Daddy PI: Book 1 of the Daddy PI Casefiles Frost, J (acx book reading txt) 📖

I take a deep breath and give him something I’ve never given another of my Doms. Never dreamed of giving another of my Doms. “I have eight hundred calories left. I can have a salad and the chicken a l’Orange or any of the fish dishes, except the lobster because it’s cruel to boil them while they’re still alive.”

I take another deep breath and wait, watching for his reaction.

He cups my head in his big hand and draws me close. His breath warms my forehead. “Yes, sweet baby. I’ll order for you.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

I expect him to release me and lead me to the table. Instead he holds me for a long minute, stroking my hair, while everyone else moves around us to their tables. Finally, he releases me and takes my hand. When I look up at him, his eyes are bloodshot. A muscle’s working in his jaw. What happened? Did I do something wrong? I glance around the table as he seats me next to Teresa Lehmann, checking to see if there’s censure on anyone’s face, but everyone sitting at the captain’s table is involved in their conversations or the menu. No one’s looking at us.

Logan sits next to me, with the chief on his far side and the captain beyond the chief at the round table. Logan takes the fancily folded napkin off my plate and places it in my lap. Then he picks up my hand and holds it tightly while he reads over the menu.

Without the burden of having to order, I can join the conversation. Surprisingly, that thought doesn’t make my palms sweat. When Teresa Lehmann gives me a sloe-eyed glance, I smile brightly at her. She smiles back.

“Michael tells me you’re a writer,” she says.

I nod. “Historical romance.”

“Oh, I read some historical romance. What books have you written?”

I reel off my bestsellers and her smile widens.

“I absolutely adored The Kingmaker’s Architect,” she says. “What gave you the idea for a woman to disguise herself as a man to become an architect?”

As the waiters circulate taking orders, I explain the mores of the time, which prevented women from engaging in “male” professions, and what I discovered during my research.

“There were women doctors like Margaret Ann Bulkley and women soldiers like Hannah Snell and Mary Anne Talbot, but they almost always dressed and acted as men. They weren’t transgender. They were just barred from the professions they wanted to pursue more than anything else, enough to risk their lives if they were discovered. That’s what lead me to write about Johanna ‘John’ Howell.”

Teresa nods. “Of course, even in more modern times, women have been barred from intellectual professions. One of my favorite authors is George Eliot, a woman who wrote under a man’s name because women weren’t considered capable of scholarly writing.”

“I love George Eliot’s novels.” Another kindred spirit. Who knew I’d find so many avid readers on a kinky cruise? “Middlemarch or Mill on the Floss?”

Teresa claps her hand to her heart. “Middlemarch. You?”

“Absolutely. ‘If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence—’”

“ ‘As it is, the quickest of us walk around well wadded with stupidity,’ ” she says, finishing my favorite quote.

I grin at her. “No one who can quote Middlemarch walks around well wadded with stupidity.”

She laughs, and on the other side of her, her husband, who has evidently been eavesdropping, joins her.

“No one has ever accused Teresa of stupidity. Tell Emily what you do, darling,” he says.

“I’m a physicist,” she says, rolling her eyes at her husband. “Which is not a profession that was friendly to women when I entered it twenty years ago, either. But it’s getting better. More than a third of my grad students are female. I know that still sounds low, but even ten years ago it was half that.”

“That does sound low,” Captain Lopez, who has evidently been listening in as well, interjects. “Why is the percentage of women in physics so low?”

Teresa and her husband launch into a spirited discussion with the captain about what keeps women out of the rocket-science field and I take the opportunity to glance at Logan, who, other than ordering our meals, has been silent at my side.

He’s watching me, a small smile tipping the corners of his mouth.

“Sir?”

“Just enjoying your enthusiasm, baby doll. Tell me that quote again.”

I repeat the line from Middlemarch.

“ ‘The roar that lies on the other side of silence.’ I like that. I think I’ve heard that roar once or twice myself.”

“All sailors have,” Chief License says. “It’s the roar that follows the dying of the engines. The last breath before the command to fire . . .”

He trails off, his squinty blue eyes focusing over our heads, at something only he can see.

Logan clears his throat and the chief snaps back from wherever he’s gone. He gives Logan a strained smile and Logan nods in response.

The weird moment is broken by the waiters setting down our appetizers. Logan’s ordered me the fennel salad. I glance up at him in gratitude and he smiles at me. He has the pan-seared scallops I had for lunch in front of him.

I wait to see if he’s going to say grace the way he did during our previous dinners. He grips my hand a little tighter and bows his head. I follow suit.

Either spurred by Logan’s actions, or because it’s her custom, too, Captain Lopez reaches out for the hands of the people on either side of her, bows her head, and says grace. Hers is more involved than the prayer Logan used during our first date, but I like it, too.

When she finishes, Logan squeezes my hand twice before he picks up his silverware and cuts up my salad.

When I glance up, I see several people, including Captain Lopez and Teresa, look away quickly. I take a bite of salad—fennel, arugula