The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The First Collection by Frost, J (great novels .txt) 📕

She huffs into the phone. “Don’t you think you’re being a little unreasonable?”

“Slightly less unreasonable than you having your IUD removed three months before you bothered telling me,” I growl.

Emily makes a small noise. She rubs my pec.

“What was that?” Miranda asks. “Do you have me on speaker?”

I could lie to her, but I don’t see the point. “Yes,” I say.

“Who is listening?” Her voice sharpens. For a bottom, Miranda has good command-voice.

“Me, Emily, and Sable.”

“Emily, Sable, and I,” she snaps. “Who is Sable? I thought your solicitor’s name was Sutton.”

I roll my eyes and Emily puts her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Not very successfully. “Sable’s the cat.”

“Since when do you have a cat?”

Since today, but I don’t enlighten her. “It’s Emily’s cat. What do you want, Mir? You’ve got the names of the labs. Pick one. Get the test done. Judge gave you thirty days.”

“Logan, for God’s sake, take me off speaker. We need to talk about this privately.”

“No, we don’t,” I tell her. “I don’t have any secrets from Emily and the cat’s hardly going to tell anyone. Pick a lab and let’s get this over with.”

Miranda’s silent for a moment, then she sighs. “We don’t need to go through the formality of a paternity test. I know who the father is.”

“You told me that two months ago. I don’t believe you. Your husband didn’t, either, or he wouldn’t have sent me that email.”

The email that started this particular boulder crashing downhill through all our lives.

“Ex-husband,” Miranda says softly. “Colin’s filed for divorce. I’m not contesting it.”

I grit my teeth. For a long time, that was what I wanted to hear. But that was years ago and now there’s no victory to it. She didn’t choose me, and I’m long past choosing her. “I’m sorry about that but I’d actually feel better if he doesn’t have any contact with the baby.”

“Oh, darling, you must know he didn’t mean any of the things he said. They were odious, but it was all the heat of the moment. He was enraged—”

“Why was he enraged, Mir?”

She chokes herself off.

“I know you lied to him about us,” I say. “What’d he find out that enraged him, Mir? Simple question.”

“Nothing about this is simple.” Her growl puts Sable’s to shame. “You have to understand—"

“No, I don’t understand a single fucking thing—”

Emily reaches up and puts her soft hand over my mouth. I take a deep breath and when I let it out, kiss my baby doll’s palm. She slides her hand back down to cover my heart.

“I’m thirty-six,” Miranda says, biting out each word. “All my friends have children. My little sister has two. I’m running out of time.”

“Uh-huh. You had a perfectly good husband to father your children. Why use me?”

Miranda’s breath breaks. That’s a sound I’ve heard many times. I used to think of it as the roll of timpani before the big finale. The sound of my success in reaching her true emotions. “You were my Master.”

“So that gives you motherfucking carte blanche to my sperm? Tops have hard limits, too, Mir. You knew what mine were.”

She cries quietly. “You don’t understand.”

“No, I fucking don’t,” I agree. “Which lab, Mir?”

“Stop being so heartless!”

Fuck this. I’m already sick of being the villain of this piece. “Fine, Mir. Call me back when you’ve decided.”

“Stop it. Just stop it! Why are you doing this to me?”

“To you? Why am I doing this to you? Don’t you have that backward? Why the hell would you do this to me? What the bloody hell were you thinking?”

Emily’s hand steals over my mouth again. I blow out a hard breath through her fingers, then tip my head back until I can catch her index finger in my teeth and give it a nip. She stifles a squeak in my shoulder.

“I made an appointment,” Miranda says, sniffling. “Tuesday afternoon. At that diagnostics center near you, Starla Labs. If you won’t give this up, I can fly in on Monday. You won’t give this up?”

“No, I won’t give it up.”

There’s a long silence. I let her sweat it out.

Finally, she says, “I’ll text you the flight details. Will you meet me at the airport?” Her voice has gone small. She always used to do this after a blowout. She’d act lost and vulnerable and I’d rush in to reassure her.

No more.

“Yes, I’ll meet you at the airport.” I can give that to her.

I’ll also book her a hotel in case she doesn’t get one herself, because there’s no way she’s staying with me. Us.

“I’ll stay a few days. We can talk. I need you to understand.”

“We can talk,” I concede.

I’m not sure what she wants me to understand, other than that her desire for a baby outweighed any respect she had for me as her Dom and as her lover. I understand that pretty fucking well.

“I’ll see you in a few days.”

“See you then, Mir.”

I end the call. I have nothing more to say.

Emily strokes my throat. She’s feeling for my pulse. I hope it’s not pounding, but Miranda’s definitely gotten my blood pressure up. I can feel the throbbing in my forehead, where I have a three-inch square of titanium mesh holding together my broken skull together. Feels like it’s about to blow out of the top of my head.

“Thanks for keeping me calm, little love.”

She lifts her head and gives me the owl-eye. “Was that calm?”

“Kind of calm.”

“Demi-calm,” she offers. “Quasi calm?”

Not very calm. “Daddy lost his cool, huh?”

“Daddy has pretty good reason. If she admits you’re the father, will you still make her take the test?”

“Yes. That sounds unreasonable, I know, but the solicitor says the only way I have a prayer of asserting any rights is with a positive paternity test.”

“That makes sense,” Emily says, continuing to stroke my throat. Her gentle touch shouldn’t be making me hard, but it is. I know that’s probably more anger and frustration than desire, but everything’s conflated at the moment.

“Nothing about