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

your assets to pay my bills. Emily, I can’t—” He stops and clears his throat. “It’s hard for me to think like that.”

I smile into the carpet. My wonderful, thoughtful daddy. “I’m never going to use the condo again like I did when I was researching the highlander series. That’s why my co-owner has been paying me rent, because I’m never there anymore and he’s using it full time. I’ve had tons of offers for my share and I’m sure it would sell quickly. It’s worth about fifty thousand pounds, and I’m not sure what the exchange rate is right now but I think that should be more than sixty thousand dollars even after the selling costs. Is that enough?”

“Yes.” Logan’s breath feathers cool across my back. “I hate the idea of selling something of yours to pay my medical bills.”

“I know,” I repeat, and I do know, because I’ve gone through all these arguments in my head already, before I did something as insane as try to convince Logan to accept such a large amount of money from me. “Daddy, please, I want to be owned and give up responsibility for my money, but it’s more than that. I’m not stupid. I can guess that the alternative is selling this house. Please—” My breath catches in my chest. “Please, I couldn’t bear it. This is your home. Your club is here. Your life is here. I couldn’t bear for you to have to sell this place. Please, Daddy, please? The condo in Scotland doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, but your home means everything.”

I hear him swallow hard, before his hand rubs up and down my back again. “I’ve only got six weeks before they get a seizure order.”

The fuckers. No wonder my poor daddy’s been so stressed. “I’ll email the estate agent I bought my share from right now. They approach me about once a month with offers, so I’m sure it will go fast. It only takes twenty-eight days to close in Scotland, so if I agree a sale in the next two weeks, we’ll have the money in time.”

Daddy swallows again, not clearing his throat. Oh, no, is he crying?

“Come up here, little girl.”

His hands lift my shoulders and I rise with a creak in my knees and a jab in my butt—ouch—and climb into his lap. Before he tucks my head into his neck, I get a glimpse of his red eyes. They made him cry, those evil fucking debt collectors. They made my daddy cry. They’re going to be the bad guys in my next book and they’re going to suffer horrible, horrible genital torture before they die.

I hug him tighter than arm-binders. “Your happiness is everything to me. I can’t stand how this is hurting you. Please let me help. Please, Daddy, please-please.”

“Stop talking, little girl,” he whispers. “Just let me hold you.”

I do, and I don’t say anything about his ragged breaths, or the way he holds himself taut in my arms so I can’t feel him shake.

After a few minutes, he kisses my forehead and whispers into my skin, “Go get your laptop and come back in here. You’re going to sit on Daddy’s lap while you do the email and I make some calls. If you’re more than three inches away from me today, that’s too far.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

I bring his smoothie and my laptop and my kitty back from the kitchen. We make a happy pile in his big chair, me in Daddy’s lap and Sable stretched backward over my knee in a position only a cat could find comfortable. I type out the email to the estate agent and send it off. They won’t be open yet with the time difference, and maybe not open at all on a Sunday, but I’m confident they’ll come back to me quickly. They’ll make a nice commission off the sale, after all.

Once I finish the email, I switch back over into my writing program. The words flow easily now, images of kilted courage and brotherly sacrifice filling my head as my hero faces the terror of the British mortars at the Battle of Glen Shiel. By the time Daddy finishes his fourth phone call, and I gather he’s not really getting anywhere by the lack of notes he’s making, I’ve finished the battle and am starting the dramatic reconciliation between the hero and heroine as she defies her family and races across the border to treat the hero’s shrapnel wounds. This seems like a good stopping point as my fingers are aching from typing so much, since I usually dictate, and I’m starting to squirm a little on Daddy’s lap because I need a pee break after sharing his smoothie.

When I reach out to close my laptop, Daddy catches the top of the clamshell and holds up a finger. I wait for him to finish his call, snuggling back against his chest and petting my purring kitty.

“Do you remember anything else about the party?” Daddy asks whomever he’s speaking to.

I’ve been studiously not listening to his calls, since that would be eavesdropping and I don’t want my ears sewn shut, but bits and pieces have invaded my writing fog anyway. He’s been asking the people he’s talking to about a party on Fire Island last summer that Rick went to. That probably means Rick asked Daddy to help him with the ugly, ugly, ugliness that was all over Rick’s Twitter feed last week, although I’m not quite sure how the two are connected. Logan doesn’t “do” social media. Oh, except LinkedIn. Snigger. Daddy didn’t see the Tweetstorm. Or the Instainferno. Rick got roasted. I follow Rick online through one of my pen names and I watched the blaze with no small amount of glee.

Logan finishes the call and makes a couple of notes in his notebook. He’s so analog, my daddy.

“Is this about what was on Rick’s Twitter?” I ask when he closes the notebook.

“Did you see that?”

“Uh-huh. The whole internet saw