Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,103
Synthesize the fire-switch elements to restore our world and share with others. Finish the IDA matching tests…”
She peered up at him suspiciously. “What tests?”
“To find all the Wavercrest brides who might want a Tritonyri mate. Your mother sent word that Evens is ready to reopen the Sunset Falls IDA outpost.”
With a low growl, she rolled herself atop his chest and pointed her finger right into the delicate tattoo of the shell she’d burned into him. “You’re already matched.”
“I’m Titanyri.” He grabbed her finger and gave it a nip. “The fire-witch and the Phantom are perfect for each other.”
She curled her hand around his and dipped her head to kiss him.
The kiss sparked something hotter and deeper. Not just tongue and breath, not just curling fingers and a more intimate joining, this went all the way to the beating of their hearts.
She pulsed a sonogram at him, raw and wicked, and the throb of his heart—and his mermanly bits—quickened, her own desire rising in time.
“I want you,” she told him. “I love you.”
“I feel it, like a burning tide.” He lifted her in his strong arms and spun her under him, so she was flying and diving at once. “You will always be the light I seek.”
And when he kissed her this time, he took her breath away and gave her the stars.
The Fall 2020 season of the Intergalactic Dating Agency brings a Beast Battalion to Earth to protect the clandestine reopening of the Big Sky IDA outpost in Sunset Fall, Montana. With such a strong and protective team of powerful warriors, no doubt the reopening will go off as smooth as the arc of a shooting star across the night sky, right?
[Editor’s note: Actually it will go off more like a shaken bottle of Sunset Springs carbonated water.]
Chapter 1
So this was the place?
Mr. Evens’ Odds & Ends Shop was exactly as Tyler Lang had imagined it. And she’d been forced to imagine it because it didn’t show up anywhere online. No social media presence, no search engine optimization, no digital footprint at all. Like, did it even exist if it didn’t have an email address?
Which was exactly what she wanted right now.
Tilting back her denim baseball hat, she studied the quaint storefront across the street with its old wavy-glassed windows framing piles of used books, second-hand furniture, knickknacks, and an antique steamer trunk—brass buttons gleaming—labeled “Mystery! Box! 100! Dollars!”
Ugh, mysteries. Who would pay good money for uncertainty and likely disappointment?
Life provided plenty of that for free.
Squinting against the gleam of the low September sun across her glasses, she lifted her gaze to the trio of narrow windows on the second floor. The windows were just slightly opened, no screens, the scalloped hems of white curtains peeking out. What century was this? But the eponymous Mr. Evens had promised on-site lodging along with the job, and the idea of not having to go anywhere or encounter anyone wasn’t just what she wanted, it was what she needed.
Yeah, this was the place, all right.
Reaching back into her rented Jetta, she grabbed her computer bag. She locked the door behind her. Locking up probably wasn’t necessary in Sunset Falls, Montana—hence the open windows—but since almost everything she owned was in the car, she wasn’t taking any chances.
She didn’t like chances any more than mysteries.
Glancing both ways before crossing the street (probably also not necessary here) she strode up to the shop. The gilt-like paint of the name on the door had flaked in a few places. Yeah, she knew how that felt, but if Evens wasn’t bothering to touch up the paint and had to trick someone into spending a hundred bucks on a rotting old trunk, how could he need—or afford—ground-up enterprise data systems architecture? She grabbed her phone from her back pocket to triple-check that the first installment payment really had cleared.
“No signal?” Uuuugh, the only thing worse than a mystery.
The front door opened with the cheery clang of a cowbell.
“No signal!” came an equally cheery voice.
With a resigned sigh, she tilted her hat up again. “I swear I just had a couple bars.”
“You might’ve. It comes and goes. Like a lot of things in Sunset Falls.” The man—tallish, lean, maybe a decade older than her twenty-seven although he had the sort of face where it was hard to tell—smiled. “Ms. Lang, I presume? I’m Evens. And I’m thrilled you’re here. How was the drive from San Francisco?”
“Long, but pretty most of the way.” She dredged up a return smile since