One Sexy Daddy (15 page)

She went into the house and gently closed the door. He stood out on the porch for a long time, feeling his anticipation rise and then ever so gently it became an acceptable part of him. He looked up at the sliver of moon on an indigo sky until he saw the second-floor bedroom light switch on.

Deerhorn rules.

It was a wonderful, if exhausting, discipline.

Twenty-four-seven days. Everyone pitched in. Moms took care of the children of folks who were working on the job. Every night, a different family volunteered to host tired workers for a home-cooked dinner. Lakeside Groceries sent sandwiches, chips, peanut butter cookies and gallons of lemonade every afternoon. The dermatologist who had a summer home on the north side of town sent a case of sun block from his offices in Milwaukee. The owners of the house next door to the site opened their home for anyone who needed a bathroom, a phone, a few minutes rest. Mrs. Pincham brought a cooler of beer and sodas around eight o'clock on the late nights when everyone was almost, but not quite, ready to drop.

The Milwaukee affiliate of a prime-time network news show sent a crew out. Mayor Pincham spoke eloquently on camera about Deerhorn's long history of civic pride—his rant about why in heck Chicago weekenders would go forty miles away to
Geneva when they could come to Deerhorn and have just as much fun wasn't aired.

True to his word, Adam worked his volunteers hard. Acting no differently than he had with the Lasser & Thomas crew, he praised good work lavishly and in public and criticized bad work in private and sparingly. But oh, those long hours! The pride in perfect workmanship! The way that every joist, every nail, every piece of PVC piping was secured!

He made only two adjustments to the life-style he had enjoyed in Brazil, Mexico, Colorado, Texas or the dozens of other places that boasted a Lasser & Thomas–Adam Tyler creation.

He came in late, which no one begrudged him. He made Karen breakfast every morning. He read books to her, looked over drawings she had made the previous day, and gave Mugs a day's worth of scratches behind his ears. Around nine o'clock, Stacy came over, and she would braid Karen's hair and supervise her teeth-brushing while Adam showered and dressed. At ten, Stacy and Adam dropped off Karen at Mrs. Smith's house, where there were already other children whose parents were helping with the school.

“My wife sent you this recipe,” the fire chief said one morning when the griddle went up in flames. “She says the secret is to set a timer so even if you get distracted, you'll remember to turn them over.”

“I wasn't making pancakes,” Adam said. “I was trying an omelet.”

The two men regarded the stove. One piece of charred food covered with extinguisher foam didn't look much different than another.

“Whatever,” the fire chief said cheerfully, dragging his tank down the back stairs. His helmet toppled behind him.

Coming in late meant staying late, which Adam nearly always did. He never left the site if there was any worker still on the job. When the only plasterer in town taught fifteen Deerhorn matrons how to put up a smooth, flat wall, that meant working straight through the night. Adam thought that the Lasser & Thomas crews, given the highest wages and travel allowances in the industry, could have used a lesson in dedication from this group. Along about three o'clock in the morning, the women led Adam through the school, lit by lanterns, to show him their work.

“Smooth as silk, ladies,” he said, rubbing his hand along the walls. “Smooth as silk.”

They cheered him. They cheered themselves. And when they went home, their husbands were proud, and their children were in awe.

But there were other nights when work didn't run that late.

That's where Adam made the second change in his work habits.

On other jobs, sure, he always had a woman for
when he needed one. He'd sleep with a woman. Drink with a woman. Have dinner with a woman. But these were discreet acts that had nothing to do with the rest of his hours.

Stacy was different.

Stacy was his buddy, his assistant, his personal Post-it note, the woman he bounced ideas off—and then when the day was over, Adam did something with her he never would have guessed he would do with a woman.

He dated.

Feeling a little like a schoolboy, he took her to movies, bowling, to the racetrack fifty miles south in Kenosha. He took her to dinner at Tanglewood and dinner at Burger Joint. Sometimes Karen came with them, sometimes she had sleepovers with one of her many friends.

He even double-dated, driving forty miles to Geneva to see movies with Marion and Jim or having dinner with the Pinchams—although Lefty boycotted Geneva, hated the very name of the city that had eclipsed Deerhorn in tourism. Still, the Pinchams hosted good dinners and better late-night poker games—nobody lost more than a few cents or won more than a quarter.

For Adam, the concept of double-dating was something he would have found laughable, were it not for the fact that it was fun.

He hid nothing about this relationship and Deerhorn citizens accepted the couple, issuing dinner
invitations to “you and Stacy” with the same ease they did with married or engaged folks. When Stacy and Adam walked the day's stress off with a trip to the Sweet Shoppe ice-cream store, Adam put his arm around Stacy's waist. People waved and said hello without a double take.

He could do this because Betty Carbol had everything under control. She told him the rules and he followed them. Betty made her own phone calls to any Deerhorn citizen who thought contrary.

Kisses were sweet—and were just that, kisses. Clothes were meant to be worn—not torn off. Beds were for sleeping in, and Stacy and Adam both had their own—in separate houses. Scantily dressed women were for lingerie catalogs, and men without a shirt lingered at the beach—nothing Adam or Stacy had time for.

And absolutely no talking about the future—Adam assumed there was one, Stacy thought he was just fooling himself.

In fact, late one night in August, Stacy got an idea of how quickly the future was slipping away.

“I just finished writing the checks to the lumberyard, the electrical supply shop and the paint store,” she said, looking up from his desk. In front of her was a neatly arranged stack of business-sized envelopes, stamped and addressed.

Adam roused himself in his armchair. “And?”

“You're almost out of money.”

“Okay,” he said, stretching. His paperback
dropped to the floor. “Have we got enough to open the school in two weeks?”

“Probably. And I want you to know that I am so grateful to you for doing this. I know you're doing it for me.”

He shrugged, acknowledging the truth.

“But you have to get a job.”

“Oooh, nagging me already, and here we're not even married.”

“Adam, be serious,” she chided. “What are you going to do after the school is built?”

“I talked to Betty Carbol—and she said when I get to the point that I absolutely cannot stand this chaste courtship I should ask you to marry me.” He grinned wickedly. “I'm there, baby.”

“Adam, don't propose, not even in jest. I can't leave Deerhorn.”

“I can't either,” he said. “I like it here. I like having people know who I am. I like having people wave to me as I pass by. I like having a place where Karen is happy. But most of all, I love you. What's wrong with all that?”

“Plans, Adam. You have to make plans.”

“What are your plans? Move in with Marion? Take care of your nephews for years?”

“Adam!”

“I'm sorry, but it's true. You were happy to make love to me once, as an experiment. I was happy to make love to you once because I like making love. But things have changed.”

“I'm being realistic.”

“You need to be romantic.”

He stood up, taking her pencil out of her hand, shutting off the calculator, snapping the checkbook shut.

“Come here, redhead. Betty Carbol hasn't given me my limits for the day. Maybe she forgot, or maybe she's decided there aren't any.”

He closed his eyes, putting his hands flat on the desk behind him. Murmured once “that's the way I like it” when she got so close her calves brushed against his pant leg. Her hands hesitated an inch from his hips and then he regarded her from beneath heavy lids.

“Just remember everything I taught you, Stacy.”

She put her hands on his firm, slim hips and though she was wearing heels, stood on her toes to put her mouth to his. His lips were hard and closed. There was an elemental disappointment in the soft guttural moan that came from her throat. But then her mouth brushed against his in just the way he had once done to her—and his mouth opened to receive her tongue.

The male conquered was quickly aroused. With his fingers wide on her buttocks, he drew her to his hardness even as his tongue explored her flesh. Every nerve in her body remembered—recalled with startling accuracy the way he would bring her
body to ecstasy. She felt herself weakening in his arms.

“We can stop now,” he said huskily. “If we have to.”

“We don't have to,” she said, conceding the truth. She craved him, had waited two weeks for him to ask her to make love to him again, and she wasn't going to take no for an answer. “What about Karen?”

“She's spending the night with the Pinchams.”

“We're hot and sweaty,” she pointed out. “I helped the roofers and I smell like—”

“Mmm! Charred black tar and talcum powder. I like it, but I don't think Chanel's going to be calling for the recipe.”

He went into the bathroom and turned on the bath tap. When he emerged minutes later, he had stripped off his shirt—his torso was caramel dark and smoothly muscled. He looked once and then twice. Her clothes were in a neat pile at her feet.

“Put your hands down,” he said softly. “I want to see you.”

She obeyed only because he told her—she wondered if she could make love to him a hundred times and still feel this modesty. Nonetheless, as his admiration gave her courage, she pulled back her shoulders and displayed her round, aching breasts and her tremulous legs.

“I said you were beautiful the first time I saw
you,” he said. “And I was right. Oh, boy, was I right.”

He led her into the bath. She tested the water with one toe as he shut off the tap.

“It's hot.”

“I've got a solution for that.”

He ran downstairs, and she put one foot in and then another. She slid down in the water, the heat an exquisite torture to her senses.

“Here we are,” he said, sitting down beside the bath. He had a bowl of ice cubes and he held one out to her lips. She opened her mouth, expecting to taste the cold, but he traced the ice cube around her lips, onto her chin, down to the base of her throat until the ice came to nothing in the hot water. A shiver coursed through her. She shyly looked at him.

“Again?” he asked.

“Please.”

This time he trailed the ice cube at her mouth, down her throat, and then as she arched her back he teased her nipples with the ice cube until it melted. She felt a heat more elemental than temperature, a heat as rhythmic as her own heartbeat, as intense as the sun.

“My turn,” she said boldly.

He stood up, unzipped his jeans, revealing the virgin-white flesh. He was unrepentantly hard.

She reached for the bowl, picked up an ice cube
and popped it into her mouth. She smiled a double-dare-you smile.

“Oh, baby,” he said raggedly.

He climbed into the bathtub, the displaced water sluicing their bodies until he found purchase between her legs. He kissed her mouth, taking the ice and giving it until the cold was gone and there was only heat. He moved inside her, slowly so as not to hurt her, kicking the stopper off its mount but not caring if the water drained away.

She was his. She was beneath him. Her legs held him tight. He moved inside her. With three long, delicious strokes he brought them both to climax.

Later, in his bed, he lay next to her and he couldn't imagine that he had ever had the desire to be anywhere other than next to her, in Deerhorn, on a hot summer evening with the cicadas gibbering outside.

“Stacy, I love you,” he said. “But you're saying that if I don't start making some plans…” He lifted his head from the pillow, looking over her shoulder to her soft, pink cheeks. She was sleeping.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
he awoke early. Kissing his sleeping woman on the forehead, he threw on a work shirt and picked out a new pair of jeans from the box of clean laundry Mrs. Zengeler delivered every Friday. Over coffee, he read the fire chief's wife's recipe for pancakes. There was something about pancakes he was determined to master—he
had always appreciated challenges and this one seemed more daunting than most. He mixed the batter, spooned out four circles on the griddle and set the timer.

Then he walked back up to his study, made a few sketches on the back of an envelope, and called the mayor.

“Lefty, could you stop by this morning?” he asked. “A little meeting to discuss a business proposition.”

“Sure thing. Just don't make any pancakes.”

Adam laughed. When he hung up he promised himself to go down to flip the pancakes but he hadn't heard the timer.

Taking a chance, he picked up the phone and dialed.

“Ryan, it's Adam.”

“Buddy! I saw that report on the TV. What are you doing—turning into some kind of what do they call it? Philan…philantholo…philantholopo…well, you know, a good-deed-doer?”

“Yeah I suppose,” Adam said, shrugging off the praise. “But I've got something other than philanthropy on my mind.”

“You want a job? 'Cause here in the New York firm, they're begging for guys like you. Come out here and talk with us. I'll take us to Le Cirque and pitch you a sweetheart deal.”

“Me first. I got something to pitch to you.”

“Deerhorn?”

“Yeah.”

“Buddy, if it's a charity project, forget it,” Ryan snorted. “These guys I'm working with, if it don't go cha-ching-cha-ching at the cash register, they don't want any part of it.”

“Oh, no. This is a money-maker. A real gold mine hidden under a pot of clay.”