Oh No, My Stalker Is Cute! (Criminally Captivated #3)

Chapter One

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Sarelia

Park benches at dusk are not as poetic as they once were. Park benches at dusk while I’m bawling, a strange man has just sat down next to me and offered up a handkerchief, though?

Still not poetic. Stop reading dark romances. They’re messing with your worldview.

“N-no, thank you.” I sniffle. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay.” His British accent takes me off guard, and I accept the handkerchief by rote when he offers it again. “There you go, love. Wipe away your sorrows.”

Staring at the man, I clutch the fabric in my lap instead.

He sighs, pulls a second handkerchief from the pocket of his…

I blink against my tears.

“Are you wearing a Hawaiian shirt?”

He takes his second handkerchief and dabs at my cheeks as he answers, “Of course I am.”

“Of course,” I repeat in a shaky whisper. Because obviously the British man in the landlocked state of Kentucky would be wearing an impeccably tailored black Hawaiian shirt.

I squint at the blooms against his chest. “Are those vanilla flowers?”

“They are,” he confirms, gently guiding my hand up to my face to help me wipe away the wetness he can no longer get, because I’ve soaked through his spare hankie.

“Where–” I hiccup. “Where did you even get that? Why did you even get that?”

The shirt isn’t ugly or anything, but… again. Kentucky. Landlocked. And, beyond that, not known for its tropical vacationing. We’re more mountains and woodlands type of relaxation. T-shirts and hiking boots, not Hawaiian shirts and flip flops, which he also wears at the end of his pale, pale legs.

He shifts on the bench, wiggling his shoulders. “Do you like it? I got it online as a retirement gift to myself. I’ve got one last work task, then I’m off to a beach. Any beach.”

“Oh?” I ask. “Retiring?”

He barely looks fifty, at a stretch. Which is just… wonderful. For him. To be able to retire at such a young age and it to be a happy enough occasion to warrant a fancy new shirt that he can wear to his fancy retirement on his fancy beach.

How. Absolutely. Wonderful.

Oh. Hm? Why, yes, that is bitterness you’ve detected. How astute.

Why bitter, you ask? Over a stranger enjoying his hard-earned freedom from the perils of the working world?

Well, it certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with my own retirement at the age of twenty-eight-and-a-quarter or my beloved family’s less-than-enthusiastic reception of said early-age retirement.

That reception being what may or may not have led to me crying on this park bench as I glare at a stranger’s perfectly aesthetic Hawaiian shirt.

Because, you know, my family would never ever, ever look me dead in the eye and say something like, oh, perhaps, “Sarelia, sweetie… are you really making enough money on your books for that? I know you say it’s going well, but…

” or, “Oh, no, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.

We just love you,” or even, “We want what’s best for you, and we worry about you. Sarelia, please, please stop crying.”

Definitely my father and my mother and my brother would not have said all of this after having sat me down intervention-style this morning to discuss the news I had delivered—happily, I might add—to them yesterday morn.

Because if they had done that, it would have been devastating. Heartbreaking. Eye opening in an oh-they-don’t-believe-in-me-or-trust-my-judgment sort of way despite the twenty-eight-and-a-quarter years I’ve spent thinking if I just prove I’m a capable adult, they’ll believe in me finally.

So definitely my very caring and loving and supportive family did not do that, and I am sitting here having an existential crisis for some other reason that makes perfectly good sense.

Def-in-ite-ly.

And this crisis is happening in the park not because I don’t want to have it at home where I live with my well-intentioned though apparently trustless parents, but because having your cry on a park bench is all the rage. Public displays of affliction: everyone’s having them.

“Retiring, yes,” the man says, right in the midst of my trendy affliction. “After one last job, which is what I wanted to discuss with you.” He sighs, shaking his head at me. “I don’t think Archie would be very happy to see you crying like this.”

Cogs turn in my head as I work to process what it is he just said and how the sentences could possibly correlate to one another.

He is retiring.

He has one last job.

He wishes to discuss this job with… me?

And Archie would not be happy to see me crying.

My brows furrow.

Yeah… he’s lost me in the middle there.

“Are you talking about Archie Pine?” I ask, because priorities.

“Is there any other Archie that matters?” he retorts.

I decide that the man can speak as nonsensically as he likes. He is, clearly, of sound mind and great intelligence.

“Not that I know of,” I reply, pausing to blow my nose into his handkerchief. “Archie Pine is life.”

The older man’s eyes twinkle down at me as his shoulders wiggle, then straighten, prouder than they were before. “Archie’s my nephew.”

My breath catches, and I freeze. Archie is his nephew? Archie Pine is his nephew?

My eyes dart across his face, searching his features for hints that he’s telling the truth. His nose is rather like Archie’s… as are his jawline, the curve of his upper lip, and the shape of his earlobe.

My heart rate kicks up a notch or twelve.

“Stone Pine, at your service.” He offers his hand, and I move to shake it, only just remembering to drop my used hankie before our hands collide.

“Sarelia Prim,” I reply, squeezing his palm as I marvel at him. Stone Pine. Possibly Archie’s uncle—AKA a man who shares blood with Archibald Charles Pine: CubeCraft gamer, British heartthrob, and unequivocal love of my life.

Stone smiles. “I know. Archie’s told me all about you, and I’ve learned a thing or two myself.”

My heart goes from sixty to zero in point-oh-five seconds flat. “Archie’s told you about me?” I wheeze. “Me?”

Surely not.

Surely. Freaking. Not.

Even if Stone is his uncle—and I’m not convinced he is—surely freaking not.

I mean, I know that Archie knows about me, general, because most CubeCraft professionals know about the fans who are active in the fandom in the way that I am active in the fandom.

Which is to say, he knows my username and sometimes discusses my video edits and fan projects in his videos, and he’s even posted reaction videos that have included him reacting to my edits.

I do not at all know how he would know about me, personal, though, because the username that I post my edits and projects under is a variation on his own username—CinnaRollLuvr88888 to his CinnaRoll47426.

No indication of who I am outside of my love for him.

I don’t have any personal connections to my fan pages.

I’m careful to the point of paranoia sometimes in keeping CinnaRollLuvr88888 separate from me, Sarelia Elowen Prim.

It’s not that I’m ashamed of my love for Archie and all things concerning him.

I’m merely forced to be protective of my identity.

The last thing I want is to cross my professional and personal lives by getting recognized while gazing adoringly at my dearest love in the middle of a convention center.

I do not need my readers to know what goes on in my life outside of whatever marketing ploy I’ve got going on at the moment. Work life balance, and all that.

As long as my pen name, Pearl Taylor, is active, my actual identity must be protected in as many areas as I can possibly protect it.

Because readers? Readers are nuts. The scary, stalker-y kind of nuts, but not in a cute way.

In an I-think-they’re-trying-to-steal-my-blood-to-clone-me-in-order-to-get-more-books kind of way.

They’re like addicts willing to do anything for a hit, and my books are their drug of choice.

In this scenario, I’m just collateral damage as they strive for more of the substance that keeps them going.

Protecting my identity, and thus my peace, has been even more important to me as I’ve approached retirement, which is really more of a semi-retirement for me, all things considered.

Even retired authors have to keep marketing their books if they want to make an income on them.

Which I do, because why would I let an entire stream of revenue dry up when I can instead dedicate a mere handful of hours a month to keeping it thriving? That would be silly.

So. Protection and privacy—to the extent that I have no clue how Archie would know my legal name to be able to then tell his uncle, let alone anything else about me.

And yet, Stone assures me that is exactly what’s happened. “Raves about you, my nephew. He finds you quite endearing, you know.”

I know no such thing, but the possibility that he might be telling the truth… I begin to understand the reader’s desperation for their next hit—their hope that something sweet might be just around the corner waiting for them.

“How would Archie know about me?” I ask, even as my heart restarts and a thread of hopeful wonder winds around it.

Maybe he knows about me from our souls finding each other in the deep of night as I sleep, our red strings of fate twining together so tightly that he wakes with a gasp every morning, my name on his tongue.

“He cyber-stalked you, I believe.”

Ah. Or that.

“And then he real stalked you, via me.”

Or… that?

“Did you just admit to stalking on two counts?”

Not that I don’t partake in a little cyber-stalking myself, but I’m a fangirl with a penchant for daydreaming and turning my glorified fan-fiction into published works of literature.

Cyber-stalking comes with the territory.

Stone is a middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt on the brink of retirement.

For one of us, stalking is cute. For the other… not so much.

“I admitted to no counts of stalking, actually. In my tax records my work is labelled as ‘High Intensity Private Investigation.’ Archie’s the stalker, not me.”

Right. Archie. Stalking. Me.

“Not to sound skeptical,” I say, broadcasting my skepticism far enough that they are likely getting a read on it in Archie’s home country of Great Britain, “but why should I believe you?” Beyond the fact that I’d really, really like to.

“Ah!” Stone declares, pointing a finger at me. “I almost forgot!” He drops his finger to reach into the breast pocket of his shirt and pull out his phone.

I wait patiently, counting my breaths and willing them to stay even as my budding hope grows ever larger.

He didn’t hesitate when asked for proof. He pulled out his phone to find it. Implying it’s there to be found.

My eyes, glued to the phone in his hands, widen when he turns it around.

“That’s…”

“Archie,” Stone confirms. “And me.”

A very young Archie with a much younger Stone, specifically. They sit together at a table, little sandy-haired Archie in Stone’s lap, his face set in a wide, carefree grin as he looks at the camera. Stone watches Archie, his eyes soft and full of love.

“That was at his mum’s house when he was maybe four or five,” Stone says, then slides a finger across the screen to change the photo. “And here we are when he was a teenager.”

Teenage Archie sparkles mayhem at me next to a version of Stone that looks considerably like the adult Archie I’m used to watching online. My eyes flick up to the man before me. “You were so handsome.”

He huffs. “I am so handsome, you mean.”

In the sense that he is what Archie is apparently going to look like someday… “Sure.”

Stone’s eyes narrow on me as his mouth turns down.

“You’re old enough to be my father, you know.”

His nose wrinkles. “I am not.”

“How old are you?” I eye him.

“Fifty-five,” he grumps.

Mm… yeah. “So, a teen father, but still. You are not within the attractive male age range for me, even if my attractive male age range were not restricted to specifically Archie’s date and time of birth.”

Stone’s lip twitches, then lifts, dragging his cheeks with it until he’s letting out a bark of a laugh. “You two really were made for each other,” he snorts. “Obsessive is not a strong enough word.”

I perk up. “Archie’s obsessive? Over what?” Please tell me, that I may obsess with him.

Stone sobers, sighing a beleaguered huff of air. “Don’t you get it?” he asks. “Archie’s obsessive over you, Sarelia.”

When I don’t respond because I am very busy hyperventilating, Stone continues, “He sent me to watch over you, my dear, and to report back, and he’s paid me handsomely to do it.

But now I wish to retire, which means it’s time, sweet Sarelia, for you two to formally meet.

” He smiles, a spark not unlike one his nephew often boasts shining from his eye.

“My last job before I retire. Kidnap the princess and take her straight to her prince.”

He wraps an arm around my vibrating shoulders, spins us to face a supremely cute little pale yellow convertible, and marches us toward it.

“Welcome to your trusty steed, Princess Sarelia, and to your new life.”