Page 18 of Daddies' Little Troublemaker

I have no disaster plan for this. There isn’t a handbook on what to do if you accidentally fuck your uncle.

Not my uncle, I immediately remind myself. My step-uncle. No blood relation, at least.

But I shouldn’t have to say “at least” about this. The whole point of going to Vice was to meet a stranger. Turns out I met two of them. I just happen to be sort-of-kind-of related to one.

If Caleb is tangentially related to me, I’m going to riot.

Before I can say anything else, Lincoln’s phone rings.

He pulls it from his pocket. When he looks at the screen, his eyes get big. “Fuck. It’s Mark.”

“Don’t answer,” I hiss.

“He’ll worry if I don’t, and then he’ll call you.”

I swallow. “Um, go ahead and answer, then, I guess.”

“Yeah, thought so.” He taps his phone screen and holds the device to his ear.

Cinching my towel more tightly around my chest, I evaluate my chances for escape. If I want to go back to the pool, I have to get past Lincoln, who takes up most of the hallway. Not so much in size, but in presence. My bedroom is also past him. I guess I could go back into the bathroom.

And there I’ll remain until the end of time, slowly dying of mortification.

“Hey,” Lincoln says into the phone.

There’s a long pause while my dad speaks. I can hear his voice, but not the words.

“I’m already here,” Lincoln says. “Traffic was light and I wanted to take advantage.” A pause. “She was a little surprised. Yep. She seems good, why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s right here, looks like she just came in from the pool.”

I shake my head rapidly. I am a lot of things. Embarrassed. Squicked out. Weirdly turned on. But one thing I am not, is ready to talk to my dad.

“I’m too wet to talk,” I say.

Lincoln’s eyes flare with interest, but he shakes his head as if clearing the thought.

“Hey, Dad,” I say loudly. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

“He says that’s fine,” Lincoln tells me.

Phew. Bullet dodged.

A minute later, Lincoln wraps up the call and pockets his phone. We stare at each other for a long moment. I don’t know what to say.

Finally, he speaks. “Obviously, I can’t stay here with you.”

“I’m not keeping you,” I say, making a little shooing motion with my fingers, like run along.

“If I go now, Mark will wonder why. He asked me to keep an eye on you. So I’ll stay a couple of days, we’ll keep out of each other’s way.”

I frown. “This isn’t ideal.”

“No? What would be ideal?”

“Ideal would be you fucking off into the great unknown and I find a magical potion to wipe my memory of this entire affair.”

His mouth tilts upward. “Wipe both our memories.”

It shouldn’t sting that he wants to get rid of the memory, but I just said it, too. That night could’ve been the hottest experience of my entire life, but now it’s ruined. Why couldn’t the guy who made me call him “Daddy” be anyone other than someone who’s related—even by marriage—to my actual dad?

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