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

I suddenly want the responsibility of a child that’s not mine? Kinda not. I don’t like the idea of being step-mommy, but I love the idea of being the babysitter, particularly if Logan’s turned on by it.

“I’d like to do that scene. It’ll all be okay, Daddy,” I whisper to him.

“You promise, huh?”

“Promise.” I hold up my pinkie and he releases the back of my neck to pinkie-shake. I lift my head enough to look into his face. He’s flushed after his orgasm, and his eyes are heavy-lidded, but also a little bloodshot. My beautiful, suffering daddy.

He sighs and tucks my face back into his neck. “She goes tomorrow. I have to keep focused on that. Not even twenty-four hours and she’s gone. Neither of us has to see or speak to her again.”

If Logan gets custody, I somehow doubt our lives will be Miranda-free. That’s a depressing thought, because I’m looking forward to the minute she gets on the plane just as much as Logan is. Still, it will only make him feel worse than he already does to point that out.

“It’s just a couple more hours. No throttling, Daddy.”

He chuckles and guides my head back so he can kiss me. “Thanks for the reminder, sweetie.”

* * *

Someone’s screaming. It can’t be me, because I can’t draw enough air into my crushed lungs to scream. Or push out enough air through my pulverized larynx. Maybe the screams are coming from the elephant that’s stomping all over me, the huge, rough plates of its feet cracking my bones, grinding my flesh to mush.

“Emmy, baby girl, wake up.”

The ringmaster speaks to me in Daddy’s voice. He points again at the Hula-Hoop that I was trying to get the elephant to jump through before it turned on me, glared at me with familiar blue eyes, and started trampling me.

The elephant trumpets, or screams, and I jolt upright.

“It’s okay, little love. Daddy’s right here. I’ve got you.” Daddy’s hard arms close around me. His big, warm palm smooths my hair. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. Did you have a bad dream?”

I nod into his shoulder. Such a bad dream. So vivid and real I could hear the crack of each bone, smell the hot copper of my blood mixing with the straw of the ring.

“Tell me all about it,” Logan says.

“I was in the circus. I was supposed to make the animals jump through a Hula-Hoop, like the tigers do?”

“Uh-huh,” Daddy says soothingly.

“The animals kept getting bigger and bigger. First it was a pig and then a horse and then a lion. They all jumped through. Then the elephant came. I could see it couldn’t fit through the it and I asked the ringmaster for a bigger hoop, but he shook his head and pointed at the elephant. I tried to hold the hoop up so it could jump through. The elephant put its foot through the hoop, but it couldn’t fit any more and that made the elephant really angry and it trampled me.”

Logan rocks me. “I’m sorry, sweetie. That sounds very scary.”

I rub my face against his shoulder and sniffle back some tears. “The elephant had blue eyes, Daddy.”

“Ah.” He rubs my back. “I get it. It was just a dream, little girl. Just a dream.”

“Bad dream.”

“Yes, a very bad dream, but it’s all over now. No more elephant. And the blue-eyed monster will be gone tomorrow.”

Not soon enough. “Can I suck my thumb?”

“Of course, you can, baby girl. But Daddy’s going to help you get back to sleep.”

“He is?” I ask around my thumb.

“Certainly is.”

He cuddles me until I stop sniffling, then fucks me into a coma.

* * *

When I wake again, my throat is sore and my eyes are gritty, and I have a strange hankering for lemon and butter crepes.

When I was six, my father went on a business trip to California. He never came back. He called a few times but didn’t speak to me or my brother. Maman would curl up in bed and cry after his phone calls. As the days turned to weeks, she stopped getting out of bed. The money ran out and then the food ran out and still she huddled under the sweat-sour covers and refused to move.

Going to bed hungry, waking up to another day of trying to stretch the free meals my brother and I got at school each day to feed all three of us, I developed night terrors. I’d scream and scream in my sleep, but neither Maman nor Francis could wake me. When I finally did wake, I’d cry all the rest of the night, until Maman took me into her musty-smelling bed where I would fall back to sleep. In the mornings, she’d make lemon and butter crepes, because the ingredients cost pennies. Even after she finally got out of bed and got a job, she’d still make me lemon and butter crepes on the mornings after I had night terrors.

I grew out of the night terrors eventually, but I guess I didn’t outgrow my taste for lemon and butter crepes.

I roll over to look at the other side of the bed. Logan’s already up. He gets up before me most mornings. I check the clock. He’ll still be exercising. There’s time for the crepe batter to rest.

I pull on a shorty sleep set and scamper downstairs to mix the batter.

Sable’s left me three “gifts” on the kitchen floor near his bowl. I think they might have been crickets. Ugh. I swallow back my revulsion and praise my mighty hunter and put some tuna in his bowl so he knows how proud his human is of him. Then I tidy up the bits and scrub the floor before Daddy sees and loses his appetite.

Logan comes upstairs while I’m grating lemon zest and kitchen-dancing to Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance.” Daddy’s sweaty but smiling. He folds me into his damp chest and kisses the top of my head.

“Good morning, little love.”

“Good morning, Daddy.