Mr. Mysterious: A Mister Standalone (The Mister Series Book 4) (3 page)

And none of it is good.

People are bad. That is the lesson she taught me early using my own father as an example.

People are bad.

You keep your head down, you do your job, and you go to bed alone for as long as you can stand it. Those are the truths of my world.

And she was right, wasn’t she? Three years out of the protective environment of private education and rolling hills covered in gourmet grass and I was looking straight down the barrel of a very dirty reality of prison, public shame, and regrets.

The front door buzzer rings out into the house, so I set my beer down on the coaster protecting the glass-top end table and shuffle my bare feet past the dining room, down the stairs into the courtyard, past the lap pool and the palm trees, up the stairs into the front house, and cover the distance to the door at a jog.

Don’t want her to think I’m not home.

I smile at that.

Don’t want her to think I stood her up.

I chuckle at that.

Don’t want to keep her waiting.

I get to the door, stop and look at myself in the hall mirror—tanned golden brown, muscles making the perfect outline, hair tousled and messy from surfing this morning—and open it up.

“Hey,” I say.

“Mr. Brown,” she says, with a wink. “Nice to finally see you again.” She holds a large paper sack with a receipt stapled to it out for me to take.

I grab it, then move aside. “Come in, let me find my wallet.” I make a half turn, then turn back. “Hey, you’ve never seen the house, have you?”

“Nope,” she says, blushing a little.

We’ve been flirting all summer. A little wink here. A coy smile there. I have no idea who she is other than the take-out girl from Buster’s Surf Subs. I don’t even know her name. All I know is that she drives a classic powder-blue VW Bug and she smells delicious every time I see her.

“Well, look around if you want. Go find the view. I’ll just be a second. I think my wallet is upstairs on the beach side.”

I jog away, knowing full well she is checking out my ass, my tightly muscled back, the curve of my shoulders.

The ladies can’t help it. I’m quite a specimen.

I don’t ever leave the Colony in anything other than a suit or tactical gear. But when I answer the door for take-out girl, I am nothing but a half-naked surf bum.

“OK,” she says, a little excitement in her voice.

I know where my wallet is. It
is
upstairs on the beach side. I know that because I put it there on purpose.

Take-out girl has been coming here all summer to drop off my food. I order from Buster’s at least once a week. More, if I’m home. Work has been pretty busy recently, so I’ve missed her the past two weeks.

Time to make up for it.

I pass the pool, take the stairs three at a time back into the beach-side house, then hook a left up more stairs where the master bedroom is.

My wallet is on the bed.

I walk over to it, pick it up, and I’m just about to go out onto the terrace to wait for her to find the ocean so I can look down at her from above when she says, “Wow. Look at that fucking view.”

I whirl around.

Now… I planned how this might go. And while I did place the wallet on the bed on purpose, it wasn’t done with the presumption that she’d follow me up here. I figured she’d linger in the hallway for a minute, get a glimpse of the pool on the other side of the guest house, then wander down that way, admiring the palm trees as she looked up at the sky. Then make her way towards the living room and kitchen where the money shot lives.

Once you see the waves crashing twenty feet away, your feet have no choice. You move towards that call of
hear me, see me, know me
.

Her feet do indeed travel and cross the required distance. As she brushes past me, I catch her scent. It’s something sweet. Almost innocent. Strawberries, maybe. A milkshake. A bakery.

Sugar, I realize. She smells like sugar.

It’s so opposite of everything she appears to be. She’s got a black biker jacket on, cut to the shape of a woman. It’s been cool the past few days, some afternoon rain, but it’s not cold enough for this jacket. It hangs off her shoulder a little, giving me a glimpse of honey-bronze skin and the thin strap of her tank top, which has tiny silver spikes as accents. The jacket has patches sewn on it. Colorful ones, mostly with skulls and motorcycles. But only pictures, no writing on them. And it has zippers. They jingle, along with the zippers on her black leather boots. Not Doc Martens. Something flashier than that. Some kind of cross between a biker and a cowboy boot. Her tanned legs are bare and long. Her thighs disappear under a short black and white tartan skirt that reminds me of an inappropriate school-girl uniform.

When she reaches for the top of the glass railing, a million little silver bracelets slip out from under her cuff and sing to me.

She sighs. Long and soft. “God, I love the ocean. I grew up in the mountains, mostly. On a farm.” She laughs—loudly—and turns away from the water, leans back against the railing. Like she’s posing for a photo.

She’s so damn pretty, she could be a model.

“You’re so lucky.”

“Yeah?” I ask, wanting very badly to tuck a stray piece of jet-black hair behind her ear so I can see her face better. Her makeup matches her outfit. Dark, dramatic eyes. Eyelashes so long, I’m not sure how she sees past them. And full, glossy pink lips.

The pink lips throw me a little. It’s like her scent. Something counter to what she appears.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Cinderella,” she says.

And maybe, coming from anyone else, at any other time, that might come off as ridiculous. But now, right here in this moment, it seems… inevitable.

“Of course it is,” I say, walking towards her. She has to tilt her head up as I approach because I’m tall and she is just average height for a woman. Her neck is long and graceful, like a ballerina’s.

How many other things can she possibly be? All wrapped up into this one unique package?

“Why am I lucky?” I ask, leaning on the railing, trying my best not to let her know how interested I am.

She draws in a deep breath and turns with me. We study the beginnings of a sunset for a moment. “This place, right?”

“I like it,” I say. “But it’s just a place.”

“Yeah, but not everyone gets to have all this, you know.”

“Where do you live?” I ask, turning my head to look at her. “It can’t be that far away. No one drives into Malibu to work as a take-out girl.”

“I was sharing a house with some friends for the summer.”

“Summer’s just about over,” I say.

“Yeah.” She sighs. “I know. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised at the level of regret I feel. “Where to? Back to school? You go to college? UCLA?”

“No. I’m done with college.”

“Oh,” I say again. “You look young.”

“I know.” She laughs. “I’m twenty-three. Just turned.”

“Where
did
you go to college?”

“UCLA,” she says. “You guessed right.”

And I don’t know why, but I know it’s a lie. “What did you major in?”

“Mechanical engineering.”

I spit out a laugh.

“What?” she says, turning to face me. But even though her protest comes off slightly offended, her eyes come off totally playful. “I don’t look like an engineer?”

“Not even a little bit, sugar.”

She tries to hold in a grin, fails, and turns her head away. “Well, I am,” she says firmly.

“Then why the take-out job? Shouldn’t you be working for some firm or something?”

“I’m not ready to settle down yet.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Where will you go tomorrow?” I ask.

She looks at me. Dead straight in the eyes. And says, “I’m moving in here with you.”

Chapter Three - Cindy

Paxton Vance, AKA Mr. Brown to me, doesn’t laugh and I know I’ve played every card right these past several weeks. I knew he was interested the very first time I came to deliver him food. Two sandwiches. One foot-long roast beef with extra mayo, lettuce, and tomato. One foot-long grilled chicken with avocado and ranch. Both on white. He always gets the same thing.

He drives a current-year black Audi A7, which surprises me since it’s luxury, but not up to what his standard should be. He bought this house cash six years ago, which would make him just a little bit older than me at the time, and he paid fourteen million for it.

He’s a Leo, which is complementary to my Gemini. And his birthday just passed three weeks ago. He was out of town for it and didn’t celebrate with a foot-long.

He likes to cook and last night he grilled sea bass on the rooftop deck, then ate alone as he watched the sun set.

“With me?” he says, unfazed.

“I think I’d like to get to know you better, Mr. Mysterious.” Which is a lie. One of several I just told him. I know everything about him already. I’ve been studying him for years, just biding my time. Malibu was the perfect place to make my move though, so I waited. He usually rents the house out in the summer. “Better than I already do, anyway,” I say, winking at him.

“Oh, fuck,” he says. “Who the hell are you?” His tone has changed from fun and flirty to dead-ass serious.

“Don’t get crazy, Paxton,” I say, using my secret coy smile on him. He draws in a breath like he wants to say something, but changes his mind and stays quiet. “I’m not here to mess with you. I’m just here to meet you.”

“So you did,” he says, in that low growly voice. “Now what?”

“Now…” I shrug. “We begin.”

“What are we beginning?” he asks.

“A beautiful relationship.” And then, before he can laugh, I play the next card. “Working relationship, Mr. Vance. Working.”

“I don’t need an engineer, sweetheart. So I’m not sure what exactly we’ll be working on.”

“Oh, silly. That was a lie.” I laugh. “Just to fill the space. A placeholder. I wasn’t sure if this conversation would go the way I planned, so—”

“The way you planned?”

“—so I wanted to keep things neutral just in case.”

“In case what?” His voice rises slightly, but not much. I know Paxton Vance well enough from spying to know he doesn’t fly off the handle or overreact. His style is calm. Cool. Completely at ease.

“Just in case we didn’t get this far into the conversation. You’re going to hire me, Pax. I know that. You don’t realize it yet, but you will.”

“I’ll ask again, just for the sake of the game,” Pax says in that serious
I don’t fuck around
voice. “What will I hire you to do? Bring me food?”

I don’t even miss a beat. “I’ll be your assistant, of course. You need help. I’ve been watching you—”

“Watching me?”

Oh, oh, oh—is that a little freakout I hear coming? Maybe? Possibly? Will Mr. Mysterious really lose control so easily?

“I think you better leave, Cinderella. Or whatever your real name is.”

“That’s my real name, all right. My mom had a thing for Disney princesses. She named me and my sisters after them. And since I’m the youngest, and no parent in their right mind wants to name their kid Cinderella, I got stuck with it. Oh, how I wish I was born first. My oldest sister, Aurora,got the normal name.”

“Disney?” He bellows out a laugh so loud, some dog-walking guy down on the beach looks up at us.

“Pax,” I say, taking his hand. He looks down at our newly entwined fingers, startled. “I’m good at what I do, I promise. You need me. You really do.”

“Your occupation is? Stalker?” Another laugh. This is going well.

“Private investigator with firearms permit. My daddy taught me to shoot, so you don’t have to worry about me and weapons. I can do it all. Handguns—even a .45—shotgun, high-powered rifle. I have my own Kevlar and I’ve been doing mixed martial arts since I was nine.”

“Where… how… the fuck did you get a license? You’re a baby.”