by JA Huss
“Yeah,” I whisper, as Oliver unties my legs and Pax takes care of my wrists. I lean into him and he hugs me. Nothing has ever felt so good before in my life. “Fuck her.”
My head swoons. Things go blurry and gray as Pax lifts me up. People are shouting now. Sirens and helicopters are blaring in the background. I hear Ariel talking to me at one point, chanting, “You’re going to be OK. You’re going to be OK…” over and over and over again. But I can’t see her because my eyes won’t open. Only my ears work.
And then… even that stops.
That’s all there is.
Story’s over, Miss Cookie, I hear the detective say. Story’s over.
Chapter Forty-Six - Cindy
I wake up of course. In the ambulance just a few minutes later.
Paxton shot cunty Claudette, she didn’t shoot me.
I never doubted him.
The drugs Claudette fed me have some kind of weird side effect that sticks in your system for a while and can cause you to flow in and out of unconsciousness for up to forty-eight hours. So they brought me to San Diego General Hospital for observation.
It’s not so bad being injured in battle. I mean, it’s a hell of a lot better than being Nolan and Ivy, who are stuck out there in the desert answering questions about why there was a secret unpermitted tunnel underneath their five-star resort.
Not to mention the fire in the room of mirrors. The cops actually asked Ivy if she was a devil worshipper.
That conversation was a hoot to listen to.
I’m still privately cracking up about Ivy Rockwell being painted a Satanist.
Or Pax and Oliver, who were taken into custody and are being held for questioning in the shooting of Claudette Delaney.
Five’s handling that. Turns out Oliver and Pax were filming the whole thing using cameras mounted on their rifles, so there’s plenty of proof to back up our story. That fucking Five. He thinks of everything, doesn’t he? Even gun cams.
Or West and Mac, who took the Mister jet back to Mac’s house in Colorado, trying to wait the investigation out. They’re totally out of the loop.
So I get stuck here in the hospital with Ariel, Ellie, and Victoria.
“Bitch,” Tori says. “Are you even listening to me?”
She’s been talking incessantly since she got here this morning. I’m stuck in bed. What choice do I have?
“My plan is still a good one.”
“True,” Ellie says, eating my canned peaches off my hospital tray with a spork as she lounges next to me in bed. “I’m inclined to agree with her, Cindy. We should give it a vote once Ivy gets back.”
Ariel answers for me. “Well, I’m in too. I say these Misters have taken far too long to figure this shit out. It’s time they step aside and let the women take over.”
“I love you,” Tori tells my sister.
“Love ya back, bitch.”
I crack an eyeball open as they fist-bump. I get to stay silent because I’m pretending to be sleeping off my drugs to make them all leave me alone so I can plan my next Miss Cookie Meets Detective Mysterious encounter.
I kinda like these crazy bitches, but they are not very good at taking hints. Ellie is gonna stick around as long as they keep delivering me trays with peaches on them. Tori is going to stick around until I agree to her plan. And Ariel… well, she’s my sister. She’s always around, even when she’s not.
We didn’t get all the answers. We still don’t know where Mariel is. Or what part she played in all this. And Oliver, well… Tori says that he’s next. That every Mister has been fucked with and now it’s his turn. Not to mention all the lingering questions about my sister, Rory.
So that really sucks.
But I did get the one thing I went after before this whole thing started.
My Mister.
And I’m happy with that.
For now.
Epilogue - Paxton
“Why, Miss Cookie,” I say. “What brings you to my bedroom tonight? I thought your case was solved?”
Cindy is leaning against the window of the Malibu house terrace, backlit by the orangey-red sunset behind her. She places the back of her hand up against her forehead with a dramatic flair Vivian Leigh would envy. “No, Detective,” she says, with an exaggerated Southern accent. She swings her head to look at me, then resumes her despairing pose. “It wasn’t solved, merely… halted in place.” She comes towards me, her long, coral-colored dress splitting all the way up her thigh with each step. “I need answers, Detective. And I need you to get them for me.”
“Hmmm,” I say, looking her up and down lewdly as I grab my dick through my pants. “But you’re broke, Miss Cookie. Dead broke. How will you ever manage to pay my fee?”
“I have heard through the grapevine, Detective”—I raise my eyebrows in anticipation. I’ve been waiting to play this game with her all damn day—“that I can suck a man’s cock like the wind blows across the Gulf during hurricane season.”
I chuckle and then bite on the stem of my unlit pipe to stop it. It’s a nice prop, I think. Making its debut Miss Cookie Meets Detective Mysterious appearance right now. I still have the trench coat. And the hat. But the pipe is still a nice addition.
I take a step towards her, making sure to admire her tits in that low-cut gown. “Well,” I say, stuffing the pipe in my pocket so I can fondle both her breasts at the same time. “How could a man turn that down?”
“He can’t,” she says, leaning in with pouty, seductive lips like she’s going to kiss me, but pulling away at the last possible moment. “No man,” she says. “Not even the great Detective Mysterious.”
I come to her this time. And I don’t pull away at the last second. I kiss her. Deep, and hard, and soft, and seductively… all at the same time. Trying to forget all the many, many things that still haunt me.
Where is my mother? She hasn’t answered her phone since last week when all that shit went down in the desert.
What was in that silver envelope? Cindy said Claudette had it in the infinity room, but the cops insist they never found it on her person. There’s no telling if it went up in flames.
It’s just so frustrating. We were so close. “What if we never get any answers, Cindy?”
She bows her head and looks up at me, batting her false eyelashes to try to keep the scene going. But I can sense the moment she gives in. “We’re all still here, Paxton. And the number of people on your side has doubled in size since last year when all this shit started happening. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“There are just so many mysteries.”
“That’s OK,” she says.
“What if we never get that happily ever after?” I ask. God, I just want to make her happy. She refused to sign the paperwork that gives her ownership of the house, but I forged her signature. So it’s a done deal. But it’s not enough. It’s just not enough to make me feel like no matter what happens to me, she will always be taken care of.
“Do we need it?” Cindy asks.
“Don’t you want it? Doesn’t every Cinderella deserve the happily ever after?”
“Well,” she says, resuming her dramatic character voice. “Maybe most princesses like that tired, old happily ever after, Detective. But me”—she stops to bat the lashes again—“I prefer the ‘till death do us part’ ending, myself.”
I chuckle at that. “You would.”
“Why, Detective, I do believe you’re calling me a troublemaker.”
“If the shoe fits, Miss Cookie.”
“That’s right,” she says, placing both her palms flat on my face as she leans up on her tip toes to kiss me on the lips. “The shoe does fit, Pax.” Her dramatic accent is gone, and in its place is just… her. “I’m Cinderella, you’re Prince Charming. And no matter what happens, we’ll be together till the end.”
She picks up two mint juleps off a side table and hands one to me. We lift them in the air and clink them together. “To Mr. and Mrs. Mysterious,” she says.
&nb
sp; “Till death do us part,” I say. “Till death do us part.”
WANT THE NEXT BOOK?
Mr. Match by JA Huss
GET IT HERE
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit where I get to say anything I want about the book you just read. But before I do that I have four important things to tell you:
(1) I am offering my first series, Rook & Ronin FREE (all three books in one eBook edition). Get the details on how to download it at the end of EOBS.
(2) There is a very special first look sneak peek for the Turning Series. This is the next project I’m working on after Mr. Match is done. So keep reading so you don’t miss that.
(3) If you’re reading this during release week there’s a giveaway on my blog. If you’re not reading during release week and want to be notified every time I release a book so you can get in on the giveaways, links for both at the end.
(4) I just made the book trailer for the Mister Series and you really (like really) need to check it out! (Hot!)
OK. I’m ready now.
Well here we are at the end of Book Four and only one more to go. I hope you got some satisfaction in this one. I hope you don’t hate me for what I did to Princess Rory. I hope it was fun to revisit Cindy, Oliver, and Ariel Shrike. (and Five. Hey – did you notice Five said he had a baby sister? And Sasha’s name came up!!!)
For those of you who have never read my Rook & Ronin and my Dirty, Dark, and Deadly series you’re not missing anything big. Cindy was six months old last time we saw her in the Happily Ever After book. Oliver was five and I can’t even remember how old Ariel was. Possibly eight. (I keep a cheat sheet for all their ages but I don’t have it on me right now)
So if you’ve never read anything else by me—no worries. You don’t have to.
I’m not going to say anything else about Rory and Five because as some you might know Five is getting his book next year. I have it on my calendar for a September 2017 release. So whatever opinions you have about that little twist, just hang on to them until the book comes out. I can tell you two things about it now:
It takes place while Rory is in college. (so long before any of this Mister stuff happened)
Five comes to see her for the first time in four years.
Is it a second chance romance? A love triangle? A murder mystery?
You don’t really expect me to tell you, right?
Hahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahh
;)
But back to Mr. Mysterious. He’s sorta cute with his Mother Complex, and his weird job, and his cool houses and boats. If there’s one thing I wish I could’ve put in here it was a scene where Cindy gets to go home and see Pax’s family farm in Kentucky. I really (like really) wanted to write about that farm. But alas, characters don’t always accommodate the writer the way we wish they would.
So maybe a bonus scene will come up after all the books are done. I mean… no one has gotten married yet, right? Well, Nolan did. But he and Ivy did that on the sly and her father is none too happy about it. So there has to be at least one wedding in the future. Maybe Pax will offer up his family farm for the ceremony. ;)
If I write the bonus stuff it won’t be until next year. I don’t have time to get it out in 2016. I mean, it’s fucking OCTOBER, bombshells! Where the hell did this year go??
Mine kinda got swept up in this series and the farther I get into the story the more I love it. When I finished Rook and Ronin (after Guns) I was so sad because it was over. I felt the same about Social Media, and Dirty, Dark, and Deadly. Especially Wasted Lust because that was the real end, right? Jesus, it was sad.
And then I wrote a bunch of standalones last year. I wrote 321, Meet Me in The Dark and Wasted Lust (sorta standalones, but also in the R&R world). Then Sexy, which has no spinoffs at all. Then 18 (another true standalone). Then Anarchy Found, which is a series but I didn’t write any more in that world this year, so it’s basically standalone at the moment. And then early in 2016 I wrote Rock.
I like writing standalone books but honestly, how do you really (like really) develop the world and characters?
You get one shot to build it up and give your characters a back story and then poof. It’s all gone and you have to build a new world with new characters.
I don’t mind building new worlds and characters at all. I think I’m pretty good at it. But when you have a series like the Misters, then there’s five total opportunities to build that world up. So I can mention a silver envelope in book one and it has no meaning whatsoever. I mention it again in book two and some readers who know me might start to wonder if there’s something to that. Book three has them scratching their heads. And now – boom.
It’s all about the silver envelopes, people. All about the silver envelopes.
And it’s not even about the men! Ha!
Who runs the world?
Girls.
Duh.
It’s great to have a large world to work with. To have a whole cast of main characters. I get this little writer’s rush when I need something in a plot—a red herring, or a diversion, or maybe just some random character that has to interact with one of the mains in a chapter or scene— and I can pull one out of another book. Or sometimes even another series. I did that Social Media. Damian Li (Ashleigh’s father from the Ford books) sticks his nose into Vaughn Asher’s business during a card game.
I mean why not use him again? I have already set up his character, his background, his business, his past. He was the perfect choice.
This is something you don’t get much of writing standalone books. Also, if you don’t have thirty plus books written to choose characters, or settings or leftover plots from other stories it’s kinda hard to pull off.
But I’m lucky. Have all these worlds, all these characters, all these places, all these stories to choose from. So I like use them.
I used to be a really big Stephen King reader back in the day and he does this especially well in his books. I can remember reading one of those Dark Tower books (Maybe Wizard and Glass—but don’t hold me to that) and someone from another book suddenly appeared and I was like, Gah!!!!!!!!!! I know that guy!
lol. I swear to God, that was me.
I’m sure there are some people who read my books because they enjoy the simplicity of my sentences, I almost never totally fuck a story up, and they usually come out the other end satisfied. Right? It’s just a good book to most people.
But then… there are the fans. People who do scream GAH! when Five shows up, or Oliver shows up. Or Ariel or Ford’s name. Whatever.
I try not to “write to” any one group. In other words I’m not aiming for only fans when I write a story. Or only new readers or casual readers. I try to balance it out. I like to give you a hint of a “bigger world” without overwhelming you and I do that with these cool little Stephen-King-esque call-backs, which is a literary device called allusion.
Allusion is when information is implied. In most cases artists, like filmmakers and authors, use allusion to redirect the watcher or reader to the world outside the story—something that exists in the world of the reader. Something big or little. Sometimes it’s nothing but intellectual minutia used to pat all the other intellectuals on the back and assure them they are smart.
But I mostly use it as a way to redirect readers to the overarching storyline of other books I’ve written where the characters or plot might cross, however briefly.
If the reader doesn’t understand the reference then my words are merely decoration. If you read Wasted Lust as a standalone (and you can, if you want. I swear, all the information you need for that story is in there) then you miss the allusion and you end up with a very different perspective of the story.
Some readers don’t like internal allusion. But fans usually dig it. So the allusion is for the fans even when I’m doing my best to write for both the reader and the fan.
This book was kinda hard to write because of the time line. Mysterious has been in a
ll the books, but he had huge parts in Mr. Romantic and Mr. Corporate. He’s much more than a side character. So when it came time to write his story I wanted to account for all those actions.
If you picked up Mr. Mysterious first and read the series out of order you might be thinking – this is not a standalone. I sort of agree—BUT—I did give you everything you needed to know for THIS book. So I consider it a standalone. Yes, you’re missing info, but what the fuck could I do? That info is all in the other books. You get the gist of it, right? If you need details go back and read the other Mister books. Start from the beginning this time.
One cool side effect, if you will, of writing this way is that there’s almost two ways to read some of my stories.
There are lots of places to jump into the Rook and Ronin world. You could start at the beginning with Tragic and read them all in order. In that case you get all the allusion and you get it fed to you in the “standard” order. But you could also start at Dirty, Dark, and Deadly—read those three books, then go back and read Rook and Ronin and you’ve gonna have those Gah! moments when you realize how they connect. You can also start with the Ford books. Or Meet Me In The Dark, or Wasted Lust. Each of those books can be interpreted two ways because of the allusion.
Some people like to connect the dots… some people don’t. I try to keep it all balanced and hopefully I’m doing a good job.
I also hope people don’t get too sick of me going back and forth in time. I don’t use this “literary device” lightly. In other words I don’t do it just for the fuck of it. I only do it when it’s necessary to tell the story a certain way. Usually I’m hiding something from you—I write romantic suspense, after all.
But I remember getting a complaint about it in 321 from someone. They said the time jumping was confusing. But the only time jumping in that book was in the prologue and the last few chapters. If that is confusing I can’t help people with that. It really wasn’t hard to follow. There was almost no allusion in that book at all. It’s a straight standalone.
