The storm moved in not long after. As a light rain began to whisper outside the window. my father gave one final turn of the screwdriver in his hand and dropped it onto the carpet. He sat back and looked at the coffee table in front of him. I was sitting across the room on the couch, watching with a bowl of ice cream in my hand. I enjoyed seeing the strong muscles of his arms tense as he assembled the various pieces, his face scrunched in concentration, his tongue absentmindedly sticking out of the corner of his mouth. I had always enjoyed watching him work. He had a special ability to lose himself to whatever he was doing, and being the extremely handsome man he was, the effect was intoxicating.
“What do you think?” he said, wiping his hands. “It’s nice, chh?” “I love it, Daddy. Thanks for putting it together.”
“My pleasure, sweetheart. Of course, my favorite part is having you watch. me,” he said, winking.
I grinned.
“I like seeing you work. You get so involved.”
Just then a giant peal of thunder shook the windows of the house. I jumped, causing my father to laugh.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Leah,” he said. “Just a storm.” “Sounds. like a scary storm.”
Another peal of thunder cracked the sky. The light rain roared into a downpour, the wind lashing the windows and rattling the panes.
My father stood up and walked over to the window to look out at the sky. “Although I will admit, it looks like it’s going to be one hell of a storm.”
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He walked over to the couch and sat down beside me. He placed a hand on my knee, my heart fluttering at his touch.
“We’ll just have to play some board games. What do you think, daughter of mine?”
“As long as you promise that we aren’t going to wash away.”
My father chuckled and patted my knee. His fingers caressed my thigh as he looked into my green eyes.
“I promise. love.”
Even though he was only my stepfather, John was the only parent I had ever known. My real father had deserted my mother before I had been born, and my mother had run out not long after. In the interim, she had met John at
an entrepreneur convention and gotten remarried a few months later. I think she had been planning to leave all along and had been looking for someone to trick into taking care of her daughter. Being the man he was, my stepfather had had no qualms deciding to keep me and raise me singlehandedly once my mother had fled. As he had told me more than once, despite not being technically related, he had known from the moment he had seen me that I was the love of his life.
A man in his late thirties, my stepfather was quite the catch. He was tall, about 6’2“, and overwhelmingly handsome, with a penetrating gaze and an aura of confidence and kindness that inevitably made every woman he met swoon. Growing up, I had been the playmate of choice for many of the kids in class just so their mothers would have a chance to talk to John whenever he came to pick me up or drop me off. It wasn’t unusual for women to slyly hand them their phone numbers in the grocery store or to interrupt us at restaurants to flirt. And it had never failed to amaze me how my stepfather had handled each of these situations, graciously turning down the women.
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Because in all the years I had been cognizant enough to notice the world around me. I couldn’t ever remember him dating. A self–made millionaire who had retired after my mother left, his sole task had been to take care of me, always giving me the best and making sure that I was happy in every way. I had asked him once or twice why he wasn’t interested in the
women he met, some of them stunningly beautiful, but he had always just shrugged in that adorable way of his.
“It’s because you’re all I need,” he would say.
Chapter 3
