Stacy's Dad Has Got It Going On (9 page)

“No, no,” Savannah replied, waving her
free hand. “No, I’ll be fine. Thank you for your help, but I’m good now. Crisis
averted.”

Eric sprang over the fence, seemingly
full of adrenaline after dragging a broken Savannah up the hill. In one fluid
motion, both goth girls turned to him but said nothing.

“Thank you both,” Eric gushed.

They demurred with him. When they
mumbled, “No problem,” they didn’t seem more than teenagers. With great effort,
Savannah convinced the girls she required no further assistance, beyond that
which her white knight could provide.

Once the goth girls had sauntered off
hand in hand, Eric turned to Savannah and asked, “Shall we?”

“One second,” she replied. Clinging to
the wrought iron fence with one hand, she reached out with the other and
latched on to Eric’s dirty white shirt. She wrapped her fist around the fabric
and looked him in the puzzled eye, trying to appear seductive and not the least
bit in pain. Pulling him in, she kissed him with the full force of her
gratitude. For a moment, he didn’t react. He was probably too stunned.

After one melting moment, Eric reached
his hands around her hips and pulled her into a scorching embrace. As long as
she didn’t let her left foot touch the ground, she could feel no pain. There
was only pleasure in Eric’s forceful touch. His kiss sent her mind reeling off
in all directions before spinning back like a dizzy top to its starting point.
He’d asked her a very simple question: “Shall we?”

Tearing her lips from his, Savannah
watched Eric’s eyelids flutter open. She answered, “We shall.”

A devilish smile broke across Eric’s
lips. “Get ready for this,” he warned her as he tightened his grip on her hips.
“One, two, three…alley oop!”

Savannah used her good foot to push
off the ground. With a heaving grunt, Eric hoisted her up and over his
shoulder. Her belly landed with breathtaking blow right next to his neck and
her front hung down his back like a rolled-up carpet. “Well?” she chuckled,
though thoroughly winded. “Do you feel heroic now?”

“You bet!” Eric shot back. “Just wait
until I get you alone!”

She smacked his ass, he smacked hers,
and they were homeward bound.

Chapter Ten

Not a moment too soon, Eric dropped
Savannah down on the couch.

“Christ Almighty!” she hollered,
laughing through the pain. “I’m not a deer carcass, man! You gotta be ginger
with me.”

“Only if you’ll be Fred with me.”

Savannah heard the freezer door open,
but she couldn’t force her body high enough to see over the back of the couch.
Her ankle panged with every movement. “What the hell are you talking about?”

With a bag of frozen vegetables in
each hand, Eric clarified. “Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers—Fred and Ginger?”

Though she rolled her eyes, she
couldn’t help laughing. “That’s what I call a
dad
joke,” she told him.
“My dad and my uncles are always making stupid jokes like that. They are
so
not funny, but I still laugh every time.”

Eric’s tone was slightly less playful
when he said, “Well, I am a dad, after all…”

“Don’t remind me.” With her head on a
couch cushion, Savannah looked up at him. She could tell he was searching her
expression for some clue as to how he should react. The conversation could have
gone too deep too fast, and Savannah wasn’t ready for that yet. She smiled, and
he followed suit.

“So,” he went on, showcasing his bags
of frozen vegetables. “Peas or beans? Pick your poison.”

 “Are those French cut beans with the
little bits of onion and red pepper?” she teased, imitating the girls from the
neighbourhood back home. “Hell, them’s fancy! I’ll take ‘em.”

With a waiterly nod, Eric stole a
pillow from the opposite end of the couch. He cleared away study notes and
magazines before placing it on the coffee table. On top of the pillow, he set
the frozen French beans and then helped Savannah squirm into an upright
position on the couch. It hurt like hell when she extended her foot, but once
she’d set her ankle down on the frozen vegetables, the pain began to subside.
She knew how easy it was to experience a psychosomatic placebo effect, even
from something as simple as food from the freezer, but she was glad for the
relief either way.

“What are you doing with the peas?”
she laughed as he sat down beside her and shoved the bag behind him. “Inventing
a new cooling system?”

“That too.” He let his head fall to
rest on the back of the couch before letting out an aching moan. “My back is
killing me! Remind me not to carry any more college girls across town on my
shoulder.”

She raised her eyebrow at him, but he
wasn’t looking. The ache humming through her body, along with the painkillers
she’d pulled from her purse on the jerky back-ride home, had her feeling giddy
and loose. “Hey, man, you wanted to be the hero.”

“Never again,” he vowed, hand to
heart. “I’m too old for heroics.”

“I’ve already argued with you enough
on that point. From now on when you say you’re old, I’m just going to agree
with you.”

Something buzzed in the front hall.
For a split second, Savannah cringed at the thought of Stacy walking through
that door and ruining the flirtatious repartee she had going on with her
roommate’s father. As the buzzing continued, Savannah realized she’d put her
phone on vibrate while Chris’ band played its set. She’d never changed it back
to ring.

“Damn it! That’s my cell.” Savannah
tried to ease herself up from the couch, but instantly fell back down. “It’s in
my purse, by the door.”

With a deep moan, Eric shot up. He
very nearly tripped on Savannah’s legs as he crawled over them, but he made it
to the front hall and unzipped her purse before the very persistent caller
could give up. “Oh,” he said when he looked at the call display. With a smile
on his face, he took the call. “Hello!”

“No!” Savannah hissed.
“What…are…you…doing?”

The person on the other end was
obviously talking over live music because Savannah could make out every word,
even from across the room. “Hey…who…dad? Is that you?”

“No, it’s Savannah’s new boyfriend,”
he replied, but the joke fell flat. “Yeah, it’s me. What’s up?”

“Why are you answering Savannah’s
phone? Where are you guys?”

He ignored the first question and
simply said, “At home. Where are you?”

Stacy was overtaken by background
noise. A long moment went by before she said, “Can I just talk to Savannah
please?”

Holding the phone in the air, Eric
shrugged his shoulders and mouthed, “Kids!”

Savannah hadn’t forgotten Stacy’s
betrayal with the whole Chris situation. She took the phone and snapped,
“What?”

“Uh…Savannah?” The various bar noises
nearly drowned her out.

“Your dad can still hear you, so don’t
say anything you’ll live to regret.”

Stacy laughed. “Damn it! Cause I
called about our plot to assassinate the Archduke Ferdinand. I guess that can
wait until later.”

Savannah released a heavy breath.
“Yeah, right.”

“Anyway,” Stacy went on, “I just
wanted to check up on you. I saw you at Kingsley’s, and then you were gone.
Chris was asking…”

With an incredulous cackle, Savannah
looked at her phone and shook her head before nestling it back against her ear.
“Okay, well I’m home now, so…whatever.”

“Sorry to dump my dad on you. I know
he’s a basket case these days.”

Savannah looked up at Eric to see if
he’d heard what his daughter just said about him. He had. “No, it’s fine,”
Savannah said to Stacy. “Really. We’re having fun together.”

When she gazed back up at Eric, he
smiled.

At the other end of the phone, Stacy
bubbled with laughter. “Should I be scared?” she teased. “Maybe if I keep
leaving you two alone together, you’ll end up as my new step-mom!”

Savannah could tell by the tone of
Stacy’s voice that it was purely a joke, but her heart seized nonetheless. If
she hadn’t been pinned by pain and frozen vegetables to the couch, she would
have scampered to her room for the rest of their conversation. “Oh, gross.”
Savannah didn’t want to say too much against Eric as he listened in, but she
knew if she didn’t Stacy might get suspicious. “Don’t even make me think about
dad sex. You’re going to make me hurl!”

She cast Eric a look that said, “I’m
sorry!” and he returned one that said, “I understand.”

“So, anyway,” Stacy laughed. “I’m not
coming home tonight. Can you tell my dad I’m staying with…I don’t know…some
friend or whatever?”

Some friend?
Some friend like Chris, maybe? God!
Savannah’s blood boiled at the thought, but who else could Stacy’s sleep-over
buddy be? He certainly seemed to have taken a liking her, and at Kingsley’s
she’d been all over stupid dread-head and his whole stupid band!

If Savannah’d gritted her teeth any
harder, they’d have turned to chalk. “Fine,” she seethed. “Fine. I’ll tell him.
I’ve got to go. Bye.”

She hung up without waiting for
Stacy’s reply, and immediately set her phone to silence. When she looked back
up at Eric in his dirty white shirt, she forced a smile.

“What was all that?” he asked.

How could she tell him about Chris?
Wouldn’t Eric feel somewhat betrayed if he knew she’d made a date with another
guy that evening, even if that other guy had gone after his damn daughter?
“Stacy’s not coming home. She wants me to tell you she’s staying with a friend
tonight.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And where is
she really staying, pray tell?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said with
a shrug. When she read the concern on his face, she quickly tried to repair the
damage. “But don’t worry. Stacy has a good head on her shoulders. She would
never put herself in a bad situation.”

Eric quickly pressed his fingers to
his eyes, his ears, and then his mouth. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no
evil.”

With an encouraging chuckle, Savannah
eased her foot from its pillow of frozen beans. Her ankle didn’t feel so bad as
she pushed herself up from the couch. In fact, her ankle was so numb from cold
it didn’t feel anything.

Hobbling to Eric way across the room,
she threw her arms around his shoulder—for affection, but also for support.
“You know what this means?”

When he smiled, his pointed canine
teeth seemed to emerge first from between two of the pinkest lips the world had
ever seen. “I don’t know.” He put his arms around her waist and rocked her side
to side. “What does it mean?”

He leaned down as she leaned up, and
their lips met in the middle. “We have the apartment to ourselves,” she cooed
before kissing him once more. This time, she was forceful about it. It was a
kiss he couldn’t possibly say no to. He squeezed her…and he winced.

“Oh my god, what’s wrong?” Savannah
hobbled backwards on her tender foot. “Jesus Christ!” she cried out in pain,
letting herself fall back onto the couch. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Eric said, clutching his lower
back as he joined her on the couch. “Are you?”

“I guess…” She stared at her foot,
infuriated by its magnificent ability to spoil an evening. “Stupid damn ankle.
Are you sure ice is supposed to work?”

Eric laughed as he adjusted his frozen
peas. “You’re asking me? You’re the biology major!”

“Bio-chem major,” she corrected him.
His faith in her knowledge made her skin tingle, but she didn’t let that show.
“And that makes me a paramedic now, does it? I study molecular damn molecules!
You’re the dad—aren’t dads supposed to know the cure for every ailment?”

“No, you’re thinking of moms,” he
chuckled. His brow furled for a moment. Was he thinking about his wife, Stacy’s
mother? How must it feel to be cheated on, and with someone so much younger
than himself? Savannah could hardly blame Eric for feeling like crap in all
this. But, of course, wasn’t Eric doing exactly what his wife had done to him?
Was it retribution? Because it didn’t feel like that, to Savannah. It felt like
he was fond of her and attracted to her, and all that had happened had been a
part of some cosmic sexual flow. If she were in his situation, she’d likely
feel redeemed in having an affair of her own.

Eric shook his head and recovered with
a smile. “Anyway, what do you think? Ice or heat?”

“Maybe both?” Savannah had a vague recollection
of taking a first aid course once, but she would have been eleven years old at
the time. The material covered wasn’t exactly fresh in her mind. “I think we’re
supposed to go back and forth—hot, cold, hot, cold.”

A roguish smirk drew across Eric’s
lips. “You’re putting ideas in my head.”

As he leaned in close, she leaned in
too. She’d very nearly surrendered herself to another of Eric’s impassioned
kisses when she noticed the streaks of dirt down his neck and his shirt and his
bare arms. “You are a dirty boy,” she teased, tracing her finger along his jaw
line. “Maybe we ought to put you in the shower with a nice bar of soap.”