CAVE MEN (The First Mountain Man Book 4): The First Mountain Man, #4

By Frankie Love

Finding my best-friend is my one and only mission.
I thought maybe she'd been kidnapped, hurt, lost – I never imagined time travel.
When I slide into a prehistoric lagoon, I know she must be here. Somewhere.
But I'm not alone in this jungle.
The moment I step onto dry land, it's not a wild animal I'm facing off.
It's two primal, feral, filthy, dirty men.
It's not that they need a shower. No. These men need something else.
I can see it in their eyes.
Feel it in their touch.
There's only one thing these cave men want.
And it's me.

Dear Reader,
Storm and Carnage have been waiting a long time for Summer.
Now that she's come, maybe she'll want to stay awhile.
Who could blame her? She's found herself two growly ass men with one thing on their mind: forever.
Xo, Frankie

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frankie Love
• Release date: Oct 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201891664

Frankie Love

Frankie Love writes filthy-sweet stories about bad boys and mountain men. As a thirty-something mom who is ridiculously in love with her own bearded hottie, she believes in love-at-first-sight and happily-ever-afters. She also believes in the power of a quickie. Get ready to fall in love … you deserve it! **Frankie also writes under the name Charlie Hart!

Book preview

1

Summer

After two days of waiting for news on my missing friend Fancy, I board a plane and head to the Yucatan jungle myself.

Of course, the authorities are searching everywhere for the missing paleontologist, and it's not that I don't trust them to find my best friend, but I have to take things into my own hands.

It's Fancy we're talking about, my best friend since forever, my foster sister who's been with me through thick and thin. I can't lose her, not without looking for her myself.

I know she didn’t just leave her life behind. She’s a smart woman. She's been through too much to just do something reckless.

The authorities suggested maybe she chose to walk away from her life. But anyone who knows her knows that isn't an option. She was excited about the research she’s doing. This dig is the find of a lifetime.

Tired of crying, I wipe my eyes as the plane takes off. I've never flown on my own before. It's totally out of my comfort zone. But I don't care about comfort zones right now. I just care about finding my best friend.

After a day of briefing with the search team and the police, I realize they've done everything possible.

There are no leads, nothing to go on. Apparently Fancy isn’t the first person to go missing around here, and none of them have ever been found.

She was in the Paradise Palms parking lot when the rest of her team decided to go to the beach. They watched her turn left into the jungle and no one saw her again.

There’s no footage of her at any of the local resorts, no cameras catching her getting into a vehicle. There's no record of her at all.

Her phone hasn’t been used since she went missing, and it hasn’t been recovered.

There isn't a single clue as to where she went, except for this jungle. The lead archeologist, Carlos, is helpful to an extent. He shows me where Fancy slept, and tells me if there's anything I notice I should let him and the police know.

But Fancy wasn't one for material possessions, and there's not much here. She didn't write in a journal, didn't keep a diary full of secrets. That wasn't Fancy's style. I was her closest friend and her only family.

Fancy's never even had a boyfriend, let alone a secret internet admirer she could’ve run off to meet, as the police suggested. I'm not surprised to hear she didn't go to the beach with her teammates, though. That wasn't really her style either. She'd always prefer a guidebook and gummy worms over a beach day.

But I can’t give up. I care about finding her more than anyone else. So after I've talked to everyone who's working on this disappearance, I decide to set foot into the jungle myself.

I pack my bag with plenty of supplies: all of my home remedies, my elixirs and tonics and salves, because that's what I do. I am prepared, if nothing else. A childhood in foster care taught me that no one else is going to look out for me. It’s up to me to look after myself.

So when I dress and pack for the jungle, I do just that. I bring bug spray and sunscreen, plenty of protein bars, and iced coffees in cans for liquid fuel.

I put on sturdy boots, and over my bathing suit, I wear cargo shorts and a sensible top that has my apothecary shop logo printed on the front. I fold up a raincoat just in case it gets stormy before I come back to the hotel that I've checked into.

The authorities don't think she is in the jungle, but they don't know Fancy like I do. She loves to explore. She loves to go off the beaten path. It's where she has always felt safest, and I can relate to that. Our lives have never been normal. We were abandoned before we learned to read. We were survivors in the truest sense, so maybe Fancy's out here doing just that—surviving.

I follow the trail from the Palm Paradise parking lot and find myself on a path in the jungle. I can see it's been traveled on quite a bit, and at the end of the path, there's a fork in the road.

Thinking of Fancy, I take the one less trodden and begin to explore. I see an entrance to a cave and, considering my best friend, I decide to explore it. There’s a narrow entrance, and what looks like a tunnel system of interconnected caves. I put on my headlamp and flip it on the moment I enter the dank space. There are stalagmites and stalactites from the floor and the ceiling—which I know because Fancy taught me the difference—and I look at the mud on the walls, thinking it might work really well for a mud mask.

I've never considered using Mayan clay. I've been working so hard to get my apothecary and body care business off the ground, and haven't quite yet made a niche for myself. But maybe I need to look at more exotic ingredients for my blends.

This is what I'm thinking about when the earthquake happens.

I say earthquake because that's the only way I can describe it. The walls begin to shake, the floor begins to rumble and the water at my feet begins to slosh over my boots. I brace myself against the cave wall, scared.

What's happening? I shriek, but there's no one here to hear me. There's nothing at all.

I try to get out of the cave the way I came. If there's an earthquake happening, I don't think a cave is the place I want to be.

I start to cry, realizing it's really bad. My knees buckle and I fall to the ground, scraping up my hands, water covering me. I hold onto a rock, hoping to secure myself when my feet slip out from under me. I am submerged in water, then pulled by a current.

How is it possible for a wave to be rolling through this tunnel?

My body is pushed forward, and it's like a chute has opened up. Like I’m on the log ride at Disneyland, only I’m being pushed through the flume all on my own, no barrel to carry me.

It's a water slide, propelling me forward at an alarming pace. The