Chapter 5

Bill’s turn:

Friday, the day before the wedding. When I pulled my company car (they gave me a sedan instead of a mini-van, last time around) into my driveway, my little SUV was already there. Haley’s driving it now. Insurance? Screw ‘em. Tomorrow I’ll send ‘em a notification that I’m married and my WIFE is driving it. I’ve seen Haley’s driving. She’s careful. Thought we could risk it.

I walk in to see Haley and Deena sitting on the sofa. That’s not an unusual thing. I’ve had the two of them together in my living room dozens of times. Make that ‘hundreds’. That Deena and Haley are friends is a happy development.

This time, it’s different, though. They both stand for greetings. Deena gets a hug and a daddy kiss. Haley gets a hug and ... Wow! Not quite a ‘take me to bed and screw me silly’ kiss, but a definite change from the innocent little kisses I used to get from her in Deena’s proximity.

Deena squealed. “Now that’s the kind of kiss I expected you to give ‘im, Haley!”

“Told ya, Deena. It’s real. It’s REALLY gonna happen.”

That statement got Deena wrapped around both me AND Haley, then the two of them pushed me bodily into my recliner. Haley pulled the handle, tilting me back, and they each grabbed a shoe.

“Wow,” I said. “I could LIKE this.”

“We’re bribing you,” Haley giggled. “We want a nice dinner.”

“I noticed no cooking was going on,” I said.

Deena named a restaurant. It wasn’t an expensive restaurant, just a bit above the middle of the scale.

I laughed. “I was hoping you weren’t planning on ordering pizza. Don’t you think I just might have intended on a special dinner tonight?” Then I stopped talking. Foot rub. Second only to sex with Haley on that ‘best feeling in the world’ list.

The foot rub ended in what almost was a common thing from when the girls were much younger. Deena perched on one arm of my recliner, Haley on the other.

Giggle. “You can sit in his lap, Haley. I know you’ve sat in his lap by now.”

I’m thinking ‘and she knows exactly the effect that move has one me’, but Haley just sort of slumped off the arm of the recliner and into my arms.

She looked up at me with those big brown eyes. Smiled. “Our daughter says to sit in your lap.”

“Our daughter is crazy.”

“Not crazy, Dad. Happy. It’s all clear to me now. How long have you loved each other? I know Haley didn’t walk in here on her birthday and say “I love you, let’s get married” an’ you said “Sure! Great idea!”

Haley looked at me, smiled, then looked at Deena. “Your dad’s sort of been my best friend ever since he moved into this house. It’s just inevitable. We sort of talked about being married before ... quite a while ago, really.”

Giggle. “I could tell. Didn’t know what I was seeing, but now it’s all so clear.”

“Oh, stop gloating, baby,” I told Deena. “You could’ve said something.”

“Only if I thought one of you would get hurt. I wasn’t SURE sure, anyway.” She kept on. “So all those times we jumped in bed with you in the morning, I guess that was a lot stranger than I thought, huh?”

Haley smiled demurely. “I guess I could’ve said it was just too weird for me to do that, but it really was nice to snuggle with ‘im.”

“Uh-huh,” Deena said.

“Kinda got me to thinking that I LIKED ‘im more than just friends,” Haley said. “But I couldn’t do anything because it’s against the law.”

I just kept my mouth shut. Haley and I have had plenty of talks about what she couldn’t say about us, which was basically nothing past ‘good friend’ and absolutely nothing past ‘friendly kiss’. I suppose that one day in the future, Deena might find out a bit more of the truth, but for right now, Haley’s little white lie was plenty enough.

I dunno. I think Deena’s a little happier than normal. We trekked off to dinner. Deena relinquished her normal front seat slot, the seat she normally took when the three of us went anywhere before. Haley accepted it with a smile.

Dinner was delightful. I’m beginning to think that things will work out as planned. Me and Haley married, Deena still happy daughter.

“So, Dad,” Deena started, “Have you given any more thought about me coming to live with y’all?”

I definitely noted the ‘y’all’ instead of ‘you’. “Haley says you two can work it out.”

“But what do YOU say?”

“I love you. I love Haley. You’re my daughter. She’s gonna be my wife. And if you two think you can live together under one roof, then I’d be a fool not to say yes.”

Deena smiled at Haley. “How hard was he to convince?”

“Biggest problem,” Haley returned, “was getting him to understand that I was FOR it. He’s very protective of me and you both. Wrong choice would have hurt all three of us. There was only one right choice.”

“Dad,” Deena said, then smirking, “Mom. I’ll be a good daughter.”

“You’ll be my evil stepchild,” Haley laughed.

“And I’ll hate it,” Deena retorted. She looked at me. “Dad, I really am gonna talk to Mom. I’ll wait, though. How long?”

“A week or two,” Haley injected.

“Baby,” I said, “you have no guarantee that your mom will buy into this.”

I watched Deena’s head bob. “Don’t be surprised, Dad. Seriously.”

“Look, baby, you’ll always be my daughter. If you can live here and you and I and Haley can have a harmonious family with her being my wife and your sister at the same time, that’s a good thing.”

We finished a good meal and headed home. Once home, we all attended to showers, me in my own, the two girls using the shower in the hall bathroom. There was a lot of undecipherable talking going on in Deena’s bedroom, then I heard them coming up the hall. Deena was wearing a blue dress.

My eyes popped. It was exactly the same dress that I’d bought for Haley on her last birthday. To my knowledge, Deena had not seen that dress.

“What do you think, baby?” Haley asked.

“Did you show her YOUR dress?”

Haley nodded. “Just now. This is freaky.”

“How long have you had that dress, Deena?”

“Mom bought it for me two weeks ago.”

“A week before my birthday, baby,” Haley added.

“I can get another one, but I need to go to Mom’s,” Deena offered.

“Nope,” Haley asserted. “This is a sign.”

“Too many signs, Dad,” Deena smiled. “This is supposed to happen. The marriage, I mean. And me being part of this family. Here.”

I shook my head. “Just crazy. We’re going to the courthouse and you two are dressed like sisters and I’m marrying one of you. Oughta raise eyebrows, for sure.”

Haley giggled. “My name’s on the marriage license, so we don’t lose track of who’s what. And Mom and Mister Steve’ll push me up front.”

I sat back in my recliner. Same as when I got home, daughter on one side, Haley on the other. Deena reached over and gave Haley a friendly tug sideways, dumping her in my lap. Different from this afternoon, though, was that earlier I had the jeans on that I wore many workdays, and Haley had her school uniform khaki slacks.

Now, I was wearing light cotton pajamas and Haley was in her nightshirt and panties and she put her arms around my neck and melted into me, something she has a knack for from the earliest days of our relationship. It felt too good the first time she did it. It still feels too good, but I’m not going to complain.

Tomorrow she’s going to be mine.

Tonight, though...

“As much as I love this, it’s not a good way to watch TV.”

“Okay, Dad,” Deena grinned. “I’ll move. Maybe Haley doesn’t wanna move just yet.”

Haley smiled demurely. “If you don’t mind, Bill.”

I smiled. “I could get used to this.”

“You’d better not,” Haley returned. “You’d better regard every instance as a rare treasure.”

Deena was paying attention. “Dad, you might have bitten off more than you can chew. Haley’s mind is a lot quicker than Mom’s, I think.”

Haley kissed me on the nose. “And don’t you forget it.” And thankfully, in the interests of decorum, she slid off me. I was able to mostly hide an erection and the flash of those brown eyes told me that she knew I had one.

At bedtime, I got a daddy-daughter kiss from Deena and a much hotter kiss from Haley. They went off to Deena’s room. I crawled into my own bed alone, hopefully for the last time.

As was more or less the standard, I was drifting along between sleep and awake the next morning when I was disturbed by a pair of teen girls, one on each side. I turned one way, kissed Deena on her nose, turned the other direction, ran into Haley’s lips.

“Excuse us, Deena,” Haley said. “All of a sudden this is REALLY good.” She wrapped her arms around me. I half-responded, holding Haley against me, trying to project some idea that this was new and exciting to both of us.

Really, though? Deena’s no dummy. I’m sure she surmises that this isn’t the first time Haley and I have been in this bed in a hot embrace, she’s just too polite to say so.

Haley wiggled back. “STOP, you! We’re not married. I’m a good girl!”

“Okay,” I said. “You two get dressed enough for us to go up the road for breakfast.”

“You could stay in bed and we’ll make you breakfast,” Haley said. They’d done that more than once. I saw it as a demonstration of the girls’ burgeoning domestic skills.

“Let’s not,” I said. “Kitchen’s clean. Haley and I won’t be back here until Sunday evening.”

“Okay,” Deena said. She started out of the bed. So did Haley, whose eyes twinkled as she gave my erection a little squeeze.

By the time I was sitting in the living room, putting my shoes on, the two of them came in, both dressed in jeans and sneakers, giggling.