Mister Impossible: Bachelor International, Book 3

  Mister Impossible

  Bachelor International, Book 3

  Tara Sue Me

  After Six Publishing

  Copyright © 2021 by Tara Sue Me

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing: Victory Editing

  Cover image: DepositPhotos

  Cover design: Mister Sue Me

  Ebook ISBN: 9781950017300

  Print ISBN: 9781950017317

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Mister Temptation

  Mister Irresistible

  Also by Tara Sue Me

  About the Author

  They say you never forget your first love. I don’t know who they are, but as far as I can tell, they’re probably right. Which is fine. I don’t want to forget my first love, after all.

  I want to destroy him.

  Chapter 1

  Piers

  Like always, it felt all sorts of fucked up to be sitting in the small waiting area of Bachelor International. Six months ago, I had been the matchmaking company’s head legal counsel as well as best friends with its owner, Tenor Butler. In those days, I’d breeze through the front door and make my way to any area I wanted in the office. I’m not even sure I’d ever looked at the waiting room any of the times I came by to meet or chat with Tenor.

  Now, however, he wouldn’t speak to me unless it was necessary.

  While I’d admit to strong-arming his then employee, Mia, into quitting all those months ago, I had done so based on what I thought was ironclad proof she was using him. I had been trying to protect my best friend and the business he’d built from the ground up. Instead, I’d fucked up a bunch of shit.

  For the past four months, I’d been working to make amends, for the most part, by tracking down the asshole who’d given me the worthless information in the first place, Benjamin Douglas. To be honest, I was shocked I hadn’t found him yet. Known by most as a respected attorney in the Boston area where I lived, I hadn’t always been the upstanding gentleman most people viewed me as. Among other things, I had what might view as questionable contacts. A good number of those contacts were known for their ability to find people who preferred to remain hidden.

  Needless to say, the fact that Benjamin Douglas seemed to have disappeared and had remained hidden from all of us dumbfounded me. Earlier in the week, I’d narrowed down the ways he could have accomplished such a task and found two that seemed to be the most likely.

  One, he was dead.

  Two, he was part of an unsavory group who had their own questionable contacts and means of doing things.

  While I preferred reason one, I had a gut feeling reason two was more likely. Based on that gut feeling, I’d revised my search tactics, and the result was why I found myself sitting in the previously unnoticed waiting area.

  “Mr. Worthington?” the admin working the front desk asked. “Ms. Matthews said to send you on back.”

  “Thank you,” I told her, walking past her desk, noting that she watched until I disappeared around the corner. Mia and/or Tenor had hired her since my fall from grace, though I’m sure someone, if not multiple someones, had filled her in on my history.

  Mia had her office door open. But I didn’t want to barge in, so I knocked on the frame to get her attention.

  She looked up and smiled. “Hey, Piers. How’s it going? Come on in and sit down.”

  I walked into her office and took a seat in a chair across from her desk. While Tenor only spoke to me when necessary, the same could not be said of Mia. She’d forgiven me for my actions that led to her untimely departure from Bachelor International. The way I saw it, my forcing Mia out had been a positive thing in the end. Ultimately, it’d resulted in her becoming part owner. That didn’t even take into consideration the fact she and Tenor now lived together.

  But that was a conversation for another day. Since I was the one who’d asked for the meeting, I started. I began by telling her my thoughts on the two most likely reasons locating Benjamin Douglas bordered on impossible. She agreed it was unlikely the man had somehow died with no record of it happening.

  “That’s not the only reason you asked to meet, is it?” she asked. “You’re here because the new search you started on has turned something up, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed. Based upon what she and Tenor had told me before, in addition to what I’d learned from my own research, Mia and Benjamin had met in college. They dated for a brief time but decided they were more suited together as friends. While this seemed to have been the case while they were in college, after graduation, they hadn’t seen the other person until that fateful meeting when they were in Atlanta at the same time and hotel months ago.

  Though I doubted Mia still considered Benjamin a friend since, according to both her and Tenor, her old schoolmate had attempted to assault her during that Atlanta meeting, I hesitated voicing what I’d found. A fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Mia.

  “You asked for this meeting,” she reminded me. “Tell me what you found.”

  I took a deep breath. “I have reason to suspect a wanted crime lord paid Benjamin for his actions in Atlanta.”

  “What?” Mia asked, her confused expression reminding me so very much of how I suspected my own shocked face looked when I discovered the evidence.

  “Don’t ask me how I came into possession of this information, but according to bank records, his account recently received a large deposit from an overseas bank. I’ve been able to track it that far, but I can’t get any further.”

  “Okay,” Mia said. “I’ll agree getting a hefty sum of money deposited by an international bank into your personal account is a little fishy, but does that mean it’s always fishy? Is there not an instance you can think of in which the transfer would result from a legitimate reason?”

  She was playing devil’s advocate. I had to admit I appreciated her questioning me and not taking everything I said as gospel.

  “Of course,” I replied. “There are several reasons the money could have been deposited legitimately. But I don’t believe any of those to be the case with Benjamin.”

  She gave a quick nod. “It’s America. Innocent until proven guilty.”

  “It’s my research,” I came back with. “Assumed guilty until proven otherwise.”

  “You think Benjamin is in cahoots with the mob?”

  Cahoots. I loved the English language. So many fun words. “Yes,” I said. “I think they have him deep inside their pockets.”

  She leaned back in her seat, and I had a fairly good idea of what she was thinking. A suspicion that proved correct when she replied, “If that’s the case, this could have a much broader scope than we originally thought.”

  Yes, and that was another problem.


  “Is it possible it wasn’t a coincidence I ran into Benjamin in Atlanta after all these years?” she asked.

  “As crazy and as improbable as it sounds, it means we have to look into that possibility.” I still thought that arranging an accidental meeting was something of a long shot. Based on what I remembered, Tenor and Mia had booked their flight and hotel only a few days before they left. One would think it impossible to move that fast.

  “Why would anyone considered a crime lord be interested in me?” Mia asked, but she didn’t wait a second before answering her own question. “Unless they were using me as a way to get to either Tenor or the business.”

  “That would be my guess,” I said. “Although I’m not sure why anyone would target them either.”

  Mia chewed on her bottom lip. “I should get Tenor and bring him in. He needs to know about what we’re potentially dealing with here.”

  As much as I knew Tenor didn’t want to see me, she was right. He needed to be present. I’d been the one who discovered the information, and therefore I should be the one who explained it to him. I gave Mia a nod.

  “I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said and stepped out of her office—on her way to get Tenor, I presumed.

  As she’d said, she was back in her office in less than two minutes with Tenor following close behind. They both came in and sat down, Tenor having to make do with the seat next to me.

  “Piers,” he said with a slight inclination of his head.

  I did the same. “Tenor.”

  “What’s this about a crime boss Mia’s talking about?” he asked, wasting no time getting to the point.

  I repeated everything I’d told Mia. Tenor listened carefully, not saying anything until I’d finished.

  “Damn.” He ran one of his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what to think, much less where to start.”

  “Off the top of your head, can you think of anyone you pissed off that may have ties to organized crime?”

  “Hell,” Tenor said. “I’ve pissed off more people than I can count over the years. I would imagine at least a handful of them have connections with the underground. But pissed them off enough to set me up for a sexual harassment lawsuit? I don’t think I’ve made anyone that angry.”

  “Especially since Benjamin would have to know I wouldn’t go along with whatever he said,” Mia added.

  I got out my phone to take notes. “Tell me again exactly what went down at the hotel.”

  Tenor went first and spoke about how he and Mia were waiting in a long line to check in at the hotel in Atlanta when Benjamin came up beside them, recognizing Mia. He told her he was in town attending a cyber security conference being held at the hotel. Tenor left them chatting and checked both of them into their rooms. Before they went up, Benjamin asked Mia out to dinner.

  She’d initially declined, saying she didn’t want to leave Tenor by himself, but Tenor told her to go on, he’d grab room service. Which he did and later ended up falling asleep on the couch, waking up when he heard Mia and Benjamin in her room next door, arguing. She was asking him to leave, and he was refusing. Tenor shot over there as quickly as possible, found Mia pressed against the wall with Benjamin towering over her.

  Tenor said a few choice words and physically removed Benjamin from the room.

  It was the same series of events he’d given me any other time we’d discussed that night. “Mia?” I asked. “Tell me what happened up to the point that Tenor came in.”

  She said she’d met Benjamin in the lobby and didn’t protest when he mentioned stopping by the bar before dinner.

  “I was tired,” Mia explained. “Travel always does that to me. Frankly, I didn’t feel like hitting the town anyway. So staying in for the night sounded good.”

  But Benjamin seemed reluctant to leave the bar. After two hours, she told him she was going to get dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and didn’t care if he joined her or not. She did her best not to act surprised when he followed her out.

  “For the record,” she was quick to add, “I’d consumed zero amount of alcohol because I can’t drink on an empty stomach. At that point, all I’d had was two tonic waters.”

  Over dinner, Benjamin seemed more like the man she’d gone to school with. Surprisingly, she enjoyed the dinner and ended up staying much later than planned. When Benjamin asked if he could see her to her room, she saw no reason to say no.

  “Thank you,” I said, noting that, like Tenor, her story hadn’t changed. “And for the record, though I’ve told you both before, when he contacted me, he claimed he and Mia were participating in a consensual nonconsent scene.”

  “Consensual nonconsent, my ass,” Mia mumbled under her breath, and Tenor placed his hand on top of hers.

  I continued, “He also told me Mia knew Tenor was into her and that he wanted to sleep with her, so she intended to set him up for sexual harassment.”

  Everything the man had said had been a damn lie. I knew that looking back, but he had come across so convincingly, I’d gone along with it.

  “I still can’t see what would interest a crime lord about a matchmaking business,” Tenor said. “It makes little sense to me.”

  “But people like that have reasons for everything they do,” I said. “It’s just a matter of finding out what that reason is.”

  Chapter 2

  Bri

  After years of preparing myself for this day, one would think I’d be ready for anything. Certainly I’d thought I was one hundred percent prepared for whatever came my way. But somehow, while making preparations and plans as well as backup plans for the backup plan, I overlooked one critical item.

  Not that I’d spent every minute of every day focused solely on hunting Piers Worthington down and what I planned to do once I found him. But I’d thought with all the time and energy I’d poured into ensuring I located the bastard, I’d be more than ready when I actually did.

  I’d obtained recent photos of him (hot as hell), I’d researched the places he’d worked (mostly on his own), who had hired him (the list was impressive), and for what jobs (see previous comment about who hired him). I knew the upscale neighborhood he had listed as his main address, the Italian place on Hanover Street where he liked to eat, and the little café on the corner across from his apartment where he stopped almost every morning to get a cup of coffee.

  I was aware of both his rift with his once good friend, Tenor Butler, and what had caused that rift. In fact, the animosity between the two was a big part of why I was selected to work for Bachelor International. With me in place, the plan to destroy Piers Worthington piece by piece was underway. Bachelor International held the dubious honor of being piece number one.

  Neither I nor the people I worked for had anything against Tenor Butler or his new partner, Mia Matthews. But someone had to be the first to fall, and Bachelor International was it for this operation. Or at least it was now.

  The plan had been to take down a small advertising agency Piers did some work for first. But one of our group’s newest hires, Benjamin Douglas, had run across Tenor Butler in Atlanta unexpectedly and moved Bachelor International up on the list.

  Because of his spur-of-the-moment decision and the complete horseshit of a mess that followed, everything had to be juggled around and new plans made to replace the ones Benjamin obliterated. Though Benjamin had pissed a lot of people off with his actions, I, for one, couldn’t have been happier. Not because Benjamin had failed so epically, but because his failure was the catalyst for the Organization to put me into play. This was the opportunity I’d been preparing and waiting years for. Unfortunately, there was one thing I hadn’t counted on.

  How the sound of his voice would freeze me in my tracks.

  Mia’s office sat between mine and Tenor’s. When she left the door open, and most days she did, I could hear almost everything that went on inside. Earlier, someone passed by my office on the way to either hers or Tenor’s, but I’d thought nothing of it. They were the owners an
d always seemed to have a steady stream of visitors. I’d gotten to the point where most of the time I tuned out the noise coming from Mia’s office. I didn’t even hear her welcome whoever it was.

  But I heard every syllable of the rough “Thank you for taking the time to see me today, Mia” given in reply.

  I’d been in the middle of typing an email, and my fingers stopped, poised right above the keyboard.

  Piers.

  His voice still held a hint of his childhood. Underneath the polished and refined demeanor I’m sure he portrayed to the rest of the world, part of him remained a young boy living on the streets of London. I’d worked hard to erase all traces of my early life. Now, only when I got upset could the tiniest bit of a British accent be heard.

  I pulled out a stack of papers and pretended to be reading through them, but what I was really doing was listening to the conversation in the next office. Piers had been unsuccessful in locating Benjamin, but that wasn’t a surprise. Or at least it wasn’t to me. If the Organization didn’t want you to be found, you wouldn’t be.

  I continued eavesdropping for a minute longer, but when they lowered their voices, I stood up and closed my office door. Out of sight, out of mind. Or so they said. At the moment, I wanted to blend into the background. There would be a time and place to allow Piers to see me, but it wasn’t right now, and it wasn’t here. At the moment, I was glad no one could see me. Certainly, the Organization would be disappointed at how I reacted to hearing Piers talk.