The Bigger They Are… (Lovers on the Fringe, Book Two) (2 page)

Or just terrorize the shit out of them by shifting into his fur coat.

“What?” Andy demanded when Fry just continued to look at him.

Fry rolled his eyes again and lifted his drink for a long swallow. “Dude, do I really have to spell it out for you?”

Well, maybe he did, because Andy wasn’t getting Fry’s meaning. Which probably had more to do with Fry’s attitude than Andy’s comprehension skills.

“You’re jealous,” Fry answered as if Andy had told Fry to go ahead and insult the hell out of him.

Andy drew himself up to his full seven feet, towering over Fry and making the sylphs sigh in unison.

“I am not.”

Fry’s wings gave a dismissive shake. “Of course you are. Your mom’s right, man. We need to find you a woman.”

* * * * *

“I cannot believe I allowed him to talk me into this.”

Jenna checked the GPS unit again and shook her head when the annoyingly smooth female voice said, “You have arrived at your destination.”

“And you’re sure this is the place?”

“You have arrived at your destination.”

Had her GPS unit just given her attitude? Hell, if a television network—one that had paid real money upfront—had given her brother enough funds to go to Scotland, she figured pigs could fly and GPS units could be snotty bitches.

Considering
she’d
been bitching the entire drive, she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d heard a disgusted sigh issue from the stereo speakers of her new Honda Civic.

But really, what kind of idiot believed in fairies and dragons?

Apparently the kind who got paid actual money to go find them.

Didn’t that damn network have better things to do with their money, like make another Saturday night movie as epic as
Mega-python vs. Gatoroid
?

Debbie Gibson and Tiffany catfight. A Monkee being eaten by a giant snake.

She’d nearly laughed herself sick.

Or it could have been the fact that she was watching that movie alone on a Saturday night after turning down a friend’s request to barhop.

With a sigh, she looked out the front window of the car again.

The next time her brother asked her to investigate some weird bar that catered to monsters in the middle of the freaking Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, she was saying no.

Which would seal her fate as the most boring person in the world.

But really…

Jenna eyed the run-down shack in the middle of nowhere, trying to see beyond the peeling paint and the shuttered windows for any redeeming qualities.

So far, all she saw was a lawsuit waiting to happen when someone put their foot through the rotting floorboards on the porch.

Had someone sent Joss this address as a way to play with his mind?

For the past couple of months, as Joss had gotten more and more convinced that he was close to proving the existence of some of the most incredible creatures in the world, Jenna had considered the fact that maybe someone was leading Joss on. Was there someone out there who had it in for her brother? Who might actually try to lure him out to this remote area and harm him?

Or maybe she’d simply traded Joss’ delusions for her own conspiracy theories.

Jenna stared out at the unrelenting forest, the sight of all that forbidding darkness reminding her of the horror that had been sleep-away camp as a kid.

All those trees. Bugs the size of her hand. And animals that belonged in a nice, safe zoo wandering around without a leash.

What had her parents been thinking when they’d forced her to spend two weeks there?

Hell, she’d always given a wide berth to the neighbor’s overly friendly handbag-sized Chihuahua.

Today, camping to Jenna meant a hotel without room service. And she refused to stay in one of those.

This… This was hell.

“I can’t believe I let him talk me into this. Jesus, I’m an idiot.”

She should just turn around and head back to the lovely bed-and-breakfast about fifteen miles down the road where she’d booked a room for the weekend. It boasted gourmet food, a world-renowned spa and free WiFi.

Civilized.

This place didn’t look civilized. It looked almost…prehistoric.

Except for the parking lot beside the shed where six cars sat. Mocking her.

Shit.

Come on, Jenna, you know I wouldn’t ask you to do this unless it was important, right?

She and her brother had extremely dissimilar views of the meaning of important.

Joss thought it meant proving there really were prehistoric monsters cruising the Great Lakes. Jenna believed important meant solving childhood hunger and the crisis in the Middle East.

But Joss had pleaded with her, begged and bribed and finally guilted her into promising to check out this place.

Come on, Jenna. If there’s nothing there, at least you’ll get a weekend away out of the deal and make a couple thousand bucks.

It had been the money that had sealed the deal. She had her eye on a new refrigerator.

“Jeez, maybe you really are the most boring person in the world.”

She half expected the GPS to agree. Luckily for its health, it stayed silent. But she knew it was mocking her. She just knew it.

With a sigh, she forced herself to put her car in drive and inch down the lane, which was more like a path, rutted and muddy and suited more for the SUVs and Jeeps she saw in that makeshift lot next to the building her brother thought might hold the Holy Grail of his career.

Career. She snorted. What kind of career could a grown man have chasing myths and legends around the world?

He’s getting paid more than double what you made last year, though, isn’t he?

Yep. She’d definitely rather fight with the GPS. It was much less snarky than her own brain.

She was happy for her brother. Really, she was. Usually she just nodded and smiled when he talked about the pitiful grants he received from groups like UFOlogists United and The Center for Cryptids and Unexplained Phenomena to “investigate” Bigfoot attacks and poltergeist damage. The UUs and CCUPs of the world were plentiful but they didn’t pay very well.

And Joss didn’t have a reputable career to fall back on. He was like Indiana Jones without the college gig.

She was the person Indiana Jones would hire to do his taxes.

Damn, she needed to get a hobby. Maybe she’d learn how to skydive. Or maybe she should start with crocheting.

And yes, she was stalling.

The closer she drew to the building, the more her heart started to pound. Instead of pulling into the lot, she parked just shy of it, turning off the car but not removing the key.

She still hadn’t talked herself into getting
out
of the car.

She was pretty sure she was trespassing. Even if the sign at the entrance said state park, the sign had also said the park closed at dusk. And that had definitely been a couple of hours ago because right now the only light was that of the moon.

She’d driven for what seemed like forever to get here and she wasn’t sure where here exactly was.

Above, the sky shone with
waaay
too many stars. All those tiny pinpricks of light were kind of freaking her out. They looked too damn…cheerful.

Where was a good, old flickering streetlight when you needed one? Hell, she’d feel safer on the streets of Reading at midnight with a homeless guy asking her for money than she felt here.

Here… Mountain lions and bears and wolves, oh my.

Why—

The door to the shack opened, light spilling out into the darkness like a party dress in a dark club. A shadow cut through the light and a man walked out. At least, the shadow was man-shaped.

Her mouth dropped open. Holy crap, the guy was tall. So tall, he had to bend down so he wouldn’t hit his head on the doorframe.

Backlit, she couldn’t see his face but she did catch a glimpse of blond hair that brushed linebacker-wide shoulders.

The guy stopped to lean against the porch railing, staring up at those same stars, and now she gasped.

In the weak light of the bare bulb over the door, she could just make out his features.

And, oh my goodness, the man was gorgeous. Her heart actually tripped over a few beats on its way back to a normal rhythm.

He didn’t look like anyone she’d ever seen before. He looked…a little wild. A little rough. A whole lot gorgeous.

Typically, she dated guys who had their hair styled—their word, not hers—every three weeks and didn’t own a pair of jeans that weren’t pressed and creased and able to stand on their own.

This guy…

Wow.

The broad planes and sharp angles of his face gave him an exotic, mysterious air. She couldn’t decide if he looked Nordic or Asian or eastern European. Probably some combination of all of those and more.

Which just made him absolutely stunning.

And made her tingle from head to toe.

He had blond hair, and she didn’t mean run-of-the-mill, department-store gold. She meant Tiffany’s platinum. The guy had to spend at last two days a week in a high-end salon to get that shade of white-blond and make it look so damn natural.

And the waves. Tousled waves fell to just below his shoulders, longer than her recently shorn pixie cut.

My God, the man should be hawking shampoo. Or butter substitute. He’d sure as hell sell more than that freaking Fabio.

Then there was that face. His features were such an exotic mix of east and west, broad nose and forehead, sharp cheekbones and eyes that hinted at an Asian ancestry. But his skin tone was definitely on the lighter side of golden.

She’d never seen anyone like him.

And she’d like to see a whole hell of a lot more of him, preferably naked and sprawled on a bed big enough to let them roll around on it. She didn’t think he’d fit on the queen-size mattress in her room at the B&B but she’d be more than willing to compromise and let him hog more than his share.

She wondered if
GQ
was holding a top-secret Big & Tall male-model convention in the backwoods of Pennsylvania.

If this guy was one of the models, she was sure as hell signing up for the catalogue. And the calendar and the pay-per-view event.

Please, God, let it be unrated and clothing optional.

As he walked off the porch and started toward her, she knew her mouth was hanging open but she couldn’t seem to care.

Not when he wore that quirky grin that let her know he saw her looking at him.

Good old-fashioned lust made her insides turn to liquid even as her nipples hardened into tight points and her thighs clenched like a virgin at a male strip show.

Holy crap.

She knew she’d been suffering from sexual frustration since she’d dumped her last lover five months ago. They’d dated for over a year and she’d never wanted Craig to strip her naked, bend her across the hood of her sensible Honda and make a few dents.

She wished she was the sort of girl to proposition a guy like that. Or any guy she liked, for that matter.

The only propositions she got involved bribes for tax evasion. Not quite enough to make her panties wet.

This guy could probably do it reciting the latest IRS newsletter for CPAs.

Somewhere in the back of her mind was a voice screaming at her to get out of the car, meet him halfway and say, “Hey, you’re hot. Can I climb you like a telephone pole and ride you like a cowgirl?”

She wondered if he’d say no. She couldn’t imagine the man, who looked like a cross between a Nordic god and the Wild Man of Borneo, hadn’t had some pretty far-out come-ons in his time.

What
was
this guy doing out here? For that matter, what was
anyone
doing out here in the middle of nowhere?

What if Joss is actually on to something?

No, that was crazy talk. Crazy talk made you believe ancient aliens built the pyramids.

And no matter how much she admired the skill it took to make Giorgio Tsoukalas’ hair defy gravity or the fact that he’d parlayed a totally insane idea into a series on the History Channel, there was no way she believed little green men from outer space had visited Earth to show ancient humans how to cut perfectly square rocks.

Then what is this guy doing here, where there’s supposed to be nothing and no one?

She’d done her homework before she’d left home. She’d checked out the coordinates on Google Earth and come up with nothing but trees.

This building stood in a clearing. It should’ve shown up on Google Earth. And yet it hadn’t.

Did that mean someone had gone to great lengths to hide this place? To make it secret?

Or had she finally joined her brother and tasted the Kool-Aid?

No, that was… No.