Private Dicks (9 page)

He laughs, and
there
it is, the bond, and his happiness is so complete and overwhelming I have to rest my head on his shoulder for a few seconds. This is it, this is warm and safe and pack. He pulls me closer, and I nuzzle against his shoulder. This is home.

"I don't give a horse's ass about invading some bastard's privacy!"

Sometimes I hate my job. Looking at the over-dressed, over-indulgent, over-egoed man looming above my desk made me aware this was definitely one of those times.

"It says detective on your door, doesn't it?"

Unfortunately, for me, it says just that, or a form of it anyhow. Mason Cason Investigations. And yes, my parents had a strange sense of humor. I have a brother named Jason and a sister named Stason; you got it, Mason, Jason and Stason Cason. Don't even get me started on our middle names.

"He doesn't look much like a detective, Daddy."

That whiny teenager's voice and her equally annoying, perpetually pouting mouth were the reason for this meeting. And if you want to know the truth, she was right for probably the first time in her spoiled, gum-snapping, daddy's-little-girl life.

I was definitely not what you would expect when you heard the words private detective. I wasn't a cop in a former life so I didn't have that rough, streetwise look or the propensity to use police lingo like perp or snitch or doughnut. I was simply an average-looking guy. My short black hair wasn't styled unless the spikes that popped up everywhere and that I tried unsuccessfully to mash down all day long counted. I had an average but pleasant enough face that generally sported a pair of high prescription glasses perched on a straight but average nose. I did have contacts, but I was too lazy most days to put them in. My suits were off the rack, the low-priced sales rack where the colors ran from average brown to average black. I was told on more than one occasion that I looked more like an accountant than anything else.

I guess I could have spruced up my image a bit. Buy some new, hipper clothes, dye and gel my hair to within an inch of its life, make my office a bit more inviting with some plants and entertainment magazines strewn about. My boyfriend also thinks getting furniture that's not circa-1970 might help, but I figured, why bother? I was a moderately successful, mostly happy—despite my demeanor—thirty-four year-old man with his own office, a condo, a 2002 Honda Civic, and a cranky cat who peed on the furniture. What was there to change?

"So are you gonna take the case or not? Doesn't seem like you're rolling in clients here." This loud, big-bellied man took the phrase "getting on my last nerve" to a whole new level.

I pushed my glasses further up my nose and shuffled some papers around on my desk, ensuring my brain and mouth were in professional mode before I answered. "Mr. Durango, if you seriously think an older man has impregnated Elizabeth ..."

The gum-snapper spoke up. "Already told you I don't use Elizabeth. It's Shahara. And what does em-pre-gate mean?"

"My apologies … Shahara." More than you realize, brat. "Impregnate simply means how you got in your condition."

"Condition? Don't you speak English? You don't look foreign or nothing."

Durango stared open-mouthed at her before huffing out a breath ripe with cigarette smoke. "He means knocked-up, for Christ's sake."

"I'm sorry," I apologized yet again. Frankly, I had no idea exactly what I was apologizing for, but going by the looks on both Durangos' faces, I thought it was appropriate. "I'll choose my words more carefully from now on." I was so over treating these people with kid gloves. My teeth and jaw were beginning to ache from the fake smile and forced tone I had been struggling with for the past half hour, and I couldn't foresee the situation getting any better.

"Well ..." snap-snap, "Yeah, you should."

I could have sworn the air got sucked out of the room as anxiety and passive aggressive irritation swirled within me. I needed these people out of my office—small and impersonal as it was—so I could come down from the fucking annoyance bashing around inside me.

"I was saying that if you believe you know the man who … knocked-up your sixteen-year-old daughter, this is a situation better suited to the police."

"No!" Shahara squawked. "They'll put him in jail. I wanna keep him."

"God almighty, Elizabeth, he's not a puppy we can just pick up from the pound."

"But, Daddy, you promised." The girl's bottom lip became impossibly bigger, puffing out further from her gun-snapping teeth as she batted her heavily made-up eyes at her father. It would have been comical if it didn't make me so nauseous.

Daddy caved immediately. "Okay sweetheart. Don't get upset. Daddy will get you what you want. Don't I always, Buttercup?"

Despite the roiling in my stomach and my fingernails-on-blackboard annoyance, I knew rushing from the room to vomit would not be considered professional. While I wallowed in my indigestion, waiting for the lovely family before me to finish their mushy bullshit, the spawn child shot me a look that could only be described as pure evil. Not the sort of evil you see on television or in the movies, but the kind that will steal from a homeless man or get pregnant on purpose to get what she wants.

"This man you say is responsible for your impending grandchild. Is he someone you know?" My professional decorum had returned, and I was, in fact, curious about who Shahara had entrapped in her deceptive web.

"He's wonderful and talented and hot and rich..."

"Elizabeth! Enough. Tell the man his name."

"He might not be that easy to find," she whined while the ache in my head doubled to the tenth degree.

I smiled sickly sweet at her. "Is he lost? And if so, how did he get you pregnant?"

She glared at me. "Not lost. On tour. But I think the tour ended last night."

I pulled my gaze from hers, mostly for fear that I'd reach out and slap the smug, fuck-you're-an-idiot-and-I-could-ruin-you-with-the-snap-of-my-fingers look off her face. I settled my eyes on Durango instead. "So the father of Elizabeth—Shahara's—baby is in a band?"

"Not just any band," she snarled. "The best band in the world."

Searching my brain, I tried to figure out what the best band in the world was to a sixteen-year-old girl. "My Chemical Romance?" She rolled her eyes. "Maroon 5?"

Her face curled up like she'd suddenly whiffed a rotten egg. "Ewwww. He's old."

I personally didn't think Adam Levine was old and he was definitely hot, but to each their own, I guess.

Durango finally interjected himself into the conversation. "They're called Iron Balls."

"Daddy! Iron Wolf, not balls."

"But you keep mentioning iron balls to your friends."

"That's what they call him because of the piercings in his… you know." I was shocked to see she could actually blush and giggle like a real teenager.

I cleared my throat and clenched my hands together under the desk. "And you've seen these 'iron balls?'"

She snorted in my general direction. "Of course. How else would I get fucked up?"

"Elizabeth!"

Goddamn these people were going to send me to an early grave. "I'm assuming she means knocked-up. So this man—this 'Iron Balls'—does he have a real name?"

"You're not very bright, are you?" Shahara's face was dead serious and I had to bite my lip to keep my composure. "Everyone has a real name." She shook her head of teased-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life, black and purple hair then rolled her eyes again. "His name is Jade Jonathan Lee."

Of course it was.

*~*~*

The end of our meeting consisted of me trying to figure out what these people wanted me to do. I had done a lot of "love gone astray cases", cheating and lying spouses, and all that lot, but I'd never been hired to spy on a baby-daddy before. Elizabeth/Shahara or what-the-fuck-ever insisted Jade Jonathan Lee was the father and that she had first-hand knowledge of his iron balls.

My assignment, should I chose to accept it—which I apparently did—was to track down said unaware baby-daddy and inform him that he was indeed going to be a daddy. The Durangos insisted that if Mr. Lee refused to acknowledge said baby, I was to do surveillance work on him to obtain pictures of other underage future baby-mamas he was cavorting with so that they could blackmail the man into taking responsibility. Durango was positive Jade Jonathan Lee must be a pedophile so there had to be other young girls out there also being taken advantage of by him. When I pointed out that maybe wanting his daughter to find and live happily-ever-after with a child-molester might not be such a good idea, the man just replied with "whatever makes my little girl happy." Somehow, I managed to resist rolling my eyes.

Shahara didn't seem to want her baby-daddy to only take responsibility. She wanted him to "love her as much as she loved him and if he didn't, she was totally, like, gonna die." Apparently Mr. Lee would not answer her phone calls—she wasn't sure if she had the right number—or her emails—sent to the fan club, not to Mr. Lee himself—and though she'd only met him once, it was "definitely true love like the kind in those sappy movies that make you cry, not the ones where someone dies though. The good ones."

By the time the Durangos left the office, I was ready to roll my eyes back in my head forever and I definitely needed a hot shower to wash off all the teenage angst and daughter worship. I questioned why I'd taken the case at all, but only until I looked more closely at the number of zeroes on the check in my hand. I honestly wasn't in the habit of taking clients based purely on financial gain, but in this particular situation, I suspected Shahara was lying through her unnaturally straight teeth and I intended to prove it. Truth be told, it was imperative that I proved it.

*~*~*

I left the office early, stopping off at the gym for a session with my trainer. He wasn't all that impressed with my performance or my lackluster attitude, so he pushed me that much harder. My mind wasn't on what I was supposed to be doing, however, and I paid the price with a few wrong moves and a strained muscle in my back. Victor sent me home with my tail between my legs and a promise to get my ass in gear and my head back in the game.

The case was still on my mind while I was driving home, and I was extraordinarily lucky I didn't run any red lights, get stopped for speeding, or kill some poor unsuspecting pedestrian. When I finally let myself into my condo—walking hunched like the old man I felt I was—all I could think about was hitting my bed, stuffing the case in a proverbial box until morning, and sulking about not getting laid for almost a month.

My beautiful Calliope greeted me at the door with a reprimanding meow and quick sprint to her dish. God, I just couldn't catch a break with being bossed around today. She ran back to me while I was stiffly bending to take off my shoes, her body twining around my calf. I reached down to pet her and was rewarded with another strict talking to as she rushed away to her dish again.

I fed my impatient darling and bypassed the idea of food for the luxury of a hot soak in my Jacuzzi. My client list might not have been keeping me flush, but I'd begun my adulthood with some family money, made some good investments, and eventually let myself indulge in some nice things—the Jacuzzi bathtub being at the top of my list. I stripped off my clothes in the hallway, leaving a trail in my wake. I needed to do laundry at some point during the week, or I'd be going to the office in the buff, something I'm sure wouldn't leave me swarming with new clients.

When the tub was filled, I sank happily into the heat of the water, my muscles relaxing and my body becoming boneless. I flipped on the jets and leaned my head against the rim of the tub, a sigh escaping my throat from deep inside. I'd dimmed the lights but hadn't gone as far as lighting candles, though I often did that without shame, at least when my boyfriend wasn't bathing with me. Slipping my glasses off, I pinched and massaged the bridge of my nose, trying to rid myself of the headache that had been building up all day. As the soft acoustic sounds of Pacu de Lucia drifted through the bathroom, I closed my eyes and let the music carry me away to a warm Spanish beach, secluded except for the man I'd been pining after for almost a month. I was too tired and sore to even rub one out, but the thought of my lover holding me was enough to soothe the sulk I'd been planning.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a slob?" The voice startled me, though not enough for me to physically react. I hadn't expected him to be home, but hearing his sexy voice, even in an accusatory tone, made me reconsider how tired and sore I really was.

"Thought you weren't back in town until the weekend." I opened my eyes slowly and took in the beauty that was Jade Jonathan Lee.

Jade Jonathan Lee, twenty-six years old, had legally changed his name at eighteen, never revealing what it had once been after he'd closed that early chapter of his life. His hair was black and straight as an arrow, and it shone and flowed about three inches past his shoulders. He had eyes the color of copper pennies, beautifully framed by long black lashes, and the slanting at the corners gave a definite nod to his Asian heritage. He wasn't a tall man, only five-foot-six or so with a slight frame—not skinny, but wiry and defined in all the right places. He was more fit than any man I'd ever known, the results of running and jumping around on stage three hundred days of the year, I suppose.

He smirked and shrugged at me, hands busy folding the clothes I'd shed in the hallway. "Caught a flight back." He placed the clothes on the vanity then settled himself on his knees by the tub, taking the glasses from my hand and leaning in to peck me chastely on the nose.

"And left the boys to ride on the bus?"

He chuckled softly, one hand moving to swirl in the water. "Perks of being the star, I guess."

After being with Jade for almost four years, I knew he thought of himself as anything but a star or celebrity. He lived the life and faked the indulgences of being a rockstar. However, he was fond of saying he was happiest at home with me and Calliope, where he could simply be who he really was and not worry about the rigors of touring or the ruthlessness of the press. He loved to sing, to write, to compose, even to perform, yet even though he was happy doing those things, he still yearned for the quiet calm of being at home.