CHAPTER I
They can`t see me cry...
For my sleeping Prince Charming, Master, lover, mentor, friend, George Burns to my
Gracie, Daddy to my baby girl. It can`t be real--how could that lion`s heart be giving
way? A ruptured aorta, standing at the kitchen counter, mixing juice one minute, collapsed
to the tile the next, his life hanging in the balance, a list of complications so bad, and
yet I`d give anything to get that far along, to be talking about tomorrow, about a wheel
chair and therapy and cognitive re-orientation.
Those hands ... all male, powerful enough to be gentle. Let me show you how that looks,
he told me once. Hands with fifty five years of experience, pain and love, hands that have
awakened, healed and aroused me, enthralled me ... set me free.
He`s not mine. I have to tell myself that ... he has a wife. I`m an employee, a friend if
I don`t stretch it too far.
This man is not mine ... but I`m his.
Has it been just a day since the heart attack?
Just a year since he came into my life?
I have to have a cigarette. I`ve been avoiding them--because I know I will break down,
but the stress load is too much. Monica is here and I have so many mixed emotions about
this. Thomas adores her, he`s given everything and she probably can`t help it but she`s
been a terrible burden to him, a cause very possibly of his heart exploding. She`s a
needy, busy little blonde, the trophy wife he calls her.
She has only one of the three things he must have in a woman. Big tits. The other two, a
hairy pussy and a penchant for tobacco are my department.
It`s a second marriage for both of them. Monica`s first husband died of cancer, when her
two girls were little, so I feel extra bad for her. She`s not really reacting to things
because of the shock but there`s a role for her here at least, when she comes around.
Me, I`m just all consumed about the cigarette. Thomas went ga ga for them. It got to be a
joke at the tidy little office we kept for two, me his ever-faithful assistant and go-to
girl. Bend over girl more like; because all I had to do was light up in front of him and I
was going to end up bent over something. If I happened to be distracting him--like that
was my fault--I`d get a few healthy swats. Otherwise, I would get his hard, wet cock, fed
between my sex lips.
Yes, I said wet cock. Thomas had this thing he did, where he would ooze pre come, more
than any man I have ever known. The first time I thought he had already ejaculated.
I can`t describe that feeling, a hot, turgid shaft in my hand, almost purple with pulsing
blood ... and covered in tantalizing, man-lubrication.
It meant one thing to me. That my Daddy owned me completely and naturally, being able all
on his own to make the liquid he needed to maneuver himself inside my tight asshole.
Oh ... jeezus, I need the cigarette. And a hard fucking. I need Daddy to look me in the
eye, center me, make me squirm like the sweet little baby girl slut he loved to see me
as.
"I`ll get Kasey or Erin," I say to Monica, sniffling into a handkerchief,
golden hair disheveled over her padded shoulders.
I must have said it like an apology because she looks at me with bloodshot eyes.
"It`s all right, Caroline, stay, I know he was close to you."
"You can only have two visitors in ICU," I say quickly. "One of the girls
should be here."
"Thank you," she releases me with a smile.
I find Kasey first. Sixteen years old, auburn eyes and chestnut hair. She is Thomas all
over; you`d swear there was a biological link. She has some of the same expressions, the
twinkle in the eye. She is passionately devoted about everything, she`s a gung ho first
child, clear proof what having a good and devoted daddy in your corner can mean for a
little girl. She was eight years old when Monica and Thomas married. He made it clear to
her up front, and to five-year-old Erin, too, that he would not try and replace their
father; that he only ever wanted to help them treasure his memory.
To that end he helped them each make up a scrapbook of favorite photos and mementos of
Craig, their biological father. Those are some lucky girls, let me tell you, to have a man
step in like that.
I would have given my real one up to have that kind of step dad, trust me.
"What`s the deal?" Kasey tucks her straight hair behind her ears. She is
frustrated as hell that she can`t grow larger breasts and she is having a real problem
with one of her girl friends who is bisexual and is starting to have feelings for her.
I know this through Thomas. I know all kinds of things through Thomas I`m not supposed
to. If only this were France where the mistress could stand proudly beside the widow at
the funerals of presidents and dignitaries.
Fuck. I said funeral. Will someone shut me up, please?
Say goodnight, Gracie.
Goodnight Gracie.
I don`t know how that started, except he thought I was just like Gracie Allen, the cute
as a button little straight woman who ran poor George Burns ragged.
"Your mom needs a little TLC," I tell her.
Kasey nods. She`s all about helping. That`s like Thomas, too. "I`m on it."
Erin is different. Erin is a little version of Monica. Since Thomas started living half
time down here a year and a half ago to start Montage Property Development, he has gotten
a dozen calls a day, half from Monica and half from Erin. Monica`s crises concern their
business ventures in Atlanta, everything from paint schemes for their corporate office to
maintaining the perpetually disorganized books.
Erin calls about nail polish, boyfriends, the latest pop groups and who is in or out of
her all important inner retinue. I get such a kick out of hearing this man, so much on his
plate down here, deal with equal and total respect for both of them. Sometimes he`ll have
me hop on the Net to check and see who the Blog Boys are or why Hillary Duff is soooo five
minutes ago compared to her little sister.
To fit the part, Erin has the lighter hair and it`s curlier, too. Kasey favors her
father, who looked a little like Thomas. Presumably Monica has a type of man; though
Thomas sometimes jokes the main thing that attracted her to him was the fact that he was
dating her sister Julie before he went out with her.
Erin`s down in the waiting room, text messaging. I remind her about not using a cell
phone in the hospital.
"I`m not calling anyone."
"You`re using the phone, though."
She sighs, rolls her eyes to the fluorescent ceiling in high drama.
I think Erin is a smidgen spoiled. Thomas won`t admit this, and I could be biased. But I
need nicotine, so I`m not responsible for my opinions.
"Where`s K?"
"She went in with your dad."
"Brian was here."
Freeze frame. "What did you say?"
"Brian," Erin repeats, her head bobbing slightly to the music piping into her
brain from the Ipod. "He was here."
"Where did he go?"
"I don`t know," she makes a halfhearted effort to relate to the outside world.
"For coffee, maybe?"
"He said that--he was going for coffee?"
"I guess."
My imagination is racing. "Did he say anything else?"
"I don`t know. He has a beard like dad. Weird."
I blink. "That`s all you have to say. You just meet your half brother for the first
time and that`s it?"
I`m being hard on her. I don`t want to see Brian, but I know I have to. I`ve never met
him; it`s not that. It`s just ... well I`m not sure what it is.
"Take a pill, Caroline."
She means a chill pill, but I`m thinking of the other kind. Thomas has a thing about
that, he likes to make sure I take mine and when he can, he watches me.
"That`s it sweetie, that`s my baby girl," he will kiss and hold me, knowing as
he strokes my hair how important this is to me, how I have vowed that I will never have
children for very good reasons. It`s not like I wasn`t taking them already or like I would
stop without him--that`s not the kind of power that turns Thomas on. It has to do with the
affirmation, with seeing how his praise turns me on ... how much I want to be a good girl
for the right reasons, for once in my life.
"If there`s a regret," he told me once, while we were having our daily tea and
philosophy session across the street from the office at Starbrew`s. "It`s that I had
to wait so long to find you; that I didn`t get to tell you all along how special and
beautiful you are."
Comments like that put me in la la land, so much so that after I go to the bathroom and
come back I forget how my panties are hanging at the moment over his leather desk chair, a
little trophy from our lunch time lust session.
"You`re going to give them quite a view," he points out of the two men at a
nearby table who are in full range to see up my skirt.
"Omigod." I quickly go to close my legs, red with shame, but he stops me, a
hand between my thighs. "No. Stay as you are. I want them to see what they can`t
have."
His voice has deepened, silk over steel, the seductive tone of the Master, pushing his
submissive girl to new limits. My eyes convey my panic, my passion, and my need.
He knows what a stretch this is, how I am terrified of the least little embarrassment,
how I can`t bear to stand out in public, a legacy, probably of growing up in a family with
so many dark little secrets.
| 
