Daddy's Little Librarian Page 8

  She shivered.

  Were her nipples perked? Were they beaded up against the inside of her shirt, pushing stiffly out against the cloth, reaching toward him in the hopes they might receive a chance touch of his hand?

  Don’t look, he told himself. He was torturing himself with a woman he barely knew.

  Oh, the devil on his shoulder cooed, but it’s worse than that, isn’t it? You’re not just torturing you; you’re torturing her too.

  Somewhere in the bowels of the house, he heard the hard buzz of a dryer go off. Almost at the same time, in the kitchen his phone started ringing again.

  “I better get that,” he said, shoving his chair back.

  Bursting into awkward laughter that came out just a little too shrill to be normal, she jumped up too. “Yeah, I, uh… I should get that too.”

  She grabbed her laundry hamper and all but ran with it downstairs. She only looked back at him one time, but when she did her eyes were huge and hurt and perplexed all at the same time.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  Pissed at himself, Kurt stalked back to the kitchen. Half expecting the call to be from District Attorney Dickface on a different phone line, he was ready to block that too. But no, it wasn’t an unknown number this time. It was Grams.

  “What’s up?” he said, answering on the fifth ring.

  “Are you going back to jail?” Grams asked bluntly, without her usual cheery greeting. In fact, she sounded tense and far more serious than he was used to hearing from her.

  “No, why would you—”

  “Why is a DA calling my house, and why does he want to talk to you?”

  Stifling a curse under his breath, Kurt threw an exasperated frown to the ceiling first, and then the floor. He rubbed his eyes. “I ran into Krissy yesterday. He probably wants to tell me the restraining order is still in effect.”

  “Which only brings us right back to my original question,” his grandmother insisted. “Are you going back to jail?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Like that stopped them from putting you in prison the first time,” she said, rare notes of bitterness creeping into her voice. “What are you going to do?”

  As if there was anything he could do.

  “I’m going to get on with my life,” he told her. “I’m allowed to have a job. If Krissy doesn’t want to see me, she can frequent another fast food squid house. I don’t care, but I’m not running from her. And I’m sure as hell not running from DA Dickface.”

  “You’re still calling him that?” Grams asked, with a chuckle that made her almost sound back to her normal self.

  “He doesn’t deserve to be called anything else,” Kurt said. “And if he thinks for one second a phone call from him is going to make me panic and run, then he doesn’t know me any better now than he did the first time he locked me up.”

  Only the guilty ran. Kurt wasn’t guilty, and he didn’t run.

  Not from anybody.

  Chapter Ten

  “Is that him?” Doris O’Conner asked, rising up on tiptoes to her full height of four feet and nine inches. She peeked over the checkout counter at where Kurt was unobtrusively sitting on the floor below Scotti’s desk, reading a book on World War II Japanese submarines. She adjusted her bifocals and squinted to get a better look.

  “That’s him,” Scotti replied, doing her best to sound cheerful and not at all self-conscious that she had a man sitting practically under her desk at work. She wasn’t an idiot. A hell of a lot of pornos started this way, and everyone in the library knew he was here. He’d gotten up and down several times—to go to the bathroom, to get another book to read, to get a drink of water from the water fountain in the hall. If everyone in the library knew he was here, then maybe someone (i.e.: Gopher) outside would know it too. So, apart from keeping her distracted and embarrassed and flustered all day long, how was this helping again?

  “What a hunk,” Doris mooned.

  “The hunk can hear you,” Kurt drawled, not looking up from his book.

  “What a hunk,” Doris repeated, this time in a whisper. “If I were thirty years younger, I might give you a run for your money over a guy like that.” The old woman smiled, wrinkling her nose, and gave Scotti’s hand a friendly slap. “Have you gone to bed with him yet?”

  “Uh,” she flushed, her whole body—her face especially—radiating with embarrassment. She shot Kurt a look, but if he’d heard that, he didn’t react. He only turned the page of his book. “No, Doris. It’s not that kind of friendship.”

  “Why not? You’re a woman; he’s a man. What more do you need? Besides, Sadie says he’s hung like a—”

  “Doris!” Scotti whisper-shouted, cutting the old woman off but not before her wrinkled hands measured out exactly how ‘hung’ he was.

  “She’s his grandmother,” Doris protested. “She ought to know. She’s also telling everyone, so if I were you, I’d get a move on before some young hussy sneaks in from the sidelines and grabs him right out from under our noses. I saw Miranda giving him the once over while you were at the card catalog. Just because she’s got big breasts doesn’t mean she’s the better woman, honey, but that man has been in jail for two years, so you’d better get crackin’ on that whoopie before she lures him away.”

  Mouth agape, Scotti quickly checked to make sure that Kurt wasn’t listening. “How did you know he was in jail?”

  “What do you think ‘working for the state’ means?”

  “Landscaping?” she shot back, then forced herself to lower her voice all over again. “Construction… building… I don’t know, but—” Her mouth snapped shut as her mind suddenly focused in on the rest of what Doris had said. She leaned across the checkout counter, coming down to the old woman’s much shorter level. “Miranda? Really?”

  “Don’t worry,” Doris said, taking her books. “I’ve got a couple of grandnephews I’ll toss her way. It’s about time they started sowing their oats while they’re still young enough to be considered wild. Just remember, honey,” the gray-haired woman winked, “you owe me details, and I want them in inches.” She held her hands to measure out such a sizeable distance that Scotti was again left gasping like a beached fish.

  “Mm hm,” Doris hummed sagely, and limped out of the library on gimpy legs that were fast on their way to needing a walker for support.

  Scotti stared after her in absolute disbelief.

  “Hey.”

  She jumped, snapping around to find Kurt now standing just behind her. It was everything she could do to keep her eyes on his face.

  “You okay?” he asked. “Why are you jumpy?”

  Somehow, she managed to shut her mouth. “Nothing. No reason. I’m fine.”

  “Your shift is over, right?” He checked his wristwatch. “Not to be pushy, but we’ve got to go if I’m going to be to work on time.”

  “Uh…” Scotti said sagely. She shook her head, willing herself to snap out of it. “Right. Right, right. Just, uh… Give me a minute.”

  Kurt’s eyebrows sank slowly down over his eyes, and he glanced from her to various parts of the library around them. “Is Gopher here?”

  “Mm,” Scotti quickly shook her head, her eyes falling below his belt for the barest contemplative second before she snapped her gaze away again. Her face flamed as hot as a third-degree sunburn. “No… um, just give me a minute, and I’ll get my stuff.”

  “You look… flushed,” he noted, narrowing his eyes.

  Willing herself to get a grip, she pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, shaking her head and looking everywhere but at him. “I’m fine,” she squeaked.

  He stared at her a moment more, then said, “Okay, get your things together. I’ll just take a quick look around.”

  Scotti nodded quickly, and threw herself into cleaning up her already immaculate counter area until he rounded her desk, heading out toward the parking lot. Pausing at the door to the outer hall, he turned
back around.

  “Hey, Scotti,” he softly called. When she looked up, he measured out a distance between his hands that was even greater than Doris had. “It’s this big.”

  He winked.

  She all but died, but managed to stay on her feet. Smirking, he left the library to check the grounds, and she promptly collapsed into her chair. Burying her head in her arms, she let the flames of mortification lick all through her.

  She had almost kissed him this morning, too.

  And now, in the midst of all this seductive burning, that place between her legs was thumping and pulsing all over again, driving the already crazy heat inside her to burn even hotter. She didn’t think she could handle much more of this.

  Worse, though… when Gopher finally backed off and all of this was over, how was she supposed to go back to normal? What if she never saw him again? What was ‘normal’ about that?

  * * * * *

  It was his first day on the job, and not only was Kurt the only pirate on the payroll in pink tights and a red and pink striped uniform shirt, but whatever laundry setting Scotti had used had shrunk the shirt three sizes. It not only fit him like a second skin, but the bottom hem stopped about two inches shy of being tucked into his pants. His midriff was showing. He looked like one of the Village People.

  “Not quite the vibe we’re looking for here at Pirate Pete’s,” Captain Tommy said when he walked in.

  “Yeah,” Kurt said, not quite able to stop himself from giving Scotti an accusatory stare as she slunk past him and found a quiet place to sit in the designated undersea dining area, better known as Mermaid Lagoon. “I was kind of hoping you had an extra uniform I could borrow.”

  “No can do, big guy,” he said with a sympathetic shake of his head. “Those were the biggest I had. But… hang on, I think I’ve got something else that will do just as well.”

  Which was how on his first day of work, Kurt found himself by being promoted. He still had to wear the pink tights, but the rest of his uniform was a nice dignified black and instead of a cabin boy bussing tables, he became Pirate Pete’s Birthday Boson. Not solely because he fit into what was supposed to be a baggy, loose-fitting outfit (and which absolutely was not on him), but because the existing Boson had quit earlier that morning and Kurt was the only employee Tommy could bully, force, or cajole into putting it on. It wasn’t pink, that was all Kurt cared about.

  Or so he thought.

  And then he had his first party.

  It consisted of twenty-two four-year-olds and six adults, all of which were crammed into Birthday Cove—a shallow indention of fake rocks not far from the Secret Treasure Cave play place—along with an overflow of helium inflated balloons. The birthday boy was jumping up and down on the seat between his parents. He wore a paper pirate’s hat, an eyepatch over his right eye, and was waving a plastic cutlass over his head. Although they hadn’t yet cut into their Pirate Pete’s grinning pirate ice cream cake, if left up to Kurt he wouldn’t have given that kid any more sugar.

  Of course, if left up to him, he wouldn’t have been here at all. Kurt sighed. There was no help for it. He needed employment, he needed a paycheck, he needed to keep one eye on Scotti, still sitting quietly in Mermaid Lagoon, sipping on a diet soda and coloring away on the paper tablecloth with a handful of well-used Pirate Pete crayons. He didn’t know if she was in full blown Little mode out there, but she’d been coloring for at least an hour now and hadn’t touched her Kindle.

  She was a very well-mannered Little. He wasn’t used to that. Most of the Littles he’d played with in the past, both privately and at the BDSM dungeons he once frequented, they’d all been sassy, mouthy, loud, sulky and bratty. Scotti wasn’t any of those things.

  None of which matters, because you still can’t have her.

  Daddies fresh out of prison and employed in places like Pirate Pete’s can’t afford Littles of their own. And those who lived with their grandmothers while they tried to save up enough to afford a place of their own, did not get to be anyone’s boyfriend, much less their Daddy.

  Do your job, Birthday Boson.

  Holding the lyrics to the birthday song in his hand, Kurt turned his back on Scotti and waded his way through all the screaming children to the table of adults. There was safety in numbers, he thought, as the kids took one look at him in his Boson get-up and went totally insane with cheering, happy glee. The pitch of their laughing, shrieking voices was deafeningly loud within the Cove.

  “How old’s the birthday boy?” he shouted, just to be heard over the noise.

  The children almost bowled him over as they shouted back, “Four! Four! Four!”

  “Four, got it!” He held up his hands to shush them all, and the room became so still and excitedly quiet as to be almost unbearable. Twenty-two children locked him the bull’s-eye of their bright, grinning gazes, and they waited. He surreptitiously glanced at the lyrics one last time. He’d spent the first half hour of his shift hiding in the bathroom, trying to come up with a good excuse for why he shouldn’t have to do this, and when that failed, the next half hour trying to memorize the words. Now… well, he was fairly well resigned to making a fool of himself, but while he would give in and sing the stupid song, there was absolutely no way in hell anyone could get him to do the silly dance that went with it.

  Fishing his Boson’s harmonica out of his pirate’s coat pocket, he blew out the first musical note and drew a deep breath. To the deafening roar of twenty-two children erupting into screams of joy, he belted out,

  “Oh yo ho ho!

  I’m four years old

  And I’m getting to be a grown-up little matey!”

  As it turned out, he needn’t have worried about the dancing, because each and every one of those kids did it for him, flapping their arms, shuffling their feet, and wiggling their bottoms from side to side like twenty-two little washing machines stuck in the agitation cycle. Some of them even looked kind of cute doing it, and despite himself, Kurt started to smile.

  Just a little bit.

  “With my pistol and my sword,

  I can swing aboard

  Any ship in any kingdom’s navy!

  But I say please and thanks,

  Before I make you walk the plank,

  ‘Cuz manners make a first class little matey!”

  “You’re not dancing,” Captain Tommy called to him when Kurt paused to check the next lyrics.

  In Mermaid Lagoon, Scotti had stopped coloring. She was standing up in her booth to see over the Cove’s fake rock privacy wall, her wide and delighted gaze fixed on him singing this ridiculous song to all these sugar-high washing machines.

  “Dance or walk the plank!” Captain Tommy bellowed in his ‘arrrr-iest’ pirate imitation, much to the kids—and Scotti’s—delight.

  “Oh, for fu—” Kurt sighed. He also made himself smile so he wouldn’t scare anyone and danced, shuffling his feet and wiggling his hips and feeling like an absolute idiot in the middle of twenty-two ecstatic Pirate Pete wannabes.

  “I’ve got a pirate bag,

  For all my pirate swag,

  And an eyepatch, and a parrot, and a peg leg.

  And we get lots and lots of booty,

  But we always share the looty,

  ‘Cuz we’re all a bunch of friendly, happy mateys!”

  “Smile!” Captain Tommy cheerfully bellowed. Kurt smiled harder, feeling like an even bigger fool, but Tommy cheered him on anyway. “Now you’re getting into the spirit of it!”

  “Oh yo ho ho!

  I’m four years old,

  and I’m getting to be a grown-up little matey!

  Yo ho ho,

  Next year I’m told,

  Then I’ll be a grown up

  With my Jolly Roger sewn up

  Oh yes, then I’ll be a grown up little matey!”

  Although it wasn’t in the script, Kurt put an impromptu stomp and ‘ta-dah’ wave of his arms on the end of the dance before abruptly dropping both smile and arms and trudgi
ng himself back out of Birthday Cove. Behind him, everybody erupted into cheers as Captain Tommy fired the birthday cannon, shooting a spray of glitter and confetti everywhere. Like the French fry machine, that was just one more piece of Pirate Pete equipment that he was too green and wet behind the ears to operate.

  All Kurt wanted now was a chance to retire back into the breakroom long enough to gather together what tattered shreds remained of his manly pride, but Scotti’s yell stopped him in his tracks.

  “Captain Tommy! Oh, Captain Tommy!”

  Kurt turned, his ‘don’t you freakin’ do it’ glare completely wasted on Scotti’s thoroughly triggered Little.

  “It’s my birthday, too!” she cried out, much to the laughter of the few adults scattered throughout Mermaid Lagoon, eating late lunches or early suppers.

  Kurt glared. The birthday party children cheered and instantly fled the Cove to mob her table, thrilled that they would be treated to an encore performance. Without the slightest embarrassment, Scotti hopped down to join them. Laughing, her blue eyes sparkling, she unashamedly threw herself into the pirate dance, flapping her arms and shuffling her feet with the best of them, and Captain Tommy gave him an expectant look.

  “Well?” he said. “Hop to it, Birthday Boson. And this time I want to see you dancing and smiling.”

  He’d almost rather be unemployed.

  Almost.

  The way she was smiling, however, as he shuffled over to stand at her table, helped to kill his irritation. When she grinned, he had to fight to keep his glower. “I thought I told you to stay put and stay quiet.”

  “You did. But you just looked so cute out there, I couldn’t help myself. Come on, do the pirate dance for me.”

  “I think I’d rather give you a good old-fashioned birthday spanking instead.”

  “The Birthday Boson doesn’t give spankings,” Captain Tommy interrupted, wheeling out the birthday cannon and pointing it straight into the air over her table. Everyone in the surrounding booths quickly moved so as not to get confetti and glitter in their food. “He sings and dances and smiles. You know, the pink tights look good on you. I think I’m going to make that a standard part of the uniform.”