Reign: A Royal Military Romance (61 page)

J
ake was
at the diner early. He preferred getting places early and then having time to mentally prepare for whatever was coming, even when it was only a few girls out looking for Bigfoot. They’d be no problem, but why stress out about anything?

After all, he had plenty on his plate. For the first time in almost a hundred years, someone had seen a grizzly bear, and it hadn’t been him. He’d been far away from Mineral Mountain all weekend, almost clear across the park, so it had been one of his pack. That is, if you could call three shifters in the same area a pack — they were more like castoffs, the ones who hadn’t fit into the weird dynamics of the real packs up north, in Alaska. They’d chosen the place together, almost fifteen years ago, after learning that the North Cascades were introducing a Grizzly Initiative, but other than that, Jake rarely interacted with the other men. He was pretty sure neither had moved, but he didn’t even know that for sure.

Jake was halfway through his cup of coffee when he suddenly noticed two girls, both looking in their twenties, get out of a small sedan. They were talking animatedly, and they weren’t local — Jake was pretty sure he knew every local girl — but that wasn’t even what he noticed.

What he noticed was that the brunette was
stunning
. Jake’s coffee stopped halfway to his mouth and his hand hung there, mid-air, as he stared at her and her friend walking through the parking lot to the front door of the diner.

She was just wearing jeans and a striped, button-down shirt, but something about the way both items fit her, hugging her curves, giving the impression that they just barely contained her raw sensuality, made Jake’s mouth go dry.

The other girl was nice enough looking too, he figured, but god
damn,
the brunette.

The girls walked in and said something to Debbie at the hostess station, and she smiled and pointed right at Jake. All at once, in very quick succession, he realized that they were the Bigfoot hunters he was meeting, that he had a half-boner, and that he’d been staring-slack jawed at them for several seconds now. He tried to play it off, looking away from them and taking a sip of his coffee, before making eye contact when they approached.

“Hi,” said the brunette. “You’re Jake Kodiak?”

“Sure am,” he said, smiling. He stood from the booth and shook the girls’ hands, towering over them. His fur had finally receded and he’d rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt.

“I’m Ariana and this is Theresa,” they said. “We’re from the Cryptid Research Foundation.”

“Of course,” he said. “Please, have a seat and tell me what you need to know.”

The waitress came right over; Ariana got a coffee and Theresa got a Mountain Dew. When Ariana took a sip, Jake felt like all he could see were her lips, touching the crappy diner mug, then the way her tongue flicked out afterwards, collecting the stray drops.

“We think there may be a Bigfoot in the area,” Theresa began.

Ariana coughed in surprise, and shot the other girl a look. Jake’s eyebrows shot up.

“There have been several sightings of a possibly-unknown creature,” Ariana said. She put her coffee down on the table. Admonished, Theresa took a sip of Mountain Dew. “We wanted to meet with someone who knows the area well to see if we can get some information about the areas where the unknowns were seen.”

“Sure,” said Jake. “I’ve been a ranger for about six years now, but I’ve lived here since I was twenty. Used to be a lumberjack before we had to close up shop,” he said.

Stop trying to show off for this girl
, he thought.

“I know these woods inside and out,” he went on, unable to stop himself.

“Great!” piped up Theresa.

* * *

A
riana wished
that Theresa would shut up and stop making them look like idiots in front of the ranger. Yes, she was very —
very —
aware that he was attractive and Theresa was single, but they were there on business, dammit.

Sure, his forearms were visibly rippling with muscle, and sure, he was huge and burly and perhaps the most solidly built man she’d ever seen. And yes, sure, he could probably lift her up and toss her onto a bed without breaking a sweat—

Ariana swallowed and forced herself to focus. For a brief moment she thought of Graham, and then thought the better of it. He wasn’t coming off too well at the moment.

Instead, she produced a small map of the national forest from her bag, with three small red X’s on it. “As far as we can tell, these are where the three sightings took place,” she said. One X was on the side of a lake, one in the middle of the forest, and one right on a small back road.

Jake took the map and pored over it, carefully, his brows knitting together.

“Someone saw Bigfoot at the Last Chance?”

“Is that the bar?”

“Yeah, it’s Tom’s place. It’s right around here, if I’m not mistaken.” He knew he wasn’t, but tried to downplay his sense of direction sometimes, knowing it was a little too good to be human.

Ariana sighed. “We haven’t been able to talk to that witness yet,” she admitted. “He says he saw Bigfoot walk out of the forest and get into a truck.”

“A green Ford,” offered Theresa.

“The Last Chance is a bar,” said Jake. He seemed amused at them, and Ariana was starting to get annoyed — a little with him, for being so smug about this, but more with her job for making her do this and with Theresa for
believing
this nonsense.

“Right,” said Ariana. “Clearly, there are some external factors we’ll have to consider when interviewing this subject.”

“What is it you need to know about these three areas?” Jake asked.

“We’ve looked at the maps quite a bit, but we don’t have a good sense of how people move through the park,” Ariana said. She could feel his eyes on her, and she had to admit they made her a little nervous.
I have a boyfriend, I have a boyfriend
, she thought. “Do people frequent these parts of the park, or are they more difficult to get to?”

“Well, you can drive right up to the Last Chance,” said Jake.

“Right,” said Ariana.

He pointed at the map, tapping one big finger on the red X by the lake. Ariana noted that he had huge, calloused hands, clearly still used to working outside.

Forest rangers still do a lot of physical labor
, she thought.

She also noted that he didn’t have a wedding ring.

“This part of the lake, it depends,” he said. “It’s no problem if you’ve got a boat, but it’s long, tough hike from somewhere else. Backpackers love it, though, for the solitude. If you can make it there, it’s real beautiful.”

“Do you have any kind of backcountry logs?” Ariana asked.

“In the backcountry,” Jake said.

Ariana wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

“They’re not at the ranger station,” he explained. “We keep them in a box where the backcountry trails split off the more heavily used ones. When they were at the ranger station they almost never got used.”

“Do they get used now?”

Jake shrugged. “More than they did,” he said. “But there’s no way to really double-check who’s going out there. There’s not even a rule that someone in the back country needs to sign in. Most of them just know we’ll find it helpful if they go missing.”

“I see,” Ariana said.

Just as she was about to ask something else, the waitress came up.

“Can I get you all anything?” she asked.

Arian opened the menu quickly and scanned: the usual diner food. Next to her, Theresa piped up. “Are you still serving breakfast?” she asked.

“All day, sweetheart.”

“I’ll have a breakfast burrito and a milkshake.”

Theresa got a milkshake at every diner they went to. She even had a blog about it: Milkshakes Across America.

“Can I get a grilled cheese and a side salad?” Ariana asked.

“Course.” The waitress looked at Jake, and something in her entire demeanor changed, just a little. She leaned a bit on one hip, blinked her eyes a little too much. “The usual for you, darlin’?” she asked.

“Usual sounds perfect,” Jake said, smiling at the waitress. Ariana noticed the woman bite her lip just a tiny bit.

I bet every woman in this town has the hots for him
, she thought.
He’s gotta have some lucky girl at home.

“Be right back,” the waitress said, and walked away. Ariana thought she noticed her hips swinging just a little more.

“So, the backcountry,” said Jake.

“How hard would it be for us to check the logs?” Ariana asked. “It might be useful to see if we could find anyone else and ask them about their experiences.”

“The logs for this trail—“ he tapped his finger on the X by the lake again, “—are only a couple miles in. You could do it in a long day hike, no problem. But the logs for this one—“ he tapped the X further in, the one Jane had reported, “—you better be prepped to spend the night.”

Theresa piped up again. “We brought backpacking gear,” she said, leaning across the table. “We’re very prepared.”

Jake raised one eyebrow. “You take this seriously.”

“It’s our job,” Ariana said quickly. “The CRF is dedicated to scientifically investigating possible cryptids, so tracking down all leads is part of why we’re here.”

Jake shook his head. “The jobs people have never cease to amaze me,” he said. “Hell, I just cut down trees until they said I couldn’t any more.”

“We’ve all gotta do something, right?” Ariana asked.

“Hunting Bigfoot isn’t too bad of a job,” he conceded. “I bet it’s at least interesting and you meet some exciting people.”

Ariana laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

The waitress came back over, this time carrying three plates. She set down Jake’s first, then the girls’.

“Be right back with your milkshake,” she said, and walked away again.

“That was fast,” said Theresa.

“It’s always fast here,” said Jake.

Privately, Ariana wondered if the other patrons got the same excellent level of service that Jake did. She was willing to bet that they didn’t.

“Help yourself to my fries,” Jake said, and they did. All three munched in silence for a moment, and Ariana spun the map so it was facing her again.

“So this third sighting, by the backpacker,” she said. “Does that area get a lot of people?”

“Even less than the lake,” he said.

“She did say she was on the third day of a five-day hike,” Theresa volunteered. She stole another of Jake’s fries, looking up at him through her lashes. “That’s pretty far in.”

At least flirt on your own time
, Ariana thought.

“How long would it take someone to hike there, not as part of a big loop?” Ariana asked.

Jake pulled the map toward himself again, munching fries with one hand. “You really have to go in a loop around the mountains,” he said. “There’s no trails that just go straight up and over, and anyone trying to go cross-country would have be in very good shape, and really know where they were going.” Still looking at the map, he grabbed his burger in two hands and took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Someone could get there in a day, then another day back, but they’d be tired as hell,” he concluded.

The waitress came back with Theresa’s milkshake and two straws.

“Just in case you want to share,” she said. Theresa unwrapped one straw and took a long pull from it, the chocolate ice cream rising up the clear tube. She looked over at Jake, then held out the other straw.

“Want any?” she asked, smiling and twirling the straw in her fingers.

“No thanks,” he said. “I’m not much of a sweets guy.”

“Me either,” said Ariana, even though she was well aware she wasn’t being asked. She took another bite of her sandwich. It was pretty good. At least they used real cheese — half the small-town diners in the United States seemed to use American cheese, which just didn’t do it.

The table was silent for a few moments as all three of them chewed their food, silently regarding the map.

“So what are you thinking?” Jake finally asked.

“I’m thinking I’d be interested to see the backpacking logs for that trail,” Ariana said. “Honestly, that’s the only sighting that really interests me.”

“That lake is hard to get to, though,” said Theresa.

“Unless you’ve got a boat,” said Ariana.

“That doesn’t interest you at all?”

“It was dark, and Nate admitted he only saw something for a split second. If it wasn’t another person out on the lake, it was probably a bear or something.”

Theresa frowned and drank more of her milkshake.

“You don’t believe that Bigfoot drives a green Ford?” Jake asked. Ariana glanced up at the map to his handsome face. Smiling, his eyes sparkling, like he was teasing her.

He had dimples. She hadn’t noticed the dimples before. For one moment, she was speechless.

Stop it, you’ve got a boyfriend
, she thought.

“I heard Bigfoot prefers Chevrolet,” she told him, smiling right back. She knew she should keep this strictly business, but she couldn’t help it. Besides, it was totally harmless: he could obviously have his pick of anyone in town. It wasn’t like he’d pick her.