Page 74 of Single Daddy Scot
Ella:Should I be scared?
Me:Not until I’ve introduced you to my dungeon gimp.
Ella:See you tomorrow morning?
Mac:If that’s still the best you’re offering, deal.
When she doesn’t respond, I get back into my car and drive to the office to pick up some paperwork. Unfortunately, as I’m just packing up my laptop, Ella’s stepmother walks into the room. She knocks first but doesn’t wait for the standard invitation, her expression seemingly delighted to see me.Or happy we’re alone?
I don’t spend too much time worrying about it, and instead direct my attention to the job at hand. Namely, getting her out of here, getting myself out of here, getting home and changed in quick turnaround to meet Keir for a few drinks at our favourite grotty pub. That’s not to say I don’t also make a mental note to have word with whoever is manning reception. Her visits are a recipe for disaster.
‘Mrs Alescio, what can I do for you?’
‘Jax!’ she says, one hand fluttering to her amply augmented chest.Unlike her stepdaughter who was blessed by the gods with natural and fucktastic tits and arse. ‘I was just in the area and thought I’d pop in and see how Raphaela’s getting on.’
‘And you wouldn’t have called her to ask that?’ I keep my expression open and my tone neutral as she slinks over to the chair on the opposite side of my desk. I notice she’s not dressed for a gym session, more like a liquid lunch somewhere.
‘She screens my calls,’ she says, waving an airy hand. ‘You know what young girls are like. Never wanting you to know where they are or what they’re doing.’
Definitely a liquid lunch by the way her eyes are glittering. And the half-truths she’s spewing. The thought occurs that maybe she sent Ella to me in an effort to find out where I live. It does seem a little extreme.
‘Well,’ I say, pushing my iPad into its leather case.I maybe should’ve left it with Louis for this evening.‘Quite honestly, she’s been rare help. I couldn’t be happier to have her living with Louis and me.’ I’ll see your half-truth and raise you my fucking happiness. ‘There was the initial misunderstanding about the position being live-in, of course, but it all worked out in the end.’
‘Oh?’ Her highly defined eyebrows don’t rise an inch, but I think that’s the effects of Botox ruining her feigned surprise, rather than the real thing. ‘Well, I’m glad it all worked out for the best. Only... ’
As she pauses, she takes the opportunity to cross her long, tanned legs, and for a horrifying minute, I think I’m in for aBasic Instinctflash of twat. I breathe out in relief when I realise her aim was just a flash of thigh. Unfortunately, I get the impression Jax takes this as a breath of anticipation, rather than one of relief, as she brings her finger to her excessively pouting mouth.
‘Only?’ I find myself asking, for no other reason than to fill the space.
‘You need to see beyond the little girl lost routine Ella spins. She has too much of her mother in her, you see. That’s not me, by the way, though I love her as any mother would,’ she adds, saccharine sweet.
If I was a younger, less astute man, I’d be covering my hand and coughing “bullshit” right now.
‘She left her fiancé last year, left university and an almost completed degree. She took a job as an au pair in Paris, working for a single dad.’ Ice water suddenly fills my veins. ‘I guess it must’ve gone wrong with him,’ she says with a light shrug. ‘Or else, why did she end up back here?’
I nod but don’t speak. Because I don’t trust myself.
‘Just be careful, Mac. I wouldn’t like to see you get hurt.’
Is that what’s happening here?
