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

I elbow him. “Daddy.”

“Get to it, little girl. No sight-seeing until you’ve made your word count. If we miss our reservation on the Maid of the Mist, you won’t be sitting down comfortably for the rest of the weekend.”

I pull out of his embrace and pull a face at him because I’m not sitting entirely comfortably now, which makes him laugh, before I start typing.

* * *

I make my word count with three hundred and ten words to spare, and we make our reservation on the Maid of the Mist. I thought I couldn’t be more impressed by the falls when we were under them and my face was wet with spray and my ears were ringing from their roar, but I’m wrong. Daddy takes me out to dinner at a restaurant overlooking the falls and the lightshow makes the falls so beautiful that I have tears in my eyes by the time it ends.

Daddy reaches across the table and dabs my tears away with his napkin. “Like that, little girl?”

“So much. It’s like a thousand fairies playing in the water.”

Daddy smiles indulgently. “I like that image.”

“I was thinking . . . maybe, of writing a story like that? About water fairies.”

“Sexy water fairies?” Daddy asks, his brow beetling. He knows I write romances, sometimes very steamy romances. That’s not what I had in mind for this book.

“I was thinking a children’s story. Have you seen the fairies in Brenna’s sketch book? They’re beautiful. I showed her Mercer Mayer’s illustrated Beauty and the Beast that we like so much, and she said she could do fairies in that style. I was thinking about writing a fairy story that she could illustrate. I’d really like a book of mine that I could read to Olivia.”

Daddy stares at me with his mouth open for a moment. Then he snaps his mouth shut. “That would be wonderful.”

Happy that he approves, I beam at him. “That’s still more like a babysitter, right?”

I’m trying to be really careful not to usurp Miranda’s position as Olivia’s mother. But I’m very happy to be her babysitter.

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“I was thinking the fairies could find a little girl named Olivia who has gotten lost, and they could help her find her way home with some adventures on the way. That way when Olivia gets old enough to know her name, she’ll be the little girl in the story.”

Daddy blinks rapidly. “That’s a terrific idea, Emmy.”

“Do you think, if it’s good enough, that Miranda would give me permission to publish it?”

“Why would you need her permission?”

“Well, it will have Olivia’s name in it and if Bren makes the little girl look like her—”

“Sweetheart, I know you’re trying to be considerate of Miranda, but I need you to be very clear on this. I have sole custody. Miranda doesn’t get a say in anything to do with Olivia. Not a single thing. The only permission you need is mine and I give it to you.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up She Who Must Not Be Named.”

Daddy’s mouth quirks. “That’s okay, little girl. I’ll take it out on your ass later. Now, I’m going to order us some tea and pear crumble to share and, while we eat, you have a story to tell me.”

I do?

“About Olivia and the water fairies and the merlyon and the troll that lives under the bridge?”

Daddy chuckles. “No, about this place we’re staying.”

“Oh!” I showed him the bed and dungeon’s website weeks ago and promised I’d tell him the story behind it, but things have gotten so complicated with everyone coming that I forgot. After Daddy orders us tea and dessert, I tell him about the inn’s history.

“It’s haunted. It was built in the seventeen-hundreds, before the War for Independence, when this whole area was still the Niagara frontier. And it belonged to the Roarbach family who ran it as an inn. The eldest son of the Roarbach family was Thaddeus Roarbach and he was tall and golden and beautiful and a great horseman. The catch of the county. He was supposed to marry the daughter of the Brigadier General who commanded Fort Niagara, but a maid at the inn, named Molly Pritchard, turned his head. It was a big scandal. She was known as a terrible scold, which I think was the Revolutionary term for brat, and when she scolded Thaddeus Roarbach in public, he spanked her with a wooden paddle and had her put in the stocks. When she was working at the inn, he made her wear a leather collar, cuffs, and chains. I think they must have been kinky, don’t you?”

Daddy rubs his hand over his mouth. “Or he was a really bad boss.”

I giggle. “No, she fell for him. They have some of her letters and she calls him ‘my Teddy.’ Isn’t that romantic? But they were separated when the Revolutionary War came. Old Man Roarbach was a loyalist, but his three sons weren’t. They ran away and joined the Continental militia. The story goes that Molly Pritchard snuck out of the inn every night with a sack of bread and salt pork for the militiamen and during these nighttime excursions she must have liaised with Thaddeus Roarbach, if you know what I mean.”

I waggle my eyebrows at Daddy, who chuckles. “I do know what you mean, little girl.”

“Well, almost a year later, Molly gave birth to a baby boy, who everyone said was the most beautiful baby they’d ever seen, with a full head of golden curls. Molly would have been disgraced but Teddy stood by her and said they’d been married in secret, so the baby was legitimate. Old Man Roarbach was not pleased, but he couldn’t turn out his heir and grandson, so Molly stayed at the inn while Teddy and his brothers fought. Two years into the war, a man with terrible burns limped into the inn and collapsed in Molly’s arms. It was Teddy’s brother, returned with the awful news that Teddy