Chapter 3

In my apartment...

I found myself outnumbered when I returned home, finding not only Erica, but Brooke and Riley already there, along with Siobhan. How in the world? I chuckled as they all reached up to kiss me and feed me supper. They had already cooked something up, which just happened to be spaghetti with meatballs, my personal favorite. That was an excellent start, if nothing else. Food was always a great icebreaker, at least for me. It also proved that my stepdaughters knew me better than I thought. I doubted that Siobhan could know me that well ... just yet.

“Well, this is a very nice surprise, ladies,” I commented, even as they didn’t waste time showing me that they wore only aprons.

“I remembered that scene from Color of Night, where Jane March wore only that apron for Bruce Willis while cooking their supper. We definitely want you to be in the right moment, and more than up to the job of breeding all four of us, if possible. We’re decidedly not on the Pill, which might well be part of why we’re so drawn to you.

“The Pill has its uses, but it has a rather unfortunate side effect, besides sometimes decreased libido. It often alters one’s tastes or preferences for sexual partners. If you ask me, more women should go off the Pill more often, not only to breed, but to return to their natural inclinations,” Siobhan related her own views on the matter.

“In other words, girls on the Pill tend to go for weaker, less masculine, more feminine dudes. Yes, that’s a rather observable phenomenon, especially as it cuts down the number of stronger, tougher guys and if she happens to get pregnant, anyway, the baby will come from weaker stock,” I grinned, especially at the idea that I was deemed to be preferable to some other choices by all four ladies in the room.

I knew that it would be very interesting to work with Siobhan while she carried my child in her womb, not to mention the likely reaction from Karen as she learned that all three of her own daughters were now pregnant to me. More to the point, there was nothing that she could do about it, even with fourteen-year old Riley, who was now of the age of consent under the new, more enlightened laws imposed by the Directorate. With Erica partly owning the house, too, even if Karen got the rest of it awarded to her in the divorce, she could be there to protect her sisters and herself, too. How would she be able to take Erica’s half away from her when she wasn’t an ex or a party to the divorce? My ex wouldn’t be able to prevent me from seeing my brats, either.

“Don’t worry, I won’t put your name down on the birth certificate, of course. I’m not stupid. We trust you to provide for us and the babies. If you sent money in that manner, Mom would find a way to control that money or would seek to do so, causing far more problems than it would solve. If we do get paternity tests, you should keep the results here, where she can’t find them. Right, sisters?” Erica reassured me, reducing another worry of mine.

I naturally had that concern, of course, that Karen would try to get her hands on any kind of child support money and it would never go to the babies. It was far better to leave the law out of this one, at least for now. Far too many judges hadn’t been purged just yet, even if more than a few had. It was just too much of a risk. It was far better to keep this between me and my three stepdaughters as well as Siobhan. True, I would have no legal rights ... yet. That could well change in a time of our choosing, and that “our” excluded my estranged wife.

Supper began shortly after that, and yes, I let the girls drink my wine with me, even Riley. It was far better to ease into drinking that to suddenly start at age twenty-one, with no real experience or awareness of what it involved. When drunk with supper, the alcohol wouldn’t be as potent, anyway. We were all on the same level of intoxication, or close enough, thanks to the hearty and otherwise excellent American classic. I couldn’t fault their culinary preferences, especially when they were deliberately chosen to appeal to me. They had even made garlic bread and some fine Caesar salad. Yeah, that really hit the spot!

“Talk about your dates, right? I’m of the impression that you’re kinda soured on the whole dating experience, but this kind of thing is different, I dare say. You’re on a date with four women or girls or whatever at once. Four ladies, right? How many five-way dates have you ever been on, and they didn’t cost you any extra for things like tips? No waiter or waitress, that kind of thing,” Siobhan teased me playfully, even as she sat with the others, all of them naked as jaybirds by now.

“You got me on that point, true enough! It’s not everyday that one gets to flout so many silly taboos, such as dating colleagues and dating one’s own stepdaughters, for instance. Did you notice that they call me ‘Daddy’ or ‘Dad,’ babe? Pretty wild, if you ask me! I seem to be getting along better with them than with their mother, that’s for sure,” I remarked with delight.

“And you get along better with us, Daddy, than we do with Mom! Oh, we love her, of course, she is our mother and gave birth to us, raised us with you, that kind of thing, but we just wish that she would get over her bad attitude lately. If we could find a way to get her pregnant by you, that would be fun, too! Imagine how that would go down!

“There’s still technically time, right, even if it would be a geriatric pregnancy. The miracles of modern science and all that jazz. I know that you probably think that you’re done with her, but wouldn’t it be satisfying to see her with a baby bump, knowing that the baby is yours? Our family could be connected by blood at last,” Brooke put in her own two cents, her smile reaching her hazel eyes as she flashed them at me.