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.”
“Shhhiiit,” I say. “I started working for Daniel Stow when I was eighteen. I logged my four thousand hours by the time I was twenty. I graduated from high school when I was sixteen. So by the time I moved to California for college, I had two years of undergrad done. I, sir, have a master’s degree in criminology, law, and society from UC Irvine.”
“I thought you were an engineer.”
“And you believed me!” I say, excited. “See how good I am!”
“And you did not work for Daniel Stow. I know Daniel Stow. Hate that motherfucker too.”
“I know. He talks about you all the time. Which is where I got the idea to meet you. He hates you back, in case you’re wondering.”
That’s another lie. Not the hate part—I think everyone hates this guy but me—the idea part. But no need to bombard poor Mr. Mysterious with the truth at this point. I’ve got him eating out of my hand.
“What does he say about me?” Paxton says, an angry look crossing his face.
“Oh, the usual,” I say, waving a hand, like that’s neither here nor there. “Unstable, mean… guilty. But I was intrigued. And the more I learned about you, Pax, the more intrigued I became. So I started following you.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. I’m gonna need a restraining order.” He grabs that dark, wavy hair for a second with both fists, like he’s losing his mind.
“You need me. I know you need me. I’m good. So…” I beam a smile at him. “I’m your new assistant.”
He’s got me by the arm and he’s dragging me back into the house.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I try not to trip down the stairs.
“You’re leaving.”
“I’m not leaving! I just got here!”
“Your boss at the sandwich shop is looking for you. You gotta go. And I’m never calling there for takeout again.”
“I don’t have a boss!” I yell. “I own the shop!”
“What?” At least he stops. We’re all the way down by the pool now. And shit. I had that master bedroom right in the palm of my hand two seconds ago and now look. All the way back downstairs. “You own it? How the fuck—”
“Paxton,” I say sternly. “I’m going to need you to focus. OK? Listen. To. Me.”
“Who the fuck—”
“I’m Cinderella Vaughn.” God, another lie. But it has to be done. He cannot know I’m his best friend’s baby sister, now can he? That would pretty much ruin everything. “I’m a licensed private investigator with a firearms permit. And I’m your new partner.”
“You said assistant!”
“We can start there. Sure.”
“No,” he says. “You’re leaving, I’m forgetting this whole thing, and—”
I yank my arm from his grip and cross my arms over my chest. “I’m not leaving. We’re in business together now.”
“Is this how you weaseled your way into Daniel’s business too?”
“Weaseled?” I sigh. God, he’s just not getting it. “I’m not weaseling. And God, no, I never fucked Daniel. Gross. He’s old enough to be my grandfather.”
“Fucked?”
“Paxton, do you always have to ask so many questions? Why are you so clueless? We are soulmates. Get it? This is fate slapping your face. I’m fate.”
“You’re crazy.” He laughs.
“No,” I say firmly. “My methods are unorthodox, yes. But so are yours. So you see, we’re perfect for each other.”
I smile, my speech complete. Not exactly how I rehearsed it, but close enough.
“The house with the friends?” he asks.
I hold my thumb and pointer fingers close together. “Teeny, tiny lie.”
“Leaving tomorrow?”
“Lie. I own that house.”
“How the fuck do you own a beach house in Malibu? And a sandwich shop?”
“My mommy and daddy are rich. Isn’t that how you got your money?” Why is he wasting time on this trivial bullshit? He should be dragging me back up into that bedroom so he can fuck me against the window.
“No,” he growls.
“Yes,” I say back. “Your father is Charlie Vance. Your mother is Mariel Hawthorne. They have billions more dollars than my family.”
“I earn my money, Cinderella.”
Oh, God. I have dreamed about him saying my name like that. “I like to earn mine too!” I squeal. “See how much we have in common?”
“You’re crazy,” he says, pointing a finger at me.
“I lick my lips and imagine myself sucking on it.”
“You just said that out loud.”
“I did?” I laugh. “Oh, well, I have a habit of that. Speaking my thoughts out loud. It’s weird at first, but you’ll get used to it. See, when you’re named after a fictional character you get all sorts of ideas about who you are. So when I was a kid I used to imagine myself as a character in a book and everything I did, I sort of narrated. I was practicing for telling stories in the future.”
“Lies, you mean?”
“No, no, no, listen. Stories. Like… I’d be walking around the farm in the winter and I’d be all, ‘Her boots made a crunching noise as she passed over the snow.’ I narrated my life. I’d be all, ‘Her father’s motorcycle sounded like the thunder of wings and the pounding of hooves.’ We had a lot of bikes at our house. And horses. So don’t judge my similes.”
“Am I dreaming right now? Am I having a stroke?”
“No,” I exclaim. “This is real, Pax. That’s what’s so great about it. This is all real. We did it,” I say, sighing with relief.
“Did what?”
“Found each other. Now we’ll be together forever.”