ROMANCE: Mr. Mystery: (New Adult Bad Boy Romance) (Contemporary Mystery Short Stories)

by Viva Fox

  James moved down the bed and kissed my belly and looked up at me, “Sasha, will you marry me?”

  Taken back by his question my heart soared, “Yes, James, of course I will!”

  James grinned and dropped kisses all over my round belly, where our baby lay curled up inside safe in the knowledge it was a secret no longer.

  I pulled James up to me for a lingering kiss, before breaking off, “It’s a boy.”

  James smiled, ecstatic, “A mini me! You can have the next mini me, a girl.”

  I laughed, taken aback, “Are you planning baby two before we have even married or seen the arrival of number one?”

  James laughed wickedly, “Hey I’m a politician, I have big plans and I plan ahead. First stop, Senator, next stop, the White House. First stop, a mini me for me, next one for you and the third one can be for the nation.”

  I laughed and kissed my man knowing all was going to be right in the world for the three of us.

  THE END

  College Affair

  “Now, Zoe, please be good for me while I get us all packed up and ready for the road trip, Mommy has work to do unfortunately.”

  I smiled to my cooing six-month-old baby girl as she rolled around happily on her blanket where we had been having play time. Zoe was the centre of my world, a world that had once been focused on nothing but getting onto the tenure track in the academic world. Looking down at my gurgling ball of happiness I couldn’t believe how narrow my world had once been. From staying up late searching for the perfect sentence for an essay, to being up all night warming bottles and settling cries.

  After finishing college I had moved to a small town ninety minutes away from where I had studied, which had houses cheap enough for my modest inheritance from my late parents. I moved after finding out I was pregnant. A small group of local moms had helped me out with some baby items, along with a few traditional women who most certainly did not.

  I sighed at the task ahead of preparing us for a road trip and looked around our happy little home. I was proud of what I had achieved on my own with limited means. The house was a single front wooden home with a green roof, white paint, and a little garden that I tried to tend (and failed at most days) and a bright interior of soft yellows and creams. Despite struggling budget wise, one luxury I never scrimped on was fresh flowers from the local market, it was difficult being a single mom and sometimes I just needed cheering up. When spending the careful five dollars for a bunch I told myself a happy mom is a good mom.

  Zoe and I were packing for her to go and stay for the evening with my old college roommate, now a mom of her own who hadn’t gone the grad student route but married after our undergraduate years, while I attended a conference at my old college, Harwood University.

  In between everything I had managed to write a published essay in a Slider Magazine on my former studies material, consumer fashion, and I had been invited to a conference on the topic of consumer behavior and fashion. People from the academia world and the fashion industry were flying in and it was big moment for me to be invited, given how small the audience for Slider Magazine was and for my article.

  I had spent the last six months juggling between being a single mom, trying to breastfeed, failing miserably, grappling with the mommy wars and all the while trying to retain some semblance of my former career and past life and tonight was my night to revel in it all. I felt in Zoe’s case, seeing her mom make something of herself was the best present I could give my daughter. Especially seeing as her father couldn’t be in the picture to provide that while I stayed home all day with her, which some days I seriously wanted to do forever. Well, until my brain craves adult conversation.

  My passion to continue with my career was what was leading me to the conference tonight. I may have had to disappear after grad school and give my future academic career away temporarily, but I hadn’t given up on it completely. Creative consumer fashion and developing theories, ideas, case studies and more in how to see fashion companies produce clothing in a better way was my driving dream.

  One I had given away to some extent when I had Zoe, but Zoe as a name meant life and to me life meant more than just being a mom, it meant being a person who was a mom and that person, to me, is someone who believes where there is a will there is a way - a way to have a career and be a mom.

  I had been really lucky to have studied under the notorious Professor Ben Arbour, former luxury fashion company CEO turned rebel against the whole industry. He held a position at our small liberal arts college lecturing and researching in consumer affairs and fashion while making a big noise in a small place.

  His op-eds were on everything from exploitation of models to the notions around ‘Paris Thin’ to sweatshops and had been featured everywhere from the New York Times to CNN. That he had left behind a career that had made him rich, celebrated and cool, to come to a college town to comment on it all from an academic perspective made him the ultimate former insider turned outsider. On campus it also certainly helped he still loved fashion - just not some parts of the industry - and he still dressed like the former male model he ruefully admitted to having been in his younger days.

  Ben Arbour. I looked down at Zoe gurgling on the blanket as I tickled her tummy. Zoe Callister, my daughter. Zoe Arbour. Our daughter. Ben and I had had one ill thought out fling but Zoe, my life, was anything but ill thought out in being here in my sunny living room with its comfy second hand couches and hand me down blue rug from my parents, a rug I had dragged from one dorm to another to one shared apartment to the next.

  Ben. Six foot, rakish dark hair, lean muscular build gone a bit more Dad bod in his late thirties, clear blue eyes that hide what they are thinking when they don’t want to be expressive. Eyes that are expressive when they want to be in a way that keeps you captive and looking at them. Eyes that pleaded with me not to leave when I said I couldn’t possibly take up a position on his research team after finishing grad school. Because I was having his baby. Not that I could tell him that. Eyes that now firmly looked up at me from my baby on the rug, Ben’s eyes in our daughter.

  How could I tell him when he was just about to launch a damning report into how fast fashion was creating disposable clothing and a kind of waste that was not just unethical but was damning the fashion industry itself in terms of its artistic expression. He was having an affair with his student. It would have ruined him. I closed my eyes against my will and pictured Ben holding court in the bar near campus, Tellers, we used to gather at after class.

  He would sip his whiskey, neat, and lean back in his chair and expansively proclaim, “How can an industry which says you can throw you t-shirt away and buy a new one, after a months wear, produce fashion of any value?”

  I would argue back with him, “But luxury fashion still exists! They produce lasting pieces of quality.”

  Ben would smile at me, his eyes warm and enjoying the intellectual banter, “Ah, but May, couture just for show, it’s just to sell the accessories you need to replace each season, that’s not driving people to create fashion art of lasting value.”

  We would argue back and forth as the night wound on and the drinks kept coming and people faded away. Until it was just us. I argued a man shouldn’t be head of a fashion company designing for women, Ben laughing and teasing me because he already accomplished that. How does a man know what should go on a woman’s body? And then one night I dared him to prove to me he knew a woman’s body well enough to decide what should be sold to clothe it.

  ******

  Ben and I sat in the corner of Tellers sipping our drinks as Pete the bartender made last call for drinks. Ben was trying to talk me into trying neat whiskey, his favorite, and ungluing me from my white wine. His ability as a mentor and Professor to get me to try new things was why I liked him, even if I was usually resistant at first. I stared at the whiskey unwilling, and smoothed down my casual cream colored dress over my thighs. I had chosen it as it went so well with my long dark hair, which I had twiste
d up into a messy bun for the evening. The dress showed just enough cleavage to keep things tasteful.

  Since coming to study under him I had learnt Ben’s rebel ways extended beyond what he taught in the classroom. Ben believed a Professor to grad students should be like it used to be, where the Professor took an interest in their best students’ lives and taught them knowledge that went beyond the lecture hall.

  So far that had included learning to appreciate early American cinema, screened at his palatial apartment on the luxe and hip North side of town, along with cigars (Cuban), fine leather work (Italian) and lessons on how to be upgraded by a flight attendant. Tonight, it was learning to drink neat whiskey.

  “Now, May,” Ben said in his best Professor’s authority voice, “it looks like it is just you and me left for tonight's lesson.”

  I looked around at the table of eight now down to us two. Sarah had had to dash off early in the evening to grade papers for juniors. Paul and Alex had a band to catch. Sasha, Greg and Cait had just drifted off over time, casually picking up jackets and papers and leaving with a laugh. Normally everyone wanted to stay around Ben as late as possible, picking his brain on this or that or hearing his dirty funny stories of the steamy side of the fashion world.

  “Yes, Ben, what is tonight’s lesson, we didn’t get to it in time for the others,” I said with concern leaning in to him.

  Ben smiled. Surprisingly to me when I met him I noticed Ben didn’t have a model perfect smile. They were his natural god given teeth, he liked to say. His slightly off centre smile gave character to his face and had helped him stand out as a male model amongst the blandness of the current standard.

  “May…maybe I deliberately left the lesson till last just for you,” he said teasingly.

  I blinked. I was surprised by his attention and I liked it. I was the top student in the class but he didn’t seem to pay much attention to me, nor comment much on my top marks or smart comments. He never praised or commented on my clothes or appearance, not like how he teased the very serious Sarah about her anti-fashion grey wardrobe or Greg for constantly buying leather jackets in search of the perfect one, all the while agonizing over whether he was making the right consumer choices.

  Ben liked to tease us, we may be studying consumer science but we could still have fun with our consumer choices. But not me, he never commented on me, not even when I wore something from the label he had taken to the top, Brinkton.

  “Well, Ben,” I replied with a hint of flirtation I couldn’t hide, “How lucky am I to be given a private lesson by the Great Ben Arbour?”

  Something flashed in Ben’s eyes as I spoke, something unknown to me. He quickly recovered his poise though; shrugging his shoulders in his navy blazer which he wore over a plain white-shirt with jeans and tan color leather shoes.

  “May, let’s get something clear,” he said, “no one needs to be in awe of me. I grew up in small town, grew up poor, happened to look like what the market wanted to see more of and then got lucky to be in the right place at the right time when Brinkton needed a savvy new CEO. It’s nothing special, don’t build me up.”

  I paused and replied, “Ben, cut it out, no one gets to your level of success without sheer hard work. Is that not what you’ve always told us to put into our studies?”

  Ben considered this for a moment, then ignored my point, which he had an annoying habit of doing. It left me hanging, was my point in class not worth considering? Was it foolish? Did he just not have an answer? Was he being an asshole like so many in the industry and academia world said he was when they disagreed with his blunt points?

  Ben spoke, “Try this,” and he pushed the spare whiskey he had ordered across the table to me.

  I knew I didn’t have a choice, Ben didn’t take no for an answer. He was determined to drag us - me - out of our comfort zone. His philosophy was how could we make uncomfortable studies in consumer science that went against the grain or were unpopular when we couldn’t even bring ourselves to read a different book or watch a different movie than we usually did?

  I picked up the whiskey and kept my eyes on Ben. I drained the drink in one go, that will show him. He may push you outside of your comfort zone but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of enjoying it like I was some hick who didn’t know what was good. I grew up modestly just like him and I resented his cultural authority sometimes. I know he never intended to make me feel foolish about not knowing cool things but I couldn’t help feel that way sometimes with his cool, calm and collected front.

  That was all well and good as a resistance strategy until I choked on the neat whiskey and went grasping for a glass of water. Ben was in peals of laughter, his arms folded up in front of his muscular chest, his eyes crinkled and a big bellow of a laugh escaped from him as he took in my misfortune.

  “Well, May, lesson one of drinking fine neat whiskey is to go slow, congratulations on learning something new,” he laughed teasingly.

  I glared at him from under my dark eye lashes. Now I am embarrassed. Stupid know it all. Stupid Mr. Cool. Stupid Mr. Bad Boy I don’t need the academic world to respect me. That was all well and good for someone with his reputation and personal financial backing. Not so easy for those of us trying to fit in with an ever more conservative academic world where the tenure track was rough going.

  I straightened up and challenged Ben and said, “It’s easy for you, Ben Arbour, you don’t need approval. I’m a lowly grad student. I can’t afford to annoy the university or be so controversial.”

  Ben watched me with a smile for a moment before calling Pete over and persuading him with easy charm to serve us another two neat whiskeys.

  “May,” he said, “Your problem is you are too serious. You are a great student, my best student, but you cannot let the burdens of work and career rule your life. Learn to embrace the amusing diversions which come your way, like tonight and neat whiskey.”

  I cautiously sipped my drink. It was warm, nice and burned in my throat in a good way.

  “I just want to get somewhere, Ben,” I said with a sigh.

  Ben nodded and sipped his drink, keeping his blue eyes on me as I fidgeted with my glass, “You are a young woman in a hurry. I get that. I was once a guy in a hurry. I have learnt to enjoy life while I fight against the rules.”

  I considered this and said, “What is your number one rule you think is meant to be broken?”

  Ben smiled, “The ever eager student wanting to wring every drop of career information out of her poor Professor, even late at night when a man is just trying to relax and enjoy a drink with a beautiful woman.”

  I ignored the beautiful comment entirely and said, “And is this a rule you think is meant to be broken? Fraternizing with students?”

  Ben didn’t miss a beat, “For sure, but only the beautiful ones.”

  I blushed. I didn’t think I was beautiful. I mean I didn’t think I was ugly but beautiful? And said by a former fashion mogul and a Professor who had freshmen chasing after him all over campus?

  I ignored him again, shy, and challenged him on another note, “What about the rule men shouldn’t design for women’s bodies?”

  Ben smiled again, refusing to get serious with me, “I never designed. I ran a company. Like a boss. That happened to sell things for women. If you think I can’t make a judgment call on what women want to put on their bodies then let me show you just how well I know women.”

  I stopped what I was about to launch into saying and our eyes locked. I saw desire and fire in his. I felt desire and fire well in me in response. I could feel my cheeks flush and heat pool in my lower belly. This was a fantasy of mine. Not just to screw a professor, which I had thought about since freshman year long before I met Ben. I have had a crush on Ben since he first strode onto the lecture podium and started casually riffing on his experiences ruling and opting out of the fashion world.

  Ben grinned at me, “Don’t think so much, May. Just go with what you feel.”

  I looked at Ben a
nd he looked at me and in that moment I made a decision. I wanted to be in the aura of Ben, to have that, that casual I-seize-the-moment Carpe Diem life where you don’t give a damn about rules, where you are too powerful to care and too confident to notice what others say.

  I leaned forward and kissed him, impulsively, with passion. His whiskey tasting mouth met mine and the heat between our mouths was as intense as the feelings now travelling up and down my body.

  Ben pulled away and cupped my face, “Did you know ‘let’s get out of here’ is the most said line in movies?”

  I broke into a grin, “So, let’s get out of here?”

  And we got out of there. Ben drove us to his home in his pickup truck - he didn’t care for luxury cars and was still a down to earth at heart. In the North Side where old homes and warehouses were being gentrified into luxe apartments and homes overlooking the Dartment River. We arrived at his apartment. Ben led the way into his living room. The room was dimly lit. Ben put his hand around my neck and pulled me in and kissed me hard. His other hand made its way up to my breasts. He groaned, “I’ve dreamt about this for a long time May.” I could feel his erection underneath his pants.