Page 9 of A Daddy for Christmas 2: Kitt

This trip home to Atlanta would only take a few hours and then this would all be behind him. And behind me. He’d be back with his brother, Jazz, and then it became his brother’s problem and not mine.

I told him as much as he sat very still, with those damn long eyelashes lowered over his eyes, refusing to look at me. He looked pale and wary and unsure, but why did I get the feeling he would still bolt at the first opportunity I gave him? And why hadn’t his brother mentioned how fragile and young he was? I knew he was supposed to be mentally unstable according to the paperwork, though he seemed perfectly fine to me, if a little immature. I was regretting that I’d ever taken this assignment and wished I was anywhere but there in that hotel room.

Chapter Two

Kitt

The man who said his name was Riordan Jeffries—and why did he have two last names, anyway—sat back in his chair and stared at me. I’d drunk a lot and needed to pee, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking if I could go to the bathroom, because fuck him. No matter how good looking he was or how blue his eyes were or how much his big muscles strained against his shirt, I hated him. He was mean.

I was tired from not getting much sleep the night before. I was staying with a friend of a friend, couch surfing, I guess, since my friend Adam’s current boyfriend kicked me out. Adam had been my good friend in school, even after I got kicked out, and he’d graduated and gone home to Albuquerque to live.

When I ran away, he was the first one I thought of going to. I knew he’d give me a place to stay until all that shit in Atlanta blew over. And he did too. Until his boyfriend came home from work one evening, and I was sitting at the kitchen bar, laughing at Adam being goofy as he flipped eggs in a frying pan. The boyfriend got jealous, for literally no reason at all, and I was asked to vacate the premises. Since he was paying half the rent, I really had no choice but to go.

Adam managed to find another friend of his, a guy named Benjie, who was willing to let me crash on his couch, but the guy’s fat cat was determined to sleep on my chest all night. I guess the couch was his, and he resented me taking it. I couldn’t blame the little guy, though, and he was really cute.

I squirmed in my seat, trying to get more comfortable, and Jeffries noticed, like he seemed to notice everything I did.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom, or do you have ants in your pants?”

I glared at him. Ants in my pants? How old did this guy think I was anyway? That was like something my Pop would have said to me years ago. The thought of my Pop brought me a little pain like it always did, right in the center of my chest even after all this time.

“I need to use the bathroom, yeah. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“Then go. Leave your shoes here and leave the door open.”

“What do my shoes have to do with anything?”

“It’s cold out, and I don’t want you to get the idea of making another break for it. You won’t do that with no shoes.”

I stood up, rolling my eyes so hard I almost did myself an injury. I pulled off my shoes and threw them down at the floor one by one. He looked on serenely. I guess he thought he was being clever and that not having shoes would help to keep me from running again. But he was wrong.

“Jacket, too,” the asshole said.

“My jacket? What do you mean?”

“That denim thing you’re wearing over your t-shirt.”

I rolled my eyes again and added a glare. “If I wanted to run, then that wouldn’t stop me.”

“Yeah, whatever. Just leave the jacket.”

“I hate you. I want you to know that.”

“I’ll try to bear up under the strain.”

I ripped my jacket off as dramatically as possible, hurled it at the floor and stomped toward the bathroom barefooted as he gave a loud sigh.

When I got inside, I thought about closing the door anyway, just to see what he’d do, but I knew what he’d do, so I just used the toilet and came back out to stand in the doorway and glare at him.

He was a really handsome guy, and big too. Probably like over six feet something and maybe close to two-thirty or so, but all muscle and not an ounce of fat on him. He had short, dirty-blond hair, and his eyes were intensely blue. He looked like a member of the Aryan brotherhood, and I already knew that he was almost as violent and mean as they were from the way he’d been manhandling me.

Okay, he didn’t really look like that, and I may have exaggerated about the violence…but my point was that he looked like he could be. Kind of. I remembered the way he’d held me when we danced to that jukebox in the bar, and how he’d twirled me around like I was a doll. People shouldn’t be that strong. He’d even picked me up and danced around with me when I couldn’t do that two-step thing. I’d felt like a doll or a kid in his arms, and I didn’t like to think about how that made me feel. But it wasn’t bad. Not at all.

He even had a lot of tattoos on one arm, like I supposed Aryans might have. No swastikas, or anything, though. Actually, I didn’t know fuck all about the Aryan brotherhood, but I just didn’t like this guy and that was the worst thing I could think of. His tattoos were cool though, and I held that against him too.

I had already looked closely for any tattoos that might have been done in prison, but I hadn’t seen any. That I knew of, anyway. He had a kind of cool flag tattoo on his shoulder and a spider web around his elbow that looked a little sus, though.

“What did you say your first name was?” I asked him, standing back in the doorway, looking at him.

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