“Oh wow,” I said. “If someone wants to truly hide, they should drive to an area away from friends and family, stay off their social media accounts, and leave their cell phone elsewhere?”
“Ditch the phone and delete the social media accounts. Leaving them active lets someone like me find out who their close friends are.”
“Oh, wow. So, they need to delete their accounts totally.”
“Correct.”
“And pay cash for everything.” I chuckled.
“That’d be a good start.”
I gestured behind us. “So, you found a missing girl for Marty and he didn’t pay you?”
“She was his soon to be wife.” He looked at me and grinned. “She disappeared on their wedding day.”
“Oh my God. That sucks. Where’d you find her?” I asked, my tone laced with curiosity. “Can you tell me that?”
He reached into his bag, pulled out a remote, and opened the gate. “In Honduras.”
“Did she have a heart attack when you found her?”
“No. But the men who were holding her did.”
My eyes shot wide. “Holding her?”
“I’ve said too much already. Let’s change the subject.” He tossed the remote into the satchel and then glanced at me. “I’ll need someone to follow me home after we do the paperwork on this car. Want to be that someone? We can grab something to eat afterward if you like.”
Normally, I would have suggested that a lot attendant to follow him home. Whether we had or not, I felt like we’d bonded through the ordeal with Marty. I couldn’t imagine saying no.
“I’d love to.”
He cocked an eyebrow as he turned onto the road. “Follow me home, get dinner, or both?”
It was a no-brainer. “Both.”
4
Vince
We sat across from one another in one of my favorite restaurants, nibbling caprese skewers drizzled with balsamic glaze. I wasn’t necessarily hungry, but I desperately needed a drink after my impromptu meeting with Marty.
“You’ve got access to a lot filled with cars designed for the Autobahn.” I took a sip of my martini and then met her gaze. “You’ve never taken one of them out and seen what it can do?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I cocked a pugnacious eyebrow. “Not once?”
“Truthfully, when I was riding with you, that was the first time I’ve been over the speed limit in one of the dealership’s cars.”
“You’re not adventurous?”
With her fork dangling loosely from the tips of her fingers, she gave me a look of reassurance. “I think I am.”
“It doesn’t sound like you are.”
Her gaze dropped to the table and lingered. After a few seconds, she looked up. “I am.”
“You are what?”
“Adventurous.”
“I’ve made a mental note.” I sipped my martini. “I don’t think I believe you, though.”
“I am. I mean, look at what just happened. I didn’t scream and run.” She lifted a mozzarella ball and shrugged. “It was no big deal.”
“You’d be the first.”
She bit into the cheese. “The first what?”
“The first adventurous woman I’ve met.”
A gentle laugh escaped her. “You’re serious?”
“About what?”
“I’m the first adventurous woman you’ve ever met?”
“If you’re adventurous, the answer’s yes.”
She looked me over quickly, and then grinned. “Are adventurous men attracted to adventurous women or do they prefer someone who’s docile?”
I had no idea what men in general desired, but I preferred an adventurous woman. I lowered my glass and prepared to respond.
“Not that you’re attracted to me,” she blurted. “That’s not what I was saying. I was just--”
“I am--”
Her eyebrows shot up and her face went flush. “Attracted to me?”
She jumped to the conclusion before I was finished speaking. “Attracted to adventurous women,” I explained.
She seemed embarrassed. She was attractive, no doubt. But, I needed a woman in my life about as much as I needed another chin. In hope of providing her self-confidence a little reassurance, I set my martini aside. “I do find you attractive, though.”
Without looking up, she toyed with what remained of her cheese. “Thanks.”
She wasn’t very convincing. Obviously, my claim of her being attractive wasn’t, either. “You’re an attractive woman,” I said with a firm tone. “I’m not relationship material, though.”
She gave me a look. “I wasn’t propositioning you.”
“I thought--”
“I simply asked the question. You clarified yourself. You’re attracted to adventurous women, but you’re not attracted to me. And, just in case you didn’t understand what I was trying to say, I’ll make it clear.” She set the cheese aside and wiped her hands on her napkin. “I’m not attracted to you, either.”
I’d obviously hit a nerve. As I finished my martini, the thought of her not being attracted to me ground against the grain of my being.
I raised my index finger, catching the attention of the passing waiter. I glanced at Jess. “Are you sure you won’t have one? It’s been a long day.”
She let out a sigh. “Sure.”
“Dirty?”
She grinned. “Please.”
I raised my glass toward the waiter. “Two, please.”
I looked her over. Describing her as attractive was an understatement. Everything about her was beautiful. By my guess, she was easily ten years younger than me. And, regardless of the age difference, she was a woman. One-night stands were at the upper limit of my relationship goals, and anything beyond that wasn’t realistic, or desired.
While I was lost in admiration, she nibbled at a cheese ball.
“Two martinis, dirty with extra olives,” the waiter said.
I nodded toward Jess.
He handed her one of the drinks, and me the other. “Enjoy.”
Jess raised her glass. “Here’s to coincidences.”
I gave her an awkward look, but raised my glass nonetheless. “Coincidences?”
Her eyebrows raised. “Finding Marty.”
“Oh.” I coughed a laugh, and then took a drink in toast. “Biggest coincidence ever.”
She took a sip. Then, a gulp.
Her gaze went blank. I sipped my drink and admired her. Having gone the entire day without eating, the two martinis I’d consumed were quickly catching up with me. Her comment about me being unattractive found its way beneath the surface of my skin, and then began to irritate me to no end.
“So, you don’t find me attractive?” I asked. “Did what happened today have an influence?”
“Attractive?” She blinked a few times and then finished her drink. “After you said you weren’t attracted to me, I was just…I don’t know. Being a shit. You’re attractive. Very much so, to be honest.”
“It’s not a big deal if I’m not. I just wanted to see why you didn’t see me as such. The question was driven by curiosity, more than anything.”
She gazed into her empty glass. “I do.”
“If you don’t, that’s fine. My self-esteem’s in order.”
“I’m sure it is.” She chuckled. “But, I do.”
“You do what?”
“Find you attractive.”
I nodded toward her hand. “Another?”
“They go down too easy.” She raised her glass. “Sure.”
“I’ll get you one.” I lifted mine. “But, I’m on my third.”
She grinned. “I’ll see what I can do to catch up.”
I ordered her another martini. As she fidgeted in her seat and nursed her drink, it dawned on me that I had a man handcuffed to four hundred pounds of weight in a spare bedroom of my weekend retreat.
“When you’re finished, we probably need to--”
“I thin
k I’m going to have one more,” she said. “Then, we can do whatever.”
“I was thinking we should--”
“Do you have any more tattoos? Other than the one on your hand?”
“I have a few that aren’t visible, yes.”
“Can I see them?”
Completely caught off guard by her question, I set my drink aside and grinned. “Not if I’m clothed, no.”
She looked me up and down. Her mouth twisted into a smirk. “You’ll need to get undressed for me to see them?”
I leaned onto the edge of the table, glanced at her cleavage, and then met her gaze. “Yes.”
“Is that something you’re willing to do?”
There were many reasons I couldn’t be in a relationship. The biggest was that in my line of work, trusting someone put me at a tremendous risk, and I wasn’t in the risk-taking business. “I told you. I’m not relationship material.”
She laughed no differently than if I’d told the punchline to a joke. After catching her breath, she looked at me as if I were crazy.
“There’s three kinds of men on this earth.” She raised her index finger. “The men I want to fuck.” She extended her middle finger. “The one man I hope to marry.” Her ring finger joined the other two. “And, the men I prefer were dead.”
She cocked her head to the side and grinned a sly grin. “I’m not sure where you’re going to end up, but right now I don’t see any wedding bells in our future, and I don’t want to kill you. At least not yet.”
It seemed the martinis were bringing a dose of courage with them. I met her gaze and held it. “I don’t get undressed to simply show off my tattoos. If I’m taking my clothes off, we’re going to go the distance.”
She lifted the bottom of her glass and drained the few droplets that remained. “Okay.”
“So, you’re up for a one-night stand?”
“I was wanting to see your tattoos, but I’ll settle for that, yes.”
There was only one acceptable response to her offer.
I raised my index finger and gave it. “Check, please.”
5
Jessica
I had too many martinis to be making intelligent decisions, I knew that much. I was also aware that Vince Devoe was standing in the living room of my apartment with the understanding that we were going to have sex.
I wasn’t having second thoughts about my offer, although I probably should have been. If our encounter left him anything other than satisfied, I doubted I – or the dealership – would ever see him again.
My fear of disappointing him wasn’t about selling cars. Or about the money I may earn from his purchases. I was a people pleaser, and the thought of dissatisfying him in any way wore heavily on my mind. In my inebriated state of being, satisfying him with sex was going to be a difficult task.
While he glanced around the living room, I mentally struggled with what my next step should be. Standing between the door and the couch with his hip cocked slightly and his thumb resting against the pocket of his jeans, he was undoubtedly the most handsome man to ever darken my apartment’s door.
But.
He was a client, and I was drunk. For those two reasons alone, I considered trying to talk my way out of the mess I’d gotten myself into.
He lowered his leather bag on the floor and pushed it to the side with his foot. Incapable of looking away, my eyes followed his every movement. He mussed his hair with the tips of his fingers and then met my gaze.
Jesus.
You’re fucking gorgeous.
My decision was made. I clapped my hands together. “Well, let’s see ‘em.”
His eyes thinned. “Excuse me?”
“The tattoos,” I said. “You said you were going to show them to me, remember?”
With his eyes locked on mine, he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt. My mouth curled into a girlish grin. In anticipation of what was sure to come, I gawked like a kindergartner watching two monkeys fuck during the school’s spring trip to the zoo.
Certain that his confident strut would be supplemented by an amazing athletic body, I stared with an open mouth and wide drunken eyes as he unfastened each button. After the last one, he pulled the garment over his shoulders and draped it onto the arm of the couch.
My expectations of what he had been hiding under his shirt was spot on. Standing before me half naked, at least part of what fueled Vince Devoe’s confidence was painfully obvious. His body defined muscular perfection.
As if it had been chiseled of marble, his torso was free of anything but muscle. Tattoos adorned each perfectly shaped slab of muscle that formed his chest. Each of his well-sculpted ab muscles were stacked on top of one another like small stones. A prominent ‘v’ pointed into the waist of the jeans that now hung low on his hips.
Leaning against the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room, I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and waited for more.
He slowly turned to the side, and as he did, I noticed his biceps were each covered in various tattoos. His muscular back was also a canvas – covered in a colorful dragon. The addition of the tattoos only made him more mysterious, sexier, and much more attractive.
I’d reached the point that there was no turning back. Disappointment may have been in Vince Devoe’s future, but I didn’t care. I was going to ride his cock like a boss, and if he didn’t like how it felt, he could leave angry.
With my eyes fixed on his broad chest, I pushed myself away from the wall and took a step in his direction. As I left the kitchen’s tile surface and stepped onto the living room’s carpet, my heel got caught on something.
My knees wobbled.
And, I fell flat on my face at his feet.
“Jesus.” He lifted me to my feet. “You’re plastered.”
I leaned my weight onto his shoulder and peered down at my broken heel. “My heel. It uhhm. It broke.”
He looked at the broken shoe, and then at me. “It sure did.”
I forced a smile. “I’m good to go.”
He let out a breath. “I can’t do this. You’re too drunk.”
I braced my hand against his firm bicep and removed the other shoe. “I’m fine.”
He looked me in the eyes. “You’re not. This was a bad idea.”
He was right. I was trashed. Trashed and horny. My problem was that after seeing him without a shirt, I didn’t want to fuck him, I needed to. Desperate to get him to see things from my perspective, I began to plead my case. “Seriously. I’m okay. I mean, maybe not okay, but I can eat some crackers or something. A few pieces of bread.”
He chuckled. “Bread?”
“Uh huh.”
He glanced at my broken shoe, and then looked at my hand, which was gripping his muscular arm firmly.
“Bread isn’t going to make me comfortable. I might be a prick, but I’m not an insensitive prick. Sober up, get some sleep, and we’ll have dinner again sometime soon.”
“So, we’re not going to--”
He reached for his shirt. “No, we’re not.”
“Can I get a raincheck?”
“I’ll be in touch.”
I knew what that meant. It was over. My chance to ride the cock of the intriguing Vince Devoe had dwindled to nothing. “I’ll be in touch” was the same as having a parent say “we’ll see”. It meant “No, but I’m not wanting to tell you ‘no’ now, because you’ll be upset”.
My gaze fell to his feet. “Okay.”
As he pulled his shirt on, I stole one last look at what could have been. His chiseled physique was begging to be touched, but I didn’t dare. While he fastened the last button, I steadied myself and took one last look of admiration at him.
“How about a kiss?” I asked.
He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.
It was the final nail in my sexual coffin.
The forehead kiss.
As he reached for his mysterious bag, I raised my right hand. “Thanks, I had fun.”
He reached into the bag, pulled out the stacks of money he’d given me earlier, and stacked them on the end table. “You might want to do something with that.”
I’d completely forgotten about it. He was right, I was drunk.
“I will,” I said, my tone making my disappointment clear.
He turned toward the door, reached for the handle, and paused. “I’ll be in touch. Maybe we’ll do something later this week.”
I shrugged, wishing I had the upper hand. I needed to redeem my drunken self. Then, it came to me.
I met his gaze and grinned. “We’ll see.”
6
Vince
Marty’s family was wealthy. His father, a hedge fund tycoon who somehow made it through the banking collapse without getting arrested, was a billionaire. At his family’s insistence, Marty relocated from New Jersey to California with the intention of opening a string of high end health food stores.
He never opened the stores. Instead, he squandered what wealth they’d provided him on a beachfront mansion he rented – for one hundred and fifty grand a month – and took repeated weekend trips to Belize on chartered jets.
In an effort to replenish the vast amounts of cash that he’d blown, he began to dabble in drug sales. His biggest problem – of the many he developed – was that in his drug venture, he’d collaborated with one of the most notorious cartels in South America.
It was that one mistake that brought him onto my radar. The disappearance of his soon to be wife came at a time that I desperately needed to infiltrate the organization he was working with. So, I agreed to find her and return her to him.
Immediately following her return, they both disappeared. She went back to France. He simply vanished. Or, at least appeared to.
I now stood in his Escondido home and wondered how many times during the previous two years that we’d narrowly missed one another. I further wondered when the cartel would find him. It was only a matter of time.
Mister Prick Page 3
