Page 24 of A Daddy for Christmas 2: Kitt

“Oh yeah? Were you…fully dressed?”

“Yes. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, like I was today. The Littles aren’t really sexual in their space, you know. Besides, like I told you, he was my friend’s Daddy. Not mine.”

“Sounds like your father overreacted then.”

“Just the fact that I was in there at all was enough for him. Some of the boys in there that day were in diapers. My father freaked out. We hadn’t gotten along for years,” I said, “but when he heard about me being in that club—in that room—I actually think he thought I was certifiably crazy. Not to mention immature and silly and wild and spent way too much of my allowance—all things he said to me. And yet he never wanted me to get a job. Never allowed me to. He said I couldn’t handle a job.”

“He actually said that?”

“Oh yes. He told me so to my face. He said I was mentally deficient and the biggest mistake he’d ever made, and he wished I’d never been born.”

Rio looked shocked that someone would say such things to their child. Just like I had been when he’d said them to me. I took a minute and then glanced over at him to see his expression.

“He was wrong to say such things, Kitt. I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“He knew he had cancer by then and didn’t have long left to live, so he made Jazz my legal guardian by getting a doctor and a judge to say I had mental issues and was incompetent. It was done to protect me, he said. Can you imagine how that made me feel, though?”

“All because your father found you in a club he didn’t like?”

“No, not just that. Not exactly. He was a homophobe and hated the fact it was a gay club. The rest of it—what the detective saw me doing—was just icing on the cake for him. It drove the final stake right through his hate-filled little heart. Plus, he was angry that there wasn’t much he could do about it.”

“Except didn’t he write you out of his will?”

I turned to look at him in surprise. “No. What makes you think that?”

“Your brother told me he did. Jazz said that he was left all the money.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s not true. My father couldn’t do that, because the bulk of our inheritance comes from our mother. She was much richer than our father. She left her fortune to my brother and me both, equally.”

He glanced sharply over at me. “What? Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” I said, staring out the side window. I was tired and hadn’t really had much sleep the night before onJack’s lumpy couch, so I put my head back on the seat and closed my eyes. I tried not to think about that last, bitter argument with my father. He had stormed out of my room after reading me the riot act, and I’d shaken my fist at him and yelled after him, saying I hated him. I told him I never wanted to see him again. It turned out that I didn’t have to. He went in the hospital a few days later, and he never came back out. I wish I could say I mourned him, but the truth was that I really didn’t. I felt like I’d never really had a dad, outside of my Pop, who tried to fill that role for me. He’d died so tragically in that crash though, when I was still young.

It was beginning to get dark, but it still wasn’t too late. I was a little surprised when Rio pulled into a hotel off the interstate.

“Are we stopping here for the night?”

“Yes. I’m tired from today and you’ve worn yourself out being bad. I think a good night’s sleep is what we both need.”

“Okay, but I’m so sleepy that I think I’ll just stay here and get a nap in the car if that’s okay.”

“Nice try. But no way. You’re going in with me.”

He led me inside, holding my hand like before and got us a room for the night, saying yes to a king-sized bed, even though I tried to object. Not because I really wanted to, but mostly just to see what he’d say. I admit that he was fun to tease.

When the clerk stepped away for a moment, he leaned down and said, “I told you that you can put pillows between us if you like, but you’re sleeping with me. I don’t trust you not to sneak out while I’m sleeping.”

I stayed quiet after that, because I had totally been planning that, and he got a key, and we went out to the car to get our bags. When we got up to the room, he nodded toward the bathroom. “I’m going to get a shower and change into something to sleep in.”

“It’s only eight o’clock.”

“I thought you were ‘sooo sleepy.’”

I shrugged, hating it when he used my own words against me.

“I’ve been up since early this morning,” he said. “I think I’ll manage to rest.”

“What about me?”

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