Alaska Black Gold Box Set by Erica Storm

Chapter 1: Olivia
    “W hat’s up tonight, Olivia? You’re searching through the papers looking for another job I see. Can’t you relax, you’re making me nervous. You take things too serious,” Carrie says to me with her big not so innocent eyes studying me.
    “And you stick your head in the sand and pretend that things don’t exist.” I turn my computer to the side and let her see what is left in my bank account. And I motion to the pile of unpaid bills setting to the side, held down by a rock, a large one.
    “Chill. I’ll just call my mother and ask her to borrow some money.”
    “Didn’t you do that last month to help me pay your portion of the rent? Are you planning on getting a job anytime soon?” I ask Carrie. She hunches her shoulder and drinks her energy drink. 
    “If all else fails, we can go to Alaska and get jobs and see some great looking men. I hear there are ten men to one woman. They don’t get to see two gorgeous women in the flesh every day.” Carrie struts around looking in the mirror. She’s pale with dark brown hair and blue eyes. Maybe five feet three inches in three inch heels. Pretty by most standards.
    I think I’m an average looking black girl with hair to my shoulders that I get straightened when I can find a hairdresser that does black hair in Seattle. Most of the salons do weaves and they cost an arm and a leg. And now I don’t have two nickels to rub together.
    “Don’t flatter yourself, Carrie. Where did you hear about Alaska men?”
    “On the internet.”
    “Yeah, on the internet. So it must be true,” I say to her with a smirk and a roll of my eyes. “That’s yesterday’s news. Like back in the day news.”
    “Things couldn’t have changed that much. Here’s an ad.” Carrie plops down on the side of the bed and she opens this newspaper article from the Seattle Times. “Wanted young women to work hard for a few months at a lucrative job. Willing to pay top dollar, provide lodging, food, and airfare.”
    “There’s something suspicious about that. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. It doesn’t say what the job is and it doesn’t say what the pay is. We could be lured to Alaska by a serial killer or worse yet a sexual predator and serial killer.”
    “If we both go, and you know, and I know we need the money, we can look out for each other. I’m going with or without you, “Carrie says flashing her big blue eyes at me.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’re so suspicious, Olivia. What’s up with that?”
    “That’s not suspicion you see in my eyes. I’m just being careful. Do you remember when you were trying to sell your car on Craigslist? I tried telling you that meeting guys at a burger stand wasn’t how that’s done. Now you’re out of a car. ”
    “You were the one who gave up my car,” Carrie says to me.
    “What did you want me to do? When his partner pulled a gun on me and said to un-ass the car? I tried to un-ass it as soon as possible, and I gave him money for gas. He looked desperate.”
    “You didn’t have to give him the rent money too?”
    “Honey when a black man says he’s desperate, you don’t argue, you just give him what he wants. If he had asked me to give him a piece, I would have done that too, but not without a fight. I didn’t stay a virgin just to hand it over that easy. ” Carrie saw my eyes narrow and one eyebrow raise and she knew that I was upset, she knew where the conversation was going, so she quickly changed the subject back to a trip to Alaska.
    “Where’s your sense of adventure? We can meet some really great sexy guys in the outback.”
    “We’re not going to Australia, we’re going to Alaska, and that’s a whole different kind of place. We could meet some really ugly sex fiends who hasn’t had a lay in years. It’s a wilderness out there and men hunt with guns and they don’t just hunt animals.”
    “Look at it this way. We have been meeting some ugly sex fiends in Seattle. You know