Mr. Mysterious: A Mister Standalone (The Mister Series Book 4)
Chapter One - Mac (Mr. Perfect) Right Now
Chapter Two - Paxton - Eight Weeks Ago
By J. A. Huss
Edited by RJ Locksley
Copyright © 2016 by J. A. Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-944475-10-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
DESCRIPTION
Paxton Vance isn’t as cryptic as he thinks. That broody nature and tough-guy exterior aren’t fooling me one bit.
I know everything about him. I listen in on his most personal phone calls. I read his mail before he does. I even know what his mother got him for Christmas last year.
You’re the man of my dreams, Paxton Vance. You just don’t know it yet.
But don’t worry, I’ll remind you. I’m here to give you everything you need, before you know you need it.
So don’t get defensive because I take a challenge seriously. You have to open up to someone, and that someone is me.
Besides, you can’t stay Mr. Mysterious forever. Why play the game if you never want to win?
ALL BOOKS IN THIS SERIES CAN BE READ AS A STANDALONE!
Mr. Perfect
Mr. Romantic
Mr. Corporate
Mr. Mysterious
Mr. Match
Chapter One - Mac (Mr. Perfect) Right Now
The sound of a helicopter outside wakes me. Rubbing my eyes, I turn over, find Ellie missing—she’s up in Idaho Springs with Ming and Ariel for a spa weekend—and sigh a little, wishing she was here.
But the helicopter sound gets louder. So loud, in fact, the walls start vibrating. Ellie has complained about this in the past when I’ve come home from a trip using the helicopter, but no one has ever come to the house in a helicopter but me, so I’ve never experienced it.
What the fuck is happening?
My mind races with all the worst-case possibilities.
Ellie fell off a cliff up in the mountains.
No, that’s stupid. They wouldn’t Life Flight her here, for fuck’s sake. They’d take her to a hospital. I’d be woken up by a phone call, not a helicopter.
Some kind of work emergency.
Equally stupid. Work is twenty minutes away by car. No one but me would fly over here from work. Hell, no one but me has a helicopter at work. We have a ton of jets over there, but only one helicopter. And it’s mine. Parked outside. On my helipad.
Nolan. He’s my next guess.
But no. I just talked to Nolan a few hours ago. He called to ask me if he should threaten or bribe Ivy’s OBGYN into telling him the sex of the baby. They just had an appointment the other day and Nolan emailed me some ridiculous blobby-thing picture of their bun in the oven. Ivy has taken the surprise route as far as the baby’s sex goes.
Nolan isn’t handling that well.
I told him bribery is probably better than threats. So it can’t be Nolan outside. He wouldn’t leave Ivy alone. Besides, he’s too far away for a helicopter ride. He’s out at that desert hotel they run.
It’s not Oliver. I know he’s in New York trying to close some deal.
Pax is the only guess left.
And he makes sense, so I throw the covers off and jog down the hallway towards the front door. Scout barks excitedly, following full speed behind me, ever the faithful farm dog. I don’t even know where Pax lives right now. He says he has an office in LA, but I’ve never seen it. And he’s always out here in Colorado with Oliver.
But Oliver called me just this morning wondering if I’d seen or talked to Paxton, and I had to tell him no. Pax never bothers with me unless one of us has called a Mister meeting.
Scout crashes into me as I slide on the smooth polished floors in my socks. The house is chilly now that fall is in full swing. And Ellie likes to keep the thermostat in the in-floor heating turned up, but she’s not here to regulate the temperature. So I slip my feet into the boots I wear out to the barn and grab the first thing my fingers come in contact with from the foyer closet, and pull the navy-blue pea coat on as I step out into the frigid darkness.
I try to close the door before Scout can get through, but she’s way ahead of me in the escape plan. She wiggles through and starts running towards the helipad, her long silver-blue sheepdog fur waving and bouncing with her short, quick strides.
She runs circles around the new arrival, which is off to the left of my own helicopter, like she can herd this thing into submission. Her bark fills the night and I look around nervously, still not quite accustomed to living in the middle of nowhere with the closest neighbors a mile away.
The helicopter has landed and the engine suddenly stops. The propellers start to slow down, that
womp womp womp
sound fading as two men get out. One stumbles while the other one helps him walk.
I stand there watching.
It
is
Pax. The stumbling one. I can tell by his gait. But I’m more surprised about who he’s with than I am about the midnight helicopter appearance.
Five.
Hmmm.
Paxton is loud as they walk towards the large farmhouse-style front porch. I forgot to flip the light on, so everything is dark and still. Scout follows them, circling them like she does the geese we keep in the barn.
Paxton is slurring his words when he stumbles again. Five has a hold of his coat, so he doesn’t go down.
“Come on, asshole,” Five growls. “Get your shit together.”
“My
shit
?” Paxton laughs, obviously drunk. “My shit is so together, you Aston motherfucker. And just wait!” Pax yells, pointing up at the sky like he’s crying
Eureka
! Loud enough to make an echo off the house. “Just wait! He will blame you too!” He laughs loud and uproariously. “He will blame you
toooooooooo
!”
“What the fuck is going on here?” I ask Five when he approaches the porch. Pax stumbles on the front stoop, almost smashing his nose on the concrete steps, but stops the catastrophe by slamming one hand, palm down, on the smooth stone. The other hand holds a drink.
I squint at it. A small tumbler glass with ice and something that looks like… mint leaves sticking out.
He didn’t spill a drop. It’s still three quarters full.
Five sighs, but says nothing.
“What’s
going on
here?” Pax bellows, grabbing the railing with the drinkless hand while the other tries to get the rim of the glass to his lips. He takes a long slurp and then waves his hand in the air. A splash of alcohol pops out of the glass and falls in a stream, right into the open mouth of my dog.
“Scout,” I say sternly. But she’s beyond excited right now. Her little nub of a tail is wagging and bobbing furiously as she hops around Paxton like he’s the best thing ever. “What the fuck are you doing here, Pax?”
Ellie would not like this one bit. She barely tolerates Mysterious. He’s way too much for her. He’s way too much for
me
, to be honest.
“Tell him.” Pax laughs. “
You
tell him,” he says again.
I look at Five, who rolls his eyes and cops a seat on my porch railing, leaning back a little, like this is going to be a long story and he needs to get comfortable. “Oliver is going to kill him.”
