Page 7 of Daddy's Little Sunshine

Relaxing a fraction, Donovan waited for the destruction to begin again, carefully moved his foot to a different spot and lowered his heel to the floor. No noise. Maybe there was a God after all. He hurried from the apartment, back down the stairs and out the front door of the building. He didn’t breathe easily until he was several blocks from her apartment, and he’d verified several times he wasn’t being followed.

A block from his place, he paused in front of a small convenience store. Breaking the news to her that her apartment had been tossed would be a lot easier with ice cream or something. He ducked inside and headed for the small frozen section.

“Fucking hell, why are there so many flavors? Chocolate. Girls like chocolate.” With that in mind, he grabbed three different pints with chocolate in the name and headed for the checkout. Pleased with his ingenuity, he left the store and jogged the final distance to his place.

He had just stepped into his hallway when a loud laugh echoed down the corridor. Donovan groaned at the already familiar sound. Sure as shit, she was standing in the hallway, laughing with nosy Ms. Edith like she didn’t have a care in the world.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Lainey turned and flashed an innocent smile. “Well, hey there.”

“Hey there? I told you…” Donovan stopped himself. Nosy Ms. Edith was watching them like they were starring characters in the daytime soap operas she loved so much. “Hi, Ms. Edith. Sorry to interrupt, but Lainey and I have to go now.”

“But I’m talking to Ms. Edith. Ow!”

Donovan wrapped a hand around Lainey’s arm and pushed her toward the front door. Ms. Edith’s shocked gasp followed them inside.

“Let go of me!”

“You don’t want that.”

She snorted and jerked her arm, but he held on fast. “Why not?”

“Because as soon as I let go, you’re bending over the arm of that couch so I can whip your ass.”

CHAPTER 4

Lainey

Lainey jerked on her arm again, struggling in vain to free herself from his grasp. “You’re not going to touch me. Let go!”

The asshole had the nerve to smirk. “A little late for that, don’t you think, sunshine? And I absolutely am going to whip your ass. Unless you can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”

“Because you have no right.”

“Like hell I don’t.” He’d risked getting his head bashed in and unknowingly pitted himself against a powerful company known for tracking down and experimenting on people like him. Hell yes, he had the right to whip her ass when she didn’t have the good sense God gave a gnat and couldn’t follow the simple directions meant to keep her safe.

She tilted her chin up, meeting his gaze head on. “You don’t! I’m not your responsibility.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, little girl. But despite both of our objections, you are my responsibility. I can’t just let you wander around the city with people trying to kill you.”

“You don’t know they were after me. It was a mistake, or a random attack. You don’t know that they targeted me specifically. You don’t even know who they were.”

She’d had some time to think about it while he’d been gone. There was simply no way those men had been after her. She was nobody, just some librarian from the middle of nowhere who’d found her way to the big city. She wasn’t a Variant and nobody was trying to kidnap her to perform experiments on her. The idea was laughable.

“Really? You think it was a mistake? How about we go back to your apartment and see if those Rose Corp thugs are still there and you can ask them if it was a mistake.”

“What?” She felt the blood drain from her face. “My apartment?”

“Fuck. Here.” He handed her a bag filled with three pints of ice cream. “I was going to tell you after dinner, but I guess you can have dessert first.”

“You bought me ice cream?”

He finally let go of her arm and shoved his hands into his jean's pockets. “Yeah. Thought maybe you wouldn’t freak out if you had chocolate.”

She looked down at the bag and back up at him. “I don’t understand.”

Daddy stomped into the kitchen and yanked a drawer open. He pulled something out and slammed the drawer, then stalked back over. He grabbed her by the arm again, but his grip was gentler, almost kind as he led her to the couch.

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