." He smiled his thanks as Jennie put another steak on his plate. "They like to cook, and I like to eat their fantastic cooking."

Dave cut up his steak as Evie teased him about getting fat.

"Ah, he works too hard to get fat," Jeff said, defending Dave. "Besides, if you two take my offer of a job, Dave and I can run together in the mornings."

"I used to run a little a few years ago, but the business got to taking up so much of my time, that I just let it go. I probably couldn't stagger through a mile now."

"And," Evie said, "he's been having a skipped beat in his heart. The doctor put him on some medication, and fussed at him for drinking too much caffeine. The doctor told him to walk, but if he decided to start running, to work into it very slowly. Something to do with an intermittent bundle branch block. They did tests and finally said that some people have the abnormality without any real significance, but it still scared us. Dave goes for a checkup every six months, just to be safe. So far, the block hasn't caused any problems, other than the initial scare when we realized he had it," she finished holding her husband's hand.

Seven females glanced meaningfully at Jeff. They might as well have screamed "healer." Jeff cleared his throat and said, "Well, maybe with the new job, you will have a little extra time to work in an exercise routine. Maybe the exercise will make this thing go away." And the healer, when I manage to catch you asleep. Maybe tonight, if I get another couple of those beers down you so you sleep soundly.

Dave glanced at his wife, then looked back at Jeff. "Uh, no offense, Jeff, but I doubt if I will have more free time taking on this job with you. You said I could still maintain my company, cycling my crews out here as they finish up their current jobs, and as we need them. But taking on this new, gigantic project of yours is going to add hours, not take them away. I..."

Jeff stopped, listening, a piece of meat speared on his fork, then, "Delegate. Spend more time planning and overall supervising, and less time micromanaging. Promote one of your people to do the onsite supervision at your other projects. We want your expertise, not your lifeblood. I will not have you working more than forty hours a week..."

Evie interrupted. "He works at least seventy-two hours a week now, even with me helping to run the business. We're making a good living, but we don't have time to live it," she finished, turning her head away so no one would see the tears in her eyes.

"Do you have anyone you could promote to oversee everything, maybe also make a foreman for each crew to do the on-scene management?"

"Korey?" Evie said, turning to her husband.

"Yeah. He would jump at the chance," Dave said looking back at Jeff, then settling back in his chair and taking a sip of his beer. "He and I went to school together. He had his own outfit, but he got screwed on a big job and went under. I have a foreman for each crew, already. I'm using Korey in that position on one of my jobs. I guess I could put him in charge of all the crews until they cycle out here. What do you think, Babe?" he asked, looking meaningfully at his wife.

"I think I'll go with anything that will cut your hours back." Quietly, she continued, "I don't want to be a rich widow. I just want to be a wife."

Diana glanced at Arlene, then let her eyes drift to the portable phone sitting in its cradle near the pool. Arlene got up, retrieved it, and handed it to Dave. Without saying anything, she sat back down, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.

Dave and Evie locked eyes. She leaned over and touched his arm. "Do it," she quietly said.

Dave dialed the phone. "Hey Marge. How are you doing... ? That's great. Say, is Korey there... ? Yeah, let me talk to him."

A little later, Dave was finishing up the steak, but his mind was so far away that he was barely aware of the great piece of meat he was eating.

Diana, Laura and Evie were in the pool standing in waist-deep water, talking up a storm. Doctor Boswell and the girls were cleaning up the table. Since they had decided to use plastic plates, there was considerably less to transport back to the kitchen. By the time that Dave and Jeff had finished, there was little left to do.

Jeff offered Dave another beer, but he waved his hand in a negative gesture. "No thanks, but I will take a glass of that ice tea. I guess I never drank sweet tea with lemon before, at least not iced tea, before meeting you people. Most restaurants in this area will serve you iced tea, but unsweetened. After Diana brought the crew iced tea a couple of weeks ago, and I told Evie about it, we've been drinking it at home. We haven't been able to make it as good as you do, though."

"All I know is there's a bit of an art to making really good sweet iced tea. Tell Evie to ask any of the women, they'll bend her ear making sure she knows exactly how to make it," he laughed, as he put crushed ice in a glass and set the pitcher next to Dave. Now tell me what Korey said when you hit him with your bombshell. "What was it? Oh, yeah. 'How would you like to run my operation?' I'll bet that got his attention."

Dave leaned back in the chair, becoming more at ease with Jeff. "Yeah, it got his attention all right. I think he about shit. I heard Marge squeal in the background when she figured out what we were talking about."

"I assume you can trust him."

"Yeah, we've been friends since school. He had a good business going until this big outfit screwed over him, and he lost everything. He knows as much about the business as I do. What happened to him wasn't his fault. He just got steamrolled."

Jeff nodded to the pool and the huddle of females, now including Doctor Boswell and the girls as well. "Looks like our wives are planning something," Jeff said, a crooked grin on his face. He had noticed that wedding rings had appeared on all his wives' hands. He saw Dave notice them.

"You're sleeping with all of them. Your daughter, too?" Dave asked, an odd expression on his face.

"Well, I'm not sleeping with Doctor Boswell... Well, not exactly," Jeff answered. "Will you and Evie have any problem with my little harem?"

Dave sat for a moment. "I knew that you were sleeping with the others. That was obvious from the bathroom in your new suite, even before you told me they were your women." He hesitated for a moment. "I don't know what I think about you having sex with your daughter. I..."

"Well, that makes two of us," Jeff sighed. There's a long story behind it. To be frank with you, I'm not going to tell you until I know you a lot better. But if it will make you feel any better, I wasn't the one that started it. I guess you could call it a conspiracy between Diana and Arlene. They didn't ask my opinion. But all of them are my wives — Arlene included. You and Evie need to talk tonight. If you can't handle our relationship, then we're going to have to work this out somehow. I want you to head up our projects here. I picked you for reasons we've already discussed. Discretion is one of them. All of those girls are above the age of consent. The only law I'm breaking is incest. And that's a law that is seldom enforced, even then, generally it involves a minor child to get the authorities interested. This doesn't. Right or wrong, I'm not going to change anything.

"Unless I miss my guess, Evie is being filled in as we speak. They don't wear their rings around outsiders," he said, returning Diana's smile as she looked over at him.

Dave finished his tea and caught Jeff's eye. "Whether I approve or disapprove of your relationship with your daughter, no one will ever hear about it from Evie or myself. That's a promise. As far as the multiple wives, well, hell, that's every man's dream. I just can't figure out how you get away with it. If I tried that, even if I knew someone who would agree, and if Evie would agree, of course, they still would be fighting tooth and nail in a week. Looks like your women would be jealous of each other. How do you manage?"

Jeff sighed. "I wish I knew. Sometimes I catch myself holding my breath when they come up with something new. But when there are decisions to be made, they seem to work it out with fewer words than men could ever do. I'll swear that the whole bunch of them get along better than Arlene and Diana did by themselves, and they never really fussed. But the group doesn't fuss at all."

"How do they decide who's going to... Ah, shit, it's none of my business, but how in the hell do you satisfy six young women, four of them teenagers?" Dave realized what he had just blurted out, and started trying to apologize.

Jeff looked at him and grinned, refusing to answer, then dropped a nonsequitur, "I dare you to dive in and jerk Evie's bottom down to her knees."

Dave looked over at the women, a grin starting on his face. "I haven't done anything like that to her in a long time. You're going to get me killed," Dave answered, getting to his feet, "but I've got to see the look on her face."

Dave dived into the water, and a few seconds later there was a short struggle, then a scream from Evie. Dave swam away with a small piece of cloth, laughing so hard he could hardly stay afloat. Evie stood stock still for a second, not quite believing what her husband had done to her, then launched into hot pursuit trying desperately to snatch her bikini bottom from his thrashing hand, totally forgetting that her bare butt was showing as she swam.

Diana accepted Jeff's hand to help her out of the pool. "Husband, this smells of instigation by my spouse. You're going to embarrass the poor women to death when she realizes that everybody is looking at her butt."

Jeff managed to control his laughter enough to gasp out, "Ah, they were both so uptight you would have thought they were on a job interview," he teased. "I thought that might help relax everybody a little. Besides, she does have a nice ass... Oh, shit that hurt," he yelled as Diana pinched him on his side. He continued to sputter as she yanked his trunks down to his knees and pushed him into the water just as Evie and Dave turned around to see what Jeff was hollering about.

"Wow, " Evie gasped, before she realized she had said anything.

"I saw what you were looking at," Dave said putting his hand on her head and shoving her under. That was a mistake. While she was under water, she yanked his trunks down to his ankles.

While Dave was fighting to try to keep his wife from pulling his suit the rest of the way off, and keep from swallowing half the pool in the process, all the women, including Helen, mobbed Jeff. Ann wound up with his trunks, and after climbing out of the pool, twirled them above her head on an extended index finger yelling, "Look what I found!"

The fight was on. Five minutes later, even Doctor Boswell was topless, and was in a losing battle to save her bottoms, as well.

Finally, Evie jumped out of the pool, quickly got a towel to wrap around herself, then took off down the hall shrieking like a teenager, with her husband chasing after her trying to pull the towel off.

Jeff had a raging hard-on, since all his wives, and he suspected Doctor Boswell as well, had freely groped and caressed him to no end. They were standing in waist-deep water on Jeff, when Ann grabbed his neck with one arm, wrapped her legs around him, and with the other hand guides his cock to her pussy. A little adjustment and a push, and she let out a sigh as she wiggled herself onto him. "Fuck me, Husband. I'm so hot I'm about to die."

Boswell, feeling like a fifth wheel, started to turn away and leave, when Diana slipped her hand between Boswell's legs from behind and cupped her pussy. "Where do you think you're going?" Diana teased, stroking her finger through Boswell's pussy lips while kissing her neck. "The fun is just beginning," she quietly said into Helen's ear.

"Diana, I..."

"... used to have a sister-wife," Diana completed, although that wasn't what Boswell had intended to say. "I can't be her, but I'll bet I can be some help right now, anyway," Diana chided, moving her finger in small circles on Helen's clit.

As Boswell started to sputter out something else, Arlene grabbed her, looked into her eyes for a moment, then kissed her while teasing her erect nipples. Boswell moaned into Arlene's mouth, and came, bucking her pussy against Diana's hand.

Arlene pulled her mouth off Doctor Boswell's. "Welcome to Pussy World, Teach," she said as she pulled on a nipple, then latched her mouth to the other one.

"'Pussy World, '" Diana teased, looking at her daughter as they carried Boswell toward another orgasm.

Arlene winked at her mother and kept sucking as Boswell moaned louder. Then the moan turned into a scream that Boswell tried to hide by putting her hand over her own mouth.

Jeff heard Boswell's muffled scream, saw what was happening near him, but most of his attention was riveted on Ann as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, frantically slamming her pussy against his controlled stroking. A few seconds later, she froze, then screamed with a keening sound that seemed to go on and on. When she collapsed, Laura took her daughter gently into her arms, as Jennie took Ann's place, guiding his cock to her pussy. The oldest dance of all resumed.

Much later, Jeff stood in the darkened hallway outside the guest's suite with the healer in his hand, feeling the inquisitive mental tickle. Okay, Little One, they need to be asleep while you do this. Last time caused me some problems.

The healer moved in his hands, and faint blue beams reached out toward his body. No, no. I'm fine. The problems were caused by the blocks they put in my mind to keep you a secret. They reneged on our deal! I can't use you if anybody knows, so you need to make sure that the people in this room are asleep. The beams continued from head to foot for a time, then shut off.

{{{??? }}}

The man, Dave, has a heart condition. But I want both of them scanned. Shit, I don't know how much you understand me, if at all. Frustrated, he continued, Just heal both of them. Then added, Please! wondering why he said it to a machine. Well, I guess you're a machine, eh, Little One.

{{{?? Warm feeling?? }}}

Since using the device so much on Boswell, it seemed like he could almost communicate with it. Then... for the hundredth time, he wondered what race made this... thing, whatever it was. They must have been able to communicate with it better than I can. But it seems to do its job, anyway. It healed Diana's ankle, he thought. He remembered that when he had put it next to her from time to time, worried about her smoking, it always played its blue beams about her.

The age regression has to be its doing, he mused, and if he wasn't mistaken, Boswell was beginning to show those signs as well. He had used it on Laura once, maybe he should do it more. If Boswell begins to be more youthful, and Laura doesn't, Laura will figure it out (oh, shit, probably has already) and give me grief. Wives know how to do that.

{{{??? }}}

Yeah, its time. Don't get your panties in a wad.

Jeff had brought the master key, but it wasn't necessary — the outer door to the suite was unlocked. Well, I guess that means they trust us. Or else, Dave was too anxious to get Evie's towel off to bother with locking the door. In sock feet he eased silently through the sitting room, thankful for the small night-light. Standing with his ear to the bedroom door, he listened for a couple minutes.

I don't know these people well enough to get caught doing this. Especially since I won't be able to explain anything about the healer, or why I'm in their bedroom at two o'clock in the morning. Shit, maybe this wasn't the best idea I've ever had. Well, then again, it wasn't my idea. I did get that look from all my wives — even Boswell, so I guess I didn't have a lot of choice, after all. Ah, shit, here goes.