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.
There was a reasonable explanation for everything. She’d just have to come back in the light of day and find it.
No way in hell was she getting out of her car and asking the hot giant if he could introduce her to Bigfoot.
Chapter Two
Andy had noticed the car parked up the lane as soon as he’d leaned against the porch railing and looked out into the dark forest.
His night vision was good enough to make out the woman in the car. A damn pretty woman who stared at him as if he were an exhibit in a sideshow.
What the hell was she doing here? Who the hell was she? And how the hell had she gotten here?
He didn’t recognize her, which didn’t mean anything. Except…she smelled totally Normal.
Edible but Normal.
Which meant she really shouldn’t be out there staring at the Mystyk Bar as if she’d stumbled onto Shangri-La. Which was absolutely worth staring at for hours.
The outside of the Mystyk…not so much.
Good thing he hadn’t shifted to go lumbering through the forest to the cabin he and Fry had rented.
He’d thought maybe he’d get lucky and scare the crap out of a long-haul trucker or two as he made a “classic Bigfoot crossing”.
That show Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet had become one of his not-to-be-missed pleasures in life. And that skeptical scientist was kinda hot.
Though not as hot as the girl in the car.
What was she doing here?
Probably better go find out before anyone else walked out of the bar. Didn’t want her to get the bright idea that she needed to get out of the car and investigate. Some of the other Mystyk patrons might not be so willing to divert her attention.