Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Neely
I’m dreaming of one of Ford’s hands between my thighs, his other pressed against my mouth. Shh, be a good girl for—
And then I’m awake. It’s a disorienting shift because the last thing I really remember, I was heading up the path to the lighthouse and thought I heard his voice.
Now I’m lying on my back in a dark room, and it’s hot. I’ve pushed off the blankets— Blankets.
I’m in a bed.
There’s a grunt from the shadows, and more comes back to me in flashes. Ford carrying me in here. Ford trying to get me to take medicine. His hand. . . Oh.
I sit up, smooth my dress down over my hips, and whisper his name. “Ford?”
He steps forward as the light pulses across the room again. “You need medicine.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re burning up.”
“Did I faint?” I move to sit on the side of the bed and test my legs out by swinging them. “I do that sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”
“You have a fever.” His voice is strangled now, I realize, and I jerk my head up to look at him better in the dim light.
“You were worried about me.”
“Of course I was—” He laughs, sharp and hollow. “Jesus, Neely, you're not dressed appropriately for the weather.”
“I thought the lighthouse was closer to the retirement home than it was. It looks closer.” I shiver, remembering how cold it got.
Suddenly I’m on my back, and Ford is above me, tucking me back under the heavy blanket. “Hey!”
He scowls. “Medicine first. Then we can talk about how you almost died because of cold exposure.”
That’s a ridiculous exaggeration.
“Can I go pee first before you lecture me?” I glare up at him.
He cracks a reluctant smile. “Yeah.”
As he gets me the painkillers and a bottle of water, I push the blanket off my legs. After taking the medicine, and before I can even wiggle my legs again and test standing, he scoops me into his arms.
“Hey,” I protest, but my head swims a little, so my protest is less heated than before.
“I’ll bring you to the washroom, and you can have some privacy.” He’s so gruff. “I’ll find you warmer clothes.”
“It’s plenty warm in here.”
He ignores me and carries me across the room and through another door. He’s renovated the bathroom since I was here last, but that’s been at least five years.
“Nice tile,” I say to lighten the mood.
It doesn’t work.
“Hold on to the wall when I set you down,” he barks.
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Da—”
We both freeze. Daddy, don’t go. Did I say that out loud as I was waking up?
I think I did. I think I can still feel the words in my throat and hear his ragged breathing as I say them, and oh my God.
Here I am, giving him lip like a teenager—which is hot for me, but definitely not for him.
There isn’t a chance in hell Ford will ever see me as anything other than a childish brat if I forget myself.
He exhales roughly. “Let’s both be glad I’m not your father.”
“Ford, I—”
He brushes his lips against my temple, then sets me down. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with clothes for you.”
Mortification rolls through me as he leaves, clicking the door shut behind him. I make my way to the toilet and plunk my ass down.
I wasn’t lying before. I do sometimes faint. I try to think if he’s ever been there when I’ve done a spontaneous flop. Maybe that time I whacked my thumb with a hammer while my dad and Ford built our deck, but he might have gone home already.
The twisted ankle, thanks to an impromptu soccer game gone awry at a picnic. . . Was he there? He wasn’t there when I passed out on the subway because it was too hot and filled with too many people, that's for sure.
After I pee, I wash my face in the sink.
I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror. Get your shit together, I tell her. You faint, it’s fine. Just tell him that.
And now he thinks I have a fever.
Have him check me again, but with his lips.
I don’t feel sick. I feel like I’ve already made a fool of myself in front of Ford, so why not go all the way and tell him how I feel?
Stepping back, I adjust my dress. It was up around my waist when I woke up, which means Ford saw my panties. Did he like that? There’s only one way to find out. . .
The mature thing to do would be to talk about it. Unfortunately, the last thing I want to be around Ford is mature. I wanted all sorts of fantasies that were inappropriate in real life. I want him to touch me in my sleep. I want him to look up my skirt while I pretend to be all innocent.
I want him to lose control around me and want me the same way I want him. With filthy, dirty, secret desire.
Still unsure of what I’m going to do or say next, I open the bathroom door.
Ford is waiting on the other side with a few folded pieces of clothing. None of them look sexy in the slightest. I swallow my secrets and give him a bland look. “See? I’m still standing.”
“Good.” He doesn’t move. “We should get you back to bed.”
“So I don’t stay up too late, get into any trouble?” I’m smirking. I can feel it, but I can’t stop myself. Ford brings out the absolute worst in me when he puts this stiff distance between us.
“Yes.” His eyes flash with a peculiar heat that makes me feel bold.
“I’m fine, by the way. Thank you for coming to find me, but I faint sometimes. It’s called a vasovagal response, and it’s actually normal. It can be triggered by cold, stress, or pain. It just happens. It’s not dangerous.”
“Until you freeze to death.” He’s so bossy and stern. I should be scared, but I’m not. I like the way his voice gets tight, like he’s worried about me because I’m Neely, and not just because I’m a dumb kid.
“Ford—”
“No.” His face goes thunderous. “If I were your father, you wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house in barely there tights on a day like today.”
If only that kind of threat actually worked to tame me, instead of making me hot.
“I thought we were both supposed to be glad that you’re not my father,” I whisper.
He shoves the clothes at me. “Put these on.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I don’t take the bundle.
Now that I think about it, that curious heat in his eyes might mean something promising. The same promise that comes from him peeling off my clothes.
I gesture down to my bare legs. “I guess the outfit was more complete before someone took off those barely there tights, of course.”
“They were wet,” he growls. “And you wouldn’t wake up.”
I step right against him, lifting my face to glare back at him. “If you want my legs to be covered up again, then I suggest you dress me yourself.”
“Don’t think I won’t.”
I wait.
He steps back, sets the clothes on a side table, and picks up a pair of sweat pants that will fall right off me. He kneels in front of me, unaware of the wild heat this position sends racing through my body.
Look at me. See me for the woman that I am.
No such luck, though. He gathers one leg of the sweatpants and shoves it at my foot. “Step into this.”
I sigh and do as he commands, one foot and then the other. Somehow he gets them up to my hips without his big, thick fingers touching my legs once, which is truly rude.
He rises as he tugs them up, looming over me again as he roughly pulls them over my ass.
My dress lifts with the waistband, and then his hands are under my clothes, fumbling with the drawstring.
Now he can’t help but touch me, and it feels so good to have his fingers brushing against my stomach, even if it’s a purely functional task from his end.
For me, it’s magic. He’s a little hesitant, like he knows he shouldn’t be touching me under my dress, even though it’s innocent.
Those little moments before he yanks his fingers away from my skin as if touching me has scalded him, but then his touch returns.
. . It’s the stuff my fantasies are made of.
Of course, in my fantasies, my legs are bare and—
“Neely, stop that.”
I jerk my head up, staring at him. “What?”
“Breathing like that.” He drags in a rough breath of his own as we exchange a heated look I don’t really understand.
How was I breathing? My chest rises between us, then falls as I try to calm myself. Had I given my desire away?
Daddy. . . This is the second or third time I’ve revealed who I am to Ford. And he’s still standing right next to me with that wild, feral burn in his expression.
“Put the shirts on.” He points to the other items of clothing.
Shirts. Plural.
My pulse jacks up. “You do it.”
His eyes go wide.
I turn around, presenting him with my back. “There’s a zipper.”
At first, I don’t think he’s going to do it, but then he steps forward, and his hands are on me again.
Neither of us speaks as he drags the zipper down my back, revealing my bare skin. There’s a window in front of me, and I realize I can see our reflection in it.
So can he.
Without saying a word, I lift my arms in the air, and he tugs the dress up and over my head, leaving me topless.
I’m not wearing a bra. I don’t need to because the dress has cups built into it, and that’s all the support my nineteen-year-old tits need.
Behind me, Ford makes a wounded sound as his gaze catches on the reflection in the window. He drops the dress and sets his hands on my waist.
I press my hands against his, holding his palms to my belly. Behind me, his whole body goes taut.
“I’m all grown up,” I whisper, gambling every ounce of pride I have that I read him correctly.
He shudders. “Trust me, I’m painfully aware.”
Hope burns inside me. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“Your car broke down.”
“Mmm.” I drag his hands up my torso, urging him to touch me higher.
His grip on me tightens just beneath my breasts, his fingertips grazing the curve of my aching flesh. “Stop,” he growls. “We can’t.”
I ignore him. “I wanted to ask you to play Santa Claus tomorrow at Cliffside Village.”
“Fine.” He’s breathing hard now, his nostrils flaring.
“That’s all you have to say? Not. . . why do I think you’d be a good Santa Claus? Ford Gamble, notorious Grinch?”
He bows his head, pressing his forehead to the back of my head. I feel his hot breath down the bare expanse of my back. His sweatpants ride low on my hips, and I think he can see the top of my little white panties. “Why?”
“Because you dressed up as Santa once for me. Remember? I sat in your lap and told you I wanted a boyfriend for Christmas.”
“Fuck, Neely.”
“And as I perched in your lap, my legs swinging between your thighs, I’m pretty sure you—”
He roars and rips himself away from me.
The next thing I know, a T-shirt that smells like him is being yanked over my head. “Go to bed. I have work to do.”
By the time I get my arms and head through the holes, I only glimpse his feet, quickly storming up the stairs to the second floor.
Upstairs is the workspace for the lighthouse. When I was little, I loved to sit on the swivel chair in Ford’s office and pretend I lived here with him as his apprentice lighthouse keeper.
I have wanted to embed myself in every part of his life for as long as I can remember.
It’s probably not healthy.
But I don’t care.
I give him a minute, then follow him—after I take off his stupid sweatpants that are too big for me, anyway.
Now I’m only wearing his T-shirt and those little panties he’s already seen.
Upstairs, the lights are turned off, but I can still see him sprawled in an armchair.
“I told you to go to bed.”
“I’d rather talk.”
“We’re not talking about that.”
That. Oh yes, we are. “Are you just going to avoid me for the rest of my life, then? Is that why you disappeared?”
“It isn’t right to want you, Neely. I’m messed up. I had to stop coming around. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“I get it.” My voice shakes. He thinks I don’t understand? I understand more than he could ever imagine.
“You don’t. You can’t. I helped raise you. I taught you how to ride a bike.”
I shake my head. “I miss you, Ford. Yes, you helped raise me, and then you dropped me as soon as I. . . what? Grew tits?”
“No.”
“Did you figure out that I wanted you, too? Did that send you running scared?”
He groans. “You don’t know—”
I walk closer until I’m standing right beside him, my bare thigh brushing against the hand dangling over the arm of the chair. “Do you think I’m messed up for wanting you?”
“If you think you do, then that’s my fault. I led you—”
“You didn’t do anything.” I press my leg into his hand, emboldened by his confessions.
Maybe I should have seen it sooner, connected the dots.
But I’m still too young, so any sooner would have been even worse. Maybe he’ll always be uncomfortable with the fact I’m Dan’s daughter, and he watched me grow up.
“You were never inappropriate,” I whisper, sliding my thigh back and forth against his knuckles. Pretending he’s the one touching me. Wanting him, desperately, to skim his fingers up the inside of my leg. “Not even once I was old enough to want you to be.”