Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Case
I promised myself when I was with Reece there would be nothing else to distract me, so I keep my phone on airplane mode and focus completely on her. Unfortunately, I can’t control my thoughts as easily as my phone and my mind keeps wandering back to the island and the woman there who’s not only trouble but somehow also completely under my skin. And it’s putting me in a mood.
Mack and I put up temporary fencing before I left Friday and I gave Tessa a pretty good spanking for her shenanigans afterward, so I shouldn’t need to think about her or what she’s up to, but I am anyhow. And at night, as I lie on my bed, my mind conjures up memories of our kiss, of the flirty way she asked me to punish her, her saucy backtalk, and false bravado. And admittedly the reverie of her in her lacy panties, her long legs and perfect goddamn ass are pure torture in the dark.
I shove thoughts of Tessa away for the billionth time and watch my little girl feeding the goats. I’m ready to pounce if one so much as looks at her finger funny. Our worker, Janet, sits on a bench a little farther away where I ignore her.
Reece hates when I ignore the worker, so as the booth employee hands me a popsicle for Reece, I order a diet cola for Janet. I know she likes diet from the many times she’s sat sipping it, reading and keeping an eye on me as if I’m the criminal I’d portrayed for five years.
That thought drags my mind back to Tessa. Would Python spank a woman who was causing him trouble? Most definitely. Even when I was portraying Python, I had a no-hurting-women rule. It’s why I stuck up for Lulah when the other members of the ransom wanted to rough her up. But a spanking wasn’t hurting a woman, especially when she secretly wanted it and plenty of the women that wanted Python, wanted just that kind of treatment. But I wasn’t Python anymore. Or was I? I’d never once played around with dubious consent before the Ransom.
A drip of sugary juice drips on my hand, yanking me back to the petting zoo and my daughter.
“Popsicle, Reece?” I call to my daughter, smiling as her little face, flushed from the sun and shiny from the sunscreen, beams. She nods and then leans down to whisper into the brown and white goat’s ear. I watch the little brown thief as he eyes the cone in her hand, which is nearly empty of feed. The goat almost drags her away when she wraps her little arms around his neck, his weirdly slitted eyes suddenly on a toddler with droopy pants and a cone full of feed pellets.
“Whoa!” She squeals in delight then runs straight for me, a llama plucking the cone out of her grubby hand as she passes through the fence gate. “Did you see that, Daddy? I almost rode that goat.”
“I sure did, but I think the goat almost rode you.” She’s sweaty and her red hair sticks to her forehead in the most adorable way. She reaches for the popsicle, but I hold it up and nod toward the handwashing station. “You know the rules.”
She giggles.“I forgot. My hands are vile.” She holds them out in front of her and wrinkles her button nose. God, she’s precious.
“I think you mean gross, cruddy or even grody.” I smile as she giggles more. One of our favorite games is synonyms. I tease that her vocabulary is above my head and find words more common for her age while she comes up with even better ones than before. I love that my little girl has an immense vocabulary and yet is still a child in every other way.
“Repulsive, detestable, and—" She looks up, thinking hard, her little tongue poking out of her cherub lips. “Gruesome!”
“Scuzzy!” I holler as she bounds over to the station, her red curls bouncing with her. She washes her hands only slightly more thoroughly than the other kids, because she knows I’ll send her back if she doesn’t. She loves this park, and we come here often enough she knows the routine.
“Did you sing it?” she asks as I hand her the rocket popsicle.
“I did. Good old Yankee Doodle.” It’s the song I taught her to sing while she washes her hands, so she’ll know how long to do it for. “Did you?”
She giggles, “Of course Daddy, how else would I have stopped just as you finished the song?”
I smirk at her logic.
“Is that for Janet?” she asks pointing to the cola in my hand. I nod and hand it to her so she can trot it over. As I watch her, I see prim and proper Janet, is reading a familiar book. I laugh under my breath. Harley and Hearts. Which once again reminds me of Tessa and has my focus wandering as my little girl chats it up with the worker.
By the time Reece finishes her chat, her treat is done, and she runs off to play on the jungle gym. And I’m still thinking about my naughty neighbor and worrying about Mack and the crew. At least when she storms back into her house after climbing the fence and murdering Mack, she won’t trip on the lifted deck boards. I chuckle to myself at the thought. It was an easy fix, and I had the spare boards, so it was nothing. Not that she had thanked me or anything, but at least she hadn’t sabotaged my worksite since then.
At least not as far as I know.
But if she had, Mack would have texted.It was only Saturday though. Plenty of weekend left to makes things hard for me.
“The weekend always goes too fast,” I say when we’re getting ready to leave Monday morning to take Reece to school. Lulah gives me a sympathetic look and grabs her belly as it moves like there’s an angry alien inside.
She looks down poking her belly with three fingers. “If you want more room you’ll have to slow down in there. At this rate, you’ll break the world record. And if you do, you’re grounded when you’re thirteen and want to go to your first school dance.”
“You’re silly, Aunty Lulah,” Reece says as I help her out of her backpack to load her into the van.
“Do they estimate that this early?” I ask.
“I’ve still got over two months left, and they’re telling me this one’s much bigger than average. And they usually gain most of their weight in the last month.”
“Isn’t the record twenty-two pounds or something?” I reply.
Lulah gasps. “Case Callen, take that back.”
I only chuckle as I help Reece with her seatbelt.
“I can do it, Daddy.”
“You totally can, sweetheart. But Daddy needs to feel needed. Can you just go with it?” I click in the lap belt and kiss her head.
She places her palm on my face, looks me in the eye and says, seriously, “I’m nothing if not reasonable.”
I bark a laugh. “Kid, you are fantastic, you know that?”
“Nana says it all the time,” Reece states and then, as if she’s morphed back into a five-year-old, she squeezes her juice box too hard, spraying us both. “Oh man.”
“You can say that again,” I add, unbuckling her and scooping her into my arms. “Stay!” I order my very pregnant friend trying to unwedge herself from the front seat. “We’ve got this.” I wink at my daughter and she, again showing her childlike self, winks back with great effort, her tongue out in concentration.
“Daddy, tell me about this tattoo again.” Reece points at the Celtic triskele tattoo and frowns as she traces it. She asks me this at least once a month.
“It’s a symbol to show the world I’m taken.”
“Taken by who?” she asks, an almost invisible smile on her face.
“By you!” I say, playing along.
“You belong to me and mommy?”
“That’s right,” I agree distractedly as we pass the new baby’s nursery. I’m momentarily saddened by how much of my little girl’s life I’ve missed because her mother had to hide Reece’s existence from Satan’s Ransom. And how much more I might miss if my parents have their way.
“Daddy?” She squints up at me. “If Mommy’s gone, can you still belong to her?”
“I guess I just belong to you now, cupcake.”
“And what if you get a girlfriend?”
“Only one lady owns this big scary biker daddy.”
She giggles, her smile wide and sticky. “You’re not scary, silly.”
“That’s because you have me wrapped around your finger, silly . Trust me, to most people I’m a big scary dude.”
“Intimidating,” she adds.
“Boogedy-boogedy,” I say, and she bursts into giggles.
“Good one, Daddy.” She pats my chest and wiggles to get down. I grab an outfit from her drawers and lay it on the bed so she can change her sticky clothes.
“I’ll be downstairs, gummy bear. Don’t forget to wash your hands, chin and neck or your hair will stick to it, and you’ll have a funny beard like mine.”
“I like your beard.” She pauses thoughtfully. “Daddy?”
“Hm?”
“I hope you get a girlfriend. Someone who’s awesome like Aunty Lulah that I can share you with.”
I swallow hard, but my baby doesn’t notice, she’s already peeling off her shoes.