Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (32 page)

Oh hell! Did they make bras for five-year-olds? Maybe some kind of undershirt. He'd get a dozen. Moving her hands away, he said, "Don't play with them." He quickly pulled the tee shirt over her head. "You need to keep this part of you covered."

"Why?"

"Because girls are supposed to be..."

Come on, Meecham, you're a writer. Be inventive. Because girls are supposed to be everything Justine Page is not, and everything Grace Hansen is, and that was damn hard to explain to a five-year-old. "Girls need to keep themselves covered on top so boys and men don't see them there, or what's between their legs. That's just the way it is." He wondered if he was up to the job of raising a daughter. Boys played with themselves because they were boys, but for some reason he'd thought girls were above it all.

"You saw me in those places," Sophie said.

"That's because I'm your father," Brad replied. "Your real father. The man you call daddy isn't your farther. He's just a man. So, from now on, I'm the only boy or man who will see you without your clothes on, except a doctor if you get sick."

"What if Ricky and I play doctor and Ricky's the doctor. Can he see me there?"

"Hell no!"

"You said a bad word. Mommy said it's bad to say bad words."

"Yeah, you're right. But you don't let Ricky or any other boy see you there. And you don't play doctor either."

No Barbies, no Kens, no doctor kits.

Books. He'll get lots of books. And a Bible. They'll go to church. There was one not far from the house. He had no idea what denomination it was, but Sophie could go to Sunday school. Maybe he'd look for a wife who went to church. She'd have them saying prayers before dinner and she could read the Bible to Sophie. That should do something. Maybe a Catholic woman so Sophie could learn about Catholic stuff like the other kids.

"Here, get these on," he said. Crouching on his heels, he held open the waist of the mini jeans. Sophie placed her hand on his shoulder, a small, warm little hand that felt odd, but good, and shoved each leg into the jeans. He pulled them up and snapped them, and zipped the short zipper. Finding a pair of socks sitting with the rest of her clothes, he squatted down again and pulled a small sock onto each foot, and tugged on the pair of scuffed western boots that Grace brought over, boots Ricky had outgrown. They were a hit with Sophie, who wore them to bed the night before.

When Sophie was dressed, on impulse, Brad opened his arms to her, and said, "Now that you know I'm your daddy, could I have a hug?"

Sophie backed away from him, clear blue eyes darkening to cobalt, shook her mop of curls, and said, "I'm gonna sit on the couch and wait for God to bring Mommy," then left the bedroom and crawled up onto the couch.

Brad looked at Sophie, sitting with her arms folded, feet crossed, there for the duration, and said, "Honey, God doesn't work that way. You need to find something to do."

Sophie's brow pinched in a dark frown. "God can do anything," she said. "I'm staying here." She tightened her crossed arms, glared at him and waited.

Brad glanced through the window behind the couch and saw Sam Hansen and Ricky heading toward them. "Here's Ricky," he said to Sophie, who turned and raised up on her knees and looked out the window. On seeing Ricky, her face brightened into a smile, the first smile Brad had seen since she arrived. It was an incredibly sweet smile, one he wanted to see aimed at him someday, and would, he vowed.

Sophie got to the front door just as Brad opened it. Sam, whose hand was raised to knock, looked at them, and said, "Would Sophie like to help Ricky build a snowman?"

Sophie looked up at Brad and waited.

"You want to?" Brad asked.

Sophie nodded.

"Then run get your coat and your new hat and mittens."

Sophie rushed to the bedroom and came out carrying her jacket, which had mittens stuffed into one pocket and the hat stuffed in the other. Brad held up the jacket for her to slip her arms into, then zipped up the front and helped her on with her mittens and pulled the hat down over her ears. "Now can I have a hug?" he asked.

Sophie shook her head. "I don't know if you're my daddy," she said. "I'll wait and see what Mommy says when God brings her here." She turned and left.

Brad stood, and watched Sophie trudge through the snow with Ricky, who looked at her and smiled, and in an instant Sophie smiled back. But before he shut the door, he saw Justine walking toward the cabin, arms laden with bags. She caught his eye, and said, "I see you survived your first day as daddy." As she approached, she smiled.

Brad couldn't help smiling back, or noticing the blush to Justine's cheeks from the wintry weather, or the glint of icy tears from the cold, or the perfect shape of her face with her hair tucked inside a wool cap with Nordic patterns on it. About the time he didn't think the woman could get any more beautiful, she proved him wrong. Even her lips, slightly blue from the cold, seemed more defined. More...

Don't even go there, Meecham.

Lips, breasts, body... The woman herself. All off limits. A dead end.

Justine stomped the snow off her shoes and nudged past him, then dropped the packages on the couch beside Sophie's gifts for God and swept the cap off her head, sending her hair cracking from static electricity and standing out to frame her face in a cloud of russet-red.

"I got everything I wanted," she said. Unzipping her jacket, she shrugged out of it and hung it on one of several wooden pegs by the door, then turned in a slow circle for Brad's perusal. "Am I modest now?" she asked, stopping in front of him and waiting for his response.

Brad's eyes roamed down the length of her, taking in the wide-heeled, low-top black boots with black lacings, reminiscent of Mary Poppins, if that had been her intent, then moving up her gray wool slacks to the high-neck, long-sleeve white jersey top. He noted that she was wearing something under it, so there were no signs of the hard nubs of her nipples. It bothered him that he wanted her more than when she was naked in the hot springs pool, if that were possible. The fact was, he wanted Justine Page. Period.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked, eyes bright with expectation.

"You look nice," he said. "Ordinary."

Hell, there wasn't anything ordinary about the woman. He had the bizarre desire to see her walking down a catwalk, with that subtle crossover step models did when strutting their stuff, and watching her modeling everything from long designer tee-shirts to sheer gowns opened down the front to expose the inside curves of her breasts, and sitting back and letting everyone there appreciate what she had, knowing it was only for him.

For the first time in his life, he could understand the concept of mistresses. He needed a modest woman with high morals to help him raise Sophie, but he wanted Justine for himself, away from his family. Justine just as she was, glib, flippant, wanting him to show her what an orgasm was. And he would if she were his mistress. Endlessly.

But the bottom line was, he couldn't cheat on a wife, so Justine would never be his mistress, and he'd never put that ring on her finger either. The idea had crossed his mind a week ago, but he'd get over it. Life had a way of shoving the
I wants
aside.

"I'm glad you approve," Justine said, then turned and went into the bathroom and shut the door. After a few minutes, she returned, and said, "Sophie must have had a bath. There are still bubbles in the tub."

"Yeah, and we need to talk about that," Brad said, eyes returning to the jersey and the band of white beneath it. Maybe a sport's bra?

"Talk about what?" Justine asked, hands draped on her slender hips.

"About Sophie. She doesn't have any sense of modesty."

"She's five." 

"That's what worries me. Sophie was playing with her nipples when I was trying to dress her. She said it felt good."

"It probably does," Justine said. "There are lots of nerve endings there. Sometimes it happens to me when I get cold, sometimes when something rubs against them, like when I wear a tee shirt with nothing under it. Is that all you're worried about?"

Brad had to get the image of the tee shirt and Justine in it out of his mind before he could get on with the next issue. "Sophie tried to make bubble breasts, and she also spread her legs and put bubbles there. Do girls play with themselves like boys do, and am I going to have to worry about Sophie sticking things up herself?"

"No," Justine said, "she was having fun in the bubble bath, but humans are sexual creatures, and her sensitive spots are there from birth."

Brad drew in a weary breath. He hadn't expected this with a five-year-old, least of all not a girl. "I told her she wasn't to get naked with boys or men, only me and the doctor, which brought up another issue. She asked if she could get naked with Ricky if they were playing doctor. When you were a kid, if you'd been playing doctor with a boy and he told you he wanted to stick it between your legs, what would you have done?"

"Kids don't play that way," Justine replied. "They're usually just curious about how the other looks, but that's why you don't let boys and girls play unsupervised. I was unsupervised with the boy next door and we ended up having a very close inspection at each other before my mother caught us and sent the boy home, but Sophie's safe with Ricky as long as they're supervised and involved in good clean fun, like now. They're building a snow man and having a good time together, and Sam is with them. It's all good."

The image of a five-year-old Justine and a five-your-old neighbor boy examining each other bothered him because he could see Sophie doing that because she had no inhibitions. "Would Grace have done that with a boy?" he asked, still wondering if promiscuity was inborn.

"I don't know," Justine replied. "Grace always played with baby dolls. She never had Barbies. But I had Barbies, and a Ken, and I wanted breasts like Barbie. But I couldn't understand why Barbie had breasts and Ken didn't have a penis. So I made one. I poked a hole in Ken's crotch and stuck a broken toothpick in it. The whole Barbie Ken thing was provocative. I intentionally let Ken and Barbie see each other naked. I even put Ken and Barbie in bed like I'd seen on a soap on TV. I was a twisted ten-year-old, but if I had a daughter, I'd never let her have Barbies. She'd have baby dolls like Grace had."

Brad made a mental note to buy Sophie a baby doll. And new underwear. And she needed undershirts so she wouldn't play with her nipples. "Did you play with your nipples?" he asked.

"Probably," Justine replied. "I can't remember. But you're obsessing over something that's normal little girl behavior. It doesn't mean Sophie will turn out like me. Grace was a virgin when she married her first husband, and I imagine even she played with her nipples since she started getting breasts when she was ten and had to wear a bra before she was eleven."

"That's less than five years away," Brad said, worried.

"Yeah, and the monthly period comes with it," Justine reminded him, "so you'll have to have a stash of supplies ready, and Sophie will have to know what's coming so she can tell you when it happens. Then you get to explain what to do with a tampon." She gave him that pat look she got when she'd one-upped him.

And she had. He had no idea how he'd talk to Sophie about tampons. She was an independent little cuss; he couldn't even get her to give him a hug. And she had a CEO attitude about her—looks that could kill, stomping her foot to emphasize a point. And the point was, she was running the show, not him. "Thank God that's five years away," he said, "Do they make tiny little sports bras for five-year-olds?"

"I doubt it," Justine replied. "Speaking of which..." She raised her shirt, revealing a white sports bra. "Now you have nothing to complain about. I'm completely respectable."

Brad stared at the white band around her breasts. She kept referring to herself as flat chested, but that wasn't what he saw. His reaction below the waist was immediate. His desire to take what she was offering almost his undoing. "You don't have to show me," he grumbled.

Justine lowered her shirt. "I wanted to," she said. "I'm also a sexual creature, although I'm only now realizing it."

"Don't talk like that," Brad said. "It's a come-on for a man. If you want men to treat you with respect you can't be acting like you do."

"I'm just being honest," Justine said. "Sex never interested me before I met you. It was a means to an end. Now it's something I want, but only with you."

"You don't even know me," Brad said.

"I know you have empathy for others, and that you're worried about a little girl you didn't know existed three days ago and now plan to take on the responsibility of raising her, and that you want to make a respectable woman out of me when you know you could get me into your bed simply by asking. And I also know you made vows you intended to keep to a fool of a woman who didn't appreciate what she had."

"Speaking of vows, there's another problem," Brad said. "Sophie said Yvette was married and the way Sophie talked, the man wanted to take custody of her after Yvette was killed. From what I got out of it, Elsa brought Sophie here to keep the man from doing that, but I don't remember Elsa's last name, so I can't contact her to find out if there's anything to it."

"Moroz," Justine said. "Her name was Elsa Moroz."