Page 6 of Daddy!

He glanced at me—although I didn't detect any kind of censure in the look at all—but didn't say anything. Instead, he just reached down and took my hand in his, threading his fingers through mine and resting our hand hands on his thigh.

"Well, I haven't eaten since lunch, and I'm hungry. How about if we swing through Mac's and eat at that nice spot by the water?"

Mac's was a little regional place with a drive-thru that made the best fried shrimp around. Unfortunately, it was only open during "season"—Memorial Day through Labor Day—so we went there as often as we could, while we could. I usually got fish and chips, and we both switched the fries for incredibly yummy onion rings, or one got fries and the other rings so we could share and have frings. It was way more food than I could ever eat in one sitting, but Mane usually polished off whatever I couldn't handle.

I was too nervous to be hungry, but I didn't want to deny him a meal. "Okay."

But once we got it, I could barely down a mouthful of it before I handed ninety-nine percent of it over to him. I could not manage to convince myself to relax, despite the fact that we were at a gorgeous, secluded water spot on the edge of the Piscataqua River, near the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which, surprisingly, is located in the southernmost part of Maine. We usually occupied this spot when we did this, except when it was tourist season and some lucky flatlander stumbled on it.

He took my food with a quiet sigh. "Well, I'm going to be ungentlemanly in the extreme and finish my dinner—dinners. Then we'll go home and talk."

"We could just talk here," I suggested, hoping he'd go for it when I knew he wouldn't.

"No, we'll go back to my place." He winked with a smile. "I want you captive while we discuss this. You're a definite flight risk, Miss Rivers."

He tried to entice me with bites of the mountain of food he was diligently mowing his way through—where did the man put it, anyway—but I couldn't. My cold, clammy fingers remained knotted in my lap, where they lay over the corresponding knots in my stomach.

When he was done, he threw away the garbage, checked to make sure that my seat belt was secured, then, on taking possession of my hand again, we headed for his place. It was actually in New Hampshire, right on the coast. It was a modest home on a big lot that real estate agents had been trying to hand him enormous sums of money for, so that their clients could build yet another McMansion, but he'd never taken it and probably never would. It was the house he grew up in, and he wasn't about to part with it. He just about died every year when he wrote out the check for his taxes, but it was more than worth it to him to have the open ocean directly across from his house and his family home still in the family.

His mom usually snowbirded to a condo in Florida—like most of the older population of New England—so as to avoid having to shovel three feet of snow at a time over the winter. Then she spent the early part of the summer with him—avoiding the tourists—and the rest with his sister, who had landed not too far away, in Vermont.

I had long since told him that his house was the biggest reason why I was dating him. He'd nodded at the time, then an evil grin spread over his face as I paused and recanted, "Well, okay, one of the biggest, anyway," fitting my hand over his ever-hard cock.

Not insulted in the least—even if it had been true—Mane didn't miss a beat. "Whatever keeps you beneath me in my bed works for me."

But the unbelievably gorgeous location of his house was now the furthest thing from my mind. I didn't even comment on how wonderful the water smelled this time when he pulled into his driveway, then came around and opened my door for me.

I had already undone the seatbelt, and he warned softly, "Don't do that on your own again, sweetie," before I found his arm wound around my waist again, somewhat tightly, as if he thought I was going to bolt or something.

I wasn't.

Not that I hadn't thought about that possibility, but there really wasn't anywhere to go even if I did escape him, which I severely doubted he'd allow, anyway. If it was over, and I decided to leave, I had no doubt that he'd drive me home—even if he really didn't want to let me go back there.

When we were inside the cozy Cape Cod, he asked, "Can I get you something to drink?"

For some reason, I couldn't seem to answer him—my throat and my eyes were choked with tears all of a sudden—so I just shook my head. What had overcome me suddenly—besides the trepidation I was already feeling—was the fact that it was glaringly obvious to me that he'd gotten off work early, come home, changed out of his uniform and set the stage for our talk. There was quiet classical music playing in the background, the fireplace was lit to make the room just that much cozier, and, most touching of all, I could see that, on the coffee table in front of the couch, there was a pink princess sippy cup sitting there, as if waiting for me to claim it.

Mane stopped in the middle of clinking ice into a rocks glass that he was probably going to fill with reasonably good Irish whiskey and came to me.

I had been very quiet as I cried, not really wanted him to see me doing it for some weird reason. Like he hadn't held me as I ugly cried at a Hallmark commercial, for fuck's sake. But this situation was very emotionally charged for me, and I was so far on edge about it that I was quite undone by his efforts.

Before I even realized it, his arms were loosely draped around me. "Ahhh, sweet pea." He was so genuinely sorry at my distress. "I told you that there's nothing to worry about, and there really, truly isn't. Okay?" He bent down rather than forcing my face up, contorting himself so that, even though my head was bent, he could meet my crying eyes. "You know it's always okay for you to cry with me, Tahl. But I hate to see you so racked up when you don't need to be." As he spoke in that calm, reassuring way that annoyed the crap out of me sometimes—when I didn't want to be comforted but he managed to do it anyway by having a voice that could soothe a charging rhino—he guided me to the sofa and sat me down.

"Gimme just a sec—I'm just going to finish building my drink and I'll be right back. Is there anything I can get you?"

I'd never been with a man who so unhesitatingly—unashamedly—assumed the role of caretaker. That was probably one of the reasons why I saw him the way I did.

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak quite yet.

He patted my leg and practically jogged over to the small sideboard he'd set up as a bar, then back again with not one but two rocks glasses.

Mane saw me open my mouth in protest but preempted me. "I only gave you a generous shot, and I want you to down it all, right now. I know it's inappropriate to give alcohol to a little girl—"

My cheeks glowed neon red at that.

"But I think that it might help you relax a bit."

He extended the glass to me, although I didn't reach up for it. "But I—"

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