Her Gentle Daddy

14. Gabby

“I need to run an errand.”

Sean looked up from his computer with a confused look.

“Okay, where do you need to go? Can I finish up what I’m working on first before we go?”

She shifted from foot to foot nervously. She had a feeling Sean was not going to make this easy on her. Besides going to work, and the one time he left her to go to his office, they had not been apart since the day she’d come to live with him nearly two months before.

“I need to run an errand by myself.”

Sitting up straighter, Sean furrowed his eyebrows.

“Where do you need to go? I can take you wherever you need, Gabby.”

Darn him for being such a good Daddy. But this was something that she needed to do on her own. She still had no idea if she was chasing a hopeless trail, and it was something that she wanted to find out for herself before she shared it with him.

“I just need to go somewhere, but I want to go alone. I hope you can understand. I’ll take my car. It should only take me an hour or so.”

Sean stood and walked over to her, his gaze piercing into her.

“There is no way you are driving that hunk of junk anywhere. You can take my car, but I would prefer that you let me take you.”

Looking up into his face, she could see that he would not budge about taking her car and her bottom clenching told her not to push that subject.

“Daddy, I need to do this by myself.”

He studied her for a moment, and she wondered if he was going to put his foot down and tell her no, and she didn’t know what she would do if he did. She wasn’t a prisoner, but she agreed to submit to him and follow his rules.

“Are you going anywhere that you will be potentially unsafe?”

She shook her head, “No, Daddy. Not at all.”

“Is it anything that I need to be concerned about?”

“No. I promise. It’s just something that I need to do, and I’m not ready to share it yet. It has to do with why I moved to Seattle in the first place.”

She could see the conflict in his expression and knew part of him wanted to tell her no. Deep down, she knew that he wouldn’t. He would give her the world if she asked for it. But he was worried about her.

“Daddy, I promise, I will be safe. I’m not doing anything bad. It’s just something that I feel like I need to do alone.”

“What if you start feeling anxious? Or have a panic attack? What if you have a panic attack while you’re driving and you get into an accident?”

She smiled up at him. He was seriously the Daddy of her dreams.

“Are you always such a worry wart?”

Lowering his face until it was hovering just above hers, his delicious scent surrounding her, he brushed his lips against hers.

“When it comes to you, yes. I will always worry about you because I love you, and I always want to protect you and keep you safe.”

When he started to lift his face, she flung her arms around his neck and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. Sean’s hands went to her hips and lifted her into the air, so her legs wrapped around his waist as they kissed each other deeply and passionately. She’d never thought she would love a man’s touch or his mouth on her, not after what she had been through, but with Sean, everything was different.

Gabby ran her tongue over her swollen lips when they finally pulled back for air.

“Will you text me when you get to where you’re going and also when you’re leaving?”

She nodded, “I promise.”

“And if you feel any anxiety or bad feelings, I want you to call me right away, and I will come for you.”

“I know you will, Daddy.”

“Let me pack up a snack and a drink for you to take with you.”

“I’m only going to be gone for an hour or so,” she said incredulously.

Sean nodded, “Okay, I’ll pack two snacks and a drink. Just in case.”

She trailed behind her Daddy as they went to the kitchen, shaking her head with a huge smile on her lips.

Driving an expensive car was something that Gabby had never done. She didn’t even know what kind of car it was, but it had all sorts of electronics and a giant touch screen monitor to control everything. Sean showed her the basics of how to make everything work, but as soon as she pulled out of the driveway, she had pretty much forgotten everything he’d shown her, and the heat was blasting so hot that she had to crack the windows.

Dumb fancy cars.

She followed the GPS directions on her phone, and when she pulled up to her location and parked, Gabby stared out of the car’s windshield to the building marked as the King County Courthouse.

“Well, here goes nothing,” she whispered to herself.

Gabby paid the parking meter and climbed the steps into the building. She sighed with relief when she walked through the metal detectors without setting them off. Not that she had anything that would cause an issue, but she didn’t want anyone patting her down.

Walking up to customer service, she waited her turn and stepped up to the counter when an impatient woman waved her forward.

“I’m not sure where I need to go. I’m looking for my birth certificate. I was told that I was born in Seattle.”

The grouchy-looking woman softened her expression slightly.

“Go up the set of stairs over there, and you’ll see a sign for birth records.”

She nodded toward the woman and went in the direction that she had pointed. Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion as she thought about all the possibilities that lay ahead once she got a hold of her birth certificate.

Her mother had told her that her father had died, but she’d also told Gabby that he had another child, and she hoped that by finding out who her father was, she could find out if she really did have a half-sister out there somewhere.

When she got to the top of the stairs, Gabby followed the sign and took a number from the dispenser before sitting down to wait. She pulled out her phone and texted Sean.

I’m at my location, Daddy. Safe and sound.

It only took a moment for a response.

Thank you for letting me know. I love you, Gabby girl. Be good.

She frowned and quickly typed back a message.

I’m always good.

When she read his response, she smiled to herself.

Good, but a little naughty sometimes.

“Seventy-eight,” a clerk called out.

Gabby looked down at her ticket and stood, making her way up to the window. By the time she approached the older woman whose nameplate said her name was Glenda, she was feeling frazzled with nerves.

“Hi. I need a copy of my birth certificate.”

The woman peered at Gabby over her glasses and popped gum in her mouth as she tapped away on her computer.

“Name?”

“Gabrielle Ellis.”

“Birthday?”

Gabby rattled off her date of birth and answered several other questions that the woman asked. Her mother had told her that she’d been born in Seattle, but she didn’t know that for a fact, which made the time the woman took staring at her computer screen seem like an eternity.

“That will cost twenty-five dollars, and you’ll get it in the mail in four to six weeks.”

Everything around Gabby felt as though it had come to a screeching halt. Four to six weeks? She just needed her father’s name.

“So you found it? I was born here? I don’t actually need a copy, I just need my father’s name. I’ve never met him, and I’m trying to…”

Her voice cracked, and she felt herself shutting down as the realization sat in the pit of her stomach that she would have to wait longer. The courthouse should have been her first stop when she got into town, except that the thought of possibly having a sister was too much for her to handle without going into a fit of panic. But since she’d been with Sean, she wasn’t feeling so anxious about it, and instead, she actually felt kind of excited about possibly having a family member.

“You’re trying to find him?” the woman asked gently.

Gabby raised her eyes to the woman and shook her head.

“My mother told me he died but that he had another child. I am trying to find out if it’s true that I do actually have a sister.”

The woman stared at Gabby for a moment before she began typing away on her keyboard again and snapping her gum. She wasn’t sure if the woman had just dismissed her or just assumed Gabby would leave. When Gabby started to turn away from the window, the woman spoke again.

“Here, this is all I can help you with, and if anybody asks, it was Sheila who helped you.”

Gabby turned to see the woman holding a piece of paper between her fingers. She looked from the piece of paper, back to the nameplate, and up to the woman’s face.

“Sheila is a real bitch sometimes. Take the paper, honey. Good luck, kiddo.”

Glenda smiled and winked at her before thrusting the paper into Gabby’s hands.

Backing away from the counter, Gabby squeezed her hand around the paper and walked down the stairs, holding onto the railing tightly so she didn’t fall. Her body was trembling with both anxiety and excitement.

Walking out of the courthouse into the warm afternoon sun, she walked quickly to the car and got in, locking the doors immediately. Her hands trembled as she unfolded the paper and stared down at a name scribbled across the sheet. It was a girl’s name. Not her father’s. Did the lady not understand what she had needed? She should have just ordered her birth certificate.

Quickly sending a text to Sean to let him know she was heading home, she pulled the vehicle out of the parking stall and started driving, her mind thinking of all the possibilities on the way. If she really did have a sister, there was a good possibility that she would want nothing to do with Gabby. Or maybe her sister was a terrible person that Gabby would want nothing to do with. There were so many scenarios in her mind that by the time she got home, she decided to sit on it for a bit longer. She didn’t want to disappoint herself or get hurt in the process of trying to find a long-lost family member - especially when she had Sean, who made her feel like a whole person for the first time in her life.

He loved her unconditionally. At least he had so far. They hadn’t been intimate yet besides kissing, and even though she found Sean to be attractive, even enough that she found her panties to be wet on many occasions, she was scared of intimacy like that. The only kind she had ever experienced before had been forced and violent, leaving her with awful memories and nightmares about it.

She pulled into the driveway and stuffed the paper into the small backpack purse that had a puppy dog’s face and ears stitched into it that Sean had bought her, and climbed out of the car. When she got to the porch, the front door opened, and her Daddy was smiling at her.