Nikki

Chapter One

“Ill blows the wind that profits nobody” – William Shakespeare

The land had been home to members of my family for generations, the best part of the property being a high ridge running parallel to the not too distant Gulf of Mexico.  After great great grand-dad bought a couple of thousand acres, over the years of heirs and sub-dividing, I was fortunate to end up with the choices of tracts, including the hillock on which I built my house.

Now about the house.  I’m an engineer, electrical, actually, and several years ago I was in the middle of a bunch of other engineers, drinking beer and eating barbecue in somebody’s back yard and I mentioned the tract of land.  Beautiful place, but it was the stripe down the middle of hurricane alley.  Flooding wasn’t likely, but winds?  Nothing for miles in any direction except a few live oak trees bent in interesting poses by decades of wind.

We had representation of the engineering staff there, my co-workers, contemporaries, and when I said something about building, they ran through a litany of jokes about houses blowing away.  But the civil guy said, “Nah!  Piece of cake.  I can draw up some specs and some plans and details and I can guarantee that a Category Five won’t touch it.  And that’s how the house was built.  Where a standard foundation rode on the surface of the soil with a thick chainwall around the edge, MY foundation was tied with steel to a set of poured reinforced concrete borings.  And the frame was bolted and strapped to the foundation.  And the roof was strapped to the walls.  And the roofing was sheet steel, screwed down with five times the standard fastenings.  The windows were double strength and there were REAL shutters, decorative when folded back, to be sure, but when closed, the wind and blown debris wouldn’t touch the windows.  Anything outside was built to stand a hundred and seventy-five mile per hour winds.  Everything. That was the house.

And I’m the electrical guy, so behind the house was a generator.  And a BIG tank of fuel.  Enough for three or four weeks.  Propane.  It doesn’t go bad.  And I took care of it, running it, maintaining it, just like the ones that my clients depended on for emergency backup power.  And when the parish (county if you’re not in Louisiana) came by with a community water system, I said NO! and kept my deep well with a pump that I supplied power for.

That’s what I had.  And it was wonderful solitude.  The nearest neighbor was a half mile away for the first two years after I built and moved in.  And then a distant cousin decided to make some money off the government and built a set of apartments on an adjacent tract.  Our rural area had NO “low income” housing, and a set of apartments was guaranteed to be filled with occupants who paid with government checks.  Plus, he got a special deal on financing.  And his ‘do-good’ project leapt right over my objections to the zoning.

So my dream house now was neighbor to a set of four apartments in a two story frame building.  Ten miles from the coast.  And I can tell you that it wasn’t built like MY house.

And it was August in Louisiana and every day I spent a few minutes checking weather reports for hurricanes.  It was that time of the year.  And one morning I looked, and there one was.  I and everybody else on the coast followed the track and two days out, I knew I was in for a ride.

I called the agency that employed me as a troubleshooter and go-to guy for industrial power, and told them to take my name off the board for a few days.  It was time to prepare.  I bought groceries.  I checked the battery stock, just in case.  Wasn’t anything left to do but close and bar the shutters and I was ready.  Twenty-four hours before the storm, I was sitting in the living room, watching TV and petting the big yellow cat that was my companion.  I watched the local news stations breathlessly calling for evacuations of the parish wherein I resided.  I sat on my own porch and watched cars leaving the apartments as well as places further back up the road.

The winds picked up under strange-colored skies, clouds moving purposefully in busy patterns toward the storm out in the Gulf.  I walked into my garage to check the big diesel pickup truck that was enclosed.  Its tank was full, and there was a fresh drum of diesel inside the garage.  In an adjacent building was my travel trailer.  In hurricane winds, that trailer would be like a ping-pong ball in a blender, except that it was fully ensconced in a shelter built just as well as the house.

The truck was a tool of the trade.  So was the trailer, home away from home when I had an out of state project.  Prepped?  That was me.  Before cell towers went down, I called my family, sister and brother, safely housed further inland, and they were joining thousands moving north and east and west out of the oncoming storm.  Both of them tried talking me out of staying, but I knew what roads looked like, jammed bumper to bumper, moving start and stop for a hundred miles in every direction.

So I made a pot of red beans and a pot of rice to go with them, and sat back to surf the news until the lines went down.

The winds continued to pick up.  I watched my home’s weather station.  The winds started gusting above forty at dark.  Sunset?  No sun visible.  I kicked back the recliner.  The display was showing over sixty by eight PM.  And rising.  The lights flickered.  Came back on.  Flickered again.  And stayed off.  That was the electricity.  THEIR electricity.  I went to my utility room, flashlight in hand, pushed a button, pulled a handle, and the lights were back on.  Generator.   The cable was gone, too.  Same pole somewhere up the road, most likely. We were ninety and gusting higher, the howl of the wind audible even through well built and insulated walls.  Tommi, the neutered tomcat, decided that he needed companionship and he wedged himself into the recliner beside me.  I put a DVD in the player and went to sleep.

I woke up and the winds were from the opposite direction, but down to forty in gusts. I looked out my portholes, the little windows that I didn’t have shutters on, and it was daybreak.  I’d weathered the storm.  I fixed breakfast for myself and put a treat down for the old yellow cat.  We enjoyed breakfast.  Well, I enjoyed my own.  He looked at his, and turned his picky old butt to it and walked off.

By eight, the winds were down to thirty mile per hour gusts.  I decided it was time to survey my kingdom.  I walked outside.  Windy.  Splatters of rain. Low clouds scudding purposeful northward towards the eye somewhere inland. But the storm was over.  I walked around the building.  Not a thing was out of place.  It had survived unscathed, result of a little engineering and a little extra time and money.  The RV shelter was similarly unscathed.  I busied myself opening shutters, putting my house back in normal condition.  That took an hour.

I flipped open the cellphone. No signal.  And I looked around, past my own fence.  My neighboring apartment building was down in a shambles.  Roof of part of it lifted off and flew to who knows where.  The rest pushed over.  I didn’t see a sign of life, but as far as I knew, everybody had evacuated

The next thing I did was turn on the radio for local news.  The storm had come ashore as a Category Three, the eye passing fifteen miles east of me.  I’d come through the worst of it.  The radio detailed post-storm situations.  Like the fact that I was inside an area that was off limits to travel.  The people who had evacuated wouldn’t be allowed back.  Walking down to the road and looking toward town, I could understand.  Storm surge waters covered it a quarter mile from me.  I could see debris as far as I could see.  I put myself in wait mode and went back in the house.

I was in my home office working over some drawings and reports from a recent project, Tommi loafing on the desk just out of arm’s reach.  And I heard a knock at the door.  What?  Yep!  There it is again.  A knock.  I hadn’t heard a helicopter, and the roads were flooded.   A few similar thoughts were going through my head when I opened the front door.

There was a teenaged girl.  Wet.  Hair a matted mess.  Debris, grass and insulation and mud covered her clothes.  Her jeans were a nasty mess  and her shirt’s neck was split on one side to the shoulder seam.  She was wearing a sopping, muddy pair of sneakers.  And her face as desperate.

“Mister!  I need help.  The building fell on me!”

I practically pulled her inside.  “Come in.  For heaven’s sake, girl, are you okay?”

“I… I don’t know!  I got hit on the head.  I scraped my leg getting out of the building.”

“Come in.  Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Okay.  How?  How do you still have electricity?”

“Generator,” I said.  “Look, we need to get you cleaned up and you need to check yourself out.  I have a shower.  Can you clean yourself?”

“I… I think so.”

“We have a problem, though.  I don’t have any clothes that’ll fit you.  You can give me those and I can wash ‘em.  You’ll have to make do with a T-shirt and maybe a pair of pajama bottoms.  They’ll be big, though.”

I herded her to the bathroom.  She was shivering.  I turned the water on.  “Shower?  Or bath?”

“S-shower, please…”

“Okay.  I’ll leave the shirt and pajamas outside the door when you finish.  Call me.  Okay?”  I thought.  “Are you  sure you can do this?”

“i.. I think so.”

I left her and went into my bedroom.  The ONLY bedroom.  I was a single guy and I’d turned the other room that MIGHT be a bedroom into an office, complete with desk, CAD station, bookshelves, drafting table (sometimes you just NEED to do things on real paper) and file cabinets.

I scrabbled through my drawers and found a pair of pajama bottoms that I never wore, and a t-shirt, and I placed them folded neatly by the door of the bathroom.  I could hear the sound of the shower.  And then I went back to the living room, watching the cat patrolling his kingdom.

I heard the shower stop and the door open and immediately close.  Moments later she walked out her head wrapped in a towel.  My t-shirt hung loosely, VERY loosely, on her frame.  And she was holding the pajamas up with one hand.

“Okay,” I said.  “You made it through the shower.  Now, what hurts?”

“My head.”

“Where?”

“Right here,” she said,lifting the edge of the towel to reveal a reddened market her hairline just above her right eye.  It was read, but not bleeding nor was is swollen.

“That’s not too bad.  Any headache?  Ears ringing?  Blurry vision?”

“No sir.”

“Okay, good,” I said.  “Let’s get some names.  “I’m Dan Granger.  And you’re…”

“Dominique Domingue.  People call me Nikki. N-I-K-K-I.”  That last name was pronounced “doe-main” in Cajun country.

“Hi, Nikki. I would have rather met you on a better note.  Are you hurting anywhere else?

“I have a bruise or something on my leg.  I scraped it crawling out of the building.  But it’s not bleeding either.  It’s gonna be blue, though.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Let me get your stuff in the washer.”

“You have a washer working?”

“I have EVERYTHING working except stuff that came in on a pole.  No cable.  No phone.  But we have our own electricity.”  And that was the subconscious “we”.

She sat down on the sofa while I collected her clothes.  I rinsed most of the debris off before I loaded up the washer with her stuff, along with a few of my own things.  I threw her sneakers in with the cloths.  When I made it back to the living room, she was asleep on the sofa.  I surveyed.  Five feet five inches, more or less.  Maybe a hundred thirty or a hundred forty pounds.  Definitely brunette, the color of polished walnut, cut at the jawline, bangs straight across at her eyebrows.  Blue eyes.  Pleasant face. Bare feet showed no polish, nor did her nails.  And she was sound asleep.  I picked up a light blanket and covered her.  Tommi walked up, looked, and he climbed up and made a comfy loaf shape beside her.

I went back to my work.  Presently I heard the washer cycle end, and I moved the wet load to the dryer.  An hour later the dryer beeped and I took the clothes out.  I neatly folded her jeans, paired her socks, folded an A-cup sports bra and a pair of blue hip-hugger panties.  Her shirt was another matter, but Mom taught me well.  I retrieved a sewing kit and dutifully stitched up the torn seam.  It was good enough to wear, maybe not to the prom, but good enough.  I folded my own stuff, too, and put it up, then went back to my drawings.

I was putting a red pen to some field changes when I heard a light knock.  “Mister Dan?”

I swiveled the chair around.  “Hey, Nikki!  You got a nap?”

“Yessir.  I just passed out.  It feels good to be clean and dry.  I thought I was gonna die in there.”

I noted that she was holding her bundle of clothes.

“Thank you for washing these, okay?”

“Oh, don’t mention it.  You can change in the bathroom.”

“Okay.”  And she disappeared.  I heard the door close.  A couple of minutes later, it opened.  “Mister Dan, you wouldn’t have hair dryer, would you?  My hair’s still wet.”

“Hang on,” I said.  I got up and went into the bathroom and rifled through the back of a cabinet.  I handed her a hair dryer.  I opened a drawer and pulled out a brush.  “If you don’t mind a used brush.  But it’s clean.  The cat’s got his own.”

“I don’t mind at all,” she said quietly.  She plugged in the dryer and went to work on her hair.  I went back to my office.

Ten minutes later she was back knocking at the door.

“Nikki,” I said, “if you knock every time you want to come in a room here, you’re gonna wear your knuckles out.”

“Uh… but…”

“Look, sweetie,” I said, “The only time you need to knock is when the door’s closed, okay?  And I’ll do that for you, okay?  You need privacy, just close the door.  I’ll knock then.”

“Okay.”

“Now, are you thirsty?  There are cold drinks in the fridge, and water, and if you want, I can make iced tea.”

“Oh, do you have a coke?”

“yes, ma’am.  And I have red beans and rice for dinner..  Leftovers, but I can reheat ‘em.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Come on, then.  Let’s go get something to eat.”  She followed me to the kitchen.  Tommi was winding himself between her ankles as I moved pots on the stove and stuck leftover rice into the microwave.

I looked at the cat.  “That’s Tommi, with an “i”.  I never saw him take to somebody like he seems to do with you.  He’s usually pretty suspicious.”

“With an “I”?”

“Yeah, since I had him fixed.”

Nikki giggled.  For the first time.  It was like the tinkle of tiny bells.  And it was a long time since that sound had graced these walls.  “You’re funny.”

I smiled at her. She sipped her coke and looked around.

“I can’t believe you have all this stuff running.  And why’s YOUR house okay when my apartment is a wreck?”

“Because this is what happened when engineers get to do things the way they want to.  I probably paid an extra twenty percent to build this house like this.”

“Wow!”

“So how come you didn’t evacuate?  Was there anyone else in that building?”  I kicked myself now.  I should have been over there looking for them myself instead of doing paperwork.

“I was the only one there.  I watched everyone else leave.”

Why didn’t you leave with your folks?”

“My mom was already up north.  I was supposed to catch a ride with my neighbor, but they wouldn’t let her back into the parish after they started the evacuation.  I couldn’t get a ride.  And I really didn’t want to go off with her.  She’s a huge slut.  And a druggie.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?”

“I tried.  The phone lines were busy.”

“Oh,” I said.  “does anyone know you’re here?”

“I dunno,” she said.  “Mom thinks I’m with my cousins.  She’s probably thinkin’ that we’ll catch up in a few days.”

“In a few DAYS!?!?!?” I was incredulous.

“You gotta know my mom.  She’s not exactly a candidate for parent of the year.  I’ve been home by myself for four days now.”

“Huh?  Even with a hurricane?”

“Yessir.  Sometimes she goes off with one of her guys for a few days.  I’m okay.”

“She leaves you?  How old are you, Nikki?”

“Fifteen.  Since last month.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“At least we got the, uh, we HAD the apartment.  Section 8.  Welfare.  An’ Mom works as a waitress at that bar up in town.  They pay her cash so she doesn’t have to report it.”

“Oh.”  This wasn’t a happy story.  I heard the pot bubbling.  “Beans are ready.  Come fix you a bowl.”

I showed her where dinnerware and silverware was located and we each sat down at the table with a bowl of beans and rice before us.  She wasn’t bashful about digging in.  “I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday.”

“I’m sorry.  I should have offered you something sooner.  I didn’t think…”

“Oh, Mister Dan, that’s okay!  You’ve done enough already.”

“Yeah, but if you wait on me, I’m liable to forget.  I’m not used to having guests.”

“I’m not a guest.”

“Yes you are.”

She looked at me with those blue eyes.  “No wife?”

“Nope.  Not for seven years.  She moved to California with a new husband.”

“Kids?”

“Nope.  Wife and I tried.  She had complications that almost killed her.  So no, no kids.”

“Oh.  Girlfriends?”

“Nuh-uh.  And while you’re here, you don’t have to ask if you’re hungry or thirsty.  Just grab it and eat.  But go light on the milk.  There’s only a gallon before we have to do powdered.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You’re not a burden.  Make yourself at home.  Really.”

We finished our meal and SHE got up and collected the dishes and put them in the sink and started washing.

“Baby, I usually save up until I have a load for the dishwasher.”

She smiled.  She had a quite pleasant smile, I noted.  “Oh, this is okay.  I’m not used to a dishwasher.  I AM the dishwasher at our house.”

It was my turn to smile.  “I appreciate it, babe.  Let’s go sit in the living room.”

I noticed a slight limp as she got up and walked.  “Are you sure your leg’s okay?  You’re limping.”

“It’s bruised.  And scraped, sort of.”

“Uh… I don’t know how I could look at it, but I should.”

She regarded me for a few seconds.  “I’ll be back,” she said.  She went into the bathroom and in a few moments came out without her jeans, but with a bath towel wrapped around her hips, sarong-style.  She walked up to me and turned.

I could see the lower end of the bruised area, red and blue.  “Nope, not bleeding.  It’s gonna be interesting colors, though.  Where’s it hurt?”

Securing the towel with one hand, she raised the bottom edge above her right leg, just under the cheek of her ass.  Higher.  Higher.  Light blue panties showed.  I could see the bruise.  “Right there’s the worst part.  Feels lumpy.”

“DO you mind if I touch it?”

“Just don’t get ambitious,” she laughed.

I carefully felt the periphery of the raised area.  “Yeah, I can feel where it’s kind of raised.  But it oughtta go away.  We could put some ice on it”

“Nah,” she said, heading to the bathroom, returning with her jeans.  “It’s just sore.  I’m okay, huh?”

“Yes, you’re okay.  Best looking girl that I’ve ever seen crawl out of a building.”

She grinned.  “Thanks.”  She sat on the sofa and then turned and put her legs on it, lounging. Tommi jumped up beside her, purring.  She petted him.

I sat in my recliner.  “Cable’s out, but I have a lot of movies.  You can look through them.  And there’s music CD’s too., but it’s probably not stuff you like.  You’re free to look, though.  They’re in the cabinet next to the TV.”

She got up and looked.  Took a CD, turned to me.  “You listen to classical?  This is Mozart!”

“Yeah.  Actually, I’m pretty eclectic in my tastes, but that’s stuff I want to hear over and over.”

“Really!?!?  I would’ve expected rock or country and western.”

“Sorry.  I’m a little different in that area.”

“No, Mister Dan,” she said.  “I’m sitting in YOUR house in the middle of a hurricane zone, sipping a cold coke, the lights are on, the air conditioning’s on, and you have classical music.  You’re different in a lot of areas.”

“Oh, thanks, I guess.”

“I mean it good, Mister Dan.  I like classical music, too.  Don’t know why.  I go to a different place when I hear it.  A place where things are just put together RIGHT!  Not the way my life usually is!”

“Nikki, you can stop with the “Mister Dan” thing and just call me Dan. Okay?”

But you’re, like, OLDER!  Uh..How old are you?”

“Forty-one.  Ancient, in other words.”

“I don’t think so.  But definitely older than me.  What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m an electrical engineer.  I work for whoever’s got problems.”

“Do you make a lot of money?”

“I’m not Bill Gates.  But I’ve got plenty in savings and this house and that truck and that trailer are all paid for.”

“Wow!”

“Nikki, it’s not that big a deal.”

She searched through the stack of DVD’s and pulled one out.  “Do you mind if we watch this?”

It was a movie I could called a ‘chick flick’ although I like the actress in it and it was funny.  “Pop it in.  I’ll turn the TV on.”  I clicked the remote.  She sat back down on the sofa, her legs stretched out in front of her, watching the TV, and if I caught it correctly out of the corner of my eye, she was looking at me, too.  We laughed at the same spots.

She kept a running commentary about the relationships and how they developed.  “I keep wishing things like that would happen to my mom, but they just don’t.  We’ve been in that apartment for two years now and I bet she’s had at least a dozen and a half different boyfriends.”

‘I don’t know what to say, Nikki.”

“Me neither.  I just don’t understand how people can be like that.  And some of those guys!  She left one at home while she went to get beer an’ cigarettes, an’ he tried to put the moves on ME!”

“He did?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “An’ when I told Mom, she accused ME of flirting with ‘im.”  She looked me in the eye.  “If somebody’s doin’ my mom, I don’t WANT him.  I don’t want the kind of guy who’d go with somebody like her.”

The movie was showing a bedroom scene.  “And that.”

“What?”

“Sex.  When I do it, it’s gonna be something special with somebody I love, not somebody I met at a bar on Saturday night.”  Her eyes were moist.  “You know how much it hurts to figure out your mom’s a slut?”

“Baby, we can turn this movie off.”

“Oh, Mister Dan… uh, Dan, it’s not this movie.  I’m sorry.  I don’t know what made me tell you all this.”  She took a deep breath.  “I’m okay.  Sorry I unloaded on you.  You’re just bein’ nice to me.  Sorry.”

“That’s okay, baby.”

“I don’t have many people to talk to, you know.  The neighbors over there aren’t exactly the kind of people I want to tell my problems to.”

“I guess.  I never met anybody from over there.”

“I could tell you stories, babe!”  She smiled.  “But I’m not there now, am I?”

We finished watching the movie.  “I don’t know what to do about you, Nikki,” I said.

“What’dya mean?”

“I mean,  nobody knows you’re here, and you’re  probably wanting to find out where your mom’s at, and she’s probably looking for you.”

“Dan,” she said, “I don’t have any close family besides Mom.  She never talks to her Dad.,  He practically disowned her.  Her mom’s dead.  She’s got one brother, and nobody’s seen him in five years. And Mom’s not exactly dying to go back to worryin’ about me an’ her both.”

“I’m sorry, babe.  I just want to take care of you, is all.”

“You’ve took better care of me than anybody else has as long as I can remember.”

“But I don’t want to stop you from being where you need to go.”

“Uh, Dan, I don’t know where to go.  I mean, they have shelters an’ stuff.  But I’d be fifteen an’ in a shelter with nobody to take care of me.”  She stared at me.  “I really don’t have a place I want to be.  This is better than I could ever hope for.”

“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want, babe, it’s alright with me.”  I breathed a sigh.  “But when the roads open up, I will probably be working every day for a few weeks.  You’ll be by yourself here.”

Her eyes brightened.  “You’d trust me to be here by myself?”

“I shouldn’t?”

“No, you CAN.  I promise.”  She smiled.  “Really!  I can take care of the house while you work.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.  Until we have to do something different.”

“Thank you.”  She smiled again.  “You have games in that cabinet.  Wanna play one?  Like “Trivial Pursuit”?”

“I haven’t played that in years.  My sister and her husband and my brother and his wife come over every now and then and we play games.  I’ll get it.”  I spread the game stuff on the sofa between us.  And didn’t tell her that nobody wanted to play with me because I beat them ALL so badly…”

I almost DIDN’T beat Nikki.  “You play a tough game, little girl,” I said.

She smiled.  “I haven’t ever been beat before.  You beat me.  I thought I was going to impress you.”

“Believe me, you did.”

I looked at the clock.  “It’s getting late.  Sleeping arrangements.  One of us gets this room.  One of us gets the bed.”

“I’ll take the sofa,” she said.  “It’s your house.”

“It makes out into a bed, if you want.”

“Nope, it’s fine like this.  D’ya have a pillow an’ stuff?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Lemme get it.”  I got up to put the game up and get her some sleeping gear.  I was retrieving it from the upper shelf of a hall closet and when I turned around, I bumped into her.  “Oops,” I said.  “I didn’t know you were behind me.”

“Sorry, Dan,” she said.  “I was trying to help.”

“Here ya go, then.” I gave her a sheet and a blanket and a pillow and pillowcase.  “In the morning, just ball this up and put it in the corner.  We’ll do it that way.”

“Okay,” she said as she started turning the sofa into a nest.

I went to my own bedroom and stripped, hitting the shower and shaving afterward.  And just because, I threw on a little cologne.  After I got out of the shower, I pulled my jeans back on and walked back into the living room.  In the dim light, I saw her there, stretched out on the sofa.  She wasn’t asleep yet.

“G’nite, Dan,” she said.  “Thanks for rescuing me.”

“G’nite, Nikki,” I said.  And I turned and went to my own room, noting that when she had the covers pulled up to her chin, her shirt and jeans were folded neatly beside the sofa on the floor.

I woke up the next day to the smell of bacon.  BACON!  And I wasn’t cooking it.  I walked into the kitchen, bleary-eyed.  Nikki was at the stove.

“You’re cooking breakfast?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind.  I saw you had bacon and grits and since you live here by yourself, that means YOU like them.  So that’s what I cooked.  How do you like your eggs?”

“You’re fixing me EGGS?  Can you do “over easy”?”

“Sure, silly,” she laughed.  “They go with bacon and grits.”  About that time, the kettle started whistling.  “I saw you had a coffee pot.  I hope I make your coffee right.”   Five minutes later I was sitting in front of a full breakfast.  And she was sitting at the table with me, staring at me over a mug of coffee.  The coffee wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough.

“How’s the coffee?”

“Great.  Just about the way I do it.”

“And everything else?”

“I’m astounded.  And I have NEVER eaten breakfast here that I didn’t cook myself.”

Giggle.  “Really?”

“Really.”

“I’m just trying to earn my keep, Dan.”

“You don’t have to earn your keep here, Nikki.  You’re here.  That’s good enough.  But god, I appreciate eating somebody else’s cooking.”

“I like doing it.  I made you smile.  That makes me happy!”  Her eyes twinkled.

I looked at those twinkly eyes gazing at me over her coffee mug.  Made me smile some more.  Together we cleared the table.  “That was perfect,” I said.

“What are we gonna do today?” she asked.

“I dunno.  Lemme try something.” I turned on my cellphone.  No signal.  “Well, so much for that,” I said.  “Wanna walk next door?  You can show me where you crawled from.”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

We sat at opposite ends of the sofa putting socks and shoes on.  She kept looking at me, and I couldn’t parse what her expression was saying.  We walked out of the house.  First thing I saw was a snake slithering across the yard.

“Come back inside,” I said.  “I wanna get a gun.”

“Why?”

“Just in case.  We have a lot of wildlife that’s very confused and in unusual places.  You never know what we’ll run into.”  I retrieved a short-barreled shotgun.

“Aren’t you gonna load it” she asked.

“It IS loaded, “ I said.  “It stays that way.”

“You keep a loaded gun in the house?”

“Of course,” I said.  “If somebody was to break in, I wouldn’t want to waste time loading it then.  And there are four of them in the house, loaded.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“No, baby,” I said.  “No little kids around to get to them.  And I would hope adults would know how to handle them safely.”

“But loaded?”

“I got stuff to protect.  I got ME to protect.  And now I got YOU to protect.  So I have guns.  Like this one.” And I cycled the slide, chambering a round.   I got another look, not fearful.  And there was a little hint of a smile.

Aside from the single snake and a raccoon that scurried away when he spotted us, nothing else was of concern.  Approaching the collapsed building, Nikki showed me the opening she crawled out of.

“I was in the hall sitting on the floor when the place fell in,” she said.

“That’s the best place to be.   There or the bathtub.”  We walked around.  “I was hoping we could get you some clothes out of there, but I don’t want to try and get in there.”

“Me neither, she said.

We walked back to the house.  I opened the garage door and backed my truck out.  We climbed in and drove a little distance down the road before turning back.  Where the storm surge had covered the road, the debris was heavy and I didn’t want to risk a tire in the debris, or risk running off into the marsh because the road was washed away where we couldn’t see it.  As we pulled back into the garage, I heard the unmistakable sound of a low-flying helicopter.  A serious one.  Close.

We walked out of the garage and waved as a national guard Blackhawk circled.  It flared to land on the road in front of the house and we walked down to meet the occupants.  A national guard lieutenant and the parish sheriff met us in the drive.

I shook hands with both of them, introducing myself.  “Dan Granger,” I said.  “This is my house.  And this is Nikki Domingue.  She survived that building collapse over there.”

“Damn!”, the sheriff said.  “You know me.  I’m your sheriff, Ernie Richard.” He pronounced it “ree-shard.”  Cajun.  “This” indicating the soldier, “is Lieutenant Gregus.  We’re doin’ a survey.  You’re the only people on this side of the parish that we’ve found.”

“Really?” I said.

Lt. Gregus said, “Yessir.  We had a good evacuation.  What’re you doing here?”

This could be dicey.  A mandatory evacuation was called, but in Louisiana, there was no law to force it.  “I built this house myself to face a Category Five.  And I stayed.  Miss Nikki here missed her ride out.”

The sheriff popped in, “D’ya wanna fly outta here?  Where there’s electricity and food and water?”

By this time one the pilots of the helicopter were joining us.

“Why don’t you guys come on up to the house and let me show you something,” I said.”And see if YOU’D leave this for a shelter.”

We all walked up to the house and inside.  The cool dry air conditioned air was a stark contrast to the post-storm humidity.

The lieutenant said, “Hey, this feels good!”

“Yep,” I said.  “Generator back there and enough fuel for weeks.”  Several weeks’ worth of food.  And I suffered NO damage.  Had bacon eggs and grits for breakfast this morning.  I’d offer you all a cold beer, but…”

Sheriff said, “But we’re flyin’…”

“We have cold Cokes,” interrupted Nikki.  “Want one?”

“That would be nice, “ said the pilot.

Nikki bopped back to the kitchen and returned with the cokes.

The sheriff sipped on his.  “So nobody needs rescuin’?

“Nope, but thanks!  Any idea when they’ll get a road open so I can go back to work?”

The sheriff mused, “Oh, three or four days.  Where you work at?”

“Any of those plants up there on the channel.  Electrical engineer.”

“Oh,” said the lieutenant.

“What about cell service,” I asked.

The sheriff said, “Maybe a day or so.  The carriers are setting up temporary towers and fixing the ones that are still up.  We need cellphones, too, yah know.”

“Can you give these people a call and tell them that I’m stuck down here?” I asked, scribbling a number and name on a pad of paper.

“Sure,” the sheriff said.  “And Miss Nikki, is it?  Are you okay here?”

Nikki smiled, “Yessir.  Best place I can be for the time being.”

“Okay, then,” said the sheriff.  “We’ll check on you again in a couple of days when they get the road open.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.  Turning to the lieutenant and the other pilot, “If you see orange flares, come and get me.  Green smoke is the barbecue’s ready!”  They laughed.

A few minutes later the helicopter lifted off.  I turned to Nikki who was standing rather close by my side.  “There went your chance to get out of her, Neek.”

“Neek?”

“Yeah.  Short for Dominique, don’t ya think?”

She looked directly into my eyes and smiled.  “Looks like we’re stuck with each other, then, huh?”
Chapter Two

Watching the chopper disappear into the distance, I mentally kicked myself.  I could’ve asked for a couple of changes of clothes for Nikki.  Five-five and one-forty and six-two and two hundred, she could swim in anything I wore, and all she had was the clothes on her back.

We walked back to the house.  I mentioned the problem to her.  “We can wash these like you did yesterday, an’ I can wear your pj’s.”

“I suppose.  We’ll see what we can do.”  We went inside and ate sandwiches for lunch, then she helped me put together a spaghetti sauce for supper and left it simmering while we walked up the road.  I carried the shotgun.  Nikki was amazed by the mounds of debris and vegetation piled on the road.  I wasn’t.  I’d seen it before.

We walked back to the collapsed apartments.  She pointed out her room in the mess, and I came away with the same conclusion, there was no way either of us would risk going into the place.  The place was fodder for a bulldozer.  Tiring of the humidity, we returned to the air conditioned haven of the house and made sure all the electronics were off.  Nikki watched as I shut the generator down to check it out, then restarted it.

We went inside and she chose a CD of Mozart.  We sat in the floor and played a game of cards until suppertime, then boiled up a pot of spaghetti to go with the simmering sauce.  I grated fresh cheese to top it and Neek declared it to be the best ever.  “I can make this,” she announced.  After dinner we cleared the dishes together and returned to the living room.  She chose another movie for us to watch.  I was getting ready to start it when she announced, “I wanna take a shower first.  Then  you can take yours, and we’ll have that out of the way.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Good idea.  Let me get you something to wear.”

“Those pj bottoms and your t-shirt?”

“If that works for you.  I’ll start a load of wash when we finish.”

“’Kay,” she said.  I handed her the fresh clothes and she bounced into the bathroom.  And heaven help me, I noted that she had an attractive form.

Fifteen minutes later she was sitting on my bed drying her hair and I was in the shower.  I got out, shaved, and dabbed  a bit of cologne on.  She was still running the dryer when I walked out, kneeling in the middle of my bed, the t-shirt having slid down on one shoulder.

“Dan,” she said, “I need a safety pin for these pj’s.  When I stand up they fall down.  See?”  And she stood up and caught them sliding down, stopping the waistband before it reached her pubic mound.  I caught me breath.  “Oops!  Didn’t mean to… you know…”

“That’s okay, babe.  Lemme see if I have a safety pin.”  I found one and helped her pin the waistband tighter.  And that put me in close proximity to what I determined to be a nicely shaped teen ass.  And when she stood in front of me, I made a similar assessment of t-shirt clad tits.

My best move was to gather up the clothes and head to the laundry room.  And on top of the stack was a pair of light blue panties.  I should have just tossed the pile into the washer, but that’s not what I did.  I lifted those panties to my nose and sniffed deeply.  And closed my eyes.  Enough!  Into the washer.

I walked back into the living room.  She was lounging on the sofa, eyes twinkling, her arm languorously tossed on the back of the sofa and that t-shirt did little to hide the shape of those titties.  My own pj’s tented out. I hunched over to hide it and retreated to my recliner.  And Nikki was watching me closely.  And a wry smile spread on her red lips.

She started the movie, the original Indiana Jones flick.  We’d both seen it before, and laughed at both appropriate and inappropriate times.  She started talking about archaeology  And I’m no expert, but it sound to me like she knew a bit

I commented on that idea

“Lots of Discovery  Channel an’ History Channel.  And the library when I can get a ride there.”  Her brow knit for a second.  “I had books checked out.  D’ya think they’re gonna charge me for them?

“Not likely.  That’s a thought, though.  In the morning we need to take my camera and go get pictures of your apartment.   And if anybody says anything, that’s your evidence.”

“That’s a good idea.  What kind of camera do you have?”

“A pretty good one.  Hang on, I’ll show you!”  I got up and retrieved the camera bag from the closet.  I pulled it out of the case and pointed it at her.  “Smile”, I said. She smiled and the flash went off.

“That’s a fancy one,” she said.

I sat down next to her on the sofa. “Yeah, I use it in my work sometimes.”  I punched the controls and handed it to her.  “Here’s you!”

“I don’t look good in pictures,” she said.

“Oh, bullshit!” I said.  “That’s what most women say.  Come into my office.  You can’t see the picture very good on this little screen.”

We went into the office and I fired up my desktop computer.  While it was booting, I pulled out the cable to connect the camera to a USB port.

“She looked around the office.  “What’s all these papers?”

“That’s from my last project.  I need to go through each drawing and make sure it’s correct and all the changes are logged.  It’s all billable hours.”

“You mean you get paid for working at home?”

“Yep.  I worked four hours yesterday while you were sleeping.  Two hundred and eighty dollars.”

She caught her breath.  “That’s seventy  bucks an hour!”

“That was quick. You’re good at math?”

“I made B’s and C’s last year.  I don’t like to do homework.”

The computer finished booting.  I pulled her photo up on the big monitor.  “There!” I said.  “That’s not a bad-looking picture at all.”

“It’s just me.”

“And that makes it unique.  And forgive me for saying so, but you’re actually kinda cute!  And this is a good picture.  Look.  You can see every strand of hair on your bangs.  And you have a little bit of a smile.”

“You think I’m cute?  In the picture, I mean?”

“Yep!  Very pleasant to look at.”

She looked bit flustered and changed the subject.  “That’s a BIG monitor.”

“Yeah,”  I said.  “Those drawings are eleven by seventeen inches and I work on ‘em on screen, full size.  Makes life better for me.”

“Show me.”

I pulled up some recent files and showed her the red additions and green deletions.

“You READ these things?  All I see is a bunch of lines.”

“D’you read Chinese?”

“Nooo.”

Same thing.  This is a language.  People who are familiar with the language can read it.”  I patted an inch-thick stack on the corner of the desk.  “This is what it took to do the electrical power for ONE small production unit at the plant I was working for.”

“Wow!  That’s what engineers do?”  She folded her arms and leaned over my shoulder.

“That’s a painful part of it.  It’s not nearly as fun as getting called when things don’t work right and I get to go in and fix them.”

“Can I take YOUR picture?”

“Sure,” I said, handing her the camera.  “Just point it and click.”

“Turn around.  I want to get you with your computer and that desk behind you.”

I turned and she shot.  “Do a couple.  Film’s cheap for that thing.”

“Uh, right…”

Then she wanted to look at the pictures she took.  “I did pretty good, huh?”

“You could be the official photographer of old goats everywhere.”

“You’re not that old, Dan.”  She looked at the camera.  “This thing has a timer.  If you had a tripod, we could BOTH be in the picture.”

“I’ve got a tripod in the closet.  Why do you want a picture of both of us?”

“So I have a record of who rescued me.”  She smiled.

I set the tripod up and showed her how to set up the timer.  We took several shots and reviewed them on the big monitor.  “I like this one best.”  It had me standing behind her, with her offset just a little to the right.  Her head was tilted slightly and she was smiling.

“I’m downloading these to the hard drive,” I said.

“Okay,” came the response.  “I’ll go put the laundry in the dryer.”  In two minutes, she was back hovering over my shoulder.  “D’ya have any work pictures?”

“Work pictures?”

“Yeah, you know, where you work?”

“I have a bunch, but I don’t think you’re interested in that stuff.  Most of it’s kinda technical.  Obscure.  Interesting to me because it’s what I work on, but…”

“Try me.  I LIKE that stuff.  Besides, what else do we have to do?”

“Well, pull that chair over here.”  And she sat close.  Very close.  I showed pictures, explaining what each was, and she asked questions.  Like she was interested.

Finally I said, “Babe, it’s getting late.  Let’s shut it down for the night.”

She laughed.  “Okay, Dan.  I’ll go make my bed.”

While she was arranging her nest on the sofa, I came in with the clothes folded and gave her a stack.

“Thanks, Dan!” she smiled.  “G’nite!”

“G’nite, Nikki,” I said, walking out of the room.  I closed my bedroom door and did my pre-bed routine, then stretched out.  I thought about the contents of the other room as I drifted off to sleep.

And for the second morning I awoke to the smell of bacon.  I dressed and walked into the kitchen to find Nikki at the stove again.  She smiled over her shoulder.  “I found potatoes.  I hope you like hash browns.”

“You amaze me.  Where’d you learn to cook?”

“Before she died, I used to spend a lot of time with my grandma, Mom’s mom.  And she knew how to cook.  And I learned a few things.  That was the happiest time of my life, so far.”  She smiled.  “Although yesterday was pretty cool, too.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yeah.  I mean, other than the whole “my home is a debris pile in south Louisiana” thing, we met people, we took a walk, we played games, we watched a movie, listened to really good music, and I got to learn a little bit about engineering stuff.  I think that was a pretty good day.”

“I’m glad you liked it, Nikki.  I could see you taking this a lot worse…”

“Nope.  Makin’ the best of the situation.”  She lifted the hash browns off the cast iron griddle and built us each a plate, poured two cups of coffee, and sat down with me to share breakfast.

“Two mornings in a row…  I could get used to this.”

Nikki grinned.  “Me too.  Isn’t it funny?  I mean, here we have a stinkin’ hurricane, an’ in the middle of it life is this good.”

“Yes, little girl, it is indeed good.”  Plates cleaned, we sat savoring the coffee, then got up together and cleared the table.”

She said, “I looked in the freezer.  You have some packages that say round steak.  I can do steak and gravy if you want…  for supper?  And sandwiches for lunch again?”

“That makes sense,” I said.  “But don’t think you have to keep house to pay your way.”

“Oh, I don’t,” she countered.  “It’s nice to be appreciated.  When I did stuff like this for Mom, she never acknowledged it, but if I didn’t, she raised hell about me layin’ around while she did all the work.  And unless I cleaned up, the house was a mess.”

“I appreciate it, Nikki.  It’s wonderful.”  Finishing our coffee, we got up and tidied the kitchen.  She went to the freezer and took out a package of round steak and put it on the counter to thaw.  She looked at Tommi’s food bowl.  “Where do you keep the cat food?” She asked.

I retrieved it from the laundry room and filled his bowl.  “On the shelves next to the dryer,” I said.  “Once a week he gets a can of the wet stuff.  Or if there’s a special occasion.  I gave him one the morning after the hurricane.  It’s his reward for saving me.”

She giggled.  “Yep!  He’s a big hero,” petting his back as he walked by us to his food bowl.

I turned on my cellphone again.  Still no signal.  Isolation was nice, but I knew that only a few dozen miles away, the industrial facilities were recovering, and I should be there.  But with roads closed and no contact…  “Let’s go walk around,” I said.

We put shoes on and walked out the door, me carrying the shotgun, her with the camera.  She took pictures.  Lots of pictures.  A skunk nosing along the edge of the marsh, a several snakes, an alligator,  three raccoons.  We made a circuit of the destroyed apartment building and she shot dozens of shots.  We walked up the road in each direction until we reached the debris fields, and we photographed that, too.  In short, we made a circuit of the high ground that protected our house from the storm surge.

Walking back to the house, she commented, “I never imagined this place would look like this.”

“Yeah, but in a year you’ll have to know where to look for signs.  The marsh out there will heal itself.  They’ll clear the road.  And they’ll clear off the apartment debris.  And you’ll not even know there was a hurricane if you didn’t know where to look.”

“Do you think they’ll rebuild the apartments?”

“I don’t know, “ I said.  “Depends on how much insurance money and government money is in it.  Maybe.  I just can’t tell.”

“I don’t know if we could get back in there anyway.  There’s a waitin’ list down here.  Mom talked about movin’ to the city where they have more housing available for government programs.  Now I guess we will.” She paused.  “If she even comes back.”

“But she’s your mom.  Surely she’ll come back, huh?”

Nikki’s face was serious as she turned to look at me.  We stopped in the middle of the road.  “Maybe not.”

“But then you’d be, like, abandoned?”

“Last year she tried to get me taken away to a home, Dan.  She called the sheriff department and told them I was out of control and she couldn’t handle me.  I’d be gone now, but I don’t get in trouble in school and I passed a drug test and the only bad report on file was hers.  They put us in family counseling, for what that’s worth.”

“Counseling?”

“Yeah.  Every two weeks we go sit in an office with a social worker and Mom says what they want to hear an’ I say what they want to hear, and they collect the government money for it.  But no, Mom wouldn’t be sad if I didn’t show back up in her life.”

“That’s sad, baby,” I said.

“So you can see why a hurricane is a big plus in my life, right now, huh Dan?”

We walked back to the house together, silent.  She started the conversation back.  “I’m okay, Dan.  Really.  For now, anyway.”

“But after this?”

“That part I don’t know.  So I just enjoy today. And tomorrow.  Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

She led me into the office.  “Let’s look at these pictures.”

I turned on the computer again and while it was booting, we had sandwiches and soft drinks.  I looked at her across the table, not saying a thing.  Finally I flipped open my cellphone.  And I had two bars of signal strength.  I punched speed dial.

The phone was answered with “Well, hello, stranger!”

“Why, hi, Steve!  What’s up?”

“You’re up!  Three plants have been after us for the Great Dan Granger to come rescue them.  And we can’t even find you.  Where you been?”

I saw Nikki watching me.  “Let me tell, you, Steve.  I weathered the storm out down here at the house.”

“You did WHAT?”

“I stayed home.  Didn’t evacuate.”

“I saw video they shot from a helicopter, Dan.  Everything down there is devastated.  Almost.”

“Yeah, I’m part of the “almost.”  I talked to the sheriff myself yesterday.  He says roads MIGHT be open in a couple of days or three.  So I’m stuck here.”

“Dammit, Dan…  I need your ass up here.  We have facilities down.”

I can’t help you there, Steve.  No way out.  Hey, I have a 3G card for my computer, so I can do a lot from right here.”

“Or I can have a chopper pick you up.”

“That’ll work.  But only if I’m back here every night.  I got a kid to take care of.”

“I was jerkin’ you about the chopper.  We’ll start sending you pictures.  When you can get out, we’ll see you.”

“Okay, Steve.  Sorry.”

Nikki looked at me with cool regard.  “You just told them you had a kid to take care of.  Is that me?”

“Yep.  Even though you’re hardly a kid.  Come on.  Let’s go play with those pictures.  I need to see if I can get a 3G signal in here now.”

I let her sit in front of the computer and directed her through tying in the 3G and just like that, we were back in the greater world.  I can’t say that I was particularly excited by that.  I was beginning to like the isolation.  My thoughts were punctuated by the chime of incoming email.

Nikki turned to me.  “D’you need to get here?”

“Nope,” I said.  “After we look at your pictures.”  We flipped through, laughing, talking, doing an occasional edit.  And she came across the timer shot of her and me.

“This one is the best,” she said.  And she got up.  “You do what you need to do.  I’m gonna be in the kitchen makin’ supper.”

Three days’ backlog of email fell down on my head.  I clicked through.  A lot of them got ignored, some got a boilerplate reply concerning my present status  And at the very end of the queue I started working on the storm projects as pictures and reports started coming in from technicians in the field.

Nikki reappeared over my shoulder.  “How’s it goin, babe, “ she asked.

“Look,” I said, and I showed her some of the pictures.  “That’s wet and needs to be dried out.  This is gonna have to be replaced.  This one needs a new roof before we can do anything.”  I sighed and shook my head.  “I’m typing up an email right now trying to see who’s got used equipment and who’s got extras we can borrow.  It’s a mess.”

“I haven’t seen you tensed up like this,” she said.

“I know.  I… we were living free and easy for a couple of days.  It was nice.  Now it’s gonna be hell for a few weeks until we get things going again.  I reached up with my right hand  and pressed against the junction between my left shoulder and my neck.

“Nuh-uh,” she said, pushing my hand away.  I felt warm, soft, feminine hands massaging my neck and shoulders.

“Mmmmmm, Nikki, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know.  Does it help?”

“Yes, it helps.  Very much.  Thank you.”

She massaged for five minutes then went back to the kitchen.  I heard pots rattling, then a lid set in place, and she was back.

“So if you did like they said, and a helicopter picked you up…”

“Email says the city’s shut down.  A few hotels are on emergency generator but they’re sold out to recovery workers.  I have no idea where I’d stay, but sleeping on the floor of an office is likely.  And there’s certainly no place for you.  And I may see myself leaving you here during the day by yourself, but not overnight.  No way!”

“But if I wasn’t here…”

“Don’t even go there, Nikki.  You ARE here and I want to take care of you.  Besides, I’m not going to go live like that if I don’t have to.  I don’t need the stress, the aggravation OR the money.”

And that got me a kiss on the cheek.  As I sat there, stunned, she left and I heard the vacuum cleaner start up.  Tommi came running into the office to hide.

In addition to the email, my cellphone was now ringing every ten minutes.

If Dan couldn’t go to the world, the world could come to Dan.

At five, Nikki was sitting on the chair next to me in the office watching me review pictures and emails.  Since she seems to take an interest, I verbalized the email answers, embellishing the instructions and findings so she could follow along.  And half the time I had the cellphone headset on, talking.

At five I turned it off.  She took me by the hand to the kitchen where I was greeted with my supper on the table.  “I hope you like it,” she said.  “It’s been a long time since I cooked it.  But you have the same stuff in your cabinets that my grandma did.”

“Two centuries of Cajun grandmas did it for us, babe.”  It was delicious.  Perfect.  She’d even poured my soft drink over ice.

After supper I went back to work, logging my time on each of three projects I was covering.  If I was gonna work, I was darned sure going to get paid.  I told Steve so over the phone.  He laughed.
Chapter Three

I was still in the office when Nikki came in after her shower.  She did the massage thing on my neck and shoulders again.  “You need to get up and walk around every now and then,” she admonished.

I hadn’t even turned around when she touched me.  I was deep in the zone.

“Look!” she said.  “Turn around!”

I turned, expecting to see t-shirt and pajamas.  I didn’t.

“I hope you don’t mind.  I didn’t want to bother you, but I found these on the shelf in your closet.  They give me another suit of clothes.”

“They” were a pair of hospital scrub pants and one of my old work shirts.  The cotton shirt hung on her loosely, reaching down below her crotch in front, below the cheeks of her butt in back.  And she’d rolled cuffs up on the legs of the scrubs and pulled the drawstring waist tight.

“Cute,” I said.  “You look like an orphan.”

“Not a hurricane refugee?”  She giggled

“That, too.  Nikki, thanks for dinner.  It was wonderful.  I haven’t enjoyed food like that in a long time.  Eating my own cooking gets old, you know.”

“I enjoyed doing it.  You have a nice kitchen.  Everything is so clean.  And it works.”

“And you work.  I am so surprised.  Shocked.  I never thought of you being like this, babe.”

“I don’t mind, Dan.  I really don’t.”  She looked at the screen.  “You need to pick a stopping place and shut down for the evening.  A hot shower will relax you.”  She smiled and left me in the office.

I answered one last email and shut the computer down.  Nikki was right.  The hot shower washed away stresses.  I shaved afterward and dabbed a bit of cologne on.  Eight-thirty.  I joined Nikki in th4e living room.

“Do you want to start this movie over so you can watch it from the beginning?” She asked.

“No, I’ve seen it enough times.  I can watch it from this part.”  And I looked at Nikki, dark brown hair, brushed to a sheen, her blue eyes intent on the TV, lips in a satisfied hint of a smile.  And that darned shirt, loose on her, was showing just a glimpse of the cleavage between two young A-cup titties.  And I looked long.

When she turned to look at me, I was watching the movie.  “Hard day, huh, babe?” she said.

“Yeah.  Nuts.  But it’ll get better.”

“What about when the roads open up?”

“I figured that out already.  I’ll drive to the job in the morning, and back at night.  Might be late, but I am NOT going to spend the night on an air mattress in an office.  Or sleeping in my truck.  Besides, I’m the freakin’ engineer.  Most of the time, I just tell ‘em what they need to do, then come back to see if it’s done right.”

“So you’ll be home every night?

“Yes.  Absolutely.  And this will be over in a couple of weeks.  We’ll get the major stuff back on, and over the next few months, there’ll be stuff that takes a little longer, but it won’t be one of those ‘bop ‘til you drop’ things.”

Neither of us were really watching the movie.

“You just do what you have to do.  And I’ll make sure the house is okay and you have dinner when you come in.”

“Nikki, you don’t have to do all that.”

“Suppose I want to?  I mean, I’m staying here.  It’s the least I can do.”

“But you don’t have to, babe.’

“Yes I do,” she said quietly.   And she got up and started fixing her nest on the sofa.

I got up and headed to bed.  I heard a quiet voice.

“Dan,” she said.  “Lay on your stomach and let me rub your back.”

“Uh, Nikki, you don't have to do that.”

“I know,” she said.  “But you’re tense and you worked hard and this’ll relax you.”

I rolled over and she knelt beside me in bed and kneaded my back and shoulders.

“I saw this on TV,” she said.  “I hope I did it right.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong yet, babe.

She got up to leave. “Then this isn’t wrong either.”  She kissed my cheek.  “Good night, Dan.”

Regrettably I set the alarm for six.  I knew that despite my computer being off, the emails would pile up.  Its insistent beeping woke me and I pulled on a set of jeans and walked into the living room, headed for the kitchen.  In the dim morning light I saw Nikki still asleep, the covers tossed off her, looking like an angel in repose.  She stirred when I turned on the kitchen light.

“Mornin, babe,” she said.  “I should have got up earlier and fixed breakfast.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.”

“No,” she said.  “Let’s get you some coffee and you can go check email or whatever, and I’ll get you when breakfast is ready, okay.”

“Okay,” I said.  I started to walk back through the living room to my office.  She stopped me and hugged me.  I hugged back.

“Why’d you do that, Nikki?”

“Because I wanted to, Dan.  Just wanted to.  Now go to work.  I’ll bring you coffee.”

The smell of fresh-brewed coffee and bacon cooking filled the house.  She came in, handing me a steaming mug.  “Two sugars.  A little half and half.  I watched.”  She smiled, the corners of her eyes wrinkling and cheeks dimpled.  “Right?”

“My Nikki is never wrong.”

There were four late emails, three of them with attached pictures and field reports.  I turned the phone on and started listening to messages, most of the “Dan, check your email and call me” variety. At ten minutes to seven the first incoming call came.  And we were off to the races.

Nikki called me to breakfast.  I silenced the phone while we ate together.  Afterward, she shoved me towards the office.  “You work.  Let ME clean the kitchen.  Okay?’

“Okay.”

And back to work I went.  In the back of my head I recognized the noises of a busy kitchen.  Then they stopped.  Nikki handed me another mug of coffee. “Dan,” she said, “You have a needle and thread somewhere around here.  You used it to fix my shirt.  Where’s it at?”

“In the left side drawer of the desk in the living room.  Why?’

“I’m gonna alter some clothes.  Like these scrubs.  And this old shirt.  So they fit better.”

“By hand?  You can do that?”

“Grandma again.”

“Can you use a sewing machine?”

“Yes.  I think so.”

I got up, went to a closet and pulled a portable sewing machine out.  And a box containing a variety of things, thread, needles, buttons.

Squeal!

“You’re not the only one who knows how to do things.”

“Okay,” she giggled.  “I can do this.  Now go back to work.”

And the sound of a sewing machine added to the sounds of our little island of sanity.

Eleven o’clock brought the sounds of a helicopter again.  Landing.  We walked out and down the drive together.  Sheriff again.

“Hello there, Dan Granger,” he said.  And he tilted his hat.  “Miss Nikki.”

“Out surveying your kingdom again?”

He laughed.  “I’m like king of a shitpile right now.  You folks doin’ alright?”

“Yes we are,” I said.  “I got cell coverage and 3G internet back yesterday.  I’ve been working ever since.  When are they going to have the road cleared?”

“That’s what I was gonna tell you,” he said.  “There are dozers and graders working up from the highway on this road right now.  You might be able to drive out late tomorrow if they don’t have to fix any big washouts.  We’ve had a couple of doozies.”

“That’ll be good.  My office offered to fly me out on a chopper.  But I told them I had Nikki here and I would have to come back at night, so I’m working from home.”

He laughed.  “Ya’ll’re like Robinson freakin’ Crusoe.  Miss Nikki, did you do that sewin’, or did he?”

Nikki raised her hand.  “Grandma taught me.”

He laughed.  “It works.  Shows that it’s done by hand, but it works.”  He looked at me.  “How’s fuel holding up?”

“Haven’t even used a quarter of the tank.”

“you gonna need some any time soon?”

“I hope not.  It’s propane.  Not like you can haul it in here in a bucket.”

“No,” he said, grinning, “but we use propane at the emergency command center, and they’re gonna have to get us a truck by the end of the week.  I can make sure they stop by here.”

“Man, that’d be great.  I might even vote for you next election.”

“You might not have to.  Another hit like this and there won’t be anybody  living here to run against me.”  He looked over his shoulder at the Blackhawk sitting on the road, rotor blades still spinning.  “Say, you got a couple of those cold Cokes?”

“You got it, Sheriff,” I said.

“Call me Fred,” he said.  Nikki showed up with four cokes already sweating in the humidity.  She handed them to him.  “And you folks be careful.  You got cellphone now, wait.  Hold this, Miss Nikki.”

She grabbed the cans as he reached in a pocket.  “Here’s my card.  Office, private office line, and my cell.  Call me if you need somethin’.”  He retrieved his drinks and walked back to the helicopter.  I watched him pass them to the crew.  We waved as they took off, curving out across the marshes.

Walking back in, I told Nikki, “I’m glad I stocked up on cokes.”

She laughed.  “But he says he can get us fuel.  And maybe you can get out tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if that’s good news or not.  Let’s eat lunch and try to make a list of stuff we need.”

After lunch, we took a generator outage.  I checked fluids and belts and a dozen other things making sure that the lights stayed on.  Satisfied, I started it back up and put the electricity back to the house.  I restarted the computer and started wading through the email again.  And the cell calls.  And I told Steve of the possibility that I just might be able to get out the day after tomorrow.

“Just come on,” he said.  “Everybody’s satisfied so far.  They’re reading the email strings.  And nobody’s kicking about paying you to lounge around down there.  But they’d like to see you.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.  But understand one thing, Steve.”

“What’s that?”

“I AM.  Repeat.  I AM going to be back here every night.  And not that “two in the morning” stuff, either.  I have somebody who needs to be taken care of here.  A kid.”

“I didn’t know you had a kid, Dan.”

“It’s a long story.  I do.  So we’ll  do it my way or I’ll have me one of them cushy offices in a building in Houston.  And neither one of us wants that.  Right?”

Steve sounded hurt.  “Dan, Dan…  I said we’d do it.”

“I know, Steve, but that’s while I’m sitting here.  If I’m in there, SOME people decide they want to throw their weight around.  They’re gonna be throwing at my bumper goin’ out the gate.”

Nikki was monitoring this conversation.  “Dan, you’re kinda harsh on ‘im.”

“He’s the one I was talkin’ about, babe, throwin’ his weight around.  He needs me more than I need him.  It’ll be okay.”  I pointed out the picture on the screen.  “What’d’ya think?”  I wanted to see if she was paying attention.

“Old.  Wet?”

“Yeah,  here’s a test report.”  I pulled it up on the screen and she looked at the numbers.

She pointed to a column.  “aren’t these supposed to be, like, two digits or less?”

“Right.”

Her finger pointed to the heading.  “Uh, this is a breaker?”

“That’s what it says.”

“and it, like, goes with a bus?”

“Yep.”  She WAS paying attention.

She smiled.  “I heard you do this one.  You said, “dry the breakers in an oven and remediate the bus with portable heaters.”

I laughed.  “I oughtta be cookin’ supper and YOU should be doin’ this!”

“Nuh-uh,” she said.  “I’m like a parrot.  I just repeat what I heard.  And navy bean soup for supper, okay?”

“Yes, dear.”  She slapped the back of my head playfully as she left.

I was on the second page of a tablet where I was logging my time on each job, talking into my headset and typing when I saw a hand reach around and hand me a glass of coke over ice.  “Take a break,” she said.  “Come sit in your chair.”

I kicked back in my recliner and she knelt at my feet, took one and rubbed it.  I groaned.  After a couple of minutes, she switched feet.  “Where’d you learn that?  And don’t tell me your grandma…”

“Then I won’t say anything.”  She smiled.

I closed my eyes for fifteen minutes.  When I opened my eyes, she was sitting on the sofa, her knees drawn up under her, watching me.  “You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine, why?” she answered.

“Because you’re looking at me.”

“Sorry,” she said.  “I just never saw anybody work like you’ve been working,  You just DO it.”

“I suppose, babe,” I said.  “It’s what I do.”

“I’m impressed.”  She smiled.

I went back to work.  After another hour, I got up to stretch.  I found bean soup simmering on the stove and Nikki in the living room with headphones.  Beethoven.  She took the phones off when I walked in.

“This is what you chose?” I questioned.

“yes,” she answered.  “I love this music.”

I smiled, walking back into my office.  Back into the fray.  Five o’clock and things were dwindling when she came in and her hands grasped and kneaded my shoulders.  When she stopped, she wrapped me in her arms from behind and whispered in my ear, “Dinner, babe!”. And kissed me lightly on the top of my head.

The soup was good.  After supper, I fielded a couple more phone calls and emails and then shut the office down.  I walked into the living room.  She smiled when I entered.  “I’m done for the night,” I declared.

“Good,” she said.  She patted the sofa beside her.  “Lay here.  Put your head on my lap.”

“What?”  I looked at her.

She looked at me.  “It’s simple.  Lay here.  And put your head on my lap.  I’m trying to help you relax.  Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.  And I did.  She looked down at me and massaged my temples and caressed my face.  “Mmmmmm, baby, that feels soooo good!”

“I used to do this for the little girl next door when I babysat.  It calmed her down and put her to sleep.”  She smiled.  “Don’t go to sleep, though.”  And it could have been perfectly innocent and so very caring.

Finally I sad, “Nikki, If I don’t get up and shower, I’m gonna go to sleep right here in your lap.”

Her smile was sublime.  “That wouldn’t be THAT bad.  But you’ll sleep better if you shower.”

I got up.  She usually showered first, but tonight I went ahead.  Twenty minutes later, I was out and she went in.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “I sewed my own pajamas today.”  And she did.  My oversized pajama bottoms were altered to fit her much slimmer and shorter frame.  She sat on the sofa and I was safely in my chair.

I looked at her.  Her eyes were softer, a subtle change in the way she looked at me.  I wrote it off as fatigue on my part.  I was mentally fatigued.

“Babe,” she said, “When you go out, are you going to be able to get to someplace where stores are open?”

“I dunno.  Why?”

She said, “I’m gonna need some things.”

“What kind of things?”

“I need another bra and some panties. And anything I can get for clothes.  I can write down my sizes.”

“I can do better than that.  I can take you?”

“Take me?”

“Yeah.  When the roads are open, we BOTH go to the office.  You stay there for a few hours while I visit some clients, then I come get you and we go to Houston and get what you need.”

“Can you do that?  I mean, they want you there bad.”

“And I’ll be there.  But I have to take care of you, too.”

“Dan, I don’t have money.”

“I got an empty platinum card and a full bank account.  I think I can get you fitted out.”

Squeal.  And she launched at me and kissed me on the lips.  Perhaps a little bit too long.  But she backed up like it was the most natural and innocent thing she’d ever done.

“Now get off my bed,” she said.

And we both went to sleep.  The next morning my alarm went off and I woke to the smell of coffee and bacon.  I walked into the kitchen rubbing my eyes.  “Beat you!” she giggled.

Mid-morning I was busy answering email and she came in.  “Dan!  There’s a bulldozer comin’ up the road!”

“Come on!” I said.  “Let’s go see.”  We drove my truck down to meet the dozer.

“Uh, yeah,” said the operator, pointing at my big four wheel drive pickup.  “That’ll make it out just fine.”

“I’ll be coming back later.”

“You got an emergency pass?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”  The company had sent out an email with letters to grant access to me as “emergency personnel” and I had copies in the truck.  “We need to make another pass through the house and then we’ll be back here.

The grizzled operator snorted.  “They’ll get out of your way.  There’s a big washout a mile up the road, but you can get by on the good part.”

Great!  Thanks!  Hey, you wanna cold coke?”

“Nah, thanks,” he said.  “I got an ice chest full.”  He pointed to the box beside him.  “But thanks!   Really!”

Nikki was excited as we went back to the house.  I shut the computer down.  And I called Steve and told him that I was going to be offline for the rest of the day.  We checked Tommi’s food and water, then shut the generator down and locked up the house.  I had an overnight bag packed, and my camera and my laptop computer.  And Nikki was in the middle of the cab, buckled in next to me.  Like it was the way things should be.  I didn’t question it.

The drive out on our little secondary road was slow going.  We dodged a couple of washed out sections, easing by crews at work repairing them.  They stopped and stared at this big silver truck coming out of an area they thought was empty of humanity.  Nikki waved.

Once we hit the main road, things picked up a bit, but there were still sections that needed care.  And finally we hit the interstate highway and headed west.  Eighty miles up the road, you wouldn’t know there even WAS a storm.  And Houston was, well, Houston.  It took me several tries before I found a hotel room, and it was a bit pricey, but we were glad to get it.  And I took Nikki to a mall.

She needed EVERYTHING.  And she got it.  I had to push a few times, making her choose slightly more expensive GOOD stuff instead of the cheapest available, “And for heaven’s sake, Nikki, get enough of ‘em.”  I was carrying armloads of bags, the second trip, having already deposited a load in the truck.  As we started to leave the last store, she looked wistfully at the cosmetic and perfume counter.  I caught the look.

“Is there something you’d like, there, babe?” I asked.

“No, Dan.  You’ve spent too much on me already.”

“I bought you stuff you need, babe,” I said.  “Now, is there something that I can just GIVE you?  Like makeup?”  I didn’t think she needed makeup.  It would be gilding a lily.”

“Perfume?”  She named a name.  “But no.  It’s like, eighty dollars!”

I turned toward the perfume display and an attentive salesgirl came forward.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am.  Whatever this young lady needs, give it to her.”

She smiled at Nikki.  Nikki told her the name, and a blue foil box was presented in exchange for a swipe of a credit card.  We made our way back to the truck.

“Dinner!” she said.  “What about dinner?”

“Pick a restaurant.”

She did.  We ate a very nice meal.  I noted her manners were certainly a lot better than I’d expect for a girl out of Section 8 housing.  I asked her about it and found that it was yet another of the lessons from grandma.

That put us checking into the hotel room.  We brought in the bags and entered the room, replete with a pair of queen-sized beds.  I watched a happy teen trying on one outfit after another, then carefully packing them all away in their bags.

We showered.  When she came out, she was wearing one of our purchases, a very neat pair of pajamas that chastely covered her and in my mind made her even more desirable.   I showered second, came out to find she’d turned down both beds and was propped up on a pile of pillows watching real TV for the first time in several days.  I sat on the edge of the other bed.

“No,” she said.  “You can sleep there.  But come over here and sit by me for a while.  While we watch TV.”

I did.  She snuggled up against me.  “Dan, thank you.  You didn't have to do any of this, you know.”

“I know,” I said.  “But you lost everything.  You needed stuff.”  I sniffed.  “Even that perfume.”

“Did I put on too much?”

“No.”

“Mom puts on too much.  I guess it has to cut through the cigarette smoke.  Grandma said it should be a hint, not a hammer.”

“It’s a hint.  Smells very good.”  And you look very nice in your new clothes, baby.”  Snuggled against me, I could lay my cheek on top of her head and breathe the scent of a fresh, clean girl into my nostrils.  I felt a familiar stirring.  I raised my knee, drawing my leg back to hide the bulge.”

“Is something wrong, Dan?” she asked.

“No, “ said, “Just a cramp in my leg.”

She raised up and looked directly at me.  “You don’t have to fib to me, Dan.  I KNOW what an erection is.”

“uh… Nikki.”

“And I know that sometimes  you can’t control when you get one.  It’s okay, Dan.  Really.”

“Nikki…”

“Dan…  I just wanted to be close to you for a little while.  You take good care of me, okay?  You can go to your bed if you need to.”

“Oh, dammit, Nikki, I don’t want to.  I liked you there.  But..”

“I understand, Dan.  You’re a good guy.  We…  I wasn’t tryin’ to …  I was tryin’ NOT to.  Okay?”

“Okay.” And I got up to get into the other bed.  And as I left, I kissed her on the nose.

“No,” she said.  And she pulled my face down and kissed me on the lips, just a tiny bit past a little girl happy kiss.

The alarm went off at six AM and we were out the door a half-hour later, stopping at a dinner for breakfast that wasn’t nearly as good as the ones I’d been enjoying, even though I did get to gaze at those blue eyes over a hot cup of coffee.

Three hours later we were back at the house, unloading her purchases and restarting the generator.  I left her under the watchful eye of a yellow cat and I went to work.  On the way in, I phoned Steve and told him to meet me on one of the jobsites so I wouldn’t have to waste time at the office.  By the time I’d visited all three sites, it was six PM.  It took me an hour to get home.

I walked in the door to a smiling Nikki.  She was dressed in new shorts and a simple cotton blouse and darn it! My heart fluttered when I saw her.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said.  “Everything okay?”

“Great,” she said with a smile.

I sniffed.  “Smells like a roast.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “I hope it works.  It was frozen.  I left in the fridge to thaw yesterday.  But I stuffed it with garlic and it’s been on the stove since noon.  I need to do some vegetables and a pot of rice.  You can go take your shower and it’ll be ready.”

I smiled.  “Thanks.”

She looked at me.  “If you could’ve called me, I would’ve had it ALL ready when you got here.”

“But I didn’t have a way to call you.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I’ll fix that.” I turned to Nikki.  “Okay.  If you can get through tomorrow, you’ll have a phone”

“I just need one until the phones come back on, Dan.”

“That might be a while, baby,” I said.

“But my own phone?”

“You’ll need one.”

“Dan, answer me something.  Truth, okay?”

I looked.  There was a serious look in the face of this young doll.  “Always the truth, Nikki.  Why would we lie to each other?”

“We shouldn’t.  Ever.”

“So what’s the question?”

“How long am I going to stay here?”

“As long as you want.  As long as you need to.  As long as you can.”

“Bu… but what if my mom doesn’t come get me?”

“That would be sad for her.  But you can stay here.  Might be some strange hoops we have to go through, because if you’re here, I need to be able to be responsible for you.  Like for doctors and school and things.  Is that the answer you were looking for?”

“I guess so,” she said.

“What else can I say?  Did I miss something?”

She fixed me with a gaze.  “Just one thing.  How long do YOU WANT me to stay?”

And heaven help me, because the word that came out of my mouth was “Forever.”

And the response was a fifteen year old girl leaping into my arms and wrapping her own around my neck.  And a decidedly un-little girlish kiss.

“I missed you today, Dan.  I really did.”

“I missed you too, Nikki.  I thought my day would never end. But we got ourselves a mess here.”

“What do you mean, Dan?”

“Very confusing for me.”

“How?”

“Nikki, you’re fifteen.  I’m forty one.  That’s twenty-six years.”

“Grandma told me that the reason Grandpa wasn’t around was that her married her when she was sixteen and he was forty-five.  That’s almost thirty years.  And she loved him until the day she died.”

“I could go to jail for just touching you.”

“I know that.  But I won’t tell.  Nobody’ll know.”

“You’ve known me for what, a week?”

“Yes.  How much time do I need?” She turned and plopped backward onto the sofa, arms crossed.  Her bottom lip was pouting.  “You know,” she said, “I’m NOT ignorant about people.”

“I didn’t say you were, Nikki.”

“I know about sex and stuff.  I mean, I have a Mom who’s been showin’ me the wrong way to do that since I was old enough to remember.”

“b-but…”

“No “buts”.  I know you’re aroused by me.  You tried to hide it but you didn’t do a very good job.  Don’t you imagine you just might have the same effect on me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m fifteen.  I’ve known boys.  I’ve known men.  But I never let one TOUCH me.  Dan, I’m a virgin.  At fifteen.  I don’t know if there are any others in my class.  I suppose there are, but I know I am, for sure.  And I wanted to kiss you and hug you and maybe other stuff.  And I know all about the laws.  So what do you think I’m gonna do?  Kiss you and run tell somebody?  I’m not.”

“But Nikki, five days ago you didn’t even know me.  I brought you in from the storm.  I didn’t do that to take advantage of you. I’d have done the same thing if you were a boy.”

“Even the cologne?”

“Well maybe not the cologne.”

“So YOU put the cologne on, and then you walk by me and I smell it and I think “hmmm, that smells really good” and I want to get close enough to smell it some more, and you start getting all paranoid?”

“Nikki… baby…”

“And that’s another thing.  I’ve been “babe” an’ “baby” and now you’re gonna treat me like I got a disease.  Don’t you just suppose I might want to just cuddle and be hugged and kissed.”

Okay, baby,” I said, “but kisses and hugs…  it’s hard to draw the line there sometimes…”

“Dan.  Would you ever hurt me?”

“No…”

“I believe you. Implicitly.”  And Nikki used words like “Implicitly”.  “D’ya want me to say?”

“Say what?”

“That I think I love you?”

“Nikki, that’s just what I’m scared of.  That’s why I don’t have a girlfriend.  I don’t ever want to be told “I love you” again and give that back and have them change their minds.  Every time that happens, it hurts worse than the time before.  And the last one…”

“I’m sorry, Dan.  It’s never happened to me.  But I’ve had a screwed up life.  My mom would just as soon be rid of me.  I don’t know who my dad is at all.  And there’s nobody in my life, ever been in my life, that made me smile like you did.  Already.  And I don’t want to be told “I love you” just because you want to get in my pants.  They’re MY pants, and I control who gets in ‘em.”

“I didn’t do anything, Nikki…  Just…”

“Don’t you understand, Dan…  You didn’t, but you did.”

“I don’t want to take advantage of you, Nikki.”

She smiled, but a tear was tracking down a perfect cheek.

“Good!  Then don’t.  Hold me and kiss me and tell me that you will love me forever and mean it.  Would THAT be taking advantage of me?  If you mean it?”

“No.  It wouldn’t.”

“Am I too unlovable to say that, then?”

“No, you’re certainly not.”

Then in a quiet small voice she said, “Then exactly why don’t you say it. If you mean it.”

“You win.  Nikki, heaven help us, I feel like I’ve been hit by lightning, but I love you.”

“And I love you too, Dan.”  And this time I kissed back.  And again.  This time I felt her lips part and a tongue brush mine lightly.  I opened my own lips and our tongues met for the first time.  “Mmmmmmm,” she purred.  “I know you’re scared, Dan,” she said.  “But I will never leave you.  I promise.”

“I want to believe you,” I said.”  I do.  But baby, you’re fifteen.”

She kissed me again.  “Babe,” she said, “ fifteen is old enough to do “forever’.  People didn’t used to get married in their twenties and thirties like today.  I can do ’forever’.  I’ll be yours forever.  Okay?” Kiss.

I sighed.  “Then I’m yours.  Forever.”

And she pushed me backward onto the sofa and was astraddle me, kneeling.  She relaxed and settled into my lap and her crotch landed on top of my erection.  And she wiggled down against it.  “You tried to hide this from me.”  She grabbed my shirt and pulled it upward, tugging so I’d raise my arms and she could get it off me. Finishing, she reached down to unbutton her own shirt and paused.  “Dan, I don’t have big titties.”

“Little darling Nikki, I know what size titties you have.   Do you think I’m made of steel?  I looked, babe.  Besides, I washed your bra.”

“Then you’re not disappointed?”

“Certainly not.”

She stripped the shirt off, tossing it over her shoulder and lowering her arms.  At first she crossed them over her chest, covering that precious beauty, but I kissed her and she lowered them and sat back.  “Beautiful.  Absolutely perfect.”  And I caressed them, reveling in the firm flesh, her areoles a little smaller than a quarter, her nipples like pencil erasers, just as pink, and now, just as hard.  I twisted downward to kiss one.  She purred, and when I sucked it, her hands pushed the back of my head, pushing my face into her.

I sat back up straight and looked at her face, then kissed her bangs on her forehead.  Her eyes were bright.  “Dan,” she whispered.  “Wouldn’t the bedroom be better?”

I cupped the cheeks of her ass in my hands, holding her against me and stood up.  She buried her face into my neck as I walked us to the bedroom and gently sat her down on the bed.  Her hands went to the waistband of my pants and pulled downward.  I took the hint and stood up and shed the remainder of my clothes.  Her eyes widened at the sight of my dick, as hard as it could possibly get, all six inches of it.

“So that’s it,” she said.  “That’s it.” She moved to a kneeling position and pulled her shorts down below her butt, then rolled backward and peeled them off her long legs.  When she lowered her legs, I was treated to the sight of wisps of dark, fine hair on her pubic mound.  She wasn’t hairy.  The mound was rounded and gave home to the start of her slit, glistening with moisture.

I crawled into the bed beside her and kissed her.  Her arms pulled me on top of her.  “Nikki, darling, I love you, but we can still stop.  You’re still a virgin.  You can keep that.”

“Dan,” she said.  “ I love you, and… my virginity?  I’m finished with it.  I want you to have it.”

“It could hurt the first time, baby…”

“I know.  But I talked to the doctor when I first started having periods and he said my, uh, hymen was vestigial.  Like in almost not there.  And if it hurts the first time, it won’t hurt all the rest of the times.”

“Maybe it would be better if you were on top, baby, where you can control how fast things go.”

“Okay, honey,” she said.  I rolled her over on top of me.  We kissed more, my hands wandering, exploring her lithe body.  She sat up, astraddle me.

“Wow,” she commented, “I can’t believe how much stuff is coming out of me.” Her hand reached down and touched the head of my dick as it was trapped between us.  She raised up and it flipped upward.  She guided it towards her waiting hole, the head lining up, slickened with juices I’d love to taste.  She worked her hips forward and back, pushing downward as the head buried into its home.  “We’re doin’ it, Dan.”  She rose up, then pushed down.  A half inch disappeared. The next stroke got more.  And finally I felt he pussy lips against the base of my dick and her smile told the story.  “Dan, you’re IN me.”

“Did it hurt, baby?”

“Not even a little bit.”  She was smiling with her whole face, looking down at me. Then a cloud came over her face.  “Dan, I don’t want to get pregnant.”

“Uh, babe, that’s not happening.  Remember when I told you that my ex and I couldn’t have kids?  It could have killed her or the baby.  So I got fixed.”

“Like a vasectomy?”

“Exactly.”

Giggle.  And wiggles involving two people with parts that were made to fit together.  “Then shoot.  Come.”

“What do you know about coming and shooting?”

“Mom’s a slut.  And not a very quiet one.”  She slid back and forth on me.  And laid down on top of me, and we entwined our arms and kissed.  Mated.  “Dan,” she whispered.  “It ain’t sex to me.  It’s love.  Just a part of love, but it’s love.”

I marveled at the flurry of thoughts and emotions that were running through my Nikki. “You’re so beautiful in so many ways, Nikki.”  I kissed her and she writhed in my arms, then pushed up, her hands on my chest.  And her hips moved.

There was a smile and her eyes were gleaming as she began to experiment with the feeling she could generate by moving the moistness over the shaft that she’d welcomed inside her.  “Mmmmmm.  Dan!  Feels soooo good!”  She rocked back and forth, finding an angle and a motion that made her very happy.  “There!  Like that.  I can feel you IN me and I can feel ME rubbin’ on you.  In just the right place.”

And she started a rhythm.  And I couldn’t help myself, but my own hips started pushing in concert with her rhythm.  I could feel her juices starting to cover the front of my balls and my pubic mound.  My dick was immersed.  And Nikki was getting more insistent in her motions.  The smile on her face morphed to concentration and her eyes alternated between bright and open to squinched closed.  And then she bit her bottom lip.  “Oh!  Dan.  It’s. Happening!  Aaauuughhhhh!” and her hands grabbed my chest, my breasts, and her fingers dug in.  And she came.  As I splurted uncontrollably into her center.

“Neeeekki, baby!  I’m coming…..  Aaahhhh!!!!”  And Nikki fell forward into my arms.

It took a minute for us to return to lucidity.  “Dan,” she said.  “Mom told me that it wouldn’t be good for me the first time.”  She sighed.  “She was wrong about that, too.”

“Mmmmmm, baby!  I’m glad.”  I kissed her gently.

“Was it good for you?”  She looked at me from three inches away.

“I think I entered a parallel universe, baby.”  She giggled softly.

“It was good for US, then.”  She kissed me lightly, perfectly, in post-coital bliss, her face framed by dark brown hair, her blue eyes happy.  From our nether regions came a soft plop as my softening dick fell out of its new home.

Nikki gave a tentative wiggle in response.  “It fell out, Dan…”

“It’s dead.  It died happy, though.”  And I smiled at her tinkling giggle, caressing her back and butt with my hands.  “You feel so good, baby.”

She purred at my touch.  “Mmmmmm,”So do you, baby.”  She slid sideways off of me and molded herself along my left side.  “Dan, you take such good care of me…”

“You’re worth caring for, baby.  You were before you showed up at my door.  And even more now.”

Her eyes were bright, a smile on her lips. “you’ve given me more in five days than I’ve had since Grandma died, Dan.”

“That’s a two-way, street, little one. You don’t know what it meant to me to wake up and find you in the kitchen, smiling.  And leaning over my shoulder in the office, smiling.  And sitting on the sofa, smiling. It’s like you brought a rainbow into my life.”
Chapter Four

We stayed in an embrace for some more time when Nikki remembered the kitchen.  She got up and disappeared into the bathroom and returned.  “We made a mess of Nikki, babe!  I’m going to finish dinner.”  She pulled on the clothes she’d strewn around the house.

I joined her, walking up behind her as she stood at the stove.  I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed the back of her head. She turned, her hair bouncing, spoon in hand.  She smiled.  “You know, it’ll be even better around here since we won’ t have to tiptoe around each other.”

“Huh?”

“You know,” she smiled,  “Makin’ sure you’re properly clothed around me an’ me around you.  Stayin’ a respectable distance apart.  And I don’t have to make a bed on the sofa.”

“No you don’t,” I said.

“You don’t know, Dan.  I wanted to get in bed with you the first night I was here.  And not for sex, babe.  Just to feel safe.”

“Babe, I’m glad you didn’t try.  I couldn’t have handled it.  I was battling in my head over you.”

“Why, Dan?”

“Because you’re an impossibility.  You’re smart and cute and sweet.  But impossibly young.  I was killing myself every time I had a thought about you that strayed just a bit off the line.”

“I know, Dan,” she said.  “I was havin’ the same ones.”  She lifted a pot lid and stirred the contents.  Get a plate.  This is ready.”

We sat down at the table and ate our meal.  She was glowing.

“You look so much happier, Dan,” she said.  “Is that from ME?”

“Yes, my love, it is.”

We cleared the table in record time.

“Shower” she said, giggling.  “Both of us.”

I stared.

“Don’t be bashful.  I want that whole naked thing.  You’re the first guy I ever saw naked, and I wanna play, okay?  So we can start in the shower.”  She was shedding clothes on the way up the hall, laughing, “Don’t worry about the clothes on the floor.  I know that lady that takes care of the place and she’ll pick ‘em up.”

I followed like a lovesick puppy.

“Come on, Dan…  you can’t take a shower with your clothes on.”  Her eyes twinkled.  “Here! Let me help.”  She peeled my t-shirt over my head and then started unbuttoning my jeans.  I heard the sound of my own zipper and then she tugged the waistband downward.  She stood up, naked.  A vision.  Her face was wreathed by that walnut collared hair, a sassy little flip at her jawline.  She shook her head and her bangs settled in place.

She kissed me.  I kissed her back, then started to bend over to get out of my pants.

“Nuh-uh,” she said.  “I started it.  I’ll finish it.”  And she knelt down in front of me.  Her fingers hooked into the waistband of my briefs.  And pulled them downward.  The elastic waist caught on my dick, pointing upward, hard.  Blue eyes looked up at me.  “Uh, Dan, I’ve never undressed a guy before.”  She pulled the waistband out and past my dick, dropping my briefs on top of the jeans piled around me feet.  I stepped out of them.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said.  “I didn’t get a chance to look while ago.”  She could look now.  It was pointed at her face.  Her fingers gently wrapped the shaft.  “This is so neat,” she said.  As I stood there trying to keep my knees from buckling, her fingers explored the head, tracing the coronal ridge, touching and squeezing.  A big drop of pre-cum formed on the tip.  Her eyes looked at me and turned naughty.  She picked up the drop on her fingertip and popped the finger in her mouth.

“Hey, that’s actually pretty tasty.”  And then she wrapped the head of my dick in her mouth and sucked.

“Oh, gosh, Nikki,” I moaned.

She pulled off it.  “Did I hurt you?” she asked.

“Oh, no, babe.  You surprised me.”

She stood up and pulled my face down to hers.  And kissed me.  “Another first for Nikki, lover,” she said.  “Let’s get that shower.”

I was glad I’d designed the shower.  I knew when I designed the house that days would come when I might need the room.  Nikki in the shower with me was need.  And a naked, wet and lathered Nikki was a thing of joy.  I washed her.  I shampooed her hair.  She washed me.  Scrubbed my back.  Finally we stepped out and I wrapped her in the biggest, fluffiest towel in my inventory.  And made a mental note to get new towels.

She dried off and was drying her hair while I shaved.  She giggled.  “I never saw a guy shave before.  You make funny faces.”

I put a dab of lather on her nose.

After I finished shaving and brushed my teeth, the said, “Dan.  A little of your cologne would be appropriate.”

“I didn’t think you noticed.”

“I told you that I noticed.  You need to listen to me better.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  I put cologne on.  And she put dabs of perfume here and there for me to find.

We went back to the bedroom.  The covers were still a mess from our earlier activity.  “Grab a corner,” she said, and we straightened the covers.  She saw the spot where we’d leaked together earlier.  And there was a slight tinge of red. “I’ll wash these tomorrow, baby,” she said.  And she crawled into the middle of the bed and stretched out on her back.

The cat strolled into the bedroom, looked at the two of us, and strolled back out.

“Poor thing!  I’m probably taking his spot.”

“He’ll probably be back when things quiet down.”

“But they’re quiet right now,” she cooed.

I crawled beside her and kissed her, cupping a breast in my hand, my fingers teasing a nipple to hardness.  And then I moved my face away from hers, downward, kissing my way to her nipple.

“Oh yeah, Dan!  I like that!”

I tongued and sucked first one perky breast, then the other.  Then I looked up into her eyes.  “Nikki,” I said, “different people like different things.  If I ever start to do something that you don’t like, you need to tell me.  It’s your body.  You get to say what we do.”

“Oh, Dan, I want to do everything.”

“Everything?  What do you consider everything?”

She pulled herself down to cuddle up with me.  We entwined arms and legs.  And she explained.  “You know I WAS a virgin until a couple or three hours ago, right?”

“Right,” I said.  “I felt that.  And saw the evidence.”

“I was.  And I’m not experienced.  At all.  I never even made out with a guy.  Or kissed one.  Not like we did.  When I felt your tongue touch mine, that was the first time that happened.”

“But you…  you started it.”

“Yeah.  That’s the point.  I know about stuff.  I heard Mom and whatever guy goin’ at it, an’ like I said, they weren’t quiet.  The tongue thing, well I read about it somewhere.  And that stuff about shooting an’ coming, well I heard that through the wall a bunch of times.  And when I did you with my mouth, I heard about that.  And about her getting’ him to do that to her.”

“Wow!”

“But, baby, I never did anything.  With anybody.  So, like, maybe I don’t know HOW to do things, but I know that things are done.”

“Okay…”

“And the same thing goes with you.  If you don’t want to do something with me, just tell me.  I remember one of Mom’s guys didn’t like to, as he said, “Eat pussy.” But most of them did.”  She looked into my eyes.  “Do you?”

“I think that eating you would be one of the happiest events of my life, babe.”

Squeal!  “Good!  “Cuz I want to see if that feels as good as I think it will.”  She kissed me.  “And while ago?  When I put your thing in my mouth?  I REALLY liked that.  I hope you do.  I want to do that.  Lots.”

Her hand was exploring my balls.  “Lay back an’ let me play.”

I did.  She had questions about what and how hard and where, and I answered as she explored.  She finally eased up into my arms again and my hand explored the sweet, moist folds of her womanhood.  Oh, right, she was fifteen.  Make that her late girl-hood.  We kissed and teased, lips to lips, face,neck, chest, and I kept my fingers busy in her pussy, finally succeeding in breaking her train of thought.  Her pelvis was hunching insistently against my fingers as a teased an orgasm out of her.  Finally she tossed her head back and said, “Dan!  Lick me.  There!”

And I did, reveling in the juices flowing from her, the smell of lust, the velvet feel of her folds, and the little pea-like head of her clitty.  I covered her clit with my mouth, sucking it in between my lips and working it with my tongue in light, feathery flicks.  And she came, pulling my face hard into her wetness.  Her muscles tensed then relaxed.  I gave her a few seconds, then resumed.  “Dan!”  Her hands went back to my head.  “I don’t know!  It’s too soon!  Aughhhh!  Wait!  Don’t stop!  Please.  There!  HARD!”  and I abandoned the light flicks and laved her clit vigorously with my tongue.  “Nnnnnnngghhhhhhh! Ohgodohgodohgod!!  Yesssss!”  She went rigid, back arched, her pussy pressed against my face.  And then fell back.  “Ahhhhhhh!  Please!  Come up here!”

I cuddled her into my arms and kissed her face lightly.  “Dan, baby,” she whispered, her lips near my ear.  “I used to do myself with my fingers sometimes, and I made myself come.  But what you just did,  wow!  Just wow!”

I brushed her sleek hair away from her face and kissed her.  “You make me feel good, babe!  You’re a doll.  A fantasy.  No, I take that back.  My fantasies were never this good.”

She pushed me onto my back and rested her chin in her hands on my chest.  “Did you have fantasies about me, Dan?”

“Oh, Nikki, I tried soooo hard not to.  I felt bad about thinking of you like that.  I wasn’t supposed to.”

A smile formed on her lips and her eyes twinkled.  A smile to Nikki was something that involved her whole face.  “But you did anyway, huh?”

“I couldn’t help it.”  I kissed her.  “I felt bad about it.”

“You don’t have to feel bad about it any more.  I want you to think about me like this too!” She eased down my chest, playing on my nipples with her tongue.   “Do guys like this too?” she asked.

“I don’t know about other guys, but I love it.  And it’s like there’s wire from my left nipple to my dick.”

“Your left nipple?  Is it the most sensitive?  You showed me my RIGHT nipple is more sensitive.”  And she was holding my dick when she latched onto my left nipple, sucking it with her lips and teasing it with her tongue.  She giggled.  “That’s so COOL!  Every time my tongue moves, your thing moves.  And gets harder.”  She smiled.  “I’m gonna love learning how to please you.”

“You already please me, blue-eyed girl.”

“Yeah, but I want to fix you so where every time you stop to relax, you think of me.”

“Too late, Nikki!”

“Too late?”

“Yeah.  All day today every time I closed my eyes, I saw you.”

“Before we even talked about us?”

“Yes. Before we even talked about us.”

“It’s us now, Dan.” She left my nipple, headed further down.  She regarded my dick at close range.  It was rock-hard.  She turned her head back toward me.  “This thing is MADE for me to suck on, Dan!”  Her head dipped and I felt lips close over me, sucking.  She pulled off me with an audible pop.  “I think I could do this better if I was between your legs, baby!”

“Okay,” I said.  I scooted up toward the head of the bed, arranging pillows to support my back.  The fact that it gave me a clear view of the brown-haired cutie crawling between my thighs was a definite plus.

She started kissing my balls, giggling.  “They’re all wrinkly!  It feels funny on my lips.  I like it!” She kissed again. “You said not to suck too hard, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Her head bobbed down.  “Mmmmmm,” she purred.  “Was that too hard?”

“Nope.  Perfect!”

“Okay, then.”  She worked me over for a minute.  Then she licked up the shaft of my dick.  “I’m just kinda wingin’ it here, babe,” she said, grinning.  Her pink tongue made another pass.  “Oooooh, look!  You made me some juice!”  She dispensed with the finger this time and her pink tongue licked it off me like a lollipop.  And then she sucked.  Her hand was wrapped around the shaft and her lips met her fingers as her head bobbed.

“Dan,” she asked, “can I bite it?  A little?  I mean, I WANT to.”

“Bite, baby.”

“How hard?”

“As hard as you want.  I trust you.”  It is a truly sensual thing to see your lover smile when she’s got your dick in her mouth.  I felt teeth.

“Too hard?”

“Nope.  You could bite a little harder.  Just not on the head.  Real light on the head, okay?”

And she gave me a series of sucks, licks and nibbles.  Purrs and giggles accompanied her experimentation.  “Am I doin’ this right?”

“If you do it much longer, you’re gonna see how right you are…”

Squeal!  “Like, I’m gonna make you COME?  With my mouth.”

“Yes, you are.  So you better stop or you are going to get a mouthful.”

Her lips slid down over the head and her teeth fastened behind the ridge, tugging.

“Nnnnnnnghhhh!” I breathed.  “Baby!  I’m serious.  I’m gonna come.”

“I want you to.”

B-but…”

“You’re my lover, Dan, and I want this thing to come in my mouth.  I mean, if Mom could do a guy she just met, I can do THE guy who I’m gonna spend my life with…”  And she went back down on me.  As she worked me over with lips, teeth and tongue, her free hand cradled and caressed my balls.  She looked up at me, giggling.  “This is FUN!  I can feel it throbbing!”  She returned to sucking and swirling me.

“I’m close, baby,” I said, touching her pretty hair.  She doubled her effort and “Nnnnnnghhhhh!  Baby!  Hereitcomes!  Gahhhhh! Ohbaby!  Nnnnnghhhh!”  the first surge spurted into her mouth.  I felt her tongue and cheeks as she swallowed.  Then the second.  And third.  And the rest was just a long flow like fire.

She kept the suction as I softened, then she climbed up to rest on my chest.  “Would it be gross to kiss you right now?”

“No.  You kissed me with your juice all over my face.  Kiss me.”

She did.  I could taste the vestiges of my semen in her mouth.  “We taste pretty good, huh?” she giggled.  We kissed more.  Then she asked, “Uh…  When they say sixty-nine, that’s where we do each other at the same time?”

“Yes it is.  Wanna try?”  And in a trice I was treated to the prettiest little pussy I’d ever seen.  We attended to each other for some minutes.

“I LIKE this,” she said.  “But I wanna kiss you.”  She turned back around and we embraced.  “You’re hard again, Dan.”  And she impaled herself on me.  We went one more round, and I was astonished to find out that I could do a third orgasm in just a mere few hours.  Nikki was under no such limitation and came twice as my stamina met the hurdle of building my third orgasm.   This time when she sat up, recognizing the wetness between us, she grinned.

“I know what to do about this mess,” she announced.  “If you don’t think it’s gross.”

“What’s gross?”

“You clean ME up and I’ll clean YOU up.  And that way, we won’t make a big mess like with did earlier.”

I grinned at her.  “I like the way you think, darlin’!”  She squealed and simultaneously attacked my dick and balls as I licked our combined juice from her pussy.  She was right.  We WERE delicious.

Finally we lay side by side, holding hands.

“Wow!  What a day, Dan!”

“Yes it has been.  I left here this morning troubled and lonely, and now I have YOU.”

“Forever, Dan.  I will never leave you or forsake you.”

And I will cherish you and you alone, for the rest of my life.  I love you Nikki.  Forever.”

“I love you, Dan,” she whispered.  She gave me one more kiss and turned toward me, her hand holding my dick as we drifted off to sleep.

The alarm was all too soon.  Nikki hit the kitchen dressed in my t-shirt (But I’d rather YOUR t-shirt than pajamas) and panties and whipped up a breakfast for us both.  As we sat at the table eating, she said simply, “Dan, we’re married, you know.”

“Married?”

“Yep!  Maybe not the way the state sees it, but that’s the way it always was.  When a man took a woman to be his wife, then they vowed to each other and sealed it with making love.  We’ve done all that.”

“You actually WANT to be married?  To me?”

Fifteen year old eyes regarded me coolly.  “Yes I do.  I said so yesterday.”

“Then we’re married.  First day I get free, we’re going to buy us some rings.”

She smiled sublimely.

“Now I have to go to work, babe. I’d rather stay with you, but I need to make us some money for a honeymoon.”  And I kissed her and turned to leave.

She tugged at my belt.  “One more, husband,” she smiled.

I kissed her.  “They’re all yours from now on, wife.”

And I went off to work.  I zipped through a couple of hours of site visits and pointing out things that might be obvious but that the clients felt better about after I validated their suppositions.  Mid-morning I parlayed my day to drive out of the hurricane footprint to a nearby city where a facility was drying out some wet equipment.  After my visit, I stopped by a cellphone store and picked one out.  I grabbed a burger on the road and headed back into the mess and a couple more site visits.

At the five o’clock hour I saw no reason to hang around longer so I headed back south to my Nikki.  She was in the living room at the front door when she heard my key in the lock.  Greeted with a kiss at the end of a day.  What a wonderful thing.  Even more wonderful with Nikki, soft, eager, smiling, those blue eyes laughing for me.

“I hope you’re hungry for spaghetti again,” she said.  “I had a hunger.” She paused.  “Actually TWO hungers.  Spaghetti is one of them.” She smiled wickedly.  “Let me go start the water boiling for the pasta.  Go sit in your chair.”

It felt good to recline.  Nikki showed up at my feet and untied my work shoes.  This was almost too much.  “Baby, you don’t have to do that,” I said.

“I know, babe,” she smiled.  “But you went off to work today and I stayed home.”  She pulled off my shoes and kneaded my feet.  I moaned.

“The sheriff stopped by today to check on us.  In an army hummer.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Just checking on us is what he said.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I wonder if he’s asking himself questions about you being here.”

“He didn’t say anything about it.  Why?”

“Oh, just something to worry about.  You’re fifteen, living with a guy who’s old enough to be your daddy.”

“Or my uncle.”  She smiled.  “Or my husband.”

“Except you’re too young to get married in this state.”

“Oh.  That’s stupid.”

I sighed.  “That’s the law.”

“But what about girls who have sex an’ get pregnant and they’re younger than me?  Huh?”

“I didn’t say it made sense, baby, just that it’s the law.”

She left and came back.  “Pasta’s gonna be ready in ten minutes.”  And she crawled into my lap.  “Baby, but I WANT to be married to you.  It’s just stupid!  I could be the biggest skank around, and nobody would care, but if I want to commit my life to the man I love, it’s against the law?”

“It would be against the law for me to be with you if you were the world’s biggest fifteen year old skank.  To skank legally you’ve have to do younger guys.”

“It’s not funny, Dan.”

I kissed her.  “I know, baby, but what is, is.  We can’t do much about it.”  I stroked her sleek walnut tresses.  Pushed them back from her ear and nibbled at it, eliciting giggles.  And whispered, “I love you.”   And that got me another, full mouth, passionate kiss.  Our tongues wrestled together.

“Mmmmmm,” she purred.  “It’s a mess.  But you know, this is the best I’ve had it since Grandma died.”

“I’m sorry, baby.  You’re cute and smart and funny and a delight to behold and things should be better for you.”

“Thank you, Dan.  You make me feel so good.”

Our little reverie was interrupted by the bell of the kitchen timer.  We ate our meal, talking about what we each did during the day.

“I pulled a book off your shelf and read it, and I listened to some of your CD’s.”

“What CD’s?”

“Oh, some Beethoven symphonies.  I love his “Pastorale”.”

“That’s one of my favorites, too.  What book?”

“That one you had of collected Mark Twain works.  You have to sort of get your mind into him, but when you do, he’s FUNNY!”

“No TV?”

“I didn’t feel like TV.  I vacuumed and swept and did the laundry.  Those sheets with the big spot on them.”  She giggled.  “I should have cut a square out and framed it.”  She smiled.  “You know.  Proof of me giving myself to you.”

“It means something to me, Nikki.  It does.”

“I know it does, Dan.”

And there was a knock on the door.  I had the shotgun in my right hand as I opened the door with my left, my foot anchored firmly to stop it from opening more than a few inches.  “Yes?”

“Uh, Dan?  It’s me, Sheriff Richard.”

“Oh, come in, then.”

I stepped back, leaning the shotgun against the wall behind the door.  He walked in and saw the shotgun.  “Prepared, huh?” he laughed.  “I would be, too.  I had to arrest four guys in a pickup truck today.  Looters.”

“No shit?!?!?!”

“Yeah.  Kinda what I said.  But you know how some people are.  That’s why I came by today.  Wanted to check on you folks.”

“Where’s your Hummer?” asked Nikki.

“I gave it back to the national guard.  I like my SUV.”  He smiled.  “Miss Nikki, I put your name in a database.  We’re trying to find your momma, but nothing’s turned up yet.  But if she goes to Red Cross or one of the other organizations and asks, you’ll show up.”

Next he turned to me.  “Dan, you got everything you need?  Food?  Water?”

“I have my own well, sheriff,” I answered.  “And we have plenty of food.  How about you?  You’re welcome to a home-cooked meal.  We have spaghetti.  Nikki learned to cook from her grandma.  She’s GOOD!”

He patted his belly.  “Not today.  I’ve been eating at the national guard field kitchen.  They got a good cook there, too.”  He looked at Nikki, then me.  “So are ya’ll related?”

“Nope,” I answered.  I told him the story of opening the door. And finding Nikki standing there.

“I thought that’s what I heard you say the day we flew in.  But I didn’t think to ask.  Little girl,” he said, “that’s a heck of a story.  How’d you get left behind?”

Nikki explained to him as she had to me.

He looked at the two of us again.  “I can get you out of here, Nikki, if you want.”

“Thanks, Sheriff Richard,” she said, but if you take me from here, I’m gonna be a teenager in a shelter by herself, and I don’t want to do that.  Mr. Dan’s got me a cellphone and if you find out anything you can call me.  I’ll be right here.  Just like today.  Okay?”

“That’s okay with me,” he told her.  “Dan, she told me you’re driving out to work?”

I told him about what I was doing and where, and about taking her to Houston to buy clothes and supplies.

He looked at me with an odd expression.  “Sounds like you’re taking better care of her than she would’ve gotten at a shelter.  So you’re okay with her staying here?”

“Just call it the only shelter in the parish.”

He laughed.  “Well, then, I’ll make sure that the deputies know she’s here during the day and they’ll make patrols.”

“Any word on when electricity will be back?”

“The electric company says we’ll probably get this road back in another five or six days.  My office is on generator too, though, and the propane truck’s gonna come in on Friday.  I’m gonna send ‘em over here under escort to make sure you’re filled up, too.”  He looked thoughtful.  “Hang on!  I’ll be back.”

He walked out the door and came back in a minute with a walkie-talkie radio.  “Here,” he said.  “This one’s on our frequencies.  Here’s the charger.  If you need us, make sure it’s on channel one.  That’s our priority channel.  And just holler for help.  Miss Nikki, that’s especially for you.  It’s faster’n 9-1-1 on your cellphone.”

“Thanks, Sheriff Richard!” she said.  Turning to me, he said, “Dan, can you walk outside with me for a second?”

Now I was worried.  But I walked outside.  “Whatcha got, sheriff?”

“Dan,” he said, “You know that a person with a dirty mind would be all kind of suspicious about a fifteen year old girl stayin’ the house with you.”

“Yeah.”  I rubbed the back of my neck.  “I can see where a person might read something into that.”

“Well, here’s what I see…” he leaned back against the hood of the SUV.  “I’ve asked her THREE times now if she wanted to leave and three times she says no and then she looks at you.  I know what “no” means.  And I’m an ol’ country boy and I’m pretty sure what that look is, too.”

“What?!?!?”

“Don’t get upset, man,” he said.  “She’s not hiding it very well.  The kid is in love.”

“And with a bit of knowledge like that, where does that leave me in the eyes of the law, sheriff?”

He crossed his arms.  “In the eyes of the law, you’re looking at five to twenty, and a life as a registered sex offender.”

My shoulders fell.  “That’d kill Nikki.  Me too.  But Nikki…  Sheriff, she’s had a rough time…”

“That’s what I’m sayin’, Dan.  IF…  That’s a big “IF”, I was to make a case of it.  But you see, she might have told you about her momma, but I already KNEW about her momma.  And what’s goin’ on with her momma right now.”

“What?”

“The woman’s been in this parish for two years now and I’ve had her picked up three times for prostitution.  Drugs twice.”

“Nikki said there were problems, but she didn’t mention arrests.”  I rubbed my neck again.

“And just so you know, her momma’s NOT going to try and find her, I don’t think.  She and the latest boyfriend got arrested with another guy at a meth lab in Arkansas today.  I sent ‘em a file.”

“Oh, shit!” I said.  “I don’t know how to tell Nikki…”

“Don’t tell her.  It’s a piece of knowledge that won’t help anything.  Kinda like me knowin’ that she’s stayin’ here with you.”

“Damn!”

“Look, buddy,” he said.  “This is the country.  I’m the sheriff.  I get a pretty free rein on how to enforce laws here.  On you an’ her, I’m keepin’ my mouth shut.  Now I’m gonna tell you something.  An’ if you say anything to anybody, your ass is mine, but I ran a background check on you.”

“That should have been interesting.”

“It was.  Army engineer lieutenant.  Good credit.  No criminal record.  Divorced once.  Blah-blah-blah.  Talked to a guy I fish with that works at one of those plants where you work.  He says you’re some sort of electrical god.  You have a lot to lose, you know.”

“I know.”

“You know Nikki’s grandma?”

“Dead grandma?  To hear Nikki tell it,the woman was a saint.”

He laughed.  “You choose words wisely.  She was.  Was my wife’s aunt, too.  And this bein’ a little country parish in Louisiana, I know that sometimes young girls and old guys, well, her grandma was a case.  And so was a certain law enforcement official who fell in love with a teenaged girl thirteen years his junior.”

“No joke?”

“Nope.  I’m sixty-two and she’s forty-nine.  And her brother’s the district attorney.”

“That’s awfully convenient,” I laughed.

“So here’s the deal,” he said.  “You and Nikki… okay.  Unless SHE says it’s a problem.  If you’re a couple, you’re a couple.  And not one of those couples where I get reports of domestic disturbances.  You appear to be an honorable man.”  He paused.  “Now let’s see what Miss Nikki says about some of this.”

We walked back into the house.  Nikki was pacing.

“Nervous?” Sheriff Richard asked her.

“Ya’ll been out there talkin’ for a long time.  Dan looked serious.  Like he was worried.”

“He had reason to be,” said the sheriff.  “Miss Nikki, do you know what the law says about under-aged girls?”

“Yessir.  Mr. Dan explained it to me.”

“He did?  Good!  So let me get a final answer from you.  Are you SURE you want to stay here.  With him?”

This time I was watching.  And he was right.   She tried to hide it, so the smile didn’t show on her lips, but her eyes twinkled and she stood just a little straighter.  “Yessir,” she said.  “I do.”

“Go sit on the sofa by ‘im, then,” he said.

Nikki obeyed.  She sat next to me, hands folded on her lap, a little fidgety.  She glanced at me.

“Now,” he said, “tell me that you livin’ here with Mr. Dan is what you want, and don’t try to tell me that it’s “I’ll clean the house and cook and that’s it!”, okay?  Am I right?’

Nikki glanced up at me and then burst into tears.  “B-but Sheriff Richard, he didn’t force me to do nothin’.  I love ‘im.  An’ he loves me.  Don’t take me away…” She wailed, tears rolling down her cheeks.  I put my arms around her.  She looked up at me.  “I’m sorry, Dan,” she sobbed.  “I love you.”

I kissed her then turned to Sheriff Richard.  “Is that an answer?”

“Dammit, I’m sorry, Dan.  I’m sorry Miss Nikki,” he said.  “I know what I need to know.  You two are okay.  Just like you are.”  He paused.  “Dan.  Outside for another minute?”

Out the door we went.  He turned to me.  “I just broke my OWN damned heart, Dan.  I’m sorry.”

“I am too, sheriff.”

“Stop the “sheriff” bit.  Call me Ernie.”

Okay, Ernie.”

“Dan, are you… would you, if you could, you and her get married?”

“Married?  How?  She’s fifteen.”

“Listen,” he said.  “Her mom’s in jail, headed for prison.  She’s in a bad spot.”

“I know.  But…”

“But nothin’.  I’ve been huntin’ in these marshes since I was a kid.  I’m good at it, and I end up with a bunch of lawyers and a judge or two who just love to come down and shoot a few ducks and drink some liquor an’ play cards every October.  And I just might have me …  us a plan.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Emancipation.  Court order takes her out of her mom’s custody.  And a judge can sign a court order to allow her to marry.  At fifteen.  Used to happen all the time, just to make sure that a baby wasn’t sittin’ in the front pew clappin’ when his parents got married.  When I was young, people cared about that stuff.  They don’t now, but I think I could talk a judge into…”

“Wait.  Nikki’s not pregnant.”

“So?!?!  Nobody said she had to be.  I had an uncle who married his fifteen year old girlfriend before he went to Viet Nam.  They have four grown up kids now.  She wasn’t pregnant.  Just wanted to get married.”

“You think you can pull that off?”

“I’d pretty much bet on it.  Cost you a cold coke, though.”

I laughed.  “Come on it.”  We walked into the house.  “Nikki!  Get Mr. Ernie a coke!”

She came back in with the can in her hand.  “Ya’ll sure seem happier this time.”

“You gonna tell ‘er, Ernie?”

He smiled.  “Miss Nikki, I am so sorry I made you cry.  I really am.”

“I’m okay, Sheriff..  uh, Mister Ernie.”

“It appears to me that you love this here old guy.  Am I right?”

She nodded warily.  “Yessir.”

“Enough to marry ‘im?”

A smile, briefly, then, “Yessir.”

He laughed.  “Then smile, baby.  We’re gonna make that happen.”

Squeal.  And Nikki threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, the chastely kissed Ernie on the cheek.  “Really?  How?”

Ernie explained.  “Now I gotta go, folks.  But here’s the deal.  After the wedding, we get together for a crawfish boil or a gumbo or somethin’.  And Dan…?”

“Yeah?”

“You vote for me?”

“Hell, man, I’ll put your sign in my yard!”

I shook his hand and Nikki hugged him before he left.  We plugged in the radio charger and she was almost giddy.
Chapter Five

“It’s gonna happen????  I can’t believe!  It’s REALLY gonna happen!  Dan!”

“Nikki, you need to be sure.  I’m not the guy that thinks marriage is just a way to get a tax deduction.  If you think it’s forever…”

She wrapped me in her arms and kissed me.  “Dan, you’re mine!  I will never leave you or forsake you.  Forever!”

“Forever’s a long time, babe,” I said.  “I can see it from forty-one.  Can you see if from fifteen?”

She looked into my eyes.  “I’m walkin’ into it with you, no matter what, Dan!” she exclaimed.  “You’d better get used to it.”

“I love you, babe,” I said, holding her.

“I love you too…” she giggled.  “Let’s get the kitchen straight an’ get us a shower, ‘kay?”

“You betcha, brown-haired girl.”

We had the kitchen squared away in half an hour.  And into the shower.  She was not the least bit ashamed of her own nudity this time.  And as I stripped, she watched.

“Danny,” she said, “D’you think I’m pretty?”

“I do, Nikki.  You’re very pretty.  And it’s not the clothes you wear or make-up or anything you have to put on or add.  You’re just a naturally pretty girl.”

“But I’m not blonde.”

I laughed, “Sweetie, blondes don’t have a monopoly on pretty.  You have beautiful hair.  It’s clean and shiny and has that little curl, and I adore your bangs.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I said.  “And besides, a guy in love gets to say that his girl is pretty.  But you were pretty that first night you were here, before I found out I loved you.”

She pressed her nakedness against me.  “I just want to be what makes you happy, babe!” and she kissed me.

“You make me way past happy, babe,” I answered.

The next two weeks were surreal.  I’d never been like this when I was married before, juggling a career for me and a career for my wife, waking up and going in separate directions, coming home,  it wasn’t the same.  Of major importance, though, was that first wife, Shelley, was NO Nikki.

Nikki and I just clicked.  She had the most amazingly placid demeanor, and the more I talked with her, the more I came to realize that there was a world-class brain behind that wry smile and those blue eyes.  I mean, first, she just took over the household like she’d been doing it for years.  I kept a clean house, but she made it shine.  Meals?  Breakfast every morning, a snack in a bag for me to take off to work, and when I came in there was always something ready for me.

There was another thing.  I’d come in and find the books she was reading.  Yes, she did Mark Twain.  And downloaded a few to my e-book reader, and I tracked titles and progress, and she was a reader.  A pretty fast one.

But one of the big surprises was, “Dan, when school starts back up, you’re gonna fix me up!”

“Fix you up?  Are you broken?”

Nope.  Just I’m thinkin’ about my grades.  Uh, do YOU think I’m smart?”

“Hah!  Not since you were helping me with storm damage stuff.  You learn amazingly fast.  That’s “smart” as far as I’m concerned.  So what are you asking, little doll?”

“I’m asking you to HELP me.  I never worked in school.  I just sit through the class.  I think I can do better.  I want you to help me.”

“I’ll help you, baby.”

“Okay, then.  I need to write down some stuff about math an’ see if we can get from there.  I’ll do that tomorrow, ‘kay?”  Her eyes twinkled.  “And when school starts back…  Your Nikki is gonna turn over a new leaf.”

Nights were our time.  Nikki put a whole physical dimension to my life that even my wildest fantasies never imagined.  She was a temptress in teen body.  Most evenings we showered together, but sometimes we didn’t, and I’d get out of the shower and find her in the bed lying seductively, reading, and she’d look at me and giggle and wink, and off we’d go.

I’m trying to say that life was good.

So I was at one of the client sites mid-morning when my cellphone rang.  I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello.  Dan Granger.  Can I help you?”

Laughter.  A voice I recognized.  “Dan, this is Ernie.  I got some news for you.”

“Oh, hi, Ernie!  Figured you’d been busy.  How’re things going?”

“Hell, Dan!  We got our butts kicked by a hurricane.  But we’re getting things back together.  Lemme ask you up front.  Are you still serious about Miss Nikki?”

“Yes I am, Ernie.  Why?”

“Then you’re gonna like what I have for you.”

“Whatcha got?”  I was excited.  My heart was pounding.

“I got a judge who let me explain the situation.  Now he wants to talk to Miss Nikki.  And you.  Separately.”

“When?”

“You know, Dan, I can move this along pretty fast.  Can you call Miss Nikki?  I’m about twenty minutes away from ya’ll’s house.  I can bring her into town to talk with the judge this afternoon.”

“Ernie, straight up…  this isn’t some way to get Nikki out of my house for good, is it?”

“Oh, no way, Dan.  If I thought that, I’d tell you.  This judge is straight up.  He’s not gonna be stupid.  Just wants to hear it from her.  And if you can see ‘im tomorrow morning, then that’s what we need.”

“Okay, Ernie.  I’ll call her and tell her.”  I thought for a second.  “Say!  I could talk to ‘im this morning myself, before or after Nikki.”

“Okay.  You call Nikki, and I’ll call Judge Lanford, and we’ll talk afterward.”

As soon as I hung up on the sheriff, I was on the phone to Nikki.  “Hey, sweetie,” she answered.

I told her what was going on.

“Dan, I’m worried.”

“Sheriff Ernie says not to worry. Just tell the judge what you told him the other night.”

Small voice.  “Okay.  And Dan?”

“Yes, babe?”

“I love you!”

“I love you too, sweetie! “  I hung up with Nikki and shoved the phone into its holster.  It rang almost immediately.

“Yeah, Ernie?”

“You’re set up for eleven this morning.”  He told me the address of the judge’s office.

My next call was to the office.  “Steve,” I said, “I’m tying up loose ends right now.  I have a domestic emergency.  I may be in and out for the rest of today and tomorrow.  Ledbetter has a handle on this project and he can call me if he needs me.  I’ll be on my phone if you need me.”

“Dammit!  Okay, Dan.  Do what you have to do, I suppose!”  Steve knew better than to think I was going to screw my clients.

“That’s a good little boss,” I laughed.

“Dammit, Dan!  Don’t rub it in!”

I worked up until a quarter to eleven and headed across town.  Walked into a tastefully appointed law office, gave my name to the receptionist, and she walked back to report my arrival.  I sixtyish man appeared in the door wearing shirt and tie.

“So you’re Dan Granger!”  shaking my hand he said, “I’m James Lanford.  Sheriff Richard told me about you.  Can you join me?”

“Yessir,” I said.

Laughing, he said, “Oh, don’t do ‘sir’ with me.  Ernie and I gut ducks together.  I’m just James, okay?  You coming in from work?” He asked.  “Ernie told me you were at one of the plants.”

“Yes, James.  I feel under-dressed.”

“Don’t,” he said.  “Sit!”  He motioned me to a chair equally as luxurious as the one behind his desk.  I sat.

“So Ernie explained to me a, well, a situation.”

“Yes, James.  I situation I wasn’t out looking for.  It just happened.”

“So he said.”  He folded his hands together.  “And I had an interesting talk with a Miss Dominique Domingue.”

“She’s an intelligent young lady who’s had a rotten life right up to the point where an apartment building fell in on her.”

He looked at me.  “That’s what she said.  And the sheriff updated me on the status of her mother, now in the custody of the State of Arkansas.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And her grandfather; her mom's stepfather, is out of the picture.  I looked into him.  Not the sort of character I’d want to turn over the custody of a fifteen year old girl to, I’m told.”

“I didn’t know that.”

He looked at a legal pad on his desk.  “Says here that he divorced Nikki’s grandmother a couple of years when Nikki’s mom was sixteen.  In and out of jail since then.”

“I didn’t know that, either.”

“And you, according to our sheriff, are, in his words, “an honorable man”.  He skirted the law to get some of that information, apparently.”

“It’s amazing the kind of help you can get with a cold coke after a hurricane,” I said.

The judge chuckled.  “If you’d’ve given ‘im a cold beer, he’d have rented a chapel for you.  Uh…chapel.  So let me get this straight.  You’ve known Miss Nikki for three, three and a half weeks, and you’re willing to take care of her?”

“Yes, I am, James.”

“More than take care of her?”

“uh.. yes…”

“Marry her, except that according to state law, she can’t get married without parental permission until she’s eighteen.  Sixteen WITH parental permission.”

I looked at him straight on.  “Yes, James, I would like to marry her.  She and I have talked about this.  As I am sure you’ve discovered.”

“Dan,” he said, “She had tears in her eyes.  Swears her un-dying love for you.  And for some reason, I am inclined to believe her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Most unusual young lady.  I asked her how she spent her days while you were working and she gave me the names of Mozart concertos and Beethoven symphonies and Handel and Telemann and Boccherini and Twain and Heinlein.  Sounds like she’s quite the sponge for culture.”

“Then she didn’t mention being an engineering assistant?”

“No.”

“The first couple of days after the storm, when I got phone and internet back, I worked from my home office.  She sat there and watched, then started catching on, and talking about it, and dammit!  She picks up things fast!”

“Sounds like she’s picked up an electrical engineer along the way.”

“Yeah.  She did.”

“You love her?  I mean, bullshit aside, you LOVE her?  Not for a housekeeper or a sex toy?  Love her?”

“James, I know how some people could do that.  But I couldn’t.  I would kill myself before I let myself add one tear to Nikki’s life.  She’s had it hard enough already.”

“Dan, she said the same thing about you.  Except she said your hard life was from women.  I can understand that, as many cases as come across my desk.”

“Nothing else I can say then.”

“Well,” he smiled, I took the liberty of having Miss Dominique Domingue affix her signature to this legal document.  I will have you affix your own.  And I will sign it.  And Mizz Helen,”  He punched the intercom, “Mizz Helen will come in here with her handy dandy court seal and seal it, making it binding and legal.  And I think that if you take this to the courthouse, those people will issue you and Miss Nikki a marriage license.  I think you’ll find that Sheriff Richard is having a hamburger with her at the diner up the street.”  He laughed.

Mizz Helen appeared just as he signed under my somewhat shaking signature.  She stamped the papers and gave me several copies.

“Mizz Helen,” he said, “Give the sheriff a call and have him bring Miss Nikki back here.”   He looked at me.  “Oh, and call your sister at the courthouse and see if she’s too busy to bring us over a marriage license.  I’m finding that I feel particularly judgish today.  I like helping people from time to time.”

“W-what???”

“Well, Dan,” he said.  “If you want, and she wants…”

I stammered, “Y-you ask her…”

I sat back in my chair. “Wow!”

“So,” he said, “how’s work?”

We chatted for five or ten minutes when Nikki walked in wearing a blouse and skirt and pumps, an outfit she’d bought with me on our trip to Houston.  Her eyes twinkled when she saw me.  She stood at my side.

“Hi, Miss Nikki,” said the judge.

“Hello, Mister James, “ she said.  She looked at me, smiled, and took my hand in hers.  “Since you’re smiling…”

“Dan told me to ask you something,” James said.

“Yessir,” she said softly.

“You told me you wanted to marry him.  He wants to know if today’s too soon.”

Squeal!  I got a kiss.  Ernie got a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  And so did the judge.  And Nikki was back at my side.  “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

The front door opened and close.  Helen and her sister showed up with a marriage license form.  In the presence of a judge it was filled out and signed by me, by Nikki, by the judge as the official performing the marriage, and by Sheriff Ernie Richard and Miss Helen as witnesses.  And holding hands in a judge’s office, we exchanged vows and promised our lives to each other forever.

And in our topsy turvy day, THEN we went and bought two simple gold bands.

Leaving the jeweler with my brand new fifteen year old bride sitting in my truck beside me, I said, Missus Granger, I need to make a phone call.

She glowed.  “Wow!  I get it!  I’m really married to you!”  She giggled.  “Make your call, husband!”

I flipped the phone open and called Steve.

“Where ARE you?” he asked.

“Leaving a judge’s office,” I said.

“W-whaaa???”

“Long story, Steve.  I’m gonna be out the rest of the day.”

“Somethin’ wrong?  Need bail?”

“Nope!  Need a day off tomorrow.  Got something to take care of.”

“A day off?  We’re goin’ balls to the wall!”

“And I know exactly what’s going on for my projects, and they’ll do quite well until  Thursday.”

Steve was a little irate.  “Dammit, Dan!  What do you have that’s more important than your job?”

“Oh, Steve, my dear old friend, I just stood in a judge’s office and got married.  My wife is more important that this job, if it should come to that.”  I paused for a second.  “But you don’t want it to come to that, do you?  Do WE?”

He was off balance now.  “Dammit, Dan!  You coulda told me…  congratulations, I guess>”

“Why thank you, Steve!  Here.  You can congratulate my new bride, too.”  I handed the phone to Nikki.  “Say hi to Steve, baby, “ I told her.

“Hi, Steve,” she giggled.

“You married my engineer?”

“Yes I did.  Can I keep him to myself for a day?”

“Uh…”

She giggled some more.  “I’ll leave enough of ‘im to go to work Thursday, I promise,” she said sweetly, and he handed me back the phone.

“Okay, Steve?” I asked.

Steve coughed.  “Dan, she sounds YOUNG!”

“She is young.  And cute.  And smart.  And I’m takin’ ‘er home right now.  I will talk to you later.”

“Uh, okay.  See you Thursday, then.”

She was laughing.  “Oh, you’re gonna get such a reputation…”

And hour later we were walking through our door into the house.  Cellphone rang again.  Sheriff Richard.

“Hey, Ernie!”

“Hi,” he said, “how do you think I did?”

“I can’t say thank you enough.  You’re on my permanent list of good people!”

“Well good,” he said.  Just wanna let you know that ya’ll should have real electricity in the next day or two.”

“Great!” I said.  “Nikki said “thank you, “ too.”

“I’m sure she did.  You two have fun.  I’ll talk to you later.  Ya’ll need to come over and visit soon, okay?”

“I’ll.. We’ll sure do that, Ernie.  Thanks again!”

“No problem,” she said.  “Just tryin to keep my crime numbers down, ya know!”

I laughed.

“See ya later,” and he hung up.

I looked at Nikki.  “That was our benefactor.”

She smiled.  “Dan, I don’t know what we did to deserve this, but a buncha people just helped us.”

“Yeah.  I don’t know what we did.  But In three weeks this hurricane thing got me a perfect wife.”

She hooked a hand around the back of my neck and swung herself to face me. “And I have a perfect husband,” she said.  “You need to know that’s how I feel.”  Her kiss punctuated the statement.

We walked out the back door and checked the generator together, then came back in.

“You know,” she said, “ we’re not expecting company, and even if somebody DID show up and catch us, we’re married.  I’m thinking that just maybe I don’t want to wear clothes right now.”

I watched her unbuttoning that neat blouse.  “I like the way you think.”

She’d just pushed me backward onto the sofa and climbed on top of me when the cellphone rang.  I ignored it.  The people I’d been working with KNEW that if I didn’t answer, they should leave a message.  I thought that would happen.  But it rang again.  I waited.  It rang again.

“Pick it up, babe!” Nikki said.  “It’s got be important.”

“More important than a naked girl in my lap?”

She giggled.  “Answer your phone!”  She fished it out of my pants and glanced at the display.  “See!  It’s your sister!”

I hit the callback button.  “Hey, Sis.”

“Hey yourself.  You still workin’ all those hours?”

“Kinda,” I said.  “But I’m off tomorrow for a family emergency.”

She drew a breath sharply.  “Uh, what KIND of family emergency?”

I laughed.  “The best kind.  As in I wanna spend it with your new sister in law.”

Squeal!  “You got married?”

“Yep!”

“Who?  Do I know her?”

Nikki was watching me.  “Yeah, you know ABOUT her.”

Another deep breath, audible in the phone.  “Dan!  Not that kid that was stayin’ there?!?!  She’s fifteen!”

“Yep!  Nikki’s your new sister in law.  Went to a judge and did it all legal and correct.   Just  this afternoon, as a matter of fact.”

“You’re serious!”  Incredulity colored her voice.

I looked at Nikki and announced loud enough for my sister to hear, “Your sister in law is beside herself with joy.”

Nikki smiled.

Back to my sister.  “I am serious.  I love her and she loves me and we are husband and wife now.”

Tersely.  “Okay.  I suppose.  You’re a big boy.”

“yeas, I am.  Now, are you calm enough to say hi to Nikki?”

“Yes.  Let me talk to her.”

“Be nice, now!” I said, handing the phone to Nikki.

“Hi, Sis!” chirped Nikki.  “Your brother’s wonderful!  He’s the love of my life!”

“We love him too,” said Dana.  “You’re a bit of a surprise, but welcome to the family.  When are we getting’ together.  Us women have to make that happen, you know.  The guys will never get around to it.”

Nikki beamed, “Let him get through all these jobs and we’ll get ya’ll down here or we can go there.”

Dana sighed, “Yeah, babe!  Now you keep ‘im straight!”

And as related alter, Nikki floored her.  “ I sure will!  That’s why I married ‘im.”

Dana was still trying to breathe when I got the phone back.  “What’d’ya think?”

“Dan, she’s a horrible person!” snickering.  “You deserve each other.  I can’t wait to tell your brother.  Or do you wanna tell ‘im?”

“Nah, you know that I hate to deprive you of your few joys in life.”

She was still laughing when we said goodbye.

Nikki’s naked butt wiggled in my lap.  “See!  They’re happy to know me, huh!”

“Yeah,especially that part about you keeping me straight.”

She batted her luxurious lashes.  “But I do, Dan.  Every chance I get!”  She was kissing on my neck when the phone rang again.

“That’ll be the brother,” I said.

“After this one we turn the phone off,” she said.

“Hey, bro!” I said.

“You did WHAT!?!?!?!”

Calmly I answered, “I married Nikki.  She is the love of my life.”

“Lemme get this straight.  You opened your door one day and she walked in, and that was three weeks ago.  And you’re MARRIED?!?!?!”

I laughed, trying to defuse the situation.  “Yeah!  Ain’t it wonderful?!?!?!”

He drew a deep breath.  “AND she’s FIFTEEN!?!?!”

“Yeah.  She’s fifteen.  And smart.  And cute.  And YOUR sister in law.  And as far as we’re concerned, this is forever, so get used to it.”

Nikki was listening.  She looked at me, eyebrow arched, questioning.  I smiled and shook my head, smiling.  Back to the phone.  “So congratulate me.”

“Yeah…  I suppose.  Okay”

“If you’re nice, I’ll let you congratulate your new sister in law, too.”

“I’ll be nice.  It’ll be like talkin’ to one of my daughter’s friends.  Lemme talk to her.”

I handed her the phone again.

“Hi, Bill,” she said sweetly.  “You’ve got a wonderful brother!”

“Hi, Nikki.  He’s a barrel of laughs, ain’t he?”

Nikki purred.  “Yes he is.”  And she did it to Bill.  “Sometimes we stay up all night.(big, pregnant pause)  Laughing.”  She giggled.  And grinned at me.  I could hear Bill’s discomfiture over the phone as she handed it back to me.

“Well,” I said.  “there she is.”

“Well I suppose.  You’re a big boy…”

“That’s what SHE said!” I said.

He sputtered.  “DAMMIT!  Okay.  We all need to get together.  When you can.”

“I know.  Nikki an’ Dana are already talking about it.”

“Good,” he said.  “I’m gonna let you go, bro.  I’m sure you can find something to entertain yourself.”

“Yeah.  Unless you’re completely warped, you can’t BEGIN to imagine.”  I kissed Nikki loudly.

“Bye!” click!

“You’re so baaad!” she giggled, kissing me.  “I love you!” She sighed.  “Are they gonna accept me?”

“Yep!  No doubt.  Dana’ll do it because she knew how bad things’ve been with divorce and girlfriends.  Bill will buy it just because he’s gonna see me an’ you and know how offbeat it is that we’re so happy.  But you might want to know that he has two daughters older than you.”

“Oh!”  she said.  “I’ll just wave this!”  She looked at the gold band on her ring finger.  “Mrs. Granger!  Hmmphh!  How about that!”  She slid off my lap onto the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She shoved my knees apart, smiling.  “My first wifely duty, sir,”she giggled, smiling with her whole face.  Her hand tilted my hard dick toward her lips and I drew a breath as she sucked me into her mouth.  She went “Mmmmmmm” as she sucked me.  “I know how this relaxes you, baby!”  She spent a couple of minutes bouncing my balls in one hand as she gently sucked me in and out of her mouth.  The she stood and took my hand.

“Husband,” she said, “ come to our bedroom.”

I followed her.  She crawled onto the bed on her hands and knees and looked back over her shoulder.  I knew the signal:  doggie style.  I couldn’t resist working over her wet pussy with my lips and tongue.  “Baby,” I said, You KNOW I don’t have much control like this.  I can’t last long.”

“She purred, “Give me your best shot, babe.  You just married me today.  I won’t take long.”

I knelt behind her, erect, her pussy pink, wet and inviting.  I pushed my dick downward, the head parting her lips and smearing her moisture over the head.  I was preparing to push forward but she beat me to it, pushing backward onto the head and first inch of my shaft.

“Oh, Nikki,” I moaned.  “You are heaven!”

“Fill me, Dan,” she said simply.  “Push me hard and fill me!”

I gripped her hips and pushed inward as I pulled her backward onto me, bottoming out, my pubic bone hard against her ass.  I could feel muscles rippling inside her.  Her mobile hips moved back and forth on me in in short, insistent strokes.

“I feel your balls bumping me.  Mmmmm!”

And I matched her rhythm, stroking in and out of heaven.  She was whimpering, little happy, “Mmm,mmm,mmm” sounds coming from her.  I marveled at her beauty.

Suddenly she pulled forward off me, rolling onto her back, legs spread.  She held her arms out.  “Come here,” she said.

I crawled in between her waiting thighs , entering her with one fluid motion.  Her pelvis rocked upward to meet me and we began to mate.  I felt her mons against me and I stroked in and out and her own motions met mine.  Her fingers dug into my shoulders.

“NNnnnnnnggghhhh!  Dannnnn!  I’m coming, babyyyyyyy!” and she smashed upward against me.  I felt myself in her all the way to her cervix, its hard little roundness against the head of my buried dick.  And I washed that cervix with jet after jet of my semen.

“Ahhh!  I feel it!  I feel you coming!!!  Babyyyyyy!”  And one of her hands hooked behind my head and pulled me down to kiss her.  Her legs were wrapped around me, trapping me as we finished our orgasm.  With our mouths joined at one end and our sex joined a the other, I rolled us over so that she rested on top of me.  When our kiss finally ended, she pulled away.  I saw tears running down her cheeks.

“Baby,” I said, “I love you.”

She looked at me with tear-filled eyes.  “Oh, DANNNNNNN,” she sobbed, “I love you SOOOO much!  Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

I took her left hand and put it in front of her face, showing her the ring on her finger.  “Baby.  My Nikki.  It’s NOT a dream.  It’s you and me.  Us!”