Xander

It’s a perfect night for a walk. The breeze is warm, the beach is deserted, and the waves are calm. The ocean is the only thing that calms Tori after one of her nightmares. The closer to the water she is, the more she forgets about the bad men and the woman who took her. That’s why I built her this house right on the water.

Sasha seems to thrive in the presence of the ocean as well. She’s more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her skipping along the water’s edge laughing with Tori.

Tori. She doesn’t call her that, I wonder why. She purposely calls her by her given name every time she speaks to her. She hasn’t slipped up once. Maybe she has a relative named Tori that she doesn’t like? Or an old friend? I’ll find out later when I read the background report I have in my briefcase. I didn’t have time to read through it today, but my investigator assured me she has no skeletons in her closet that would affect Tori or me. Calvin has been my head of security since the kidnapping, and I trust him explicitly. He saw what that did to Tori, and I know he would never allow her to be in harm’s way again.

Sasha gasps and yells down the beach to me. “What about the pizza?”

She must be hungry. “They’ll text when they’re here, don’t worry.”

“I don’t want the delivery person to spit in our food because we weren’t home.”

“I tip well. He would happily sit all night if I asked him to,” I say catching up to her. She and Tori have stopped and are squatting down looking at a piece of sand glass.

Sasha rolls her eyes when she looks up. “I’m sure you do.”

“What? Am I supposed to be a dick and not tip him?” I don’t get this woman.

“No, but you don’t have to brag about being a great tipper. In fact, you don’t have to brag about a lot of things like what a great surgeon you are or how handsome you are.”

“I’ve never bragged about how handsome I am. Although, I am pretty good looking if I do say so myself.”

She pops up off the ground and points her finger at me. “Ha! I knew you couldn’t resist the urge to brag if I gave it to you.”

“What’s brag?” Tori asks.

“It’s when someone speaks highly of themselves,” I say.

“Is it bad?” she asks looking back and forth between us sensing conflict in the air.

“Not always, sometimes it’s nice to be humble and modest, though, and keep those kinds of things to yourself instead.”

“Why?” she asks innocently.

“Yeah, why?” I ask just to irritate her.

“Because it makes you look like a jackass.”

I shouldn’t smile. I should be offended and appalled at her choice of words in front of a five-year-old, but I’m not. I smile, and Tori’s expression is one of confusion. She knows about swearing, she knows I don’t do it unless I’m angry, and she knows she should never do it. Yet, here I am on the verge of laughter.

“You said a naughty word,” she says to Sasha.

“I did?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why is it naughty?”

Tori looks to me for an answer. “We just don’t say it, that’s all.”

“That doesn’t make much sense, you must have a reason.”

“It’s not nice,” Tori says, coming up with her answer and looking proud of herself for it.

“Jack is a name, and ass is a part of your body. I don’t think Jack is a bad sounding name personally, and we all have an ass.”

“It’s a swear word, and she’s not allowed to say it in public where someone might hear her. If you’d like to say ass at home, Tori, that’s all right. Just don’t make it a habit.”

“I don’t believe in swear words,” Sasha says, and Tori’s eyes go wide. Nobody disagrees with her daddy, and she knows it.

“The rest of the world does, so we don’t say them if we can help it.”

“Well, I think that’s stupid. What makes a word a curse word anyway? It’s a word like every other word. Nothing different happens when you say shit instead of poop, or bitch instead of nasty person. If you give power to those words, they become powerful. If you use them like every other word, no one will think twice when you say fucker in public.”

“Okay, that’s enough. You will not say that in public, Tori. Understand?”

She nods her head looking horrified, and Sasha shrugs as if I were the crazy one here. My phone vibrates in my pocket. Thank God, saved by the bell.

“Pizza’s here, we better head back.”

“Yay, pizza! I’m hungry!” Tori squeals and runs down the beach her eyes darting back and forth making sure no one else is around. She stops to wait for us at the base of the stairs unwilling to go any further alone.

“Sorry about the swearing thing. I just think it’s dumb.”

“It’s okay, I get where you’re coming from as an adult, but as a parent of a five-year-old, I have to conform to society somewhat. She’s going to be in kindergarten this fall, and I can’t have her cursing like a sailor in school.”

She doesn’t respond. We catch up with Tori and climb the stairs back to the house as Tori heads straight to the island to take a seat. She won’t go near the front door when she doesn’t know the person on the other side.

“I’ll be right back. Hey, bug, why don’t you show Sasha where the plates and cups are.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She hops off the stool, and Sasha joins her while I head upstairs. When I get back, they are all set to eat.

“Find everything? Feel free to snoop around all you want.”

“Yep, plates, cups, milk, and I grabbed you a beer, is that okay?”

“Yeah, great, grab yourself one, too, if you want.”

“I don’t drink, but thank you.” She doesn’t drink? Not even a beer? I don’t remember Calvin saying anything about her being an alcoholic because that would be a problem.

“I don’t have a problem with it or anything if you’re worried. I choose not to drink for personal reasons.”

“Good to know, and yes, I was wondering.”

“Thought so.”

“You did, did you?” I say twisting the cap off my beer.

“You get this little pucker right here…” She points between her eyes, “… when you think hard about something.”

I reach up and touch the groove between my eyes that I could easily fix with a simple injection of Botox but choose not to. “Here?”

“Yep.” She opens the pizza box and hands a slice to Tori.

“That’s pretty observant for only knowing me a few hours.”

“Technically I’ve known you for a little over two weeks, and I noticed it the night you stitched up my face.”

“You probably did. I was thinking hard about saving your perfect skin that night. I was also angry that someone did that to you and drove away without taking responsibility or at the very least calling 911. Have they made any progress on the case yet?”

“No, still nothing.”

“When somebody gets hurt, you’re supposta tell the police,” Tori says.

“See? Even a five-year-old knows better. Tori, honey, some grown-ups are just…”

“Jackasses?” she fills in for me, and I roll my eyes at Sasha. She mouths sorry from behind Tori, and I chuckle under my breath.

“Yes, jackasses. But remember, you can only say that at home with Sasha and me.”

“And my Zion.”

“Yes, and Zion when she comes home, although, I’m not sure she’s going to be open to that. She’s old-school.”

“My Zion’s not old.” Tori frowns and crosses her arms over her chest defiantly.

“I didn’t say she was old, but she is sixty-five-years old. I said she’s old-school, that means she thinks differently about things than younger people do.”

Tori still looks lost. “She doesn’t go to school.”

Sasha steps in to give this a shot. “It’s like this… so you know how people who are older like grandmas and grandpas watch TV shows that they watched when they were little?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s them being old-school. When you grow up, you’ll still like the shows you watch now, and little kids will call you old-school. Get it?”

“I’m already old-school, I watch Dallas with my Zion, and she watched that a long time ago.”

“Okay, maybe that’s a bad example for you then.”

“It’s not important, eat your dinner, bug. You need a bath tonight, and we still have to show Sasha around.”

Sasha mouths, thank you, and I nod. There’s a time to teach, and a time to eat, and right now we need to eat. Anyway, I don’t think either of us were going to effectively explain old-school to Tori.

When we are stuffed with greasy pizza, Tori and I give Sasha the grand tour. “So you’ve seen the living room, dining room, kitchen, music area, and the pool. Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll show you the rest.”

Our house is built into the side of a cliff. You enter through the front door at the top of the cliff or through the garage that is inside the wall of rock. “Up here are six bedrooms including Tori’s and mine, four bathrooms, a game room, and my office. Down below the main level where we just came from is Zion’s quarters, a theatre room, a library, a gym, and Tori’s playroom.”

“Whoa, there’s another level below the living room and kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“And just the three of you live here?”

Tori nods innocently. She has no idea that most people live in a fraction of the square footage she does. She’ll learn when she starts school, though, and I worry about that day. I worry about her going to school because of my bad experience with school. It’s unnecessary, I know, but she’s beautiful and smart and rich—the trifecta for popular kids—but I can’t help worry she will be picked on by those with less.

And I don’t mean just less materialistically. I also mean less love, less attention, and less opportunity for greatness. Kids are mean, and Tori has a weakness—her fear of strangers and the unknown. If they sense her weakness, and if for whatever reason they don’t like her, they could destroy her ability to thrive and mature.

“You’re a very lucky little girl, Victoria. Your daddy loves you a lot.”

I half expected her to say something snide about the rich. She surprised me with her kind remark.

“I know, we’re great, This is my room!” I chuckle at her off-handed pat on her own back. She’s a chip off the old block for sure.

She swings open a heavy wooden door that seems to be more difficult to move than it should be. I push it open a little wider to see for myself. It’s ridiculously heavy like it’s lined with metal. “Wow, that’s heavy,” I say to no one in particular.

“Steel reinforced, and all of her windows are bullet-proof glass and highly alarmed so don’t try to open them without changing the settings on the security system first.”

Tori is the safest kid in California when she is in her bedroom. It’s essentially a panic room or a bomb shelter, except panic rooms and bomb shelters don’t have windows. That’s why there is an actual panic room behind a secret door in her en-suite bathroom.

Sasha’s face is pale, and her mouth is set in a straight line. We don’t tell people about Tori’s extreme safety precautions, but if she’s going to be her nanny, she has to know what to do in the case of an emergency.

“This is Miss Ellie.” Tori holds up a pink and white stuffed elephant aka Ellie, the Dallas Matriarch.

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Ellie.”

“And I have books. You wanna read me a book?” She looks up at Sasha with begging eyes holding out her favorite book, Frog and Toad are Friends.

“We have to finish giving Sasha a tour, and you need a bath. Maybe she will have time when she tucks you in. How about that?”

“Okay,” she says dropping her head and tossing her book onto the bed.

“I’ll read it after your bath, promise,” Sasha says, and Tori perks up.

“So, her closet is in here, the bathroom is through this door, she has a few toys and books in here, but most of her things are downstairs in her playroom.”

“I got a secret room, wanna see?” Tori asks, and Sasha nods. “It’s in the bathroom.”

“It’s a panic room, in case of an emergency,” I add to clarify.

“Isn’t her bedroom panic room enough?”

“It has windows. True panic rooms don’t.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows shoot up, and she looks away. She thinks this is overboard—anybody who didn’t know what Tori went through would.

In the bathroom, Tori walks to the built-in shelves full of towels and opens it revealing a metal door. “See, cool, huh?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, cool.” Sasha’s lack of enthusiasm is lost on Tori. She presses the code into the security panel, and the door slides open with a whoosh. Inside is a panel with several screens attached showing every room in the house. There’s a small bed on one end, books, toys, and a mini refrigerator.

“How long can you survive in here?”

“Months, maybe a year, depending on how many people there are. The more people, obviously the less time.”

Tori peeks inside and around the corner before pressing the close button on the panel. She doesn’t go in there. She says it’s cool, but she knows what it’s for, and she never wants to have to go inside.

“Okay, that’s that. Let’s move on. Across the hall and down this way is my bedroom,” I say herding them away from the panic room. I open the double doors to my room and flip on the light right inside the door.

“Nothing spectacular, but if you need me, this is where I’ll be.” God, I hope she’ll need me. After that kiss we shared downstairs, I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve been inside her. I was getting some mixed signals at first, but when I had her pressed up against the window, I was pretty sure she was giving me the green light.

“Nothing spectacular, huh? You should see my bedroom… four of them could fit in here.”

“I have a solution to that problem right across the hall,” I say leading her to my favorite spare bedroom in the house. “This will be your room while you’re staying with us. I hope it’s enough of an upgrade for you.” I open the door and cross the room to switch on a light. A soft glow spreads across the elegant room, and Sasha’s eyes tell me she is going to love it.

“This is my sister-in-law’s favorite room in the house. She and her husband always stay in here when they visit.”

“I can see why, it’s breathtaking.” She’s standing right inside the door doing a three-sixty to see the room from every angle. Every spare space is filled with bookshelves, and those shelves are packed with romance novels.

She takes a step forward to look closer at a few of the titles. “Are these all romance novels?”

“Yes, David and Lola, my brother and sister-in-law, spent a summer with us. She loves to read, so I had the shelves installed and filled them with every New York Times best-selling romance book I could find. Zion helped with that part. She liked mom smut, too.”

She turns to face me. “Mom smut? I’m not a mom, and I love romance books.” She crosses her arms over her chest daring me to challenge her, but I know better. Women like Lola, and apparently Sasha, take their romance books seriously.

“I meant no disrespect. I come in peace,” I say holding up my hands. She relaxes her stance, and I see a hint of a smile on her lips.

“Sorry, it’s perfect. I’ll never want to leave, though. I’m warning you, this is a romance junkie’s dream come true.”

Oh, I hope so.

If that’s all it takes for her to stay here forever, I’ll buy her every romance book ever penned.

Sometimes all you need in life is some mom smut.