Daddy Next Door Read online

  Randy had taken the spot where Chris had slept.

  The last night before I was prepping to leave, I heard the knock on the door. It was three sharp blasts, then a drunken howl. Lurching toward it, wearing only a nightgown, I found myself staring into the dark blue eyes of Chris. Immediately, my heart began to hammer.

  “You can’t do this,” he said. Bursting in through the door, he wrapped his hands around my waist.

  “Chris—get off of me—” I whispered, shoving him away.

  With a gasp, he stepped back, blinking wildly. “Why don’t you want me anymore?” he asked. His arms hung at his side, making me think—for perhaps the first time—what a child he was.

  I stood in the midst of boxes, too exhausted to argue. Pointing toward the open door, I murmured. “Please, Chris. You’ve done enough. Why won’t you just leave me alone? Let me get on with my life.”

  At that moment, Randy lunged forward, grasping Chris’ ankle. Whimpering with alarm, Chris bolted down and removed the dog’s mouth from his skin. Soft indents formed. “You got a dog, Quinn?” Chris asked me, his voice weak. “We always talked about doing that together.”

  I shrugged, allowing all of my last regrets about Chris to fade from me. My arms lowered toward the ground. I wrapped them around Randy, raising him toward my chest, and held onto him tightly—like my teammate, the only one on my side. He sniffed at my necklace then wrapped his teeth around it, companionably, like it belonged to him.

  “After what you and Emery did to me,” I said, my voice soft. “I never want to see either of you again, Chris. Can you understand that? Can you respect that?”

  Chris backed away from me; his hands stretched high. He understood the invisible boundary. My body was no longer his. As he staggered, drunken, he nearly thrust himself down the steps toward the pavement below. But in a last-minute effort, he gripped the railing and held on tight as his eyes blinked back up at me one last time.

  “Good bye, Chris,” I said, slamming the door closed.

  I didn’t check to make sure he was all right.

  Chapter 5

  Tyler

  After a long five days, I picked Rachel up at school, feeling overjoyed as she leaped into my truck. She began to chat away, her face growing pink and eager, as I drove away, feeling finally at-ease like I could take a breath.

  “And how was San Francisco, Daddy?” she asked me. She plopped a rainbow sucker into her mouth, turning her tongue a bright, unnatural color.

  “Eh, you know. Work stuff,” I said, shrugging. “Boring as usual.”

  I allowed myself to dive into the beauty of Rachel’s little, routine life. She expressed her irritation that she’d gotten an A minus on her science test instead of a solid A, the fact that some idiot kid had called her a name she’d rather not say out loud’ during recess; a minor complaint that Marnie had packed her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich AGAIN. It was nice and allowed that ‘business’ talk from the previous few days to fall away and just enjoy Rachel.

  At the stop sign before our neighborhood, I felt my phone buzz. Glancing down, I spotted a message from Samantha. Slipping it open, hoping it was a work message, I read:

  “Had such a good time with you the other night. Hoping we can do that together again, soon. Maybe this time without Hank.”

  My skin began to crawl with fear. Jesus. I’d given her absolutely no indication, whatsoever, that I was interested. She was gorgeous, sure, but the air around us didn’t electrify in that special, sexual way when we spent time together. She spoke of Human Relation responsibilities as if she were discovering a cure for cancer. The boredom all-but destroyed me, but, being the good-natured devil I was, I shook my head and asked careful questions.

  And more women had fallen for me, in this way, than I could count. At least, since the divorce. I never reciprocated.

  I saw the moving van parked next to our place as I drove my truck down our road. Intrigued, I mentioned it to Rachel, pointing.

  “Looks like someone bought the place next to ours.”

  “That’s been for sale forever,” she said, giggling. “Ever since Marty went—where did he go?”

  “Alaska,” I replied. “He was involved in the oil industry. But his family was from here. Do you remember his little daughter?”

  “Oh. Megan,” Rachel said, scrunching her nose. “She was so annoying.”

  I sputtered with laughter, rolling my hand over Rachel’s hair. “Come on, now. You need to work on liking people more.”

  “I don’t need a lot of friends,” Rachel shrugged. “It’s not like Albert Einstein had that many friends, Dad.”

  Perhaps she had a point. As the truck made its way down the pavement, listening to Rachel tell me about Albert Einstein—intimate details about his life she’d picked up online—I saw the new neighbor for the first time.

  She was young. A good ten years younger than me, at least, with long, bleach blond hair coursing down to the small of her back. Her lips were pressed into an anxious smile as she spoke with one of the movers, who was gesturing toward a tan couch, still centered in the driveway, instead of its probable last resting place somewhere in her living room.

  Damn, she was hot. This gut reaction was unlike me, purely animal and something I didn’t experience often. It might have been better to say she was gorgeous, but looking at her my mind went to an entirely different place. This woman was a whole lot more than gorgeous—she was hot as fucking hell. I could clearly see her tight breasts beneath a pink shirt, which told me she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra; a round ass, that pulsed out in a pair of cut-off shorts, gliding down into beautiful long legs. She folded her arms across her chest as if she could feel my inspecting eyes.

  “Daddy?” Rachel asked. “Hey. Earth to Dad!”

  Blinking wildly, I turned my eyes back to the center, realizing that I’d driven directly past our two-bedroom colonial. “Shit,” I muttered, my mind racing. “What did Albert Einstein do? Wasn’t he the famous scuba diver?”

  “No, Dad,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “And I think you also forgot where we live. Wake up, over there! You also owe a quarter to the swear jar!”

  I would have owed a lot more to the swear jar if my daughter could have heard my thoughts. Grateful that she couldn’t, I ducked into the furthest driveway at the end of the road and then cranked back, heading back toward home and parking in front of the garage door.

  Rachel sighed, staring down at her legs. She looked oddly defeated. My heart continued to hammer for the girl next door, who’d kept up her dialogue with the mover.

  “I just don’t want to go back to her house. Ever again,” Rachel said finally, interrupting my reverie.

  “Your mom’s?”

  “Who else’s?” Rachel asked me, her eyes flashing. Sometimes, when she became angry, she looked a bit too much like Marnie. But god, their temperaments couldn’t have been more different.

  “Honey, you know I’ve got to go back on Thursday,” I answered, my heart feeling squeezed. “It’s just a lot during this early part of the job. Hopefully, it’ll calm down in a few months.”

  “But Mom is a nightmare,” Rachel protested, drawing her arms across her chest. After a moment of silence, I felt myself stuttering, hunting for something to say when Rachel’s lips parted in a moment of shock.

  Pointing across my chest, she alerted me to the neighbor lady, and to the little black lab bouncing around the yard. “Our new neighbor has a dog!” she cried out, her face losing its sadness. Her cheeks stretched into a smile. “Oh, please, Daddy, can we go over there and introduce ourselves?”

  I turned my head back toward the hot-as-fuck neighbor across the yard, who’d stretched down to pet her puppy, allowing me a full view of her cleavage which was mesmerizing. It was going to be extremely difficult for me to resist this woman, but I reminded myself that I was with my daughter and now was no time to flirt with the new and much younger neighbor.

  “S
ure,” I said, hopping from the truck and watching Rachel leap out, drawing her backpack across her shoulders with a quick motion. She rushed toward me, her eyes centered on the dog that leaped, with the same quivering excitement as Rachel. In that split second, I caught the new girl’s eyes, realizing that she was staring at me, too. I held her gaze for several moments, assessing her, reading the bright blueness of her irises and then tracing her curves, the flatness of her stomach, down to her feet. She seemed serious, nervous as a rabbit. Almost waiting for my attack.

  Did she know what I could do to her if I chose? Did she sense it? Did she know that within seconds of seeing her for the first time, I wanted to fuck her? Perhaps every little mammal could see the eyes of the wolf, could smell the want and desire on his lips?

  Samantha had sensed it, too. But she was mistaken. For her—I held nothing. No lust. No desire. Nothing.

  Why was this new girl different?

  “Hi there,” I called out, my voice deep. “I finally have a new neighbor. The place has been up for sale for about five months now.”

  The woman allowed a slow smile to curl across her face. It was a friendly smile, still tinged with unease. “Hi,” she said. “That’s right. I just bought it last week. I came in from Asheville. Thankfully, I could close it right away.”

  “Can I pet your dog?” Rachel asked her voice piping up between us.

  “Of course,” the woman said, gesturing for Rachel to draw closer. “He’s a baby. He might not be very gentle and could knock you over. But it’s all love. I promise.”

  Rachel rushed toward her, drawing her hand across the black dog’s head. The black pup nipped and licked her lips, making her cry out in a mix of alarm and happiness. “Oh, my gosh, Daddy,” Rachel called to me. “He’s just the sweetest. What’s his name?”

  “Randy,” the woman answered, eyeing me again. “And I’m Quinn.”

  “I’m Rachel,” Rachel giggled, easing her hands across the black dog’s back, scrubbing into his skin. “And that’s my daddy.”

  “Tyler,” I replied, taking three long strides across the grass. I shot my hand forward, taking hers in mine, and memorizing the softness of her skin as we shook hands. God, she couldn’t have been more than twenty-three-years old. Maybe twenty-four. Her eyes only held mine for a moment, before darting downward.

  “It’s nice to meet someone in the neighborhood,” she said softly, before drawing herself to the ground, with Rachel, and attacking her puppy with love. “I take it you like dogs, Rachel?” she asked, clearly finding it easier to speak to my daughter than to speak to me. I pressed my hands against my hips, towering over them both. Dominant. I could hardly control the pulsing blood against my eardrums, reminding me, over and over again, that I was a man and I should take what I want when I wanted it.

  That this was the first thing, I’d suddenly wanted in years. I didn’t know how I was going to get it, but I felt confident that I would have this woman as I watched her grin grow wider.

  “Love them,” Rachel said. “But we can’t get one because Daddy travels too much for work, and my mom is a slob.”

  “Rachel!” I said, eyeing her. I didn’t want her to think that speaking about her mother that way was correct, even if it were true. These thoughts were purely her own, and I never tried to speak badly about Marnie in front of her. Of course, she had every reason to think them. And that yelling match we’d had on the video chat days before. It had probably altered her mind even more.

  I didn’t want to poison her, the way Marnie did.

  “Sorry,” Rachel said, keeping her eyes on the dog.

  “I travel quite a bit,” I admitted, my voice still low. “I have a new position at the tech firm downtown. Dalton.”

  “Then I’m assuming you’re always in Silicon Valley,” Quinn said, her voice a string.

  “That’s right.”

  I held her gaze again for a long time, sensing that the attraction between us was a bubble, over Rachel’s head. I hadn’t felt this intensity with someone in many years—perhaps not ever. But even as I toyed with the idea of knowing her, of fucking her, the realization dawned on me that it couldn’t happen. No matter how much I wanted it. Not when I had so much on my plate. Not when I had Rachel to consider.

  “Well, we better head back inside,” I said, placing a firm hand on Rachel’s back. “You’re in the middle of moving, and we’re in the way. Trust me. I remember how it was when we moved in here. Too much neighborly love is definitely a thing.”

  “Not enough, what I always say,” Quinn answered, her voice soft, but eager.

  What on earth did she mean?

  I gave her a final smile, and a good luck nod before guiding Rachel back toward the house. Rachel continued to eye the dog, allowing her backpack to sag along her elbows, before we were safe in the confines of our little colonial. Safe from the allure of the outside world.

  “Pizza?” Rachel asked, piping up.

  “No. No way,” I said, laughing. “I think we’ll go with fish tonight.”

  “Dad. You’re so boring,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  But we sat together in one another’s presence that night, eating vegetables and fish, and finding normalcy. We watched a documentary—Rachel’s choice, of course—and then fell asleep with our mouths open, our heads atop the pillows. A dry voice continued on without us, telling us the history of the Mesopotamian era which was becoming the dialogue of Rachel’s (probable) highly intellectual dreams.

  But my dreams? They told something quite different. They offered nothing but my mysterious, new lust for the girl next door.

  She’d opened doors within me. And I hardly knew more than her name.

  Chapter 6

  Quinn

  The gorgeous dad next door, with his thick, muscled shoulders, his tight abdomen, and his swagger in his business suit, left his house every morning at around eight, taking his daughter Rachel to school. He returned with Rachel safe by his side around six—keeping up a similar routine, a life I began to watch in earnest from my bedroom window as I tried to force myself into unpacking. The boxes were hardly enough to fill an entire house—even a one-bedroom, and I sensed I needed to shop, to fill it with something else. But instead, Randy and I took to toying around on the living room floor, next to the house Chris had labeled ‘soft,’ and daydreaming about our future in Raleigh.

  Oftentimes, I imagined a future with the dad next-door, but I wasn’t entirely sure why? We were attracted to one another—that I felt was certain. But involving myself in a father-daughter relationship seemed strange, bizarre, especially as it seemed we were on incredibly different paths. We’d had minimal contact since that first day, with him waving toward me when he caught me in the yard and me giving him a shy wave back. I’d taken to wearing tight, non-science-y clothing often—revealing my tits and my ass in ways I hadn’t, when I’d been in a relationship.

  I was exploring my sexuality, I told myself. I was exploring what it meant to be single and alone.

  On Thursday afternoon, I stood in the driveway, monitoring the arrival of a large wardrobe that I’d ordered—an antique, from a local vintage shop. The man arrived in a truck, coughing cigarette smoke and eyeing my slim form in a way that felt particularly assault-y. When I glanced up, mid-discussion, I saw that familiar truck easing down the road once more, with Tyler and Rachel inside, chatting, their radio up and playing an old ‘90s tune I knew. I waved, giving them a grimace—an almost ‘help me!’ expression—and then watched as Tyler eased from the truck and came to my rescue.

  It was as if he could read my mind.

  The wardrobe deliverer and Tyler carried the mahogany piece into my bedroom, with Tyler taking the brunt of the work. I shivered, watching them work, pointing toward the far corner. “Yes. Right there,” I offered my voice soft. Rachel walked up behind me, giggling as she watched her dad work.

  “He’s on a computer ALL day,” she whispered to me, laughing. “I didn’t ev
en know he could still carry stuff.”

  “I heard that,” Tyler said, letting a laugh as he shifted the wardrobe into place. “All right. Look good to you?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  “Yes, it’s perfect.” I nodded, giving him a bright smile. “Should I tip you?”

  “Just my neighborly duty,” he grinned.

  The delivery driver drove his truck from the driveway, leaving us alone moments later. We stood in the heat of the driveway, making small talk for another five minutes. I was wearing this slinky, pink cardigan and jean cut-offs that revealed a bit too much of my ass—certainly too much to be around children, which made me feel self-conscious. Randy burst outside, then, dancing around Rachel and drawing his pink tongue out, licking her ankles. Rachel giggled, crawling around in the grass and toying with him—batting her hand around his nose.

  In the silence that followed, I couldn’t help but feel small, anxious of this tall, dark-haired man before me. His black, penetrating eyes, firm biceps, and decent style made me feel lackluster. Rather than tech, he looked more like a man who cut down trees for a living, or built houses, or did anything other than sitting in front of a computer all day, with his fingers tickling the keys. He’d revealed that with the wardrobe, he had frequently worn.

  “Why don’t you guys come inside?” I found myself asking, feeling totally at the mercy of Tyler. “I just made some lemonade.”

  “Only if Randy can come too?” Rachel asked me, her voice adorable and high-pitched.

  “Of course. He lives here, too,” I answered, laughing slightly.

  Tyler still hadn’t spoken. I turned, conscious of his eyes upon my ass, and led them into the new house. Could they see through me? I wondered. Had they been eyeing me across the yard, wondering about me? Could they see the pain I’d suffered back in Asheville? The reason I’d left it all behind?