by JA Huss
You can’t make this shit up.
If someone really does find that gold it would be the largest recovery treasure of all time. Liam’s salvage company had filed a claim on the ship. But the treasure had moved. Maybe someone moved it? Maybe it drifted into that cave where seven-year-old Weston found it? Who knows how it ended up where it was. Maybe it was just fate?
So the Conrads… what a bunch of filthy assholes they were. They always knew there was more gold than Weston told them about. And when Liam couldn’t beat it out of him, they took him home. They were patient, I’ll give them that. But everyone’s patience runs out after a while. And by the time Weston was in his senior year at Brown, they’d had enough. They devised that rape charge to pressure him into spilling his secrets. Did we all get taken along for the ride? Maybe. Maybe not.
God they make me sick.
Weston was all too happy to wash his hands of the whole thing so when I offered it up to the Russians to pay for their help in setting up the Antimony Association house, he was ready.
It was also a bribe to stay far, far away from my Katya.
Katya’s other eyebrow goes up. “Well,” she says. “Imagine that. And nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about right now, Mr. Match.”
“Me either,” I say, handing her a cup of coffee too. “But speaking of Mr. Match, another totally funny thing happened while you were sleeping.”
She doesn’t bother cocking her eyebrow this time. “Really?” She laughs. “There’s more?”
“Yeah, what do you think about me selling Hook-Me-Up?”
“You’re selling Hook-Me-Up? I feel like Rip Van Winkle. How long was I asleep?”
“Some Russian called up Ariel last night and offered her seventeen million dollars for it.”
Katya literally spits out her coffee. “What the fuck did you say?”
“Seventeen million is a lot of money, you know?” I wait, practically holding my breath. I wonder if she’ll ask, or demand to know my part in all this. Demand to know if anything between us was fake.
But then her hand goes to her throat and her face relaxes. The tension and doubts fall away. “Wow,” she says. “You could do a lot with that kind of money. Leave town, if you wanted.”
“Hit the open road,” I say, trying not to get too excited. “On a bike, or in a car, or a fucking RV. I really don’t care, Katya Kalashova.” I walk over and take her hand. Hold it up to my lips and give it a kiss. “I give you my love more precious than money. Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?”
She lets me fuck her six ways to Sunday after that little bit of romance.
I mean every bit of it, even though everything is still confusing.
I think they wanted us. Those Silver people. I think they wanted Mysterious to get even with Mariel. I think they wanted Perfect because he knew I was covering for Allen. I think they wanted Romantic because his mother dissed them and they already had Claudette. I think they got me by mistake, and they really wanted Allen. But maybe that’s just my inner snowflake talking? Maybe they wanted me because my sister, dead or alive, she got away too. Just like Mariel.
The only one I can’t figure out is Corporate. And both his parents are dead now. His mother hanged herself in jail last night—so they say—and his father went up in flames out on that mountain with Katya’s sister.
Maybe he was never anything but collateral to them. But I’m not gonna say that to his face. Regardless of what they did, they were his only family. Same goes for Kat. I know she will mourn Lily for years to come. That yesterday will forever be the day she lost everything… again.
But I also know that today will forever be the day she got it all back.
I’m gonna give her a home and make her a mother. I’m gonna grow old with that girl, and the tree in our house will get old with us.
She got me, and my sisters, and my friends. I told Romantic earlier today that he should let his fucking managers deal with that resort. What kind of rich dude actually lives at his resort? Maybe before his dad died he needed to worry about money. But now? I’m betting he moves down near Perfect in the Denver Tech Center and Ivy and Ellie will be BFFs forever and ever.
Cindy has pretty much decided to live in my dad’s condo. Mysterious doesn’t give a fuck where he puts his head at night, as long as my sister’s there next to him.
Victoria will be at Ariel’s house until Corporate gives in and buys her one nearby. You gotta hold on to your friends, I told him earlier today when I called to see how he was doing. Let her stay, I said. I told him to use the jet as much as he wants if he still needs to do business on the West Coast.
He’s still pretty shook up. But I said, “Look, asshole, if you cry you’re a goddamned pussy, you hear me?”
I said just kidding afterward, but he gets the idea.
Don’t look at what you lost, look at what you have left.
I don’t know if I really understand what happened ten years ago. It was the perfect storm of people with grudges, and people filled with greed, and hate, and plans to take others down no matter the cost. We will never be cleared of that crime. But we will never be charged either. Maybe that’s the best we could ever hope for?
And who cares, anyway? That lie brought me this girl. That lie brought me these friends. That lie gave me my whole world back. If it wasn’t for that lie, I’d have left this town behind and never looked back. I would’ve gotten on that open road and turned into somebody else.
So fuck that girl, and fuck that school, and fuck that night.
I don’t care anymore.
So I lost everything eleven years ago.
Who fucking cares?
The next day I got it all back because I got all my friends. I got Mr. Perfect, the guy who really is as good as he looks. I got Mr. Romantic, a fucked up dude for sure, but he’s my fucked up dude. I got Mr. Corporate, who knows better than anyone that second chances are real. He’s had enough of them for three lifetimes. And of course, my own BFF, Mr. Mysterious. Who really can fix just about anything. He’ll take good care of my baby sister.
I got so much more than I lost.
Just like Katya.
She expresses me better than I express myself.
She is more to me than my poem.
She is my whole world, now and forever.
We are the perfect match.
END OF BOOK SHITS
Welcome to the End of Book Shit – the place at the end of each book where I get to say whatever I want. They are never edited so don’t judge my grammar, typos, or comma usage. It’s always last minute when I write these and everything comes off the top of my head. You might hear fans call it the EOBS in conversation. They really look forward to these little rants of mine and I really enjoy writing them. Especially in a controversial book.
Mr. Perfect isn’t very controversial but I still have quite a bit to say about it. If you’ve read a few of my EOBS chapters then you might remember me saying I like to think about a book for a pretty long time before I start writing. Usually about a year. Sometimes a lot longer than that. One of the reasons it takes me so long to go from idea to book is that I plan my year out ahead of time. So when I came up with the idea for this book in the spring of 2015 I already had a full plate of books to write before I could get to it.
The main premise was always the same. Delusional girl meets practical man, but before they meet, practical man gets a huge dose of her delusional world via text messages.
This book actually started out as an angsty new adult story about a girl who lost her first love and fell for his best friend. But eh, I got bored with that. The original title was All The Things That Never Happened and if you do a search you’ll see I used that phrase a couple times in the book to pay homage to a title I loved.
It became Mr. Perfect after I decided to give Mac a little “team” just like the one Ronin, Ford, and Spencer had in the Rook & Ronin books. I had just written the Ha
ppily Ever After epilogue novella when I started itching to do another series. I spent almost all of 2015 writing standalones. I did start a new superhero romance series with Anarchy Found, but everything else last year was a standalone. I guess Wasted Lust was more of a final Dirty, Dark, and Deadly book, but it was also a spin-off of 321. So eh. You could read WL alone, but no one really wants to. Sasha was too big of a character in all the other books, going way back to Ford’s Slack book.
The really cool thing about a series is that you get to build a world and hang out in it for a while. When I wrote the Happily Ever After book for Christmas last year I felt like I was going home to the Rook & Ronin world. It was so much fun. But it was over. The End. And yes, I will be writing about some of the kids—particularly Five. I know there are a ton of people waiting on Five, but I just don’t feel ready to put that on paper yet, so it’s being held back until spring 2017. We want Five and the Princess to be perfect, right? ;) And there might even be another “team” kid cropping up in a future book quicker than you think. Keep your eyes peeled!
But I needed a new series. A new group of people in a brand new world. I set this first book in Denver, but the second book is in California and New England. I try to write places I know and that’s why you usually get Colorado, California, and any of the many southwestern deserts from me. But I’m branching out, bitches! :) New England here I come. I’ve never even been there (Aside from Eastern PA), so it won’t be as big a part as my other locations, still, I should get some cred for trying.
And even though Mr. Perfect started out as a standalone drama I like it much better as a book one of a standalone series.
So… the team. ;) Hot guys with money and suits. All of them share a secret past and you got a small dose of that past in this first book, but of course, what kind of JA Huss book would it be if I gave you everything straight? Remember Tragic? Remember how you knew Rook had a little somethin’ somethin’ going on before she met Ronin. And remember how with each book it got a little bigger? A little more twisted? Well, the Mister Series is a little bit like that.
There are five men as you just found out. Each book can be read as a standalone and out of order until you get to Mr. Match. And let me tell you, Mr. Match will have quite the surprise in store for you.
And each guy played a part in ‘that night’, but maybe not the part you—or their friends—think they did. Mac got off easy. (Insert evil laugh) But that might not be the end of the story for the rest.
But the main story is mostly about love and how each of these damaged men come to terms with their past, find their soul mates, and move forward. I think each of the ladies will be challenging to them in a unique way and each of the men will be pantie-melting hot between the sheets and the pages.
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If you’d like to hang out with me on Facebook I have a private fan group called Shrike Bikes. Just ask to join and someone will approve you as soon as they see it. I am in that group chatting with the fans every single day and we have a lot of giveaway sand fun stuff going all the time. Especially around release days. I usually do a takeover and give away all kinds of stuff related to the new release, so come on by and say hi.
Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book.
Julie
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit (fondly called the EOBS in my little pond), the place where I get to say anything I want and readers have to listen. ;) Just kidding. I bet most people don’t even bother reading these.
OK, so like most of my stories this one started out based in fact. If you read the Rock EOBS you know that I got a lot of the original premise from real life and if you read the Social Media series, you might’ve suspected I based it off something that really happened as well.
The Mister series is loosely based off another real event. All the characters are made up in my imagination. The settings are made up, the scenes---all fiction. But the basic premise—a group of guys get accused of something and suddenly their lives are turned upside down because the court of public opinion pronounces them guilty—is real.
My premise takes place ten years after the “big event” that changed their lives. And my questions are valid ones I think. What happens to people who endure social outrage on a vast scale? People who might not just get national attention, but global attention? How do they go on when the dust settles?
Well, this my version of how that scenario might play out. Mr. Perfect made pretty good use of his ten years between then and now, but Mr. Romantic? He’s not so sympathetic. And the way it affected him is definitely not sympathetic.
But I feel for this guy. I always want to believe people are innocent. I root for people to be found not guilty. Not to get off. Not to avoid justice. But because I want them to be unequivocally innocent and I want that to be a final judgment in a court of law. I want to believe that people are good.
I have a master’s degree in forensic toxicology. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically drug testing. Biological analysis to determine what, if any, chemicals are inside the body of victims and perpetrators. And in my last semester we had to take an ethics class to prepare us for expert testimony in the courtroom. The one thing they hammered home in this class is pretty much the only thing that stuck with me. (I’m not a forensic toxicologist, right? I’m a writer. So I didn’t do much in this field to make it stick). But that one thing was this – “It is far more ethical to let the guilty go free than it is to persecute the innocent.”
I still believe that. While it sucks when a criminal gets off, it literally makes me sick to my stomach to think of an innocent person sitting in prison for something they didn’t do.
So I like to believe that everyone is innocent unless there’s a good reason not to.
Sadly, I’m a bad judge of guilt and innocence. Remember Laci Peterson? That pregnant lady who went missing just before Christmas in 2002? I wanted her husband to be innocent so bad. Not because I have some weird fixation with would-be murders. But because I want to believe that no man is capable of killing their pregnant wife and dumping her body in the ocean.
I was genuinely distraught when it became clear he was guilty. Lost my faith in humanity.
So when another high-profile case came on the news not long afterward I decided I wasn’t going to invest my opinion again. I got burned with Laci Peterson’s animal of a husband. I’m out of the guilt or innocence business.
But you know… you hear the news. You hear the evidence. You see the completely fucked up reaction of the media, hell almost the entire nation trying to lynch the people accused before they get to trial. And you form an opinion.
I had an opinion, I just told myself I didn’t. I wasn’t going to invest in these things anymore. I always lose. They are always guilty. So when the details of this case came out and it was found they were innocent—well, I got some of my faith back.
Not everyone is a monster. Sometimes people are set up. It absolutely happens. And for whatever reason, this case was one of them.
So when I started plotting the backstory for Mr. Perfect in February 2016 I decided I wanted it to be about a case like that. Ten years earlier a group of friends are accused of a terrible crime and maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t, but they got off because the witness died.
Now this is not exactly how the real-life case went. And believe me, that one is pretty interesting. But the book isn’t about that case. This isn’t their story. It’s just a story. One that could happen to anyone.
But then I started looking up what happened to these people after the case was over and that’s where the backstory really came to life. That’s when I knew it was what happened after that mattered.
No one gave a fuck about them after. No one cared that their lives were disrupted or that they had to find a way forward. No one cared about what they lost. No one even cared why they were accused in the first place.
This was my story. What did th
e public outcry do to these people? How did that experience of unjustified persecution change them?
This book is a look at five men, ten years later, and how one lie changed who they were forever. That’s it. It’s not a thinly veiled commentary on anything happening right now in the news and it’s not a statement about how people are treated by society and the media if they find themselves wrapped up in something bigger than themselves.
It’s not about any of that. It’s just about these five fictional guys trying to come to terms with how one night turned into a nightmare.
Mr. Perfect did pretty well. We’re all kind of proud of his reaction. He wanted to make the world a better place. Mr. Romantic? Well, not so much. He’s a cynical asshole with a rape fantasy fetish. Maybe he was this guy before the lie, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe that lie changed him for the better? He will never know because he can’t see his alternate reality where that night never happened.
I try to write unlikable antiheroes. I think I do a pretty good job. But I also try and give you a reason to root for them as they find redemption.
Mr. Romantic isn’t as dark as some of my characters. James Fenici is dark. Merc is dark. Hell, I think Ford is probably darker than Mr. Romantic. So that’s why there’s no trigger warning in my blurb. This isn’t a dark book and if you think it is, you missed the point. All Mr. Romantic wants is an answer. Why? Why was he a target? Why did people lie about him? Why does he have to live with a stigma for the rest of his life over something he never did?