Daddy Issues

by Ava Sinclair

  Ellie dropped her hands from the keys, leaning back as her fingers sought the place now throbbing uncontrollably between her legs. She was soaking wet, the inner folds of her pussy engorged and sensitive beneath her nimble fingers. She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes as she worked them back and forth to the image of the girl over Lord Grayson’s lap being subjected—after years of want—to a father’s loving correction.

  But with her climax came an intense feeling of shame at having masturbated to a story crafted on a man who’d done nothing more than pay her the same consideration he’d pay anyone else.

  She felt a little emptier when she shut the computer. It was like shutting him away, but that was the point of the exercise. Get your feelings out, Dr. Gruber said. Pour your heart out in your writing, and then don’t dwell on it. Life is about moving on. You have to move on.

  Good advice.

  She stood, cracked open the window, and lit a cigarette. She’d bought a pack earlier in the day, and this was her first one in hours. It went to her head, making her dizzy. She sat down, shivering in the chill as she blew streams of smoke out the window into the dark blue of night.

  “Something has to change,” she said aloud. “I can’t keep on like this.” She thought of the beauty of the campus and town surrounding it. She thought of the cafés with their Help Wanted signs. She thought about what Dr. Ashworth had said about putting in a word for her. Perhaps she’d go down and see if she could get the job on her own. Just as a change. It wouldn’t be to see him again. No, nothing like that. Nothing at all.

  Chapter Four

  At first he didn’t recognize her. Ellie looked different, her scruffy clothes replaced by a starched white shirt, black pants, and an apron bearing the Magic Bean logo on the front.

  William stared at Ellie from where he was sitting partially hidden by a column. The Magic Bean was busy, and she’d not seen him arrive. Her name badge had the words ‘Barista in Training’ under her name. Beside her, a young man watched patiently as she prepared a latte. Given his appreciative nod, she was learning well.

  William marveled at the transformation, and how pretty Ellie was with her hair pulled away from her delicate face. She’d tamed it into an almost elegant ponytail, and smiled as she handed the coffee to a student in a Hilliard U jacket. And then, at that moment, she turned her head and saw him looking at her.

  Was it his imagination, or could he see the flush on her cheeks from across the room? He stood and walked over, smiling. The young man who’d taken the coffee was leaving with some of his friends. The counter was empty.

  “Ellie?” he asked.

  She nodded and twisted the rag she was holding nervously in her hands. “Hello, Dr. Ashworth.”

  He looked around. “You took my advice and got a job here. And… apparently without the necessity of my very influential reference.”

  She dropped her eyes and smiled. “Well, it was time for a change. My hours had been cut back at my other job, and this one is fulltime, so…” Her voice trailed off and she looked back at him. There was a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks. He realized he was staring.

  “When did you start?”

  “Last week,” she answered quickly. “This is my fourth day.” She paused. “How are you?”

  “Well,” he said, and was suddenly seized by the desire to tell her he was better than well, that he’d had a change in his life, too, that he had ended a toxic relationship and was ready for a fresh start, hopefully with someone new, someone soft and submissive, someone he’d be comfortable enough with to explore tendencies he was tired of repressing.

  You aren’t the only one with secrets, pretty girl.

  “Do you like it here?” he asked quickly.

  Ellie looked around and offered another small smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. It’s a lot different from Costello’s.”

  “The club downtown. The one you mentioned?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I’m not surprised that you didn’t remember. It’s not the kind of place a guy like you would enjoy.”

  He gave a little laugh. “No. I’m far too much of a bookish nerd for the club scene.”

  “You aren’t missing anything.”

  “Ellie?” The young man who’d been coaching her earlier called from further down the bar where another group of Hilliard students was waiting.

  “I’d better go,” she said. “I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “Oh, of course not,” he said.

  William walked back to his chair. He sometimes came into the Magic Bean to go over class notes or read. Some days he ordered a coffee; other days—like this one—he did not. He’d been planning to leave when he spotted Ellie. Now he decided he’d go up and order an espresso once the gaggle of students had dispersed. He noticed that the manager training Ellie had walked away and she was making the ordered coffees on her own. It pleased him to see her working so confidently.

  He resumed reading his paper and was halfway through an article when he heard the sound of a raised voice. William looked up to see one of the male students was holding up his cup and pointing at it, his angry gaze fixed on Ellie. He recognized the young man as Derrick Grayson III, fourth generation Hilliard student, school rowing team captain and—in his opinion—one of the most obnoxious and entitled people he’d ever met.

  William lowered his paper for a better view.

  “Does this look like a fucking half frap to you?” Derrick was asking. Behind him, a blonde in furry boots and skinny jeans smirked. “A fucking monkey could do a better job.”

  “That’s what you ordered and I followed the recipe.” Ellie was trying to explain as she looked around, obviously searching for the absent manager.

  “Uh, in order to follow a recipe, you have to know how to read,” Derrick shot back to the laughter of his hangers-on before continuing to berate her. “But hey, what can we expect from someone who seems really, really happy to be getting ten bucks an hour to serve their betters.” He turned to his friends. “Am I right, guys?”

  “Be nice, Derrick,” the blond girl said, clutching his arm. “I mean, if she works really, really hard she can probably achieve middle management before she’s thirty.” She turned to her other friends. “But it’s like my dad says, every hive needs its worker bees!”

  Now the entire group was laughing and William could see even from where he was sitting that a flush had come over Ellie’s pretty face, and that her tears were brimming in angry eyes.

  “Not all of us have fathers who can buy them a fancy education,” Ellie said, her voice shaking. “Not all of us can go to college, not even if we want to. I got a partial scholarship to Hilliard a few years ago, but even that wasn’t enough for me to afford it and my father refused to help me. But if he had, and if I’d had the privilege of going, you’d better believe I’d have appreciated my good fortune enough to be nice to the people who made my day a little better by waiting on me.”

  Derrick had begun to stroll around the area in front of the counter, pretending to play a violin as his friends guffawed. William decided he’d seen enough. He walked up to the front.

  “Mr. Grayson,” he said when he approached the group. “Are you choosing to make an absolute ass of yourself? Or is this some sort of uncontrollable urge, like an unfortunate social tic?”

  Derrick Grayson’s smirk faded from his beefy face as stopped strolling and glared at William.

  “You mean like your uncontrollable urge to interfere? Are you moonlighting as the manager for the Magic Bean? Because unless you are, I don’t think this is any of your business…”

  By now all the patrons were watching.

  “I’m making it my business, Mr. Grayson,” William said. “You’re being incredibly rude. I think you should apologize.”

  “Fuck that,” Derrick said. “The only person I have anything to say to is the manager.”

  “What’s going on?” The young man who’d been training Ellie came out
. Grayson instantly launched into a tirade about Ellie’s poor skills as a barista and her rudeness as his followers backed him up.

  “My dad is on the Chamber of Commerce,” Derrick said. “I’ll tell him how I’ve been treated.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” The manager looked stricken. “I’m sorry you had this experience. Of course we don’t condone it.” He turned to Ellie. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re fired.”

  Derrick’s friends had begun to snicker. William watched, infuriated, as Ellie’s face went pale. “But…” Her tone was disbelieving. “I don’t have anything else.”

  “Maybe you can find a rich man to adopt you,” the blond girl said. “And then he can send you to school since your real daddy couldn’t.”

  The pain in Ellie’s expression was almost palpable.

  She didn’t say anything as she shakily removed her apron and laid it on the counter. The sound of the students’ laughter trailed her out the door as William followed, then turned to Derrick before he exited.

  “You can believe you’ve not heard the last of me,” he said. “There’s a code of conduct for students at Hilliard.”

  A lady caught him on the way out. “Thank you for standing up for that poor girl,” she said. “I heard what you said to that boy. If you need a witness…” She pressed a business card into William’s hand. He thanked her before rushing out the door.

  It was busy on the street, and William panicked when he looked first left and right without catching a glimpse of Ellie. Then he saw her. She was standing by a black column outside another restaurant a few doors down. A wisp of smoke floated above her and it took William a moment to realize she was smoking. Pulling on the overcoat he’d grabbed on his way out, he made his way to her.

  “Ellie.” He kept his voice gentle, not wanting to frighten her. But the eyes that looked up at him weren’t frightened so much as defeated.

  “Dr. Ashworth, if you don’t mind, I don’t feel like talking right now.”

  He stared down at her, resisting the urge to take the cigarette from her. Cigarettes were dangerous. He didn’t want anything dangerous near her.

  “Forgive me if I ignore your request. But what you said back there—about getting into Hilliard.” He paused. “Was it true?”

  Ellie took another draw off the cigarette. She didn’t face him, but looked toward the street, forcing him to view her in profile as she took another drag off her smoke. Her pert little nose with its smattering of freckles made her look younger than her years, like a truant waif indulging in an adult activity. When she answered, her voice was as hard as her looks were soft.

  “Yes. I wanted to major in history and literature. Why do you ask? Does it surprise you?”

  “No.” He answered with certainty. “Not at all.”

  She looked at him. He had her attention. Good.

  “But it does intrigue me,” he said before he could lose it. “In the cab… you said your father was dead.”

  “And now you think I’m lying about one or the other,” she scoffed. “I’m not. When I say he’s dead, I mean he’s dead to me. My father walked out on me when I was an infant. He was there when I was born. Afterwards he told my mom he was going to grab a bite to eat, but he never came back. He called her to tell her he wasn’t ready to be a father, especially not to a girl.”

  William watched in silence as she took a last draw on the cigarette before stubbing it out in the sand of a nearby trashcan.

  “Mom should have been angry, but when I was growing up, she made every excuse in the book for his behavior. She was convinced he was going to just wake up one day and come around. She told herself he’d come back. She told me he’d come back. By the time I was five, I’d figured out that wasn’t happening. It took her another dozen years to admit it too, though. I tracked him down some time back when I applied to Hilliard. They’d awarded me a partial scholarship but it wouldn’t be enough, I knew. I figured maybe knowing I’d be going to his alma mater would make him proud, so I ambushed him outside his office. I didn’t have any pride by that point, just desperation to get a good education. I asked him to help. He told me he would, but said the help would be financial. He made it pretty clear he wasn’t going to be a father to me. But I was okay with that. It was enough knowing I could go to school. We were supposed to meet the next night at a restaurant. I wore my best dress…” She stopped, swallowing hard.

  “He stood you up, didn’t he?” William asked.

  “Yes. He didn’t even bother to give our relationship a dramatic ending. Just a predictable one,” she said quietly. “I felt like such a fool, picturing myself researching the history of this town, maybe writing a book. But maybe that asshole guy in the coffee shop was right. Maybe I’m not smart enough to go to Hilliard. Anyone stupid enough to believe a man who walked away from her will ever care probably shouldn’t set her sights on anything more than middle management.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Hell, even middle management is out of reach now that I’m unemployed.”

  His mind flashed back to the silver scar he’d glimpsed on her wrist. He wanted to ask her about it, about whether her father’s final abandonment had pushed her that far into despair. But his instincts told him to wait.

  Her purse was sitting at her feet. William leaned down, picked it up, and took her by the hand. “Come on, Ellie.”

  “Where?”

  He turned to her. “Let me make it very clear, young lady. I am not an impetuous person by nature. Nor am I one to involve myself in the lives of people I don’t know very well, unless it’s in a professional capacity. I know it’s a lot to ask since you don’t know me, but I want you to trust me.” She was looking at him. The emotions on her face flickered between apprehension, confusion, and curiosity. William squeezed her hand. “Please, Ellie. Let me help you.”

  “I’m not taking part in your study,” she said firmly.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s the only reason I’m asking you to trust me. The help I want to offer is… personal, not professional. And it would mean a great deal to me if you would just consider it.”

  Her hand was still in his. William held his breath, fearing that any moment she’d pull away. When she didn’t, there was a flood of relief. And when she nodded, a flood of joy.

  He kept his hand on hers as he hailed a cab. A few moments later they were both in the back seat, together. He gave his driver the address and sat back, wondering if he was being rash. Then he looked at the young woman beside him and decided that no, this may be the most reasonable step he’d ever taken in his life.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were standing on the sidewalk as Ellie stared up at the well-kept Victorian house looming over her.

  “This is your house?” She looked over at him in disbelief. “This is the old Key House!”

  “It is.” He was delighted that she knew. “You’re familiar with it?”

  She scowled as she turned her attention back to the house, and he knew she was stung by his assumption that she’d not know the history of a place in the town where she’d grown up.

  “I did a paper on this place for my high school senior project,” Ellie explained. “Dr. Wentworth built the house for his new bride. He made each upstairs room reflect a happy memory from her childhood. The door to each room had a different lock and on each one-month anniversary after they were married, he’d give her a key.” She paused, her eyes filled with wonder. “Each room was like a present.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve not been down here in several years. The last I heard, an historical society purchased the place to renovate after it fell into disrepair, but there was some scandal with the group—a tax thing, I think—and the house was put back on the market at a song.”

  “Hence my snagging it for a good price,” William said. “This house, young lady, is my pride and joy.”

  “You did this? You restored it?” she asked, obviously surprised.

  “I inherited a tidy sum of money before I left England. I wanted a
home here that captured some of the history and romance of what I’d left behind. The Key House felt right for me.” He looked down at her. She was still staring at the house, gazing over the façade. For the first time, he noticed the intelligence in her eyes.

  Brilliant girl.

  “Would you like to see the inside?”

  Ellie tore her gaze away from the house. She looked hesitant, but William could tell she very much wanted to see what was behind the heavy wooden doors.

  “Ellie…” He gentled his voice, even as he ignored the pounding of his heart. “I promise you, you are safe with me.”

  She nodded then, her smile so small as to barely be perceptible, but so very sweet—the smile of a child taking the first faltering steps toward trust.

  I mean what I say, he silently vowed, as he led her inside.

  Chapter Five

  It was like stepping into the secret world that flowed from her pen. For a moment, Ellie found it hard to catch her breath. The foyer was classically beautiful. The walls were papered in burgundy and gold. To the left she could see a sitting room with comfortable, classic furnishings. To the right was a masculine study, its walls lined with leather-bound books.

  Ahead was the staircase. She’d been unable to visit the house when writing her paper; at that time it was in the hands of the historical society, which didn’t allow visitors. But she recognized the staircase from old pictures she’d found during her research. The railing was heavy, carved mahogany. The steps went halfway up to a landing before continuing up at a right angle beyond which she could not see. But she knew what lay above: the rooms, each with a different lock on the door.

  The foyer was long and ran past the stairway. Beyond it was an open door, and she could see the servant’s stairway on the other side. She knew the kitchen lay beyond that, as well as a butler’s pantry. There was also a solarium, where the Wentworths once kept orchids and a French-speaking parrot named Claude.