The Misters Series (Mister #1-7)

by J. A. Huss

  I feel sick.

  Utterly sick.

  Chapter Twenty-Five - FIVE

  We linger on the grotto rock for a while, eyes closed and breathing slow. My hand wanders down her stomach, fingertips fluttering over her belly button.

  I can’t see her smile when I do that, but I know it’s there. I know her so well.

  “What’s on your mind?” she asks.

  And she knows me too.

  “Just life and how it’s changing. How the girls are growing up and how I don’t want that to happen.”

  “All kids grow up, Five.”

  “I know. But I’m not ready for it.”

  “They need to see the world.”

  “I agree,” I say. “But I’m not convinced that the world needs to see them.”

  She rolls over on her side, sighing heavily. Her fingertips find my stomach, the same way mine found hers. She tickles me as she brushes her nails lightly up and down my skin. “They’re ready. And so am I.”

  Which is the part I’m worried about, right? I’m still content and happy to be out here in paradise with them, and they’re moving on.

  “Are you tired of me?” I ask her.

  “What?” She laughs out the word. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m more in love with you today than I was yesterday. And yesterday I was more in love with you than I was the day before. That’s how it’s always been. Our love just… grows. And you can’t stop it.”

  “Like the girls,” I say.

  This time I see her smile. Because she’s looking right at me. “Yeah, like them too.”

  We lie there in silence for a few more minutes. The grotto is humid and hot, since the sun and the day, like our love and our girls, can’t be stopped either. But the mist from the waterfall keeps us cool.

  “I bet they’re done by now,” Rory says.

  “Probably,” I say, unable to stop the sadness in my voice.

  “Let’s go back and I’ll make us all lunch. I’ve got a ton of work to do before tonight. I want to get the pool area set up for the parents and make sure dinner’s on track. Plus, I have to find Katya and get her to try on her dress.”

  “Kat and Oliver are on a date day. They probably won’t be back until later.” I say it as a last-ditch effort to keep her here with me. Just me. Just her.

  But it doesn’t work. She says, “That’s OK. I’ve got to check on the baking and decorations too. And find Louise and Mathilda and make them take a bath before the party.”

  I get up without comment. Because I can’t keep her here all day. She’s right, there’s so much to do. I hold out my hand and she takes it so I can pull her to her feet. We stand there, staring at each other for a few seconds. And then she cups my face with both her hands and kisses me on the lips. “You’re OK, Five. I promise. You’re gonna live through this.”

  “It’s just moving so fast all of a sudden.”

  “It’s not,” she says. “It’s moving at just the right pace.”

  She waits to see if I’ll keep the discussion going, but I don’t. So she grabs my hand, leads me over to the waterfall, and we dive in together.

  When we resurface on the other side the real world is back.

  We swim over to the edge of the lake and drag ourselves out of the water, sopping wet. And then we walk home. Silent. Holding hands. Thinking about two totally different versions of the future.

  When we get back to the pool, the twins are swimming. Obviously the test is over. I look around for the sealed envelope I know they’re in, but all evidence of the test-taking is gone. No pads of scratch paper, no pencils, no Ming, either.

  Rory jumps in the pool with the girls and they splash and play a little as I settle into a chair under the shade of the palapa.

  I need to find Mysterious. I’m not giving up on this plan of mine just yet. But I don’t want to leave them. So I watch a little longer. Then a little longer still. Until Rory says, “Have you seen your sisters?” to the twins, which gets my attention, because they’ve been off doing stuff all day.

  “They came back a little while ago covered in mud,” Ana says.

  “Mud!” Rory exclaims. “Jesus! Five, can you go find them and get them cleaned up?”

  “Sure,” I say. Because it gives me the perfect excuse to find Pax. “Hey,” I call out to the girls. “Have you seen Paxton? Or Cindy?”

  “Nope,” they both shout back at the same time. Twinning. And that makes me smile and forget that they’re about to leave me behind and never look back. So I feel a little better as I say, “I’ll see ya later.”

  “Dinner’s at eight!” Rory calls. “And the parents should all start arriving around seven. Don’t be late!”

  “I’ll be there!” I say. She blows me a wet kiss from the water and I do that stupid thing where you catch it in the air and slap it on your cheek. Which makes my girls all erupt in laughter.

  I laugh too, but then when I turn and walk down the path leading to the house, the smile fades.

  This shit is happening, Five Aston. They’re growing up. And Mr. Mysterious is your last fucking chance to change it.

  I look all over the place for Mysterious. He’s not in his bungalow, or down at the beach, or at the kitchen house where I sent him last. I’m just about to go up to the stables to see if he’s up that way when Mathilda and Louise appear from the jungle looking like they rolled in the mud and then hosed themselves off, but didn’t do a very good job at it.

  “What the… what have you two been up to?”

  “Nothing,” they say together. Hands behind their backs, feet fidgeting.

  But this isn’t twinning, like Ana and Isa. This is a lie. They do that, these little ones. They lie… and that’s when I hear the squealing. “What have you got behind your back?” I ask them.

  “Nothing,” they say again.

  “Girls,” I say, putting on my stern father face. “Stop lying and show me what’s behind your back.”

  They look at each other, then shrug like it’s inevitable. Louise scrambles behind Mathilda, and then they both produce… a piglet.

  I cover my mouth so they can’t see me laugh, take a moment to gather myself back into parent mode, and then say, “Where did you get that pig?”

  “The beach,” Mathilda says.

  “Didn’t we discuss this, ladies? I told you, those pigs are off limits. You have to leave them be. And you’d better not have been feeding them.”

  They just stare at me with blank poker faces. Which means they sure as fuck did feed them. “Where is this pig’s mother?” I ask.

  “She abandoned it,” Mathilda says. “It was starving, Daddy.”

  Yup. This is not good. “How did you get that pig?”

  “We fed it mangos,” Louise says. “And bananas.” She makes a pouty face that usually works to defuse my anger.

  But it’s not working now. “I’ve told you a hundred times we can’t feed them or they won’t stop coming around looking for food.”

  “We’re sorry,” Mathilda says. “We won’t do it again. But we had to save him, Daddy. We just had to.”

  If I had more time I’d punish them. But I don’t. And they need to get ready for the party. So I just do basic dad duty instead. “Are you hurt?” I ask, turning Louise around to look her over. She’s wet, and got mud all over her hair, but seemingly unharmed. “You can’t mess with those pigs when they have babies, girls. You know better and I’m not happy with you. You should’ve asked before you went off and did dangerous things—”

  “We didn’t do it,” Louise says.

  “What?” I ask, looking at Mathilda. “What’s she talking about?”

  “Mr. Romantic,” Mathilda says, like this explains everything.

  “What’s Nolan have to do with this?”

  “We bribed him into catching our pig,” Mathilda explains.

  “Can we keep him, Daddy?” Louise says, looking up at me with those wide blue eyes of hers. “Please?” she begs, grabbing both my hands and jumping up and do
wn.

  “Please, please, please,” Mathilda says.

  “He’s gonna die, Daddy,” Louise continues. “If we don’t keep him, and feed him, and give him a bed, he’s gonna die.”

  “We can’t let him die, Daddy!” Mathilda says, turning on the tears. “We just can’t!”

  I roll my eyes. My girls are spectacular actresses. They really should go into theatre.

  You don’t have a theatre on the island, that nagging voice in my head says. So they’ll never go into theatre.

  I shut that down and run all the reasons why we can’t keep a wild pig as a pet. It might have diseases. Swine flu, for instance. Or it might grow up huge and attack us. I try to think up a few more, just to build a better case, but the pig snorts and draws my attention down to his pudgy belly, which is right side up as he lies in Mathilda’s arms, half asleep and looking like a stuffed toy.

  I sigh.

  “We’ll take really good care of him, Daddy!” Louise says.

  “You’ll never have to feed him, or watch him, or anything!” Mathilda adds.

  But they’re both wearing those smiles. You know the ones… the ones kids wear when they know they’re gonna win this battle.

  So I say, “Baths. Now. All of you. Including that pig.”

  “Yes!” they both squeal, which wakes the snoozing pig up and makes him squeal with them.

  “And put on your pretty clothes. Grandma and Grandpa are coming tonight with all your aunts and cousins.”

  “We will!” they call out, already running off.

  I don’t know how Rory is gonna feel about a pet pig, but at least the little girls are still happy about living on the island. You can’t catch and keep wild piglets in Colorado, can you?

  So that lifts my spirits. Mathilda and Louise will both be on my side when I have to put my foot down about Ana and Isa leaving.

  Because we’d all have to leave if they leave. I can’t send my girls out into the world alone. What kind of father would I be if I did that? If they leave, we all leave. And if we all leave… paradise is lost.

  I follow the girls back to the house, preoccupied with how our lives seem to be changing so suddenly, when I bump into West, Tori, and Ethan.

  “Hey,” I say, as the three of them walk up the path towards me. “Whatcha got there?” I ask.

  “Fish!” Ethan says, holding up his catch for the day.

  “Holy…” And then I laugh. “What are you doing? Feeding the entire wedding party with that catch?” All three of them have nets filled with fish, not to mention a cooler filled with lobsters.

  “Looks that way,” West says, ruffling his boy’s hair.

  “Here,” I say, taking Tori’s net. “We’ll take them to the kitchen. Have you seen Paxton anywhere?” I ask, remembering what my mission was before I bumped into the pig problem.

  “I think I saw him with Cindy down by the boathouse about an hour ago,” Tori says. “But I’m pretty sure they’re gone now.”

  “Great,” I say as we walk up to the kitchen house. That means he doesn’t need my help in Cindy’s little scavenger hunt. Which also means he’s probably not gonna help me steal those tests.

  “What time’s dinner?” West asks. “We need to clean up.”

  “I think everyone starts arriving around seven and dinner’s at eight. Just clean up and head to the pool. Everyone will be there by then and we can have a drink.” I’m pretty sure Tori hates me after all that shit that went down last year, but it never hurts to patch things up. Especially when Ariel is coming tonight. Tori and Ariel are best friends now, from what Oliver’s told me. And it never hurts to have a backup when it comes to Ariel Shrike. She’s gonna have something to say about this whole lie we’ve been living. Oliver might’ve taken it all in stride, but Ariel? No way.

  We hand the fish and lobster off to the catering staff flown in from Nassau for the wedding, and then go our separate ways.

  Them to their bungalow, I presume. Me to try to catch Mysterious alone before dinner. Maybe he can grab those tests tonight? Replace them with blank pages or something?

  I’m thinking that’s a very good idea when I get to their place, and I’m just about to knock when I hear Cindy say, “Fuck me, Detective,” from an open window.

  My knuckles stop the knock just in time. I could interrupt them, but something tells me Mr. Mysterious takes his sex as seriously as he takes his drink. So even though I’m dying to wrap this plan up and tie it up in a bow, I back off and head home.

  Four kittens attack me at the door and I’m cursing Mathilda and Louise under my breath. They’re supposed to be taking care of them, not letting them run loose on the island all day. And when Rory finds out I let them keep that pig…

  “There you are!” Rory says, opening the door. “Come on. Hurry up. Everyone’s gonna be here soon. We gotta get cleaned up.”

  After that time rushes by with no sympathy for all the things we need to get done and before I know it, our families are landing out on the helipad and people are arriving at the marina, and I’m looking around for my two little princesses, because they disappeared about an hour ago and Rory put me in charge of keeping track of them.

  I go out to the play house to see if they’re there and walk in on… a tea party. But not your typical tea party.

  I cover my hand to stifle a laugh when I see Nolan sitting on top of a fuzzy pink pillow in a tiny white chair. “What the hell?”

  “Hey, Five,” Nolan says, cool as ever. “Just having a little tea with your girls.” He brings a tiny tea cup to his lips and sips.

  “Are you pointing your pinky finger?” I ask. “I need a picture of this.”

  “Is it time, Daddy?” Louise says, jumping up from her seat.

  “It’s time,” I say, pointing to the ceiling of the play house. “Hear the helicopters? Everyone’s here. Come on, we gotta go.”

  “I’ll take them,” Ivy says, standing up from her place at the table with Bronte in her arms. “I can’t wait to see my parents.”

  I herd the girls out after Ivy and then I turn to Nolan. “I hear you caught a pig for my girls today.”

  Nolan points to the corner where said pig is sleeping on top of a pink velvet cushion. “You mean that pig?”

  “They very one,” I say. “And what the fuck happened to your head?”

  Nolan gingerly touches the giant lump near his ear. “Louise doesn’t exactly have the best aim. She hit me with a rock.”

  “She what?”

  “Well, in her defense, she was aiming for the daddy pig.”

  It suddenly occurs to me that I have no idea what my kids were up to today. And Rory is gonna kill me when she finds out how this pig thing went down. “What the hell were you thinking, Romantic?”

  “Hey, they offered me a deal. I couldn’t pass it up.”

  I want to argue with him, tell him about the nuisance these pigs are if you feed them. Smack him in the head, right on that lump the size of an egg, and call him an idiot. But I hear more helicopters arriving and decide it’ll have to wait. “Come on, everyone’s here. We can settle this later.”

  Back up at the house there are dozens of people crowded around the pool where we’re having the party. I spy Spencer and Veronica laughing and joking with my mom and dad, then look the other way and see all Rory’s sisters hugging her and jumping up and down. All except Ariel. I look for her because I know she’s gonna be a problem. But she’s not here. Did she stay home? Was she so pissed off we left her out of the plan to save Rory that she refused to come?

  Nah. She has to be here somewhere.

  “Hey,” Katya says, coming up to me as I make my way around the pool, heading towards Rory so I can say hi to my sisters, Sasha, Kate, and Wendy.

  “Hey,” I say to Katya. I don’t know her very well. I wasn't part of all that shit that went down with Oliver last year. I was too worried about making sure no one got wind of Rory and our little island paradise.

  “Have you seen Oliver?” she asks.


  “No, why?”

  “I was just with him like twenty minutes ago when everyone got here, but now he’s disappeared.”

  “I’m sure he’s here somewhere, Kat. Just lost in the crowd.”

  “OK.” She sighs. “I’ll keep looking.”

  Katya walks off, looking a little bit lost in the crowd of mostly strangers. She’s met the Shrikes—hell, she eats Sunday dinner over there every weekend back home. But it’s gotta be intimidating, right? All those people in one place. So tight. So close. So connected.

  And she has no one but Oliver.

  I feel bad for her.

  I think Rory does too because she’s been going out of her way to make Kat happy, even altering her dress for her last-minute to make her wedding day perfect.

  I look around for Oliver again because two Shrikes missing is probably not a good thing. I see Nolan and his mother talking with the Rockwells. Pastor Rockwell looks like he’s giving the infamous Mr. Romantic the third degree about his granddaughter, while Mrs. Rockwell holds Bronte and showers her with kisses. Poor Nolan. No one ever cuts that guy a break. Not even me.

  I see Mysterious and Mariel. Kat’s over there now, probably asking the two of them if they’ve seen Oliver. Mysterious looks oddly… uncomfortable. He catches my eye and shakes his head like something’s about to go really wrong. I decide to head over there and investigate, when a hand slaps over my mouth and I’m pulled into the bushes.

  “I need to have a word with you, Five Aston,” Oliver hisses in my ear as he throws me aside.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I ask, stumbling. When I turn around, straightening out my shirt, I find a very pissed-off Oliver Shrike and his equally terrifying sister, Ariel. They both stand, feet shoulder-width apart, arms crossed, and faces that tell me… yup. This is the freak-out I’ve been expecting all along.

  “You stole my fucking sister,” Oliver says.

  “Mine too,” Ariel adds.

  “And if you think we’re gonna let you keep her prisoner out here in the middle of the ocean one more second, you’re sadly mistaken, brother.”