Daddy Issues Read online

  I bit my lip and looked down at my plate. We hadn’t even been in this per­ver­ted place two hours and already I was com­pletely over it. How in the world had I al­lowed the Cap­tain to talk us into this in the first place?

  “Per­haps now is good time to say good night,” Salt said, ob­vi­ously pick­ing up on my mood. “We are very tired and jet­lagged from long flight. Is there any­thing else we should do be­fore we say go to our suite?”

  “Hmm?” Berkley looked up, glassy eyed. “Uh, no. No, of course not,” he mumbled.” He mo­tioned at one of the ser­vants. “Show Mr. Saltanov and his Little…to their…to their room.”

  Chapter Five

  “Well, that was creepy,” I re­marked as we fi­nally stepped in­side our suite and shut the doors be­hind us.

  The area as­signed to us was a richly ap­poin­ted set of rooms with a fire­place in the sit­ting room, a vast king sized bed and an over­sized rock­ing chair in the bed­room. There was also a marble tub big enough to swim in right in the cen­ter of the bath­room. All of the dec­or­a­tions with the ex­cep­tion of the tub looked like some­thing out of a turn of the cen­tury bor­dello. There was deep red car­pet on the floor and gold and black vel­vet wall­pa­per on the walls. The bed­spread was a deep, an­tique gold which looked ex­pens­ive and tacky at the same time.

  “To say the least,” Salt said shortly. He sighed. “At least now we have brief re­prieve. We will not have to deal with these people again un­til to­mor­row.”

  “You don’t think we should go out and scout around a little to­night?” I asked in a low voice. “Maybe check out the lay of the land while every­one is asleep?”

  He shook his head. “I think we are still un­der some sus­pi­cion. Is bet­ter we stay in to­night. Be­sides…” He looked at me crit­ic­ally. “I think you are need­ing some sleep, Andi. A good long rest.”

  “I’m fine,” I said brist­ling an­grily. “At least I will be if I can ever get this per­ver­ted cos­tume and these hor­rible shoes off. They hurt.”

  “Come. Sit.”

  Salt drew me to the plush, gold up­holstered sofa in front of the fire­place. Someone had built a small fire in the fire­place which should have been too hot for Tampa—even in the fall. But the AC must have been cranked up be­cause the warm glow of the fire was pleas­ant rather than op­press­ive.

  In the light of the flick­er­ing flames I thought my part­ner looked pos­it­ively huge—a vast, black shadow that would have frightened me if I was really the little girl I was pre­tend­ing to be. Yet, when he pulled me onto the sofa with him, he was amaz­ingly gentle.

  “Why are we just sit­ting here?” I asked him. “I want to get out of this aw­ful dress and get a shower.”

  “You will see.” He drew my feet into his lap and star­ted tak­ing off the pat­ent leather shoes.

  “Salt, no!” I ex­claimed, try­ing to pull my feet away. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “But I want to.” He held me firmly and stripped off the little white lace ankle socks that went with the dress. “You said you hurt—yes?”

  “Well, yes…” I was still strug­gling fu­tilely. Salt was al­ways so care­ful around me that some­times I for­got how in­cred­ibly strong my part­ner was. I would prob­ably have as much luck try­ing to get out of a pair of steel hand­cuffs as I would get­ting away from his grip on me. Still, I tried. “I wasn’t say­ing I wanted a foot mas­sage. Hon­estly!” I pro­tested, wig­gling.

  “Maybe I want to give one,” he said reas­on­ably. Tak­ing one of my feet in his large hands, he began to press the sole of my foot gently with his thumbs. “After all, what kind of a Papa would I be if I did not take care of my little mishka?” he said giv­ing me one of his rare half-smiles. “If I didn’t take care of this little foot?” He com­pared it briefly to his hand and I saw that from heel to toes, my foot was not quite as long as his hand was from palm to fin­gers. Then he star­ted rub­bing again.

  “I don’t…don’t know. Ahhh,” I moaned softly when he pressed the arch of my foot in just the right way. Wow, he really knew what he was do­ing! Who knew my part­ner had such hid­den tal­ents?

  “Just re­lax,” Salt ad­vised me. “Let me take care of you, Andi.”

  “You really don’t have to, though,” I pro­tested, but I had stopped strug­gling to get away. His hands felt too good to fight any­more. “I mean, this isn’t the kind of thing we usu­ally, you know, do for each other,” I poin­ted out.

  Which was true. Though, as I men­tioned earlier, Salt touched me a lot, none of the touches were really in­tim­ate. Or maybe that’s the wrong way to put it, I don’t know. The point was, he had never pulled me down on the sofa, taken off my socks and shoes, and star­ted rub­bing my feet be­fore. That was just some­place we didn’t go and it felt kind of weird to go there now.

  Weird, but nice, I ad­mit­ted to my­self. Salt’s big hands felt like ma­gic and I couldn’t help re­lax­ing back into the couch as he con­tin­ued to rub me.

  “Just be­cause we do not do these things for each other does not mean we should not do them,” he re­marked. “Any time you wish for a mas­sage, you have only to ask. You know this, Andi.”

  “Ac­tu­ally, I didn’t know it,” I said. “But I do now. God, you’re good at that!”

  “I am glad you like.” He star­ted on the other foot. “To­mor­row we will go to cos­tume shop and get you new shoes that do not hurt.”

  “A new dress, too,” I said quickly. “I hate this one.”

  “Be­cause you think is per­ver­ted?” Salt in­quired, rais­ing one eye­brow at me as he con­tin­ued to rub my foot.

  “No,” I said guardedly. “Be­cause it re­minds me of one…one I had when I was a kid, I think. I didn’t re­mem­ber it un­til I saw my­self in that big, old mir­ror in the entry­way.”

  “Is that why you kept star­ing at the re­flec­tion?” he asked. “I was wor­ried—you seemed…what is the word? With­drawn. Like you had gone some­place else—some­place I could not fol­low.”

  I was sur­prised that my part­ner was so at­tuned to my emo­tions.

  “Well, yes,” I said care­fully. “I guess you could say that. I was…re­mem­ber­ing. I…my dad bought me a dress like this one be­fore…be­fore he left.”

  “Yes?” Salt asked softly.

  “Yes.” I nod­ded. “He…he bought it for a Father/daugh­ter Valentine’s Day dance we were hav­ing at my school.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this but some­how I couldn’t seem to stop. My mouth kept mov­ing and as I talked, more and more memor­ies seemed to rush in from the dusty corners of my brain where I’d locked them away so many years ago. “We used to prac­tice for it,” I heard my­self say. “I would put on the dress and he would have me stand on his feet and dance me around the room. I looked for­ward to it for months.”

  “This Father/daugh­ter dance—was it good?” Salt asked.

  “I don’t know.” I looked down at my hands. “He—my father—left us about a month be­fore it happened. On the…on the night of the dance…” I cleared my throat. “I…I…”

  “Go on,” Salt said, so softly I felt the words more than heard them.

  “I put on the dress,” I said, still talk­ing to my hands. “I was sure—so sure—he would come back just for that stu­pid dance. After all, he’d bought me the dress for that ex­act reason. He said he wanted to see his ‘pretty little sweet­heart’ twirl­ing around on the dance floor in it.” I gave a bit­ter laugh that seemed to stick in my throat. “That’s what he called me—his little sweet­heart. I knew he wouldn’t stand me up—I knew he’d come back for the Valentine’s Day dance at least.”

  “And did he?” Salt asked.

  I looked up at him. “I’m sure you already know the an­swer to that. No.” I sighed. “No, he didn’t come back. I sat in front of the house for hours un­til it was way past my bed­time—way after the dance was over with. Fi­nally