Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Carri tried not to stare as the man responsible for her first sale wandered away, but it was a challenge. She finally gave in, watching as he strolled through the room, checking out the other displays. Tall, dark, and yummy, everything she wanted in a man.
The fact that he appeared a good fifteen or more years older than her own twenty-five years was another plus in her book.
She preferred older men, always had. Experience had taught her that they were not as self-absorbed and narcissistic as men her own age.
If he were a straight Daddy in search of a Little girl, he would be her perfect unicorn.
“Carri!” Lottie touched her arm as she called her name, causing her to jump.
“What?” she cried as she twirled to face her sister.
“Always with your head in the clouds. I asked if you wanted to run to the restroom with me before the doors open for the day?”
“No, I’m good. I’ll go later if I need to,” Carri said as her gaze went back to the man carrying the bright yellow bag.
Was he another vendor? One of the convention staff? Or had he snuck in to make the rounds of the vendor room before the doors opened?
Shrugging, she looked at the twenty-dollar bill she still held and smiled. She had made her first sale and the day had not officially begun yet. Was this an anomaly, or a portent of the success she would have over the next four days?
Tucking the money into the cloth zip-top money pouch Tilly helped her put together, Carri noted her first sale in the notebook Lottie helped her set up so she could track which critters sold, for how much, and which sales were cash and which were credit card sales.
“Oooo, Daddy, look at all these stuffies!” A young woman bounced up to the table and immediately began picking up the animals and hugging them to her chest. “I want this one, and this one, and this one. Oh, look Daddy, a dragon. You need that one.”
Carri could only smile at the woman tried to fill her arms with half the critters on the table.
The man with her laid a hand on her shoulder. “Jessica, take a breath, sweetheart. We just walked through the door. Don’t you want to look around a little before deciding what you want to buy?”
Jessica looked from the animals in her arms to her man and gave him a pitiful puppy-dog look. “But Daddy, if we don’t get them now, they might not be here when we come back.”
The man sighed and pulled out his wallet. “We’ll buy one now, and we’ll come back after we walk through the rest of the vendors and if you’re a good girl we’ll discuss buying one or two more.”
With a huff of disappointment, Jessica began to carefully put the animals back on the table.
Once they were all in place, she chose a gray-and-white owl and a black dragon with a red belly and wings and shoved them into his face.
“Can I get the owl for me, and the dragon for you? You need a dragon, Daddy. He can keep you company at work and blow fire at the people who bother you.”
The man looked from her to the dragon and back again. With a smile and a sigh, he nodded. “How much for the owl and the dragon?”
Once Carri quoted the price, he handed over a credit card.
It took a moment to get her phone connected with the card swiper, but a few minutes later, the Little girl skipped away happy, and Carri did a quick jig in celebration of her second sale.
She quickly wrote it down before hugging the rejected animals with a whispered, “You’ll get a new home. I promise.”
She replaced them on the table and then pulled one of the boxes out from under the table and filled the two empty spots with a purple hippo and a pink elephant.
Checking on her sisters, she saw they were both busy helping customers. She would have to keep her happiness to herself until later.
The morning passed quickly, with Carri selling to nearly everyone who stopped at her table. Most of the sales were to men and women dressed in brightly colored and patterned clothing and holding the hand of a Daddy or Mommy or caregiver.
Just before noon, the room emptied after the announcement that the convention’s opening luncheon would be beginning in a few minutes.
“How’s it going?” a deep voice asked as Carri dug through a box in search of a penguin.
She knew there were several more of them somewhere, she just had to find one of them.
Standing up, she swayed as it took a few seconds to find her balance.
Looking up, she saw her first customer of the morning leaning over the table.
She stepped back, hoping she hadn’t flashed him too much of her ass.
“Um, it’s going well, thank you,” she answered with a smile. “People really seem to like the animals.”
“My name is Rooker St. James,” he said, extending a hand over the table. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier.”
“Carri Smith,” she responded, taking his hand, and giving it a quick shake. She gasped as an electric shock zapped her palm.
When she tried to pull her arm back, he refused to release it.
Instead, he raised their joined hands, and brushed a kiss over her knuckles.
Carri froze as her pussy clenched and her nipples beaded.
The skin where his lips touched began to tingle.
In seconds, her entire hand felt like she had dipped it in fizzy water.
Rooker straightened slowly, but did not release her hand, or her gaze. “I was wondering if you would join me for dinner this evening?”
His smile made Carri want to melt, but she held it together.
Somehow.
“I … um … well, okay,” she stammered. “But I can’t leave the building because it’s my night to guard the booths.”
“Guard the booths? What do you mean?”
“My sisters and I are each going to spend a night guarding the booths, That way we don’t have to pack everything up each night and then set up again in the morning.” Carri explained.
Why was big man looking at her like she had begun to speak Russian?
He looked like he was going to say something but shook his head instead. “Nope. You do what you feel best. How about I arrange a picnic supper so we can get to know one another better while guarding your booths?”
The heat in his eyes seemed to promise a lot more than his PG-rated words, and Carri wondered how far things might go between them.
After all, there would be other people around the building, but the way she felt, she might need to sneak away during the afternoon to find a private room where they could be alone.
He was still a stranger, but she wanted to get to know him better … and better and better. She wanted to know everything there was to know about Mr. Rooker St. James, from his shoe size to whether he had a six-pack hidden under his soft-looking deep-green Henley shirt.
She only hoped he would not break her heart in the end by walking away and forgetting her.
“Little one? You still with me?” Rooker asked as he shook her hand, side to side, causing her whole arm to move back and forth.
“Oh. I’m sorry. A picnic dinner sounds wonderful.”
“Very good. I’ll be back here with food about six-thirty.”
Carri nodded. “That sounds wonderful. Sir.”
She wasn’t sure what made her add the Sir, but it felt right. From the widening of his smile, Rooker apparently agreed. After all, he was older and wiser than she, though she found most people were wiser than her, older or not. But there was something about Rooker that pulled at her mind and body.
“All right. I’ll see you at six-thirty.”
Rocker pulled on her arm, forcing her to step closer to the table. He surprised her when he leaned forward to brush a kiss on her forehead.
“Be good, little one,” he said before walking away.
“What was that about?” Lottie’s sharp voice cut through the brain fog that interacting with Rooker left her in.
“Huh?”
A moment later, Carri yelped when her sister pinched the back of her upper arm.
“What?” she yelped.
“What did that man want?”
Carri looked to where Rooker had disappeared. “He asked me to join him for a picnic after the vendor area closed for the evening.”
“What?” Lottie screeched.
Tilly joined them at that moment with the box of sandwiches, chips, cookies, and other snacks they’d brought to eat. There was more than enough food for all their lunches and her dinner, but Carri would send the leftovers home with her sisters. She had a date for dinner.
Lottie pulled three bottles of juice from the cooler tucked under her table. The sisters then dragged their chairs to the open area between Tilly’s booth and Carri’s.
“So, tell us about this Daddy-man who wants to take you on a picnic,” Tilly started the ball rolling in her most soothing, nonconfrontational tone.
Carri had noticed her sisters also seemed to be enthralled with men present in the vendor room.
Lottie could not stop staring at the vendor just across the aisle from her booth while Tilly seemed preoccupied with one of the security guards who patrolled the room at regular intervals.
Nearly every time he was near, he stopped to chat with her if she didn’t have customers.
She considered asking about their bits of eye candy but decided to change the subject instead.
“I’d rather talk about the twenty-seven stuffies I sold this morning,” she said, then took a bite of her sandwich and chewed slowly.
Gun-shy about dating after her last fiasco of a so-called relationship, Carri did not want Lottie and Tilly to talk her out of having a casual dinner with Rooker.
Lucky for her, the change of topic encouraged her sisters to report their own sales, though Tilly gave her a knowing smile with a nod and a wink of approval.
Late that afternoon, Rooker left his assistant in charge of Dr. Rooker’s Little Boutique booth. He had a picnic to arrange. While at the grocery store buying picnic foods, he also picked up some juice and healthy, filling breakfast foods.
Afterward he made a quick stop at his house which was just outside of town. He added instant coffee, hot chocolate, and his electric kettle to the breakfast food bag. They had several cases of bottled water at his booth already.
After packing a large duffel bag with a change of clothes, sleeping bag, pillow, and the air mattress he’d bought for his last camping trip, he figured he was ready to spend the night at the convention center.
The closer he got to forty, the more he found that camping trips required something softer to sleep on than the ground, or in tonight’s case, a concrete floor covered by industrial carpet.
He was not sure how much sleeping they would do, but since this was only the first day of the four-day conference, they both needed plenty of rest.
Rooker returned to the convention center and carried everything into the hall just as it was announced that the room would be closing to convention-goers in ten minutes.
“Great timing, boss,” Laurie said after she finished checking out a customer. “Just in time to help me cover up the displays and finish up the paperwork.”
“Oh boy,” Rooker said with a chuckle. “Just what I live for, paperwork.”
Setting his bags down, he grabbed the stack of tablecloths that would cover their tables and display racks. It only took a few minutes to unfold them and lay them over the tables.
Instead of pushing the paperwork on his assistant, who had a family to get home to, he had her put together the deposit, making sure to leave plenty of change for the next day.
While she did that, he looked over the spreadsheet they used to keep track of what had sold during the day.
From that, he made a list of what they needed to restock and texted it to Seth and Ginger, who were running the store for the weekend.
They would gather everything so Laurie could pick it up in the morning.
While he would love to sell out by the end of the convention, between now and then they needed to keep the booth well stocked.
“Sales look good,” he said as Laurie finished up.
“Should pick up even more tomorrow and Saturday. Do you want to drop the deposit at the bank or shall I?”
Rooker shook his head. “You do it. I’m not leaving just yet.”
Laurie stared at him, then at the pile of gear he’d brought back with him. “Planning to spend the night?”
“Maybe,” he said as he turned his attention back to his tablet. He scrolled the emails and messages that had come in during the day and decided there was nothing that could not wait until morning.
“You do know there is security on duty, and you don’t have to stay, right?”
“Get out of here. Or would you rather spend the weekend doing inventory at the store instead of being here with me?” Rooker made the threat with a touch of his infamous Dom tone in his voice.
“I’m going. I’m going. I’ll see you in the morning.” Laurie giggled as she grabbed her backpack and hurried away.
Rooker kept one eye on the time as he called the store and checked in.
At six twenty-five, he grabbed the picnic basket, a spare tablecloth, and the small cooler that held a couple of bottles of juice before winding his way around the large room to Carri’s booth.
His excitement about spending the evening with the woman he was certain was Little grew with every step.
He hoped she was looking for a Daddy who was strict, but indulgent.
As he approached her booth, he frowned. Carri was not alone, and she did not look happy. He immediately went on alert and wondered who he had to kill to put a smile back on her face.