Page 22 of Bound By Earth (The Nature Hunters Academy 1)

“Are you two seniors?” askedJax.

They nodded in unison. Tara glanced at Shelly and saw the girl’s mouth hanging open. Then Tara realized her mouth was hanging open, too, so she snapped it closed, hoping she didn’t look like too much of an idiot but knowing she absolutelydid.

“Are either of you interested in geology?” heasked.

“We’re interested in something,” Shelly murmured under herbreath.

Tara stomped on her friend’s foot. It was obvious by Jax’s chuckle that he’d heard Shelly’s comment. “Like what? Digging up rocks and stuff?” Tara asked, attempting to move past the embarrassingstatement.

Jax chuckled. “Something like that. Our firm is primarily engaged in research. We study the elements and try to find ways they can be used to enhance the quality of humanlife.”

“Sounds like a bunch of scientific, technological mumbo jumbo to me,” said Shelly, apparently having decidednotto cross the table and lickJax.

Jax chuckled again so loudly and so deeply that Tara wondered if it would cause the building to shake. “There may be some science involved, but it’s not mumbo jumbo. Our employees work hard to improve humanlife.”

Tara frowned.Human life.Such an odd phrase to use. And he’d said it twice. All of a sudden, the tingling feeling she’d gotten when she’d been playing soccer came back to her. She could’ve sworn she’d seen this man before somewhere, even before the soccergame.

“Is there a reason you were at our soccer game?” she asked suddenly, as if watching a high school soccer game was somehow against thelaw.

“Oh, you two are on the soccer team? Oh, yeah, now I remember. You’re the one who collided heads with that other girl. Knocked her out of the game but didn’t seem to faze youmuch.”

Tara narrowed her eyes. She got the feeling the man knew exactly who she was before she ever walked into that gymnasium and hadn’t suddenly justrealizedwho she was. “You didn’t answer thequestion.”

“Um.” His brow lowered, and he gave her a look as if she was acting extremely paranoid. Forget the fact she probably was. “I was there to watch a soccer game,” he said, his words coming out slowly as though the question confusedhim.

“Did you know anyone playing?” Taraasked.

“No.”

“Why would you come to watch a high school soccer game, not to mention, one ofourgames?No onecomes to our soccer games,” saidShelly.

“Yeah, we suck,” added Tara.That was a brilliant thing to say to the jobrecruiter.

“I just like soccer, that’s all. I was in town for the career fair and decided to catch a game. I don’t think you sucked at all. As a team, you worked really well together, and a few of you seemed to have some real talent. You guys had some tough luck there at the end. One in a million shot that was. You were clearly the better team.” Jax seemed genuinely impressed withthem.

“So where’s this TGT whatever place located? Must not be local if you were ‘in town,’” askedShelly.

“Tellus Geological Testing and Extraction,” he said. “TGTE. We have offices all over. The closest one is in Charleston, WestVirginia.”

“Why would you come here?” Tara asked. “They don’t have high schools in WestVirginia?”

“Of course, they do, and I’ve visited most of them. But we are a growing company. We need lots of new employees—therightemployees—to meet demand. As a recruiter in this territory, I try to make it to as many high school career days as I can, even at the small schools. One never knows when he might find a diamond in therough.”

Tara couldn’t help feeling the look he gave her was extremelypoignant.

“And what are therightemployees, exactly?” Shelly asked. “I suck at science. And don’t you have to have a college degree orsomething?”

“Not to work for us,” said Jax. “Not at all. In fact, sometimes we find our college graduates make the worst employees. We have to spend the first six months un-teaching them everything they supposedly learned while in college. We require particular aptitudes in our employees, skills that cannot necessarily be learned from abook.”

Shelly lifted a brow at him. “Is this that whole detail-orientated, team player, go-getter typestuff?”

“Sort of. We require certain personality types. The work can be very grueling. Long hours. Hard on the body andmind.”

Tara frowned. “Grueling work in a laboratory? That doesn’t seemright.”

“No, no, no,” said the big man. “Our employees spend very little time in the lab. It’s mostlyfieldwork.”

“What does that mean, fieldwork?” askedTara.

---