Page 190 of Merciless Daddy

His mouth shifted.

“I love your terrible wolf. I love your sharp mouth. I love the Little who trusts me with her coloring pencils.” His expression became serious again. “You are worth protecting, Lena. But you are also worth stopping to enjoy.”

My throat hurt. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his.

“Ok, your pasta was almost good,” I whispered.

He laughed against my mouth.

“That is the closest thing to devotion you have ever said to me.”

After sunset, when the sky turned violet over the water and the first stars began to show, I found Sal on the veranda and said the words without making them sharp.

“I would like Daddy now.”

He looked up from the book in his lap.

The expression on his face changed at once. Not hunger first.

Attention.

“Come here, little one.”

I went. He drew me between his knees and rested his hands at my waist.

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know.” I looked out at the water. “To stop thinking. No more worries.”

“All right.”

He did not ask what I had been thinking about. He took me upstairs and opened the drawer where he had placed soft clothes for me. Not clothes chosen by my father’s stylist. Not the polished armor I wore to meetings.

A pale blue nightdress. Thin straps. Soft fabric that slid over my skin.

“May I help?” he asked.

I nodded.

He unbuttoned the shirt I had borrowed from him. His fingers moved slowly over each button. Then he lifted the nightdress over my head and settled the straps on my shoulders.

His knuckles brushed my collarbones.

“Beautiful,” he said. “You’re so god-damn beautiful. I can barely take it in.”

I looked down at myself.

The dress made me feel younger than I was. Softer.

It made me want to crawl into his lap and stay there until the world forgot our names.

He led me back to the veranda with my coloring book and pencils. A bowl of sliced mango waited on the table. So did a bottle of lotion.

“Sit,” he said.

I sat on the outdoor sofa with my legs folded beneath me.

Sal warmed lotion between his hands and began rubbing it over my shoulders.