The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The First Collection Frost, J (good beach reads .TXT) 📖

open again, for the last half of the hour, Hendry hooks up Daddy to a super-TENS machine. He gives me a dark, amused glance as she puts the electrode patches on him and I wriggle in my chair, trying not to think of the times he’s put similar patches on me. Daddy likes to play what he calls “predicament games,” where I have to do something like keep my balance in an impossible position to avoid getting zapped. The last time we played, he hooked up the current to a butt plug and zapped me that way. Insane stinginess inside my butt. He’s such a sadist.

Maybe I should suggest to Hendry that she try zapping Daddy in the butt. It could be therapeutic.

That thought has me grinning into my tablet.

As she finishes, Daddy asks Hendry if he can start doing squats with weights. She shakes her head, which makes me sad, but happy I didn’t have to tell her how much pain Daddy’s still in. She cautions him about pushing too hard, too fast—again—and talks to him for a few minutes about different exercises to strengthen his core. Logan already has a serious six-pack, so I’m not sure why she thinks he needs core-strengthening, but I don’t interrupt, and take Daddy’s hand when he holds it out to me after saying goodbye to Hendry.

“Don’t think I missed that sly smile when Hendry was hooking me up to the electrical torture device, little girl,” he says as we step out onto the sidewalk. “What was that all about?”

“You know where you zapped me the last time?” I ask.

“Uh-huh. I remember.”

“Well, I was just thinking that I felt the zap all the way down to my toes, so it might be a good idea if Hendry zapped you there, too.”

Logan chuckles. “Try suggesting it to her, little girl. You won’t sit down for a month. Possibly two months.”

I giggle, knowing he would never hurt me that badly.

“But, Daddy, we want to do everything possible to speed your recovery,” I say sweetly.

“We do. I’m just giving you fair warning: open your mouth on that subject to Hendry and my ass will recover a lot faster than yours.”

I’d like to say my butt’s not afraid of him, but that wouldn’t be true. I settle instead for swinging his hand as we walk down the heat-hazy street and whistling MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”

Chapter Six Logan

For the second time today, we open a door and walk into a serious stink. Only this time, it’s my house, and the stink is urine instead of shit.

“Oh, no!” Emily drops my hand and bolts past me. As she runs through the great room, the cat emerges from under the couch and begins meowing plaintively at her, but she runs past him, into the kitchen. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Daddy, don’t come in here. I’ll clean it up.”

I follow her into the kitchen, and the cat follows me, still meowing.

Emily set up the cat’s litter box in the space between the breakfast nook and fridge. While we were out, the cat evidently decided that location wasn’t to his liking and left a yellow puddle in front of the closed door to the half-bath between the kitchen and my office. It’s a big puddle, too. Horse-sized, rather than cat-sized. In the overly warm house, the stink is eye-watering.

I move to the French doors and open them. No self-respecting fly will want to come inside, given that smell.

The cat takes one look at the open doors before darting back under the couch, still meowing.

Emily’s already gathered handfuls of paper towels and is mopping at the puddle, although how she can see anything through the tears filling her eyes is a mystery. She’s trembling all over and whips her head towards the couch every time the cat yowls, before going back to madly swiping at the puddle.

She’s panicking. Either this is her old trigger about bodily functions or it’s a new one, but either way, letting her try to deal with this on her own is a mistake. I know from painful, past experience.

I walk into the living room and sit down in my favorite armchair. “Emily, stop what you’re doing, come here, and kneel.”

“Just a sec—”

“Now.”

I hear her start crying audibly. She shuffles through the dining area, into where I’m sitting, wringing her hands, tears trembling on her chin. Head down, she kneels between my feet.

I give her the hand position for Nadu and she goes into it, spreading her knees and resting her hands on her thighs. I wait a moment for the position, and its associations, to calm her. When the tears stop dripping, I pat my leg. She leans forward and rests her cheek against my thigh.

“Please, Daddy, d-d-don’t make me take Sable back. I’ll train him, I promise.” She whimpers, a sound that bruises my heart. “This won’t happen a-a-again.”

“Emily, do you remember when you showed me Peter Aloha Bunny? What did I tell you then?”

She sniffles, then shakes her head, rubbing her wet face against my shorts. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I d-don’t remember.”

“I told you that little girls need their lovies and I would never take Peter Aloha Bunny away from you. Not as a punishment. Not for any reason. Sable is your kitty as much as Peter Aloha Bunny is your bunny.”

“I can keep him?”

I stroke her hair and feel the tiny tremors running through her. That goddamn woman did this to my little girl, destroying the things that comforted her when she needed them the most. “Always, sweetie. He’s yours.”

“I’ll train him, Daddy, so he doesn’t make messes.”

“I don’t care about the mess, my baby. I care about you.”

She breaks position to wrap her arms around my waist. I don’t reprimand her. She can touch her daddy whenever she needs to.

I let her hug me, and I stroke her hair, until she’s no longer shaking. When she sits back, I wipe her eyes with the hem of my tee, which is